Gadgetell | Tech News, Reviews, and Interesting Things

Sony is offering to help brighten up your home by adding a splash of fruity colors to its most recent Bravia HDTV models, as part of their “Draw the Line” concept for kitchens and brightening up the home. You’ll see this in the 20-inch KLV-20S400A, which is available in fruity pink, green, and orange, as well as the classics - white or black. This would be perfect for the kids’ room, but unfortunately, it will only start appearing in Asia by June.

The Bravia V4-series, meanwhile, is a new lineup announced alongside the fruity variants, likewise featuring a 2008 Bravia Engine 2 video processor and 1080p24 input capability. The only difference the V4-series has over the former is that it has an extra “Digital Media Port” for iPods and other MP3 players, as well as Sony Ericsson Bluetooth-enabled handsets.

The S4 and V4 series also come in 40- and 46-inch sizes, in case that’s your thing. And as earlier mentioned, won’t hit stores until June. No word on pricing has been made available yet.

Via [Crave]

Portable media players with 250GB of internal storage are hard to come by, for one many people don’t really need anywhere close to that amount of storage. However, Newman has recently introduced a player that comes in a few different models with storage options ranging from 80GB up to 250GB.

The M8000 comes loaded with many nice features including 4-inch TFT screen, built-in camera, TV-Out, gaming support, a PVR and other multimedia support. It is also an HD quality portable media player and the video clarity should be really good, especially with the big 4-inch screen. The only drawback to having a portable media player with a lot of storage is that sometimes it will take a long time to turn on and to find the video you want. Hopefully that is not the case with the M8000. 

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Rumor had it that Cowon would be coming out with a 16GB model of their D2 portable media player, however, until now it was simply just a rumor. Recently, that rumor has been confirmed as Cowon has officially announced their D2 with 16GB of storage. This announcement came from one of Cowon’s main retailers, Jetmall.

So far, the price of the 16GB D2 is relatively high, considering what some other 16GB portable media players are retailing for. The D2 is set to cost $240, however, if you want to add a 16GB SDHC card to the mix, it will cost an additional $70. Basically, a 32GB D2 would round out at $310. Even then, that price is still a little bit too high for my liking. Going back to the base device, the 16GB D2 costs $240. Keep in mind the 16GB Creative Zen costs $180 and the 16GB Sansa View is $150. Of course on the flipside their are some that are retailing higher such as the 16GB Sony NWZ-A729 which is priced at $290 and the 16GB Sony NWZ-A829 for $320.

So there are a lot of portable media players under the D2’s price, yet there are also some that are over, so it’s right in the middle and ultimately should sell pretty well. If Cowon wanted their 16GB D2 to be the one of the most popular portable media players of its class, they should consider lowering the price into the ballpark of $150 - $180.

Via [AnythingButiPod]

The Zune has some reason to celebrate, and while they are still far from Apple and the iPod, they have just reached the respectable 2 million sold mark. This new level comes just about one year from when Microsoft announced they sold the first million Zune’s, and with the increased sales some increased market share comes as well. Microsoft has been (albeit small) affecting the market share of some others such as Creative, who recently saw a two-percent drop. While the Zune has still not been able to affect the iPod with any major significance, its seems to be in the game for the long haul and has only been improving since its initial launch back in November 2006.

Via [electronista]

The new Pioneer AVIC-T10 comes loaded with many nice features, unfortunately, it is set to release only in Japan for the time being. The AVIC-T10 comes with a 5.8-inch VGA touch screen, 4GB of internal memory, Bluetooth capability for hands free calling, and has HSDPA support. To use that, you have to connect your device through your phone. Additionally, it comes with a TV 1Seg tuner, has decent format support including WMA, MP3, and AAC. It also comes with many useful services including Smart Loop Traffic Congestion Information, Parking Availability Information, Gasoline Price Information, and PinPoint Weather reports. My guess is that the first service, the Smart Loop Traffic Congestion Information provides traffic updates, the Parking Space service lets you know where there are available parking spots (that’s pretty cool), the Gasoline service lets you know where the cheapest gas in the area is, and the PinPoint service updates you on the weather. The last service is called the Rendez-Vous service, which basically chooses a convenient meeting place if you want to meet with your friend. It finds out that convenient place by searching through emails sent and received by the same person. All in all, it comes with some pretty nice and unique services. No word on exact pricing at this time, but hopefully it remains relatively inexpensive.

Via [Akihabara News]

Aigo is coming up with a new PMP dubbed the Patriot MV5920 MP5 player. This latest PMP is being touted as a breakthrough device for its dual-core technology that allows HDTV playback at 720p (1280 x 720 pixels). The device also has Wi-Fi and mobile TV support aside from its 160GB hard drive capacity. It’s also categorized as an MP5 player, which is what PMPs are typically called in China.

For around $429 you’ll have this uber-cool looking piece of hardware that comes with other powerful features including a 2.0-megapixel camera, 4.3-inch color display at 16:9 (480x272 pixel) resolution, MP3 player that supports various digital music formats and an integrated DVR recording function. And yes, it’s still portable at 6.14 x 3.23 x 0.78-inches, despite its many features.

The only question left for all of us now is when will it be available in the international market?

Via PMP Today

Sharp and Amimon, an emerging leader in semiconductor technology for wireless high-definition video, have combined their technology to bring wireless HDTV experience to users of Sharp’s LCD display units. Slated for a release in Japan soon, Sharp’s super-thin X-series LCD displays will be equipped with Amimon’s Wireless High Definition Interface (HDMI) 1080p wireless technology. For us users, this simply means that we would no longer have to connect any cables to our TVs since all the necessary wires and cables of the Sharp LCD displays will be tucked in a separate set-top box. 

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While most of Microsoft’s Zune media events have usually been ho-hum press gatherings lately, the most recent one has sparked speculations that Microsoft could be planning to roll out a Zune-Sidekick mobile phone combo soon. This is based on an offhand comment made by Chris Stephenson, General Manager of Marketing for Zune. According to Chris, MS is currently finding ways to integrate and work with the 250-man staff of Danger. Danger, if you recall, is a consumer handset OS maker that Microsoft bought recently. And if Microsoft is working closely with them, it could mean one thing above anything else: that they are trying to add a few handset capabilities to the already multi-connectivity ready Zune. To be sure, we’ll be keeping a watchful eye over this issue, and will be here to update you with the latest news when it hits.

Via [Zune Boards]

The Blu-ray format is getting a new supporter in legendary musician Neil Young, as the singer has recently announced that he will be releasing his entire music archive on Blu-ray. Mr. Young, who was surprisingly among those who spoke during the Java Conference in San Francisco, will release the first installment of his music archives covering his hits from 1963 to 1972 in a ten disc Blu-ray set through Reprise/Warner Bros. Records.

Mr. Young is set to maximize the full capacity potential of Blu-ray discs with the release of his music archives. These BDs will contain not only his popular songs, but previously unreleased songs, videos, handwritten manuscripts and other memorabilia as well. Of course, this is just one part of Blu-ray’s goodness, as releasing his collection in this format would also give out better picture and sound quality. This is aside from the fact that Blu-ray discs can hold more content.

Although this is not the first time that the Blu-ray discs were utilized for such purposes, most of those who released their own BDs have just released their concert videos and were not as comprehensive as Mr. Young’s plan of releasing his full archive.

Read [Associated Press]

Although we have already seen the migration of YouTube video content into our living room TV. HP wants to up the notch a step higher by bringing you a better video watching experience with its HP MediaSmart Products that include the MediaSmart Connect digital media receiver and the high-definition MediaSmart TV.

Yes dear readers, with this tie-up between HP and YouTube, you will be able to watch and share full-screen videos on your HDTVs. You can also create multiple playlists from anywhere you watch TV. Even sweeter is the fact that just like the old habit of slacking on your couches and watching your favorite TV shows from morning till dawn, you can do all these things using your HDTVs remote control,. Only this time, you have a full YouTube video database to watch, which if you would calculate, could probably last you a lifetime to finish watching.

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