CrunchGear |  |
- Portaro: Toshiba announces portable, over-priced DVD player
- Awesome Sega Genesis and Space Invaders business card cases
- Next Star Trek date announced, with no director
- While the USA wages a war on terror, Japan wages a war on germs with fever-detecting cameras
- Here they come: the first iSlate fakes
- Nyko gaming accessories
- Super Dino Galaxy? Chinese knockoff of Mario is utterly shameless
- KICK-ASS the movie might actually be a kick-ass movie
- UFC’s Dana White throws down, vows to go after Internet pirates no matter the cost
- MSI concept all-in-one has keyboard that slides out the bottom – wait, that doesn’t work at all
- OLED ID cards creepy, probably helpful
- WTF video review of the Nexus One
- MSI’s two-screen wonder looks a lot like that extinct OLPC 2.0
- Review: Sprint Overdrive 3G/4G WiFi hotspot
- LG’s UHD TV: 3840×2160 pixels of goodness
- Joy of Tech’s Smartphone/Superphone/Flip phone/Landline/iTablet fight
- Vote for the Computer Engineer Barbie
- Sony’s Bloggie camcorders might be meant for video blogging
- Video highlights from CrunchGear’s CES 2010 booth
- CES 2010 in Pictures: This is why Matt can’t have nice things
| Portaro: Toshiba announces portable, over-priced DVD player Posted: 12 Jan 2010 03:41 AM PST
Toshiba in Japan announced the Portaro SD-P12DT [JP] today, a new portable DVD player. The main selling point of the device is the 12-inch LCD screen that features an LED backlight and 1,366×768 resolution. Sized at 342×73×326mm (weight: 2.8kg), the Portaro is available in black or white.
Apart from video DVDs and music CDs, the device supports DVD-R/RW and CD-R/RW (there’s also an SD card slot). It also has a built-in digital TV tuner (that will work only in Japan). Toshiba says the lithium-ion battery has a life span of four hours.
The Portaro will go on sale in Japan on February 1 for $550, which is a pretty steep price considering you can’t watch Blu-rays on it. Panasonic’s portable Blu-ray/digital TV hybrid, the DMP-BV100, for example (which we blogged about last year), currently costs just $600 [JP]. Toshiba hasn’t announced yet whether the Portaro will ever be available outside Japan as well, but that’s highly unlikely.
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| Awesome Sega Genesis and Space Invaders business card cases Posted: 12 Jan 2010 01:40 AM PST
If you’re an old-school gamer, the Sega Genesis (known as Sega Mega Drive outside North America) sure does have a special place in your heart. And if your current job requires you to give away business cards from time to time, this new business card holder that’s shaped like Sega’s legendary 16-bit console might be the right thing for you.
In case you want to go even more retro, there’s also a Space Invaders business card case in red and another one in black now.
Both the Genesis and the Space Invaders cases are made of aluminum. They’ll go on sale in Japan in March, but import/export specialist Geek Stuff 4 U lets people living outside Japan pre-order the cases already (price: $24.30 each). Alternatively, you can still go for the Nintendo Famicom-shaped or the Pac Man business card holder that Banpresto, the maker of all these cases, introduced last year. Geek Stuff 4 U is still selling those, too. Via Akihabara News
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| Next Star Trek date announced, with no director Posted: 11 Jan 2010 07:30 PM PST
That’s right, despite the fact that JJ Abrams pretty much made the Star Trek relaunch work through pure force of will, he will not be returning to direct. That’s a bit worrisome, considering the quality of the script that he was able to polish up a bit. Of course, it’s just a little bit early to start being cynical so we should probably just sit back and wait it out. [via ScifiSquad]
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| While the USA wages a war on terror, Japan wages a war on germs with fever-detecting cameras Posted: 11 Jan 2010 07:30 PM PST
Japan is very concerned for its citizens’ safety; but instead of concocting ineffective security measures, they are enforcing preventative care in that playplace of infection, the airport. I suppose it’s a bit of an invasion of privacy, but no more than x-raying your bags or getting millimeter wave pictures of your junk. They have infra-red cameras set up to pick out people who may be a little hotter than normal, and in extreme cases where an fever actually seems present, they may actually escort you to a hospital to be treated. It’s an interesting idea to extrapolate to other devices: imagine if computers had low-res IR cameras that would detect a high temperature and advise you to medicate? Or a larger camera mounted in a nursery or children’s ward, which could easily monitor temperature without constant probing with thermometers? Weird stuff, but pretty cool as well. [via Laughing Squid]
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| Here they come: the first iSlate fakes Posted: 11 Jan 2010 06:13 PM PST
Gentlemen, start your Photoshopping! Here we have the first of the iSlate fakes, similar to the older iSlate fakes. What makes this fake? All the icons are distorted and its showing ugly people in iPhoto. Apple never shows pictures of ugly people.
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| Posted: 11 Jan 2010 06:02 PM PST
First the Wii stuff. The Wand+ is Nyko’s latest replacement for the standard Wii Remote. Other than being fully compatible Wii Motion Plus games without needing an extra dongle, it doesn’t have a whole lot of extra functionality that the standard remote doesn’t. As you can see above it is slightly smaller, although the buttons have been enlarged a bit. It rests comfortably in your hand, does what it’s supposed to, and doesn’t suck. It comes in the two designer colors you see, for $39.99.
The Type Pad is an interesting attachment, applicable mostly to those who browse the web a lot on their Wii. The QWERTY keypad is within easy reach of your thumbs, and the A and B buttons become triggers on the underside. It fits both Nyko’s wand series and the standard remote. No extra batteries needed, it’ll leech power straight from the remote. $29.99 if you just absolutely need a full keyboard for your Wii experience.
And speaking of power, the Charge Base Quad let’s you recharge four controllers at once, either the Wand or original. One cool thing is that complete contact between the remote and the charger isn’t necessary to charge, meaning you don’t have to take off any gel cases or the like. There’s also a USB port on the base so you can charge your phone, beard trimmer, etc. all for just $49.99.
Okay, if you really need me to explain this product, I’m not sure what I can tell you. It’s a gun. For your Wii. It’s $14.99. It works.
Now we make a quick delve into the Playstation realm. If you were disappointed the PS3 Slim reduced the number of USB slots, you’re in luck. This media hub attachment will give you 4 USB ports, a media card reader for SD and Sony memory sticks, and an IR remote to control DVD and Blu-ray playback. They run $24.99 a pop.
And from the PS3 we bounce over to its mortal enemy, the Xbox 360. The SpeakerCom 360 is a combination headset and loudspeaker, so you can share you profanity laden Xbox Live conversations with the whole room. It requires a single AAA battery, and the backs of the earbuds are magnetic. I personally prefer an actual headset for gaming, so the weight isn’t on my ears. But to each their own. $19.99.
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| Super Dino Galaxy? Chinese knockoff of Mario is utterly shameless Posted: 11 Jan 2010 06:00 PM PST There are no words. This is the most egregious product-biting I’ve ever seen. Even worse than Super Shrek Brothers. Just watch the video and be amazed at the dedication that Chinese knockoff artists have to their craft. Apologies if there’s an ad before, that’s not us. [via 1up]
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| KICK-ASS the movie might actually be a kick-ass movie Posted: 11 Jan 2010 06:00 PM PST Watch the trailer above and tell me that you don’t want to see the movie. Yeah, you can’t.
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| UFC’s Dana White throws down, vows to go after Internet pirates no matter the cost Posted: 11 Jan 2010 05:30 PM PST
Do not expect UFC to look the other when it comes to online piracy of its various pay-per-view events. Dana White, the company’s president, recently told the Vancouver Sun that he and the UFC will do whatever it takes to eliminate piracy. “It's gonna cost us a lot of money, but guess what, it's gonna cost them [pirates] a lot of money. It's gonna get to the point where it's like, fuck it, maybe we shouldn't pirate MMA anymore.” This is not a very forward-thinking way of looking at the problem, no. It was only a few weeks ago that I first made mention of UFC’s efforts against piracy. The gist of the argument was, just let it happen and concentrate on maintaining the company’s momentum. The UFC doesn’t want to end up like the music industry, having sued its fans into indifference, if not antagonism, toward its product. It seems to me that, in the interest of the greater good, the UFC should ignore the streams that pop up. The greater good, of course, being continued and long-term growth at the expense of short-term profit (or, worse, revenge, because the tone Dana White has here screams nothing if not vengeance.) (Keep in mind that there’s no telling how many of these illegal streams are set up overseas where copyright laws are non-existent. There’s no telling how many of these streams are watched in countries where the local population has no other exposure to UFC, where they can’t buy an official stream for $10 per show. Why not let these people get a taste now, and in a few years’ time, when you’ve built up an international distribution infrastructure, come in and offer them legal ways of watching your content? Maybe hire Shane McMahon to figure that out? What, the ol’ “I didn’t pay for this before, so I’m not going to pay for it now?” song and dance? Those people aren’t your fans, nor will they ever be. Don’t worry about them.) There’s a few more things to consider. The year 2009 was the company’s biggest grossing year on record, with a record 7.755 million PPV buys over the course of the year. That’s around $349 million in PPV revenue alone. Arguing that a couple hundred (or even thousand) people watching an illegal stream will ruin the company is a stretch at best. That number, $349 million, is likely to be the biggest number of any company of any sport on PPV ever, even bigger than boxing in its heyday (though boxing has been putting higher profile fights on plain ol’ HBO in order to grow an audience). There’s every reason to believe that 2010 will be even bigger, particularly if current UFC Heavyweight Champion Brock Lesnar can get healthy. A fight between Lesnar and, say, Frank Mir would do extraordinary numbers on pay-per-view. That’s them up there, by the way. Needless to say, the UFC is doing just fine. This all started when the UFC filed suit against a Boston bar last week for showing an illegal live stream of the game. Yes: the bar literally hooked a laptop up to its TVs and had patrons watch that. Not only is that incredibly stupid on the bar’s part (the bar said that someone had set it up without its knowledge, which is incredibly difficult to believe), but, really, who wants to see an Internet live stream blown up onto a TV? It must have looked horrible. UFC wants $640,000 in damages. I hope it gets every single penny. UFC plans to combat the scourge of live streams by sending subpoenas to Web sites that ask for every single IP address that connected to the stream. Then UFC would go after those IP addresses, just like the RIAA did back in the day. Never mind that I (or anyone with a modicum of tech-savvy) could spoof my IP address with my hands tied behind my back. Never mind that people could just connect to the stream using any number of anonymizers. And what if you live in an apartment building with a bunch of open Wi-Fi access points, or, just as bad, encrypted only with WEP? A ne’er-do-well could hide his identity any number of ways. An IP address is not someone’s unique genetic code, so let’s stop pretending it is. Then think of the possible backlash. For all the money UFC is going to spend in and around the legal system by going after alleged pirates—and how long would we have to wait till it sues a single mother with three children, the oldest of whom connected to a stream for a moment just to see what all the fuss was about?—does the cost-to-benefit analysis work out? Maybe it does, I don’t know. I don’t want it to sound like I’m defending the streams, I’m merely saying that it seems crazy to me to risk becoming the RIAA of this decade in order to prove a point. The UFC has every right to go after people who pirate its content, but it really ought to think about wether or not it’s even worth the trouble. Lawsuits didn’t eliminate music piracy. No, it was the proliferation of easy-to-use, legal alternatives (initially iTunes several years ago, and now things like the Zune Pass and Spotifiy and Pandora) that marginalized music piracy. Suing everyone under the sun is not a method I would recommend to companies that are looking to grow. Much of the background info via The Wrestling Observer Newsletter
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| MSI concept all-in-one has keyboard that slides out the bottom – wait, that doesn’t work at all Posted: 11 Jan 2010 05:00 PM PST
See what I mean? Is there any support there? I would have stayed to ask, but they were being cagey about their other concept products, so I left in a huff.
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| OLED ID cards creepy, probably helpful Posted: 11 Jan 2010 04:30 PM PST I question the actually utility of this, except for in corporate ID badging. It is cool though, combining OLED, RFID, and 3D into an ID. Plus, how is that for an alphabet soup of acronyms? Thanks to NetbookNews for the tip.
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| WTF video review of the Nexus One Posted: 11 Jan 2010 04:08 PM PST I honestly don’t understand what’s going on here nor do I particularly condone this tomfoolery.
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| MSI’s two-screen wonder looks a lot like that extinct OLPC 2.0 Posted: 11 Jan 2010 04:00 PM PST
I begged and pleaded but they wouldn’t let me play with it or the bigger version… and then I saw why: the large one was basically a transparent printout over an LED backlight. The little one I think was actually showing a real display, but now I’m starting to doubt that as well. They were kept under glass, like rare cakes, and even the most despicable name-dropping and assurances of MSI glory on TechCrunch left their guardians unmoved.
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| Review: Sprint Overdrive 3G/4G WiFi hotspot Posted: 11 Jan 2010 03:30 PM PST  Short Version: The Sprint Overdrive is a small, compact portable 3G/4G cellular data network to WiFi dongle designed for use by up to five people simultaneously. The best part is the ease of use and the worst part is the dearth of 4G networking outside of a few major cities.
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| LG’s UHD TV: 3840×2160 pixels of goodness Posted: 11 Jan 2010 03:00 PM PST
Click for full size, and here’s the little boast that was displayed alongside it. I’ll get more info if I can find it.
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| Joy of Tech’s Smartphone/Superphone/Flip phone/Landline/iTablet fight Posted: 11 Jan 2010 02:30 PM PST
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| Vote for the Computer Engineer Barbie Posted: 11 Jan 2010 01:30 PM PST
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| Sony’s Bloggie camcorders might be meant for video blogging Posted: 11 Jan 2010 01:00 PM PST
Time to sweep up after CES. Devin tells me we have a hands-on with these cameras buried somewhere in our live video feed from the show but we're unable to find it at the moment, so please allow me to paint a picture for you using good old fashioned words. Two models are available – both shoot up to 1920×1080 HD video in the MP4 format. The MHS-PM5/V, pictured above in blue and pink, costs $170 and features a Flip-like USB connector, 2.4-inch LCD, 270-degree rotating lens, movie and still buttons, Memory Stick and SD(HC) expandability, and 4x digital zoom. The MHS-CM5/V, pictured above right, costs $200 and features HDMI output, image stabilization, 5x optical zoom, flip-out USB connector, movie and still buttons, Memory Stick and SD(HC) expandability, and a swiveling 2.5-inch LCD screen. For $30 more than the other model, I'd pick this one up first if only for the swiveling LCD and optical zoom. bloggie MP4 Cameras [SonyStyle.com via Electronista]
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| Video highlights from CrunchGear’s CES 2010 booth Posted: 11 Jan 2010 12:30 PM PST
But we go on to take a look Stitcher, Shapeways, a Geek Not Needed router, the L5 iPhone remote, v.Clone Iomega software, Blue Microphones, Mad Catz Cyborg R.A.T. mouse, LowJack computer software, an HP CTO, PocketCPR, Pogoplug and finish up two hours of interviewing with a look at the Gunman iPhone game. Forgive all the shuffling. We did this via Livestream, after all. Click through for all the interviews and general CrunchGear hijinks.
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| CES 2010 in Pictures: This is why Matt can’t have nice things Posted: 11 Jan 2010 12:23 PM PST
We had to put down newspaper for the boy back at the hotel. It was a mess.
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Time to save the date! Word is out that the sequel to the JJ Abrams Star Trek movie will be out on July 29th, 2012. What we don’t know as of yet is exactly who the director will be.
CrunchGear had its own booth at a CES event this year and of course we streamed all the interviews live. East Coasters may have missed out due to the late schedule though. So here they are for a second time. Daniel Brusilovsky started out the panel with a demo of mSpot video streaming Android app.
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