Hasta La Gadget!

We had a hunch that 3DV Systems’ technology — which we actually toyed with back at CES 2008 — had something to do with Microsoft’s newly unveiled Project Natal motion tracking solution, and today details have trickled in to us confirming as much. As the story goes, 3DV Systems was initially hoping to have the ZCam in the manufacturing process by the tail end of 2008, but Microsoft swooped in and acquired the outfit just weeks after it blew minds in January. At the time, not much thought was given to the pickup; now, however, we’re treated to a bona fide ZCam brochure which details the actual specifications behind the Xbox 360’s newest friend. Granted, we have every reason to believe that Natal has advanced significantly from what you’ll see in the gallery below, but it’s still a tasty nugget of behind-the-scenes information. Of note, the former 3DV Systems VP of Business Development was quoted as saying that the target retail price of the ZCam was $100, though it still had aways to go as of early 2008.

Filed under: Gaming, Peripherals

Microsoft’s Project Natal roots revealed: 3DV Systems ZCam originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 03 Jun 2009 16:21:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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LaCie’s LaCinema Black MAX is but a few months old, and already the aforesaid company is expanding the family. The newest two are the LaCinema Black PLAY and RECORD, both of which enable users to stream HD media over their network, house content internally with up to 1TB of space and connect sans wires via WiFi. As expected, there’s a built-in UPnP client to suck down content from a networked PC or Mac, and it’ll even handle 1080i upscaling of SD material. Oh, and if you couldn’t guess, the RECORD also enables TV tuning and recording if you’re into that type thing. Both can be ordered up right now starting at $429.99.

Filed under: Home Entertainment, Storage

LaCie debuts LaCinema Black PLAY and RECORD HD media players originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 03 Jun 2009 16:09:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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There’s been some buzz this week around Pixel Qi’s 3qi display technology, which integrates e-paper attributes with LCD to create a versatile and potentially very energy-efficient screen. The idea is that with a flip of a button you can go from a traditional high-resolution color LCD experience to …

It looks like Sony Ericsson is taking a page out of Apple’s book for the launch of its app store, bundling the service in with the very same platform it already uses to distribute music and movies. PlayNow arena — which was originally designed for music distribution and whose movie rental functionality is going live this month in a handful of locales — is now being expanded to incorporate applications as well, initially coming to 13 countries and some 38 Sony Ericsson models. Conveniently, PlayNow arena is already well-plumbed to support a variety of blling methods which should make the transition to paid apps a pretty seamless one for the company, devs, and users alike. Submissions from developers for inclusion in the store will kick off July 1, initially covering Java and Symbian before being expanded to cover “additional platforms” (Android, anyone?) later in the year; there’s no word, though, on exactly when end users will be able to get in on the action.

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Sony Ericsson expands PlayNow arena to cover apps, too originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 03 Jun 2009 15:18:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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After confirmation of basement experimentations, and then a surprising announcement of product, Acer’s now actually showing off an Android-powered netbook at Computex. Acer is careful to say that this isn’t their actual Android netbook in the flesh, they’re just the Aspire One D250 as a test platform. Naturally, startup and shutdown times are fairly rapid (eighteen seconds up, one second down), and for the most part Android seems unmodified other than its support for the D250’s 10-inch display, though there is one major head scratcher — in PC Watch‘s coverage of this computer they show off a full-ish version of Firefox apparently running on Android, menu bar included, which is a new one on us. Of course, Firefox runs on Linux, and Android is built on Linux, but there are still a few gaps in logic there that we’ll be happy to explore when we get our own look at this thing.

Filed under: Laptops

Acer shows off Android on a netbook, sneaks Firefox into the proceedings originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 03 Jun 2009 15:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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