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Filed under: Handhelds

We’ve known for almost two years now that Palm has been cooking up a mysterious mobile computing device for what founder Jeff Hawkins calls the company’s ‘third business’ (with the other two being PDAs and smartphones, obviously), and now several sites are claiming that attendees of Walt Mossberg’s D: All Things Digital conference will be the first to learn hard details about this ambitious project. Although it’s been public knowledge that Hawkins would be speaking at next Wednesday’s D for some time now, both Brighthand and I4U are reporting that he will indeed be divulging material information on what many people are predicting will be a UMPC-like tablet codenamed ‘Hawk’ and powered by Palm’s recently-announced Linux-based OS; when we contacted Palm, they would only say that “Jeff…will be presenting something to do with Palm.” For whatever it’s worth, we do know that Hawkins shares our love of cramming as much power, storage, connectivity (well, for the most part), and usability into as small a package as possible, so to those folks who have been discounting Palm and its seeming inability to innovate, you may be in for quite a surprise next week.

Read – I4U
Read – Brighthand’s predictions

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Filed under: Features, Home Entertainment

Jeremy Toeman contributes Ins and Outs, an opinion column on entertainment technology:

Last time on Ins and Outs we introduced the concept of buyshifting — what it means, what it is, and where it’s going. But now it’s time to get down to the brass tacks. That’s right, we’re talking about whether it’s viable for the average consumer — more specifically, where it falls on the cost scale. The results might actually surprise you. So let’s dig in, shall we?

For the “standard” HD+DVR package — your kind of baseline TV-consuming experience — the monthly bill for San Francisco’s Comcast digital cable service is $78. If the average household watches 8 hours of programming per day (yes, it’s true), that comes out to about $0.32 per hour. Comcast also charges $0.99 per episode through its VOD service. iTunes, of course, charges $1.99 per episode, or $34.99 per season ($1.59 per episode at an assumed 22 episodes per season). Buying the DVDs on Amazon ranges from about $25-$40 per season ($1.14 to $1.81 per episode).

Since your cable bill is fixed (well, not really, as the cable industry has managed to increase billing at a rate that exceeds inflation for the past 10 consecutive years – big surprise), it comes out to $936 annually. (Side note: for simplicity’s sake we’ll assume that your average satellite bill is comparable to cable.) So let’s see the results on a per-year, per-month, and per-episode basis, assuming one season per year, 22 episodes per season per show.

Continue reading Ins and Outs: Is buyshifting the future of television? (part 2)

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

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Filed under: Gaming

Wii modders have already hit (and overcome) a few snags as a result of changes Nintendo has made to the console, but it doesn’t look like the company is ready to give up the fight just yet, now reportedly introducing (as rumored) another round of revisions to stop folks from messing with the Wii’s innards. According to at least one retailer in Japan, Nintendo has taken the somewhat drastic step of actually snipping some of the pins from the surface-mounted IC on the Wii’s motherboard, making the current crop of modchips virtually useless. Currently, the changes only seem to apply to NTSC-J model Wiis sold in Japan, with no word of any NTSC-U model Wiis suffering the same fate — although we wouldn’t bet on them being immune for long. Of course, all this is of little concern for anyone planning on playing by Nintendo’s rules, but the rest of ya may want to grab a moddable Wii while the going’s still good — or at least wait for the inevitable workaround to this latest impediment.

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Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Tsk, tsk. Looks like Best Buy will indeed be paying up for the misdeeds involving that dodgy intranet we saw a few months back. Connecticut’s attorney general announced a lawsuit against the big box retailer and accused it of “deceiving customers with in-store computer kiosks and overcharging them.” Attorney General Richard Blumenthal was quoted as saying that the store “gave consumers the worst deal with a bait-and-switch-plus scheme luring consumers into stores with promised online discounts, only to charge higher in-store prices.” The suit seeks “refunds for consumers, civil penalties, court costs, a ban on the practice, and other remedies,” and while Best Buy spokespersons are vigorously denying the allegations, Connecticut’s consumer protection commissioner even said that there was “certainly an element of deception here.” Reportedly, the in-store kiosks were somehow an “alternate way to get information about products,” but when that information ends up costing your customers more than they should be paying, we doubt the judge will look kindly upon it.

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Filed under: Displays, Misc. Gadgets, HDTV

Toshiba has shown off some auto-related products at the Automotive Engineering Expo 2007, including a mobile HD DVD player and a fresh take on touch panels. The high-definition in-dash player is under co-development with Alpine, and is planned for a 2008 release. The LCD is an improvement on traditional touchscreen technology, with no film coating — which traditionally reduces contrast ratio and brightness — to handle the user input, instead bundling optical sensors alongside each pixel. These sensors can then detect the shadow of a press during the day, and the reflection of the backlight at night. Toshiba also plans to upgrade that tech to use infrared instead of day/night sensors. Who cares if you can’t see the difference between 1080 and 720 on a 7-inch screen, we just want our mobile touchscreen HD now!

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