Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video

Let’s break it down TV junkie. Sony’s new ¥38,000 (about $355) XDV-D500 features a 3-inch, 432 x 240 pixel resolution display with 160-degree viewing angle, 500:1 contrast, and a battery capable of about 8-hours of TV reception. It can even record up to 10 hours of scheduled programming to 2GB of internal memory. The itty bittier XDV-G200 brings a 2-inch LCD to the show, AM/FM radio too, then ditches the EPG and recording function. This is Japan mind you, so these sets receive digital 1Seg TV — in other words you can kiss your import fantasies goodbye.

[Via Impress]

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Filed under: Wireless, Networking

If you’ve been at it long, you’re probably tired of forking over $100 or so every year for the latest and greatest in wireless networking. The TEW-637AP, thankfully, takes a different approach. Instead of chucking your current router, the 300Mbps Wireless “Easy-N-Upgrader” just jacks into an extra Ethernet port on your existing router, and relies on that old box to do the “routing” part. The TRENDnet unit deals with blasting the 802.11n with MIMO, for theoretical speeds up to 300Mbps. Seems a bit silly, but the $64 pricetag certainly bests your average 802.11n router, so it might work out for you if you’ve got a good thing going with your existing setup, and just need a little extra push in the bandwidth department.

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Filed under: Household

Yeah, it’s no Spice Weasel, but we’re pretty sure this product concept would feel right at home in an episode of Futurama. That’s right kids, it’s the spice gun — a handy device which would allow you to gun down your food in cold-blooded flavor. To use this killer, you’d lock and load the barrel with a selection of your deadliest spices, then simply spin it — Dirty Harry style — to switch up ammo. We could go on all day with clever turns of phrase describing how much “kick” this thing has, suggestions that you load it up with radish-piercing bullets, and cautionary messages like, “Never point the spice gun at a steak unless you intend to season it,” but we’ll spare you the pain. Oh, whoops.

[Via Uber-Review]

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Filed under: Cellphones, Portable Video

No, it’s not that 700MHz spectrum, but the $2.5 billion sale of the airwaves to AT&T from private firm Aloha Partners could have implications as large as Auction 73’s massive, open-access Block C itself. Given that Aloha’s Hiwire trials for DVB-H-based mobile TV have been playing in the 700MHz arena, we suspect this could spell doom for the whole project — and on the heels of Modeo’s collapse, very likely spells doom for DVB-H on the whole in the US. Though that’s great news for Qualcomm and DVB-H competitor MediaFLO, it’s awful news for the prospect of a global mobile TV standard, closely (if not eerily) following what happened years back with the European Union’s selection of GSM and the rise of CDMA in North America. For its part, AT&T says it’s going to use its newfound airwaves — which cover 72 of the top 100 US markets — for “broadcast video or for two-way communications such as voice, data or multicast content.” Admittedly, the “broadcast video” part of that leads us to believe that Hiwire could somehow survive the change in ownership, but with AT&T’s selection of MediaFLO last year as its standard of choice, it sure ain’t likely.

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We’ve just got off the blower with Apple’s Greg Jozwiak, vice-president of worldwide product marketing for iPod and iPhone.

The new launch today of a 16GB iPhone and 32GB Touch has raised some serious questions about how often Cupertino is outing updated products, leaving first adoptors to rue the day they lashed out on a new piece of Apple flavoured kit.

Here’s what he had to say when we took him to task over today’s shock news.

T3: So, first and foremost, it’s been three months almost to the day that the 8GB iPhone was launched in the UK. Are people going to be annoyed that a better model has been released so soon?

GJ: No, I don’t think so. The price remains same for the existing 8GB model and while the price decreased dramatically in the past (8Gb reduced to 4Gb prices – Ed), we’re offering an additional option to the existing model.

T3: Will existing 8GB iPhoners get a compensatory upgrade?

GJ: No. We’re releasing a brand new model with a brand new price. The original 8Gb price is still the same – we’re just offering a different option.

T3: Why hasn’t Apple launched a 32GB iPhone? Memory technology is available, as proved with today’s iPod touch announcement.

GJ: Different things are happening in both products. We’re offering choice.

T3: Is it really a 16GB capacity? How much space is gobbled up by the OS?

GJ: Not a whole lot is taken off. Jump into the settings and you’ll be able to tell.

T3: It’s no secret that lots of the UK mobile phone crowd won’t buy an iPhone until 3G appears. When can we expect it?

GJ: We don’t talk about future products. We have the most sophisticated platform for a mobile device. The ability to add to features as and when is phenomenally compelling.

T3: Will 8GB iPhone users quickly find themselves out of memory with the impending raft of apps from the SDK-ers?

GJ: There’s still quite a bit you can do with the existing model. A higher capacity model can obviously hold more but we try to be clever and efficient in iTunes to meet the needs of both.

T3: Right, so how many 8GB iPhones sold have been sold in the UK?

GJ: We’ve haven’t made any decision to announce sales figures.

T3: Finally, this bigger storage size should merit more visual media, so what’s holding back iTunes movie rentals in the UK?

GJ: Yeah, we’re interested to get that up and running and expecting to bring them to the UK this year.