Hasta La Gadget!

And you wonder why people refuse to take wireless HD / HDMI seriously. A full 15 months after Belkin’s FlyWire was introduced at CES 2008, the world is still waiting for it to ship. When launched, it promised the consumer world a device that would take multiple HDMI devices and stream them (one at a time, obviously) to your HDTV sans wires. The box itself relies on AMIMON’s WHDI technology, and while we’ve seen with our own eyes just how marvelous it works, Earthlings won’t be able to purchase one until — drumroll, please — August 2009. According to a Belkin PR manager that we spoke with on the matter, the January 2009 ship date has now slipped to late summer for the US market, though the altogether painful $1,499 price tag remains firmly in tact. So, what’s the over / under on Belkin actually keeping its word this go ’round?

Update: Contrary to some reports, the delay is absolutely not related to WHDI. Belkin’s own PR team has confirmed that the hold-up is in no way related to WHDI, but that it is “paying very close attention to the user experience.” In other words, it’s delaying things to get things totally right, and for $1,500, we’d expect nothing less than perfection.

Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment, Wireless

Belkin’s $1,500 FlyWire delayed again, now slated for August release originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 16 Apr 2009 16:34:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The lean and mean GT3.

(Credit: GTR Tech)

Even though it’s been out for more than two years, we hadn’t heard about the GTR Tech GT3 until earlier today, via the blog of PC business-type Ed Borden. Now that we know about the trim GT3, we’re struck by how appropriate such an enclosure seems to today’s fascination with pared-down desktop design.

In his blog, Ed compares the virtues of the GT3 with other smaller gaming PCs, in particular with HP’s recent Firebird 800-series gaming desktop. That system uses a customized motherboard and laptop-style MXM graphics cards. Ed also draws a comparison to systems like Falcon Northwest’s FragBox 2, which require smaller microATX motherboards that generally sacrifice expansion room for space savings. Unlike either of those systems, the GT3 support both full-size ATX motherboards, as well as standard dual-slot graphics cards.

We don’t want to sell either the FragBox 2 or the Firebird short. We recently reviewed a FragBox 2 with a pair of doublewide 3D cards and a 1,000 watt power supply jammed inside, so using a microATX doesn’t automatically make a desktop underpowered. We also have to credit the Firebird’s power efficiency and its visual appeal. Unlike the otherwise attractive GT3, the Firebird doesn’t have a giant, electric blue “GT3” emblazoned across its front panel.

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Looking for that perfect sound? You can literally get an instrument to bend to your creative will.

Bent Festival, a hardware hacking festival, is showing music-loving geeks how to do just that this week in New York City. The event revolves around the art of tearing apart electronic gadgets and bending their circuits to create new musical instruments. In addition to teaching D.I.Y. workshops on circuit bending, Bent is hosting a series of art installations and music concerts featuring various bent-circuit artists.

Circuit bending may sound intimidating, but the event is designed for anyone, said Mike Rosenthal, managing director of The Tank, a nonprofit theater that puts on the event.

"We get people off the street who have never had anything to do with electronic music before, and within a few minutes kids as young as 5 or 6 are ripping apart their toys and creating amazing new musical instruments," Rosenthal said in a previous Wired interview.

The event starts today and ends April 18. Individual night tickets are $10; a three-night ticket costs $25. For a full schedule, visit the Bent Festival page. 

See Also:

• Gallery: 8 Futuristic Musical Instruments
• Nerdy Instrument Creates Crazy Noise in a Beaker
• The Thummer: A Musican Instrument for the 21st Century?
• ‘Sound From Wind’ Turns Bikes into Musical Instruments
• Reactable tabletop shared musical instrument
• Crazy Homebrew Musical Instruments

(Thanks, Jenn!)

Photo courtesy of The Tank

It’s already delayed its controversial broadband capping plan in a number of markets, and it looks like Time Warner Cable has now gone one big step further in Rochester, New York (one of the initial test markets), where it has reportedly scrapped the new tiered pricing plan altogether. As you no doubt recall, the plan was more or less modeled on cellphone pricing plans, and had intended to cap customers’ data usage at a certain level and charge upwards of $1 per GB for any overages (eventually maxing out at $150 per month). That, naturally, didn’t go over so well with folks, and even New York Senator Charles Schumer eventually got in on the act and complained directly to Time Warner Cable. Of course, this still doesn’t officially mark the end of the pricing plan in other markets, but it certainly seems to be getting increasingly difficult for Time Warner Cable to move ahead with it.

[Thanks, Phil]

Update: As a few of you have helpfully pointed out in comments, Time Warner Cable has now put out a statement of its own that confirms in not-at-all Orwellian terms that it is shelving all of its consumption-based billing trials “while the customer education process continues.” The company also says that it’ll soon be making bandwidth measurement tools available to customers, which it hopes will “aid in the dialog going forward.”

Filed under: Home Entertainment, Networking

Time Warner Cable scraps broadband capping plan in Rochester, NY originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 16 Apr 2009 15:22:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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(Credit: Photojojo)

When I’m out on shooting trips, I usually sling the shooter around my shoulders. This is why I invested in a tough Domke camera strap. However, its boring design may not go down too well with some shutterbugs, so I’ll probably recommend them the Seat Belt …