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Digital Contents Expo Tokyo: Pioneer’s awesome 3D display “Floating Vision” (video)

Posted: 27 Oct 2009 05:20 AM PDT

fv_01_pioneer

Pioneer has showcased the Floating Vision at the Digital Contents Expo in Tokyo (that ended Sunday), another 3D display that doesn’t require you to wear glasses (yawn) to view 3D images. It’s not bad at all though, even though visitors flocked to Sony’s booth to see their stereoscopic 3D display (which was a bit cooler).

You can connect the Floating Vision to a PC via USB 2.0 to view images or videos “floating” over the display (5.7 inches, 640 × 480 VGA resolution). What’s pretty cool is that you can “interact” with the image, as the device detects your hand movements. It’s also possible to “control” an image with your voice (the device has a mic on its front). Both Windows PCs and Macs are supported.

fv_01_pioneer_2

The device is sized at 179×185 ×146.5 mm and weighs 1.1kg. And best of all, Pioneer actually sells the device already on their website for $540 [JP]. Ask the Japan Trend Shop or Geek Stuff 4 U in case you live outside Japan and you're interested in getting one.

Here’s the video of the FV-01 in action I took at the expo:

Woot! Off! Alert!

Posted: 27 Oct 2009 05:18 AM PDT

woot_off (1)
Just so everyone knows, there’s a Woot! Off going on right now. Perfect timing too as it’s just before the holiday shopping season. So load up Woot! in a dedicated tab, sit back, and enjoy the ride for the next day or so.

Tire maker Bridgestone shows world’s first flexible e-book reader

Posted: 27 Oct 2009 03:40 AM PDT

bridgestone_e_paper_flexible

Tire maker Bridgestone isn’t the first company that comes to mind when thinking about electronic paper, but the company has been experimenting in this field for quite some time now. Today, Bridgestone claimed that it has developed the world’s first flexible e-book reader [JP]. The device, which is pictured above, uses electronic paper (instead of, say, an LCD) and will display the content on the screen even after you turn it off.

Bridgestone says the prototype has a 10.7-inch-screen, is just 5.8mm thick (Kindle 2: 9.1mm) and can display color pages. The device can be bent to some extent since the circuit board and the electronic paper are flexible.

First tests with end consumers will begin in spring of next year, but Bridgestone already said it doesn’t plan to commercialize the e-book reader at this point.

bridgestone_e_book

The company also unveiled another device that features a 13.1-inch e-paper (touch screen) that can display up to 4,096 colors, communicate with cell phones and comes with a reaction rate of 0.8sec (that’s how long it takes to refresh a screen). It’s pictured above.

Daily Crunch: Monster Party Edition

Posted: 27 Oct 2009 12:00 AM PDT

I’m going to be a 20-foot-long ANIMATRONIC GOMORA for Halloween

Posted: 26 Oct 2009 07:30 PM PDT


Well, you can stop trying now. You’re not going to win that costume party. I’m going to come to it in a monstrous Gomora costume as big as a tree, shooting smoke and lighting up my monster eyes. Unless you come dressed as Ultraman and vanquish me (unlikely) I’ll be taking home first prize.

The costume is being tested and sold as part of a promotion for an upcoming movie called, I kid you not, “Mega Monster Battle: Ultra Galaxy Legend.” If that’s not the greatest movie of all time, then they will need to be indicted on charges of false advertising.

Rumor: Nintendo planning a DSi with a 4″ screen

Posted: 26 Oct 2009 07:00 PM PDT

dsi
With the DSi still fresh on the market (relatively so anyway), it seems strange that Nintendo would want to replace it so quickly. But hey, they did it with the GBA, so why not? Japanese paper Nikkei reports that Nintendo is planning a new plus-size version of the device, which is to sport a 4″ screen (or screens). Sounds good to me, although the DSi already enlarged and improved the DS Lite’s perfectly good screen. So a 4″ one would probably be more for the real hardcore kids.

To give you an idea of what the difference would be between the 4″ and the current 3.25″ screen, I’ve made this handy chart:

dsiplus

A noticeable improvement.

This rumor comes hot on the heels of another rumor, though they seem to be unrelated. The rumored DS Speak Channel would probably be on the new version as well. And hey, it’s almost holiday shopping time — a nice big-screen DS would make a lot of kids happy.

[via Electronista and Shack News]

Vivitar invades the pocketcam market

Posted: 26 Oct 2009 07:00 PM PDT

vivitarFlip definitely created a market that no one knew existed, when the came out with their now famous line of portable camcorders (or pocketcams). There have been a few other brands, with a few different feature sets, and now Vivitar is going to throw their product into the lineup.

The Vivitar does bring a new night vision feature to the table, being one of the first to do so. The DVR-510 also includes a totally waterproof case, meaning you don’t need to worry if you’re shooting at the pool or the beach. The bad news is that the video quality is somewhat lacking, running at a maximum of 640×480. The camera has 2GB of built-in storage, and has an SD card slot so you can add more if needed (though 640×480 video won’t require a lot of space).

Vivitar’s new camera is priced very attractively at $50. For the feature set, it’s a more than reasonable price. Be warned that the picture quality may not be the best, but it should be good enough for family video.

[via ChipChick]

Best Buy drops the price on the Netflix-streaming, Blu-ray playing Insignia Blu-ray player

Posted: 26 Oct 2009 06:30 PM PDT

9386112_ra (1)
Want a Blu-ray player? Want a Netflix streamer? How about both for $100? Best Buy has you covered with the Insignia NS-BRDVD3.

Yeah, this player isn’t you reference quality unit, but my goodness, for $100 who cares. The unit will playback Blu-ray discs just fine, display all the BD-Live goodies and stream Netflix. What more can you want for that price? [Best Buy via Electronic House]

Another Windows 7 launch party in Japan, another touchscreen failure

Posted: 26 Oct 2009 06:00 PM PDT

Judging from this video, the Windows 7 launch in Japan was certainly more, shall we say, flamboyant then the launch here in the US. But the really amusing part is the fact that the host couldn’t get the touchscreen to work.

The video is strangely disturbing, and I’m not sure exactly who the costumed heroes are (Ballmer? Gates?) but that’s not the really funny part. You’d think that someone being on stage demo’ing a technology would have looked at the thing first. Had he done that, he would have learned that using your fingernail doesn’t work, and not looked like an chump.

To be fair, crashes happen during demos. It happens to everyone, you’re showing off your shiny new thing and oops, there it goes. This was user error and shouldn’t be blamed on Win7.

How much would you pay for this mouse? $1200? No? Okay, don’t read this then

Posted: 26 Oct 2009 05:30 PM PDT

ninjamouse
Of all the people on Earth, I’m probably at least in the top 100 of “most mice handled.” Not a particularly prestigious list to be on, but I’ll take what I can get. And I’m probably one of the biggest proponents of splurging on a good mouse. Mamba, G500, Mighty Mouse (if it’s any good)… just go for it, you use this thing for hours in a row and it might as well be the perfect fit. But like all things, there are exceptions. For instance, when a mouse costs over a grand.

ninja2Now, that’s not to say the ID Mouse from Intelligent design doesn’t look good (it does) or that it won’t be comfortable (it might be) — and honestly, you don’t need anybody to tell you that $1200 is too much to spend on a mouse. The most expensive mouse worth buying is the Mamba, and even then I advise trying to get a rebate or something.

But of course, this mouse isn’t meant to be a good mouse. It’s meant to be a piece of art. In that case — well, still not worth $1200. Besides, it’ll get all smudgy.

Lastly… you called your design house Intelligent Design? Come on now.

[via The Design Blog and HardOCP]

New iMacs have finicky DisplayPorts

Posted: 26 Oct 2009 04:30 PM PDT

ports
Just a PSA, really: The newest iMacs are somewhat limited in their capability to be used as external monitors for your laptop. I’d consider the functionality to be a bonus to begin with, but if you were going to be relying on it, better make other plans. It seems that the DisplayPort on 27″ iMacs (there isn’t a video in on the 21.5″ ones) is a bit picky on what it takes an input from. Using various adapters, iFixit determined that at the moment, the only devices which can use the iMac as a secondary display are those equipped natively with a Mini DisplayPort.

I won’t editorialize here other than to say what’d you expect? Apple was going to ignore the chance to sell another accessory?

The NBA starts tomorrow, and so does NBA Live 10’s Dynamic Season Mode

Posted: 26 Oct 2009 04:00 PM PDT

nbadyn

A little birdie, also known as an e-mail, tells me that EA Sports will flip the switch on Dynamic Season Mode in NBA Live 10 tomorrow. Well, for the Xbox 360 version; PS3 owners will have to wait till Thursday. This, of course, coincides with the start of the new NBA season, to be won, according to that same NBA Live 10, by the Cavs.

Dynamic Season Mode actually sounds pretty neat, truth be told. What it does is monitor the performance of teams and players (data is provided by Synergy Sports Technology), then attempts to bring that data into the game. So, let’s say, all of a sudden, Shaq starts hitting every single one of his free throws in real life. Well, that means the chances of Shaq making a free throw in the game goes up accordingly. Or maybe LeBron James, for whatever reason, just to show that he can, probably, starts hopping on one foot in real life. Assuming EA Sports’ rendering engine can render a hopping man, well, there you go.

So yeah, that’s it. I guess I’ll have to start watching SportsCenter again, now that basketball is back (the NFL can take a hike for all I care, and I get all my baseball news from Ron and Fez on Sirius XM.)

Surprise! “Family Guy” too raunchy for Microsoft sponsorship

Posted: 26 Oct 2009 03:48 PM PDT


When I first heard that Microsoft was going to be publicizing Windows 7 in the legendarily offensive “Family Guy,” I thought “Wow, either Microsoft is cooler than I thought or they’ve never actually seen the show.” Unsurprisingly, it seems to have been the latter.

“Family Guy Presents: Seth and Alex’s Almost Live Comedy Show” has already been made, of course, and will air as usual, but it won’t be Microsoft sponsoring its the advertisement-free presentation. Microsoft decided that “riffs on deaf people, the Holocaust, feminine hygiene and incest” weren’t a good fit for its brand image. Really, Microsoft? Then why did you decide to partner with a show that jokes about those things every week without fail?

[via TechFlash]

Oh dear: Analyst slashes DJ Hero sales expectations by 50 percent

Posted: 26 Oct 2009 03:30 PM PDT

penny

Interesting note regarding DJ Hero, where "interesting" means "potentially bad news." One of those fancy analyst types, someone at Cowen and Company, has slashed sales expectations by a little more than 50 percent. That’s nothing to brush aside if you’re Activision.

Here’s the juicy part of the report:

On DJ Hero, despite some recent positive comments from company management about pre-orders, we remain very cautious about the title’s prospects at launch,” he noted. “A survey of online retailers indicates a demand profile that is well below what we would have expected to see just a few days before launch for a title that was destined to be a big (or even modest) hit. As a result, we are reducing our estimate for DJ Hero Q4 US unit sales from 1.6 million to 600,000, and we are reducing our first year estimate from 2.5 million to 950,000

Someone at Kotaku wrote, "It seems the turntables have turned on Activision," which legitimately made me laugh.

Look, for a time I was into that whole DJ scene, and still am to an extent. That’s why I wrote what I wrote: that the barrier to entry to becoming a competent DJ, what with today’s software, is a lot lower than it is to becoming a competent guitarist. Plus, DJing is a little more niche than guitaring; who didn’t want to play the guitar growing up?

Now, the analyst isn’t saying that DJ Hero won’t sell at all, just that, based on the early hype, and the Hero brand name, it he and his company initially expected it to do better.

Or, if you want to be a cynic, you can blame Activision for burning through all these music games in such a short period of time that people are either A) tired of them or B) they’ve played enough if them, and don’t need to play any more.

In any event, the game comes out tomorrow for $120 with turntable. (Maybe the price has something to do with it, too?)

via Kotaku

Pic, of course, via Penny-Arcade

Pro Evolution Soccer 2010 knocks FIFA 10 off its little perch, becomes top selling game in Europe

Posted: 26 Oct 2009 03:00 PM PDT

pes2010

Believe it or not, but FIFA 10 isn’t the only soccer game around. In fact, Pro Evolution Soccer 2010 just came out in Europe, and was the top selling game there last week. Not the top selling sports game, but the top selling game overall. Yeah, it’s big.

Forza Motorsport 3, which comes out here in the U.S. tomorrow, was the second best selling game, followed by FIFA 10, Mario & Sonic at the Olympics, and WWE Smackdown vs. Raw 2010.

I’ve always been a PES guy, so hooray for my team! Not that I’m going to buy it this year—I’ll only buy sports games every so often; I can update my own rosters, thank you very much—but thank goodness it did well. You don’t want there to only be one game to choose from, do you?

And I’m pretty sure this screenshot is broken: if Liverpool were to play Barcelona, you figure either one or the other would be wearing their away kit; the colors there are far too close to make them easily discernible.


Review: Astro Boy

Posted: 26 Oct 2009 02:30 PM PDT

astroboy
Note the “Western Eyes”
Short Version
Trust me. Paranormal Activity sucks. Go see Astro Boy if you have to see something this week or weekend.

A Real Boy
The original Astro Boy aka Tensuwan Atomu was created in 1952 by Osamu Tezuka as a reaction to post-war technological advances and the swift industrialization of the island nation (see also Godzilla). This is not really that original Astro Boy. The plot in this update is pretty wonky: there’s this boy named Toby and his dad, Dr. Tenma (the voice Nicolas Cage), a scientist for the Ministry of Science for Metro City, a city that floats over the barren wasteland that is now Earth. Robots help out the humans by washing stuff for them but humans are like “Robots aren’t people” and there’s essentially robo-apartheid. Tenma meets up with his buddy Dr. Elefun, some dude with red and blue space stones. The blue one is the good one and it contains boundless good energy. Elefun wants to use the blue one to clean up the Earth. Then there’s the red one, which is the evil stone. And the President wants them both to make weapons. Spoiler: The President is a douche.

The President is trying to blow up the surface-dwellers with something called the Peacemaker, a big robot. The President wants those balls and so he steals the red one and things go awry. Toby runs into a room where they’re testing the robot and Toby gets vaporized, Dr. Tenma gets totes sad, and you get these weird questions from your kids where they ask “What happened to Toby” and you’re all like “Oh, he went away.” So then Tenma makes a new Toby, powered on the blue orb, and discovers that although he’s made an exact replica of Toby, robots aren’t the same as humans (although popular Japanese culture and the Tenga Flip Hole clearly state otherwise). So Tenma kicks Toby aka Astro Boy out of his house. Astro goes to earth, meets some people, and saves the world.

So Is It Any Good?

Imagi Animation Studios made this movie and it’s definitely no Pixar family treat. Compared to another CG-frenzy I recently saw, G-Force, I’d say this is considerably better than the abysmal Madgascar and not as good as the recent Ice Age. Thankfully there is enough coolness in the film to keep the attention of the three-year-old boy while still allowing his father to not want to check his iPhone every minute.

As I said in the short version if you’ve exhausted every movie idea for this month, Astro Boy is good enough to stand alone as well as introduce kids to the world of manga. The story is well-paced and intelligible and except for Toby totally going up in a red mist there is very little violence.

Bottom Line
A good placeholder movie before the holiday blockbusters roll in. It’s not quite indie but it almost has that indie feel and it isn’t as saccharine as some other recent kids movies.

Take a picture of yourself in your Halloween costume, win an XBox 360

Posted: 26 Oct 2009 02:00 PM PDT

Halloween is coming up and if there's one thing I know it's that geeks love Halloween. The opportunity to hide behind a mask, to subvert the status quo, and to dress up like sexy nurse/sexy witch/sexy balloon boy is a cause for celebration. That said, we're offering one Xbox 360 Modern Warfare 2 Limited Edition Console to the winner of our First Annual CrunchGear Halloween Costume Contest. Here's how to enter.


Pet dinosaurs for everyone! Pleo is back!

Posted: 26 Oct 2009 01:00 PM PDT

pleoSeriously, who doesn’t want a pet dinosaur? Sure, Jurassic Park makes it seem all dangerous and life-threatening and such. Would you really let that stop you? I think not. But until genetics research and cloning catch up to our imaginations, we’ll have to settle for robotic proxies. And everyone’s favorite little Camarasaurus just got back on the market.

For those unfamiliar with Pleo, it is a animatronic baby dinosaur, designed to evolve based on its environment and interactions. Basically he’ll grow as a real baby dinosaur would.  The Life OS software takes Pleo through three separate stages. Being born, hatching, and juvenile. His full range of movements and behaviors won’t show themselves until Pleo continues to “grow”. Not physically mind you.

The original Pleo had a short life-span of only three years, from 2006 to April 2009 when its creation company Ugobe, filed bankruptcy. But two short months later, Jetta, the original manufacturers of Pleo, announced the relaunch of our green, lizard-related friend here under the Innvo Labs brand.

The Pleo World site is back online, fully functional, and awaiting orders. You can get yours for 349.00 USD.

[via Robots Rule!]

Excitebike: World Rally WiiWare trailer (you must watch this)

Posted: 26 Oct 2009 12:47 PM PDT


Skip to 1:00 mark and prepare to be amazed at the multiplayer Excitebike Wii port. Seriously, there are people out there that will buy a Wii just for this WiiWare game and the side-scrolling retro action. I might. Click through for the awesome trailer.

Video play-by-play: The first seven minutes of the new sci-fi TV show ‘V’

Posted: 26 Oct 2009 12:30 PM PDT

To paraphrase the great Joe Rogan, from last Saturday’s UFC 104, I don’t watch much TV, maybe the Discovery Channel here and there to see a documentary or two. I bring this up because I’ve been told to write about some TV show called "V," and the beauty is that I have no idea what it’s about! My first thought was, "V For Vendetta? Oh, no? Oh, well, then yeah, not a clue." Apparently it’s a re-make of an old sci-fi show. Thankfully, though, ABC, the network where this show will air here in the U.S., has just posted the first seven minutes online. Let’s watch it, together!

Note: I’m not sure if this video works outside of the U.S. Sorry if it doesn’t, but there’s no other source right now. So if you’re an international reader, feel free to skip all of this.

Opening scene, it’s the blonde woman, the former "Other," from Lost, who, to be totally honest, was the only reason I watched Lost as long as I did, and I’m not keen on blondes at all.

Moving on, a priest looks ominously at a street lamp. He talks to a man in a wheelchair, saying nothing of any importance.

A man is trying to buy an engagement ring. "Can’t go wrong with a knee," says the shopkeep, in response to a question if going down on one knee is corny or not when asking a woman to marry you.

We’re about a third of the way through, and the one thing that’s painfully obvious, given the spooky music and quick camera cuts, is that something bad is going to happen. Plus, everything is shaking for some reason. Shaking = bad.

The Lost woman is back. Her no-good son in at a doctor’s office in SoHo (following a party he wasn’t supposed to attend), which either means this is taking place in New York City, and thus totally unreliable to Middle America, or in London, which would be reasonably exotic and interesting. Fingers crossed!

The shaking has returned! Books fall off the shelf (to illustrate how severe the shaking is), and the priest saves that same man in a wheelchair from a giant, falling crucifix inside the church.

… and then a fighter jet crashes into the streets of, sigh, New York. The CGI here is abysmal. Goldeneye for the N64 had better fire effects. Oh, and Goldeneye was also fun. This? So far…

The pilot of the fighter jet, who’s presumably dead, floats down to the street via his parachute. Then the guy who was buying an engagement ring looks up and sees… something! They’re building suspense, that’s what they’re doing!

And we’re back to the kid who’s talking to his Lost mother. She tells him to stay where he is, but then his phone, an iPhone, cuts out. It needs to be said that the kid’s iPhone cutting out may be totally unrelated to the oncoming commotion because, as we all know, AT&T is a hunk of junk in New York City. So far, this is the most realistic scene in the show.

Now we get scenes of people looking up into the sky. Clearly something is up there, but what?

We get a better glimpse of what’s going on: a vessel of some sort is floating in the sky.

There it is! It’s a vessel of some sort, all right, and it’s shaped like a sting ray.

vvvvvv

The cops are telling everyone to remain calm while the Lost woman’s no-good son arrives on a motorcycle, presumably to reinforce his tough guy image. He can’t be seen driving a Ford Fiesta, now can he? He tries to go against the flow of people to go home, but a soldier tells him to keep walking with the crowd, away from home. Oh, my.

Then we see some news footage of people talking nonsense, including some nerd kid who corrects his friend’s reference to the movie Independence Day. The one kid says, "Dude, this is Independence Day," but then the other kid says something like, "Well, that movie was a ripoff of any number of other alien invasion movies." I get it.

The engagement guy meets up with his girl, and they embrace. Guess they won’t be getting engaged today. Now that guy has to psyche himself up all over again, presumably after all of this craziness ends. That’s if they both survive, of course.

The Lost woman is looking for her son on the streets, but a solider tells her to hit the bricks. She crosses the police line anyway. If this were real life she would have been detained right then and there—you mean to tell me that no officer saw her cross the police line?—but not in the clever world of TV, where anything is possible.

Of course Lost woman finds her son. Why challenge the audience? What could be more terrifying than losing your child? Bring some emotion into this dreck.

The vessel is opening! We see lights, and people are looking up!

And there’s a woman looking down from the vessel. She looks like Alyx Vance from Half-Life 2.

End of video.

Boring. I’m sorry, but you see one invasion angle and you’ve seen ‘em all. Granted, Alyx Vance may portend something not quite usual, but I can’t get behind another invasion angle. It’s played out. Not even the Lost woman will get me to watch it.

Feel free to disagree, but I shan’t be watching this show (outside of this here preview).


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