Toshiba’s BDX2000 Blu-ray deck hits Best Buy for $199, sour grapes also on sale

Man, poor Toshiba. The company’s already sucked up its pride and started putting Blu-ray drives in its laptops, but here’s its first stab at a proper standalone player, the BDX2000, on Best Buy shelves a bit early for $199 — or $50 less than its announced price. Sure, that makes sense given the falling prices of Blu-ray decks as the holidays approach, but even at that price it’s not super competitive with the slew of other decks out there that can do Netflix streaming. We’ll see if Tosh’s next efforts are a little more interesting than this, or if this is just more heartbreak than its worth.

[Thanks, Alex]

Continue reading Toshiba’s BDX2000 Blu-ray deck hits Best Buy for $199, sour grapes also on sale

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Toshiba’s BDX2000 Blu-ray deck hits Best Buy for $199, sour grapes also on sale originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 26 Oct 2009 20:22:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Netflix for PlayStation 3 requires a disc, software solution coming late 2010

It can’t all be sweet, right? So Netflix is indeed coming to PlayStation 3, but there’s a catch, and that is a disc (badly photoshopped into the picture above) will be required for use — not just for a one-time install, but every time you want to stream. Joystiq shot some questions off to the company, who justified this as being “fastest and easiest way to let PS3 enthusiasts get Netflix on the PS3” and that an embedded software solution through XMB will be coming late next year. It denies this has anything to do with Microsoft’s exclusivity agreement, but frankly we’re a bit bummed by this perplexing hurdle in convenience. At any rate, be sure to go reserve your disc now if you want to start streaming — assuming, of course, PlayOn hasn’t already satisfied your Netflix needs.

Read – Netflix interview
Read – Disc reservation page (must be logged in to see)

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Netflix for PlayStation 3 requires a disc, software solution coming late 2010 originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 26 Oct 2009 19:34:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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HTC confirms it has Android 2.0 handsets in the works

Of course nobody expects Motorola and Verizon to be the sole benefactors of Android 2.0’s Donut-ey goodness in the long run, but in an age of increasing Android ubiquity it seemed odd to see them as the only ones with a more-or-less-confirmed Android 2.0 handset on the way. Well, Sascha Segan over at Gearlog did some digging and while Samsung wouldn’t confirm any Android 2.0 work, HTC was forthcoming in saying that it’s had Android 2.0 around for a while, and is working on it for future phones. Perhaps the HTC Desire (dubbed Droid Eris) or the Passion will be one of those phones? It would be odd to see Verizon introduce a 2.0 handset from Motorola and only 1.5 or 1.6 handsets from HTC, but we’ll just have to see how it all goes down next month — Motorola sure seems buddy buddy with Google on this one. But if Dell could track down a copy, we don’t see how far behind HTC could be on this one.

[Via SlashGear]

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HTC confirms it has Android 2.0 handsets in the works originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 26 Oct 2009 19:18:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Google Voice app gDial Pro updates for WebOS


(Credit:
gDial Pro)

Back in September, we tested out a Google Voice app for Palm WebOS phones called gDial Pro. The free gDial Pro just recently updated to version 0.8.9, and is available now in Palm’s App Catalog. While gDial Pro still isn’t quite as integrated …

Originally posted at The Download Blog

Microsoft ditches Family Guy special… for being Family Guy

Face? Meet palm. Microsoft’s decided to pull out of its co-sponsoring of “Family Guy Presents: Seth & Alex’s Almost Live Comedy Show” after execs attending the taping came to the sudden conclusion that Family Guy-caliber jokes were to be told, tackling such topics as “deaf people, the Holocaust, feminine hygiene and incest.” We’re not sure how 10 years and over 120 episodes of offensive precedence bypassed Redmond’s radars, but man, that’s gotta be some strong personal bubble. A Microsoft representative said of the taping, “it became clear that the content was not a fit with the Windows brand.” The show will still air November 8th, pre-recorded Microsoft references in tow, but with a new as-of-yet unnamed sponsor. All we have of the now-doomed partnership is this brief video from the Windows “741” student site — it’s after the break.

[Via The Raw Feed]

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Microsoft ditches Family Guy special… for being Family Guy originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 26 Oct 2009 18:46:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sony Ericsson looking ready to come clean with Android-powered Rachael on November 3

It could be argued that Sony Ericsson owes the world some love after it built up its last event only to introduce a single, solitary A2DP headset, but we might finally get what’s coming to us in just a few days’ time. It looks like November 3 is the date SE has chosen to unleash the first volley in its Android strategy on the world, likely the XPERIA X3 (or X10, or whatever the heck they decide to call it) with that wild Rachael UI that we’ve been tracking for a few months. How do we know? Well, it does line up with the latest and greatest rumors — but more importantly, digging into the event page’s HTML source reveals several mentions of Rachael by name, so… yeah, that’s pretty much a lock. Should the unannounced Dragon and Sholes / Droid both be shaking in their boots already?

[Via se-blog.com]

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Sony Ericsson looking ready to come clean with Android-powered Rachael on November 3 originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 26 Oct 2009 18:28:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The 411: No smartphone without a data plan

This is the 411, my Q&A column answering all your questions about cell phones and cell phone accessories. I receive plenty of questions about these subjects via e-mail, so I figured many of you might have the same questions, too. At times, I might solicit answers from readers if

Originally posted at Dialed In Podcast

Beloved boardgame Settlers of Catan comes to iPhone

Catan brings the complete Settlers of Catan boardgame experience to the iPhone.

If you’ve never heard of Settlers of Catan, you owe it to yourself to read the Wired story, Monopoly Killer: Perfect German board game redefines genre.

Then you owe it to yourself to buy a copy, as …

Originally posted at iPhone Atlas

Stanford builds robotic Audi for racing, robotic Volkswagen for parking

You can make a robotic car, and you can make a robotic car — and it looks like Stanford is leading the charge on the no compromises approach with its new driverless Audi TTS. That, of course, is only the latest in a long line of robotic cars from the folks at Stanford, and it looks like it’s also by far their most ambitious, as it’s going above and beyond the usual DARPA challenges in the hope of breaking a few records and winning a few races. In fact, the car apparently already holds the “unofficial” speed record for an automous car at 130 miles per hour and, in the long term, Stanford hopes that it’ll be able to complete the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb, which stretches some twenty kilometers and includes no less than 156 turns. To balance all that adreneline, the Volkswagen Automotive Innovation Laboratory at Stanford has also developed a new VW Passat “valet system” that may not win any races, but can sure do some mean parallel parking. Videos of both after the break, more details a few hands-off impressions courtesy of BotJunkie at the links below.

Read – BotJunkie, “Stanford’s New Robotic Audi TTS Knows How To Drift, Will Tackle Pikes Peak Next Year”
Read – BotJunkie, “VAIL Demonstrates Autonomous Valet Parking System”

Continue reading Stanford builds robotic Audi for racing, robotic Volkswagen for parking

Stanford builds robotic Audi for racing, robotic Volkswagen for parking originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 26 Oct 2009 17:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Samsung Moment review

In the world of Android, it’s not yet clear who’s going to come out victorious — QWERTY sliders or their keyboardless brethren — but does there really need to be a winner? We say there’s room for just about everyone in this open-source party, and Sprint is starting to round out its Android offerings by introducing the keyboard-equipped Samsung Moment to saddle up alongside the HTC Hero that was released a few weeks ago. In the scheme of things, the platform is still extraordinarily young which means that virtually every new handset that’s announced brings “firsts” to the table; in the Moment’s case, it’s both the first Android device with an 800MHz ARM11 core and the first Android QWERTY phone with an AMOLED display (you’d have to go back to another Sammy, the Galaxy, to find the first AMOLED Android phone regardless of input method).

Being able to stuff Android, AMOLED, QWERTY, and 800MHz all into one sentence certainly sounds like a winning combination, but does the Moment deliver? Let’s find out.

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Samsung Moment review originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 26 Oct 2009 17:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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