Hasta La Gadget!

Nintendo has gone to some lengths to keep one step ahead of the modding community, but to little avail. We’ve recently seen a product that enables DVD playback on the Wii, and now we’ve been hepped to FLATMII, a device that plugs into the Wii’s drive ribbon, letting you stream ISO backups of your games (or the Gecko OS, Mplayer, emulators and more) from your Windows XP or Vista PC — which your console now takes for its DVD drive. If you’re the sort of sane and sober Wii owner who figures that it is wise and prudent to backup games that you own legally — the kind who would never ever think of stealing software — hit that read link. And be sure to catch the video after the break.

[Via Max Console]

Continue reading FLATMII streams games to your Wii, via USB

Filed under: Gaming

FLATMII streams games to your Wii, via USB originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 31 Dec 2008 13:24:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Listen, you know the drill by now: Macworld is less than a week away, and that causes a Cupertino-sized rumor mill to fill up with hints of new / refreshed hardware of all shapes and sizes. The crew at TUAW claim they’ve heard from sources that a new Mac mini will be unveiled with an aluminum finish, a Time Capsule-esque “lip,” and a SATA optical drive that can be customized as a second HDD instead. Additionally, TechCrunch says it has three independent sources that confirm there’s a large iPod touch is coming next Fall with a 7 or 9-inch screen. There’s no indication if they expect a Macworld announcement here, but if true, we expect the cargo pants industry to react accordingly. Finally, and possibly related to the TechCrunch rumor, a Taiwan news site claims Quanta Computers is expecting to add Apple and Sony (is that you, Vaio P?) as clients for manufacturing netbooks in 2009. For those playing along at home, at some point next year we should expect a bigger iPod touch, a netbook, a smaller iPhone, a revised iMac, a revised Mac mini, and absolutely no love at all for the Mac Pro.

Read – Large form iPod touch to launch Fall ’09
Read – Rumor watch: new Mac mini go for launch
Read – Quanta expects zero YoY NB shipment growth in Q4, 2008

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

Apple rumor roundup: aluminum Mac minis and supersized iPod touches originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 31 Dec 2008 12:42:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Movie studios will reportedly have to wait until next year to see if they will be able to block the analog transmission of high-definition movies on TV.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin told reporters Tuesday that the agency will not likely address the “selectable output control” (SOC) issue before President-elect Obama takes office next month.

SOC lets copyright owners – namely the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) in this case – tell cable and satellite stations to block the transmission of selected programs to certain devices like TiVos, Slingboxes, or TVs without digital input.

Worried that SOC might impede the proliferation of HD programming, the FCC banned it in 2003, but the commission announced in June that it would reconsider the issue.

Why does the MPAA want SOC?

Rumors of a touchscreen tablet from Apple are gaining momentum — again.

Three independent sources close to Apple told TechCrunch that a large-screen iPod Touch is slated for a Fall of 2009 release.

The device will feature a 7- or 9-inch screen, sources told TechCrunch. One of the sources even claims holding a prototype of the tablet.

The first rumor of a Mac tablet surfaced in July at MacDailyNews. But that rumor was slightly different: Rather than describing the rumored device as a larger iPod Touch, the source said the Mac tablet would have a MacBook screen, an optical drive and run a full version of Mac OS X. The source said this device would launch October. Clearly this was an inaccurate report.

Gartner analyst Ken Dulaney said a Mac touchscreen tablet would be a logical step, since all Apple would have to do is blow up the screen of an iPod Touch and slightly tweak the software.

As always, we should take rumors with a grain of salt. But this time around — with TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington citing three sources — the fabled device has more hope.

TechCrunch did not have details on pricing for the rumored device. But we estimate the device, if real, would cost around $700 to $800 — positioning it in between the low-end MacBook ($999) and the iPod Touch ($230).

Illustration of a fake, large-screen iPhone: vernhart/Flickr

According to a document filed with the SEC, Virgin Mobile USA now gets paid $4.50 for each subscriber it signs on to the Sprint Nextel network between July 1, 2008 and Dec. 31, 2009, MocoNews reports.

To put the change in context, here’s the back story: When Virgin bought Helio, the media-oriented MVNO piggybacking on Sprint’s network, Virgin used the event as an excuse to renegotiate more favorable terms with Sprint. The new deal is an increase from $2.50 per subscriber that Sprint paid Virgin Mobile before July 1st, 2008.

“At the end of Sept., Virgin had 5.2 million customers, and Sprint had just above 50 million, but has lost millions this year,” the article said, calling the latest deal an example of “just how desperate Sprint is to stop losing customers.” Sprint is the only major U.S. carrier to have lost subscribers in 2008; the other three (AT&T Wireless, T-Mobile, and Verizon Wireless) all posted significant gains.