Google posted word of an update for Sony's Google TV devices. Both its Internet TV and Internet Blu-ray player now have a faster Chrome web browser. The Blu-ray gets an extra treat in support for 3D Blu-ray movies to catch it up to other players.
Musician Neil Young in an interview at the D: Dive Into Media conference made the contentious claim that Apple's late chief Steve Jobs would have been pushing hard for improved audio quality. The "Needle and the Damage Done" creator claimed that Jobs, despite creating the iPod for digital music, preferred to listen to vinyl records at home. Apple's co-founder would have allegedly been working on higher quality devices, not just formats like Apple Lossless, to improve audio quality.
The third-generation Xbox could mark a symbolic switch in storage but also a step back for game ownership. Kotaku understood from a rumor source that it would keep an optical drive but jump to Blu-ray, allowing it to hold larger games and play offline HD movies. For Microsoft, it would be the footnote to the HD disc debate of the mid-2000s, where the company officially backed HD DVD but was forced to drop plans after Toshiba axed the format and eventually supported Blu-ray.
Paramount has become the first movie distributor to sell movies using the UltraViolet digital distribution system directly to customers. Up until now, UltraViolet digital downloads were available only as part of a DVD/Blu-Ray disc package deal or from a retailer such as Amazon.
Exploration has confirmed that at least two key Microsoft staffers have jumped from the Azure cloud service to the Xbox team. Dave Cutler, best known as the chief architect behind Windows NT, has left for the gamign division, ZDNet heard after talking to Microsoft. While his exact project wasn't known, he would be helping shift the Xbox to a digital media hub, a transition that had already started with the fall 2011 Dashboard update.
Dell's Alienware badge ventured into small form factor desktops for the first time late Tuesday. The X51 is billed as the smallest gaming PC desktop ever at no more than 13.5 inches at its largest dimension. Even with a 3.7-inch thick width, it can not only fit up to a GeForce GTX 555 desktop graphics card but replace this, the hard drive, and the RAM as new technology comes through.
Vizio on Tuesday expanded its entire TV-focused strategy for 2012 by starting with its own equivalent to an Apple TV. The VAP430 Stream Player is dedicated solely to bringing Google TV 2.0 to sets that don't already have it. It links to the TV through HDMI, with a pass-through for other devices, and can share media on the local network through Wi-Fi and DLNA.
Sony at CES unveiled new Google TV hardware that we had the opportunity to try. The hardware itself, a new NSZ-GS7 Network Player and a NSZ-GP9 Blu-ray player, isn't a revolution but is subtler and fits well into a home theater. The more distinctive feature for us is the remote: while Sony wouldn't let users touch the early prototypes, which we'll go into depth for along with launch details and pricing.
Sharp has unveiled a slew of new devices this week ahead of CES in Las Vegas. The product lineup includes a projector, 20- to 85-inch Aquos televisions and connected services, Blu-ray players, sound bars, shelf speaker systems, and several solar charging products for home installations.
HP hoped to cut into the territory of Apple's iMac with CES introductions by launching its first 27-inch all-in-one desktop. The Omni27 forgoes touch but is the first without touch to use HP's Magic Canvas, a widescreen-optimized space for apps, movies, and photos. Beats Audio and direct HDMI video input turn it into a media system both on its own and for other devices.
Samsung kept up its preview of its strategy for CES with two new home theaters and a sound bar. The HT-E6730W combines a 1,330W, 7.1-channel speaker system with vacuum tubes amplifiers. Much like its new Audio Dock, it mixes a digital amp to provide a clean source with the warmer sound and an extra octave of sound before distortion sets in.
Sony has kicked off its holiday sales a few days ahead of Black Friday, offering a variety of discounts on direct purchases. The company has slashed prices for a variety of products, including home theater systems, speakers, televisions, Blu-ray players and bundles, with free ground shipping on all orders.
Yamaha has introduced its latest home theater system, the BDX-610, which pairs an A/V receiver with six speakers. The 5.1-channel receiver features a 3D Blu-ray player, along with a network connection that enables users to access BD-Live and Netflix, among other services. Users can attach iOS devices via USB, with audio from iPhones or iPods sent as a digital PCM signal.
HP in one of its more surprising unveilings Wednesday night completely remade its Envy 15 and 17 notebooks. The new versions take more of their visual cues from the MacBook Pro, adopting its silver-colored metal, but put an even heavier emphasis on Beats audio processing than they did in the past. Each has six speakers and a subwoofer, even going so far as to have an oversized thumb dial for volume that both gives it finer volume control and a more iconic look.
Sony brought out a late PlayStation 3 holiday bundle on Tuesday to catch Black Friday buyers next week. The new bundle ties a 160GB PS3 to both 2D and 3D versions of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 on Blu-ray. A coupon in the box gives access to downloadable versions of the two earliest movies in the series, Sorcerer's Stone and Chamber of Secrets.
MCE Technologies has announced that all internal and external models of its 12X Blu-ray recordable drives will now include playback software for the Mac. The Mac Blu-ray playback software allows users to play both commercial and non-commercial movies on any Mac running OS X 10.5.2 or later. A one year license that enables full Blu-ray playback capabilities is included with the purchase, while a lifetime license can be purchased at a discounted rate. The software requires an Intel 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo or faster processor, and minimum 4GB of RAM.
Warner Brothers is ready to offer copies of its Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows, Part 2 movie to download or stream on the UltraViolet platform. People who buy the Blu-ray/DVD combo, which goes on sale tomorrow, will be able to download an additional copy via Flixster apps for iOS, Android and BlackBerry devices.
HP started off the week with a push into 3D in areas it doesn't normally touch. Its media hub, the Wireless TV Connect, now has a new model that has the still-rare ability to stream 3D video from a PC to a TV. It's now much smaller but can still take the footage directly from a PC's HDMI adapter, up to 1080p with 7.1-channel surround, over a WHDI stream with "virtually no latency" to its own wired HDMI connection.
The long in the making UltraViolet platform will get its formal launch this week. Starting with the October 11 Blu-ray release of Horrible Bosses and the October 14 release of The Green Lantern, viewers who prove ownership of a UV-aware title will have access to it across computers, mobile apps on Android, BlackBerry, and iOS, and even across services. The rights include five major movie studios and, for an extra fee, can sometimes involve getting a physical copy for something they only own digitally.
Dell replaced the higher-end of its all-in-one desktops Tuesday with the Inspiron One 2320. It stays framed around a 23-inch, 1080p display with optional touch and freshens it up with a jump from AMD to the newest Intel hardware. Systems start off at the entry level with a twin-core Pentium and scale up to as much as a Core i7 and 8GB of RAM.
Toshiba has used the CEATEC trade show in Japan to unveil the Regza Blu-ray DBR-M190. The device stands out from the Blu-ray player/personal video recorder crowd in that it packs a massive 5TB hard drive. This, along with its mult-tuner capability, makes it good for simultaneously recording up to six digital broadcasts for up to 15 days.
Dish Network made a bet on Internet video Friday with Blockbuster Movie Pass. The service bundles satellite TV with mailed movie, TV, and game rentals as well as Internet streaming. Pitched as a rival to Netflix and Qwikster, it takes advantage of the Blockbuster rights and TV streaming to give a wider catalog of Internet video; 10,000 movies in total will stream to TVs and computers, including from Starz and others who have held out on Netflix to shelter their TV business.
ASUS has just put up two new multimedia notebooks with the 15.6-inch N55SF and 17.3-inch N75SF. The former can be had with a screen resolution of either 1600x900 or 1920x1080, and with either a 2.3GHz Core i5 or 2GHz Core i7. Either model gets a 2GB NVIDIA GeForce GT 555M graphics processor.
MSI pushed deep into gaming notebooks Wednesday with two new higher-end systems. The GT683DXR and GT780DXR at 15.6 and 17.3 inches each both carry quad-core 2GHz Core i7 processors and newer GeForce GTX 570M graphics to handle modern games. As desktop replacements, they both have 2.1-channel Dynaudio speakers and twin hard drives in a RAID 0 stripe that boosts the disk performance.
Home theater viewers received three new choices from Sony at the IFA show. The SMP-N200 Network Media Player updates Sony's early digital-only box and adds support for both 3D and HD video streaming as well as a new 'concave' design. It primarily taps into Sony's own music and video services, but it can take media from DLNA-equipped devices on the local network and supports the 'throw' sharing from the Tablet S.
Sony is set to launch a new headphone system designed to be used while watching 3D media. The MDR-DS7500 is the first with Sony's new 3D VPT (Virtualphones Technology) which recreates 3D surround sound, and is optimized for 3D content. The headphones are also ergometrically designed to allow the user to wear both 3D glasses and the headphones simultaneously and comfortably.
Sony's S1 tablet has had some of its launch details spoiled just a week before it's expected to show. Now rechristened the Tablet S, the 9.4-inch slate should now be shipping with Android 3.1. Its support for remote controlling home theaters over IR was known, but Engadget has seen that it will now have a pseudo-AirPlay style "throw" over DLNA and should be groomed for Ice Cream Sandwich when it arrives.
Netflix and Hulu occupy almost entirely separate camps of digital streaming, Nielsen learned in a study Wednesday. Both are now available on many platforms, but Netflix is the dominant form by a wide margin on non-PC devices, including iPads, game consoles, and Internet-aware media hubs, ranging from a three-to-one ratio on Apple's tablet to seven or eight times higher. Hulu only wins out on computers but often does so by a wide margin, with 89 percent of its viewers watching on a computer versus just 42 percent of Netflix owners wanting to do the same.
Netflix in discussing its spring results (PDF) confirmed plans for a Facebook integration feature, albeit with limits. The company planned to allow sharing video recommendations over Facebook before the end of the summer. To avoid possible legal ramifications from the US' Video Privacy Protection Act, however, the company planned to serve Canada and Latin America at first.
Fox will become the first movie studio to bring movie downloads to Google's Android platform this October. The first movie will be X-Men: First Class, a digital copy of which Blu-ray disc buyers will be able to download and sideload onto their Android devices. The service will at first be available in the US, the UK, France and Germany.
GE has reportedly achieved a significant breakthrough in its Holographic Data Storage project. Researchers claim to have successfully demonstrated a micro-holographic material that is capable of supporting data transfer rates at the same speed as Blu-ray discs. The tech is said to step closer to the goal of storing the equivalent of 20 Blu-ray discs onto a single DVD-size disc.
Two months ahead of the formal release of the six-part Star Wars saga on Blu-Ray, a "sneak peek" app has previews of some of the 40-plus hours of bonus features and footage, and will be available for download from the iTunes App Store on Wednesday, July 20th, Engadget reports. The bonus material will include never-before-seen content from the Lucasfilm archives, and new interviews with the cast and crew.
A newly leaked document sent to Kotaku reveals Sony's next PS3 console won't support HD playback of Blu-ray discs through its component output, unlike current consoles. Existing models won't get the same restriction through a software update, however. Ars Technica reached out to Sony regarding this matter and was told the change is a requirement of the Advanced Access Content System agreement.
Developer Macgo claims to have solved one of the most common complaints about Macs by launching its simply titled Mac Blu-ray Player. The app decrypts the AACS copy protection keys itself and bypasses the need for an OS-level protection scheme to work. Although it needs an Internet connection to work, it can play most any format stored on a disc and takes advantage of both hardware graphics acceleration and NVIDIA's CUDA (on GeForce chipsets) to decode 1080p video.
HP on Monday quietly posted some of the highest end of its new AMD Fusion-based Pavilion notebooks. The dv6z Quad Edition uses AMD's faster Llano-based chips and ranges from a 1.4GHz quad A6-3400M through to a 1.9GHz A8-3530MX, the two extremes of which can boost to 2.3GHz and 2.6GHz respectively. The Fusion technology gives them graphics capable of playing 1080p video smoothly, but they can be optioned up with an unspecific dedicated AMD Radeon chipset to handle more demanding games.
Sony chose Europe as the first venue to unveil a redesigned VAIO Z. The new system is now more consciously pitched as a MacBook Air equivalent and moves both the optical drive and even dedicated graphics to an external box, the Power Media Dock. The new PC is the first non-Mac to use Thunderbolt, albeit not in Mini DisplayPort form, and uses the high-speed cable to handle not just Blu-ray or DVD but AMD Radeon HD 6650M video, three USB ports, Ethernet, 3D-capable HDMI, and VGA.
Mitsubishi has just taken the wraps off an upcoming LCD TV that sports not only a built-in Blu-ray player but also a 500GB hard drive. While these features don't make it unique, the 22-inch set's ability to hide these in the base keeps the design more compact than others. Most Japanese all-in-one sets hide it in a bulkier cabinet or need a larger overall TV.
Vizio continued a string of mid-year AV updates with a turn towards audio and Blu-ray players. The VHE211is its first real mobile in-ear headphones and include a built-in mic for iPhones and other smartphones to handle calls. Vizio claims to have better quality than usual in the class with 9mm neodymium drivers and a flat design to fight tangling; they ship in white or black this summer for $30.
Commodore on Friday said it had nearly finished its first wave of production for the remadeC64. The now dual-core Atom PC is due to ship this coming week. Its launch coincides with the company opening an office in Fort Lauderdale that will handle custom orders beyond the pre-configured models on tap.
Sony on Wednesday morning reworked the VAIO C and E for the summer. The 14-inch EG, 15.5-inch EH, and 17.3-inch EJ are the more radical breaks with new patterns and fingerprint-resistant shells. Buyers still have the pick of more recent Sandy Bridge-era Core i3 and i5 processors but can pick an AMD Fusion-based 1.6GHz E-350 in the EH to keep the price down but still get HD-capable video.
Acer is launching its Revo RL100 Media Center in the US. The small footprint PC's signature trick a detachable wireless pad that acts either as a keyboard or a mouse and helps it fit into home theaters with a minimum of extra space. It is powered by a 1.3GHz Athlon II Neo dual-core processor that gives it unusual performance for something in its size class.
Samsung deepened the links between its TVs and phones Thursday with both Android and iOS apps. Smart View for Android (free, Market) now gives users two-way media sharing. Those with a Galaxy S II or a similar phone can stream cable TV, Blu-ray, or any other video source from the TV to the phone itself. They can likewise browse the set's Smart TV apps and can watch content from one source while the TV is used for another.
Sony picked Wednesday to upgrade two of its most popular notebooks. The VAIO S we just reviewed is now getting an upgrade to a 1600x900 display that turns its 13.3-inch screen into more of a desktop replacement. It also has options for two solid-state drives in a RAID stripe to give it very fast load times.
Lenovo set out to liven the world of high-end all-in-ones Monday night by bringing the look and feel of the ThinkPad Edge to its ThinkCentre desktops. Its 21.5-inch Edge 91z moves the power brick to the outside and keeps the desktop just 2.5 inches deep, giving it both a slicker look and reducing the footprint it needs on the desktop. Performance still keeps up with as much as a quad Core i7 and the option of 1GB Radeon HD 6650 video for pro 3D or gaming.
Peel began its week by getting a large $16.7 million round of financing. The creator of an iPhone TV remote add-on and independent iOS app planned to both get its "fruit" remote control bridge as well as expand to other platforms and more content sources. Most of the money would come from Lightspeed Venture Partners.
Non-traditional movie rentals upstaged retail shop rentals in the first few months of 2011, DEG reported Monday. Subscription rentals, including both discs and Internet streaming from sites like Netflix, created 33 percent more spending in the March quarter. Cash from rentals at Blockbuster and other legacy stores simultaneouly dropped 36 percent, however, hinting that many had been giving up the old method in favor of new.
MSI chose Wednesday to bring out a unique notebook tailored just to serious gamers. Unlike the internally created keyboards on most notebooks, the 17.3-inch GX780 uses a special keyboard designed by game accessory maker SteelSeries. The layout is both more durable than most notebook keyboards but has had its keys optimized for gaming, such as enlarging the Alt and Ctrl keys as well as moving the Windows key to the right to avoid accidental hits.
Origin PC on Monday began shipping its EON17-S gaming notebook with a CPU overclocked to 4.5GHz in Turbo Boost mode. The notebook was introduced in mid-February but now has overclocking that Origin said doesn't come at the cost of stability or durability. The 17.3-inch notebook offers a 1080p a display and Intel's second-generation Core i5 or Core i7 processors, but only the Extreme Edition Core i7-2920XM gets the ultimate overclock option, which hits about 4GHz without the Turbo Boost.
Mitsubishi unveiled three new REAL Blu-ray recorders on its Japanese website, the DVR-BZ450, DVR-BZ350 and DVR-BZ250. All three have 3D Blu-ray, BDXL and VoD support, AVCREC, and two digital TV tuners. The difference between the three models is the amount of internal storage. The BZ-450 has two terabytes of internal storage, while the BZ-350 has 1TB and the BZ-250 has 500GB.
The NPD Group in a new study suggested that Internet video had done little to dislodge Blu-ray and DVD as the dominant forms for movies. About 78 percent of the money spent on watching at home in the US was spent on one of the two disc formats exclusively while 15 percent were spending it on a hybrid service with both Internet and physical rentals, like Netflix. The remaining seven-plus percent accounted for every other digital and pay-per-view service combined, including iTunes, Amazon Instant Video, and cable or satellite watching.
