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NAIAS 2008: Jaguar XKR

Posted by Sheila Franklin Categories: Corporate News, Design, Transportation,

The Jaguar XKR was just too special to pass by. It carries a MSRP of ~$90,000 and is the elitest of the elite. With 420 horsepower and a 4.2 liter V-8 engine, we assume you are going to rule the road with this one as it can hit a top speed of 155 mph and accelerate to 60 in 4.9 seconds. It was the luxury that we just couldn’t get past. Reach up and the ceiling is all kid leather. You don’t just get new car smell in this car. It figuratively screams, “I am so rich!” The seats and steering wheel adjustments are so exact, even the shortest of us fit. A couple of interior shots after the jump. All we can say is that this is the car we want to be buried in.

Click to continue reading NAIAS 2008: Jaguar XKR

OMG Xbox 360 melting!!!

Posted by Sparky Categories: Culture, Hardware, Microsoft, Xbox 360,

Melted Xbox 360

Sensationalism aside it appears the Xbox 360 is a meltable platform. Thankfully, the above melted carnage was the result of a not-so-bright user keeping their 360 on their stove(!) rather than a result of console cooling gone wrong - but it’s still an image that will send chills down the spine of any gamer worth their salt. Seriously though folks - don’t store your expensive consumer electronics on a stove - unless you are busy Breaking Stuff!

More Reason To Drool Over The Optimus Keyboard

Posted by Michael Cardiff Categories: Accessories, First Person Shooters, Hardware, PC, Rumors,

Optimus Keyboard

You all remember the Optimus, right - that keyboard where every key’s a little screen that would make FPS gaming oh-so-much sexier? Well, if it ever makes it out in to the wild, it sounds like it’s going to be amazingly sweet. Slashgear notes some interesting tidbits from Optimus’ livejournal:

... the 103 will appear to whatever computer it’s plugged into as a mass-storage device. That means it shows up as a drive volume in Explorer, needs no drivers and, best of all, can store all of the custom layouts you slavishly create on-board. Got two PCs you want to use it with? No problem, the layouts come with it.

Of course, the issue of price is still up in the air - how much can I expect to spend on a keyboard that’s got nearly as many pixels as a 15 inch monitor, and more bells-n-whistles to boot? Similarly, it doesn’t bode well that the Optimus website recently changed the release date of the keyboard from “Late 2006” to “Concept”. Sigh….we need to get SOMEONE to build this thing. Hey Dell - don’t you think you’d be able to charge quite the pretty penny if you bought these folks out and started bundlying the Optimus with your Alienware PC’s?

Asus Releases Dual Screen Notebooks

Posted by Brian Viele Categories: PC / Laptop, Portable Audio / Video,

Description Well, it seems the cores aren’t the only thing going dual on notebooks. Asus is continuing in its efforts to grab more of the mobile market with it’s newest W5Fe addition to their notebook line. The new series of laptops, codenamed Newport, sports a small color LCD in the lid, sorta like the little external screen on today’s flip-phone, but this is much cooler!

The display uses a new Vista-only technology PortalPlayer Preface, known officially as Windows SideShow. This technology allows the LCD to operate and do all its necessary functions while the rest of the laptop is on, off or hibernating. Using the nifty little control pad, SideShow will let you access flight departure information, movie show times, alerts, play games, movies, images and MP3s without draining your battery! PortalPlayer estimates you will be able to see “hundreds” of hours of life out of a single charge.

Price and release date have not been announced, but since the device relies so heavily on Vista technology, I wouldn’t expect to see this guy released until somewhere around Vista’s release in January.

Playstation Magazine’s Hands-On with the Playstation 3

Posted by Brian Viele Categories: Home Entertainment, Video Games,

A Real Live PS3 Playstation Magazine (PSM) got to play with what could be a final release version of a Playstation 3. Yes, it does work! In fact, it works “brilliantly” according to the users at PSM. There are some really nice pics on the site to check out showing the brilliant detail on their HD screen.

Key Comments:

It’s quiet like a sleeping baby. A barely audible hum. With the TV on you simply can’t hear it at all.
It’s heavy like a planet. No, really. It’s impossible to pick up with one hand.
It’s shiny like a mirror. In fact, it’s impossible to take a photograph of it without the flash spanging every picture into a starburst mess. And therefore it’s massively prone to fingerprintage too, with the tiny amount of dust in the office magically attaching itself to its surface in seconds.
The PS3 joypad is very light and the tilt system is very responsive.
The start up is amazingly fast. And game load times were faster than expected. In fact, PS3 does both at about the same speed of PSP. ie, Long load times due to the massive Blu-ray disc? Nope. Simply not an issue.

Sony Q&A on 1080p and Blu-Ray for Playstation 3

Posted by Brian Viele Categories: HDTV, Home Entertainment, Movies, Video Games,

Description A GamePro editor got to sit down with Phil Harrison, an executive at Sony Computer Entertainment America(SCEA) at the Tokyo Game Show and had an interesting Q&A about the Playstation 3’s Blu-Ray and 1080p advantage. The interview was short, but very interesting. Phil of course touted the 1080p support, “True HD” he called it, that only the PS3 has out of the box. This is true at present, but as reported earlier this week, the XBOX 360 will be receiving a software upgrade to support 1080p, likely for the launch of their HD-DVD drive. It was also interesting to note that Phil stated some games look better in 720p. I’m not quite sure how that would work, but I guess we’ll see soon enough.

My favorite part of the interview was about Sony’s choice to use a Blu-Ray drive in the PS3, which has driven up the price and helped to make setting a launch date a nightmare. A lot of the critics, and apparently Microsoft, think that the only use of the Blu-Ray drive in the PS3 is for HD movie playback and just makes the device more expensive even for those who don’t plan to use it as a movie player. I will leave you with Phil putting the “Smack-Down” on that idea.

“There’s this sort of misunderstanding that the Blu-ray disc player for movies is somehow burdening the console with unnecessary cost. That is completely not true. We put our Blu-ray Disc functionality in the console purely from a game design point of view. Once we had that storage capacity on Blu-ray Disc, adding the movie playback functionality was extremely cost-effective, [the cost] is actually non-existent.

So games like Resistance which, as a launch title, is up to 20-something gigabytes already. And that’s day one—think about four years, six years from now. We’ll be pushing the 50 gigabyte limit with dual-layer Blu-ray very quickly. So we absolutely need it as game designers, and in that regard, the consumer is getting the movie functionality effectively for free.”
—Phil Harrison, Representative Director SCEA

Asus Jumps into the HD-DVD Laptop Market

Posted by Brian Viele Categories: HDTV, Home Entertainment, PC / Laptop, Portable Audio / Video,

Description Recently, Asus has been pushing very hard in the mobile computing market. Earlier this year they released a new Lamborghini line of laptops and now Asus has decided to jump on the HD-DVD bandwagon with its new W2P laptop. The 7.25lb monster sports a new Mobility Radeon X1700 with 256MB of dedicated GDDR3, an ever so important HD-DVD drive and and HDMI port for simple connection to your HDTV. To complete the multi-media package, the unit also comes with an analog (NTSC) and digital (ATSC) tuner built in along with a Dolby certified sound system. The system also comes with the normal bells and whistles of todays high end laptops including Bluetooth 2.0, 802.11 a/b/g Wi-Fi, Ethernet and a Modem. The system will likely come with Windows XP Media Center Edition standard, but with its specs, and new Radeon chip, this system would make for a great HD gaming system, and would be very well suited for XP Home or Professional. Pricing and availability have yet to be announced.

RFID Tagged Disks May Put a Halt to Piracy

Posted by Brian Viele Categories: HDTV, Home Entertainment, Movies, Rumors,

Anti-Piracy Movie makers are planning to begin to use RFID tags embedded within media to prevent playing of pirated disks. The technology will be applicable to DVD’s, HD-DVD’s and Blu-Ray disks. Essentially, the system will read the ID tag to ensure the disk is authentic, which will require the unit 1) To be able to read RFID tags and 2) To be able to connect to some database to retrieve valid ID tags. All of this is going to be, of course, at the consumer’s expense.

I have a few issues with this upcoming system. First of all, there will undoubtedly be ways to rip and re-burn the video into some generic form that will not require the player to scan the RFID. Otherwise, it will make recording home movies and such impossible, so it doesn’t totally rid the potential of pirated media. Additionally, when these new security measures come into affect, people with older systems that do not have the RFID capability will be forced to upgrade in order to view the new releases. At $500 a pop for the low-end Blu-Ray and HD-DVD players today, I find it obscene to expect consumers to purchase a new device to incorporate new anti-piracy technology that likely will not be totally effective. Unless U-Tech, IPICO or the movie makers decide to upgrade consumers current equipment for free, I don’t think many people will find this a great idea.

LG Announces New Blu-Ray Devices

Posted by Brian Viele Categories: HDTV, Movies, PC / Laptop, Peripherals,

LG has launched three cute new models of Blu-Ray devices including a Player, fully functional Blu-Ray PC and a PC recording drive.

The Full HD Blu-Ray player will perfectly compliment their recently released line of LCD panel displays that support full 1080p at sizes up 55 inches.

The LG XPION X600 desktop PC will include a Super Multi Blue Blu-Ray writer (GBW-H10N) and boasts a Pentium D945 3.4GHz processor, a 320GB hard disk, 1GB of DDR2 memory and an NVidia GeForce 7900GT for smooth full HD playback. The writer, which will also be sold separately, will burn up to 25GB and be the first drive to support 4x Blu-Ray recording to Blu-Ray recordable disks and 2x to rewritable media.

No price or release has been disclosed, but I expect an expensive price point, and as for a release date, I predict by the end of the year.

Sony Shows Off PS3 Blu-Ray Playback

Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: PlayStation 3,

At a recent Blu-Ray demonstration in Japan, Sony showed off a little of the interface and video playback for the Blu-Ray capabilities of the Playstation 3. Famitsu managed to get a shot of the interface, and it looks largely like an expansion of the PS2 DVD playback UI, or perhaps an enhanced UMD playback UI from the PSP. Sony is apparently shooting for 75 Blu-Ray titles within the year in Japan, and average retail is targeted at 5000 Yen, or about $42 US. Sony also discussed the BD Java features of the player, as well as the Internet-based BD Live content.

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