It’s that time again — the Engadget Show returns this Saturday, March 20th at 5pm! We’ll be joined by Nicholas Negroponte, founder of the MIT Media Lab and OLPC project for what’s sure to be a rousing conversation. What’s more, we’ll have Joystiq’s Chris Grant on hand and Sony’s Senior Researcher Dr. Richard Marks will be showing off the PlayStation Move… and we’ll be letting some lucky audience members demo it live on the show! You’ll be meeting our new investigative correspondent Rick Karr and we’ll have more of the classic Engadget Show shenanigans that you love so much. You can also look forward to some chiptune goodness from minusbaby, as well as visuals from notendo. We’ll be streaming the whole thing direct to you via the internet, but we’ll be doing some major giveaways at the live show only, so make the trek and join us at The Times Center in person if you can. If for some reason you live in not-New York, hit up the stream and tweet comments directly to the show!

The Engadget Show is sponsored by Sprint, and will take place at the Times Center, part of The New York Times Building in the heart of New York City at 41st St. between 7th and 8th Avenues (see map after the break). Tickets are — as always — free to anyone who would like to attend, but seating is limited, and tickets will be first come, first served… so get there early! Here’s all the info you need:

• There is no admission fee — tickets are completely free
• The event is all ages
• Ticketing will begin at the Times Center at 2:30PM on Saturday, doors will open for seating at 4:30PM, and the show begins at 5PM
• You cannot collect tickets for friends or family — anyone who would like to come must be present to get a ticket
• Seating capacity in the Times Center is about 340, and once we’re full, we’re full
• The venue is located at 41st St. between 7th and 8th Avenues in New York City (map after the break)
• The show length is around an hour

Sprint is also offering 50 guaranteed tickets to the Engadget Show taping to the first 50 entrants who text “ENGADGET” to 467467 or enter online. Standard text messaging rates apply. Click here for the Official Rules and see how to enter online.

If you’re a member of the media who wishes to attend, please contact us at: engadgetshowmedia [at] engadget [dot] com, and we’ll try to accommodate you. All other non-media questions can be sent to: engadgetshow [at] engadget [dot] com.

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Continue reading The Engadget Show returns this Saturday, March 20th with Nicholas Negroponte and PlayStation Move!

The Engadget Show returns this Saturday, March 20th with Nicholas Negroponte and PlayStation Move! originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 15 Mar 2010 16:36:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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I’ve been skeptical of the big push for 3D in TVs and movies. But I just played the first 45 minutes or so of Metro 2033 on a top-of-the-line 3D-enabled gaming rig and, well, wow.

Playing games in 3D right now requires a lot of work on your part, or at least a lot of money. An Nvidia rep told me that you could get a decent 3d-capable tower for $800-$1,000, but it was telling that the setup they had me playing on at the press preview for the game had a to-be-announced Nvidia GPU inside a 3.5-foot-tall tower with a plexiglass side to show off the water cooling inside. Sure, it’ll work with a slower computer, but if you want a great experience, expect to pay top dollar.

That’s because 3D gaming will basically require a doubled framerate to get video as smooth as we’re used to with 2D games, as it’s processing a frame for each eye instead of one for both.

But that’s fine. Unless you’re a hardcore PC gamer or a serious early adopter, I wouldn’t suggest running out and dropping $4,000 on a tower. What was exciting about this was that it felt like a glimpse into the near future.

PCs, after all, aren’t where the majority of players get their gaming done. They play consoles. The PS3 is getting 3D capabilities this summer through a couple of firmware upgrades; the same is coming to the Xbox 360 sometime soon. In any case, even when the PS3 and Xbox 360 get 3D support you’ll need a new 3D HDTV that supports HDMI 1.4 to run em, so it won’t suddenly make 3D gaming mainstream.

And since 3D requires a doubled framerate, you shouldn’t expect to be able to play the current crop of console games in 3D even when the PS3 gets that ability, because most of them are already pushing the console hard to hit its framerate as-is. Doubling that will not work out very well.

Post-Apocalyptic Moscow in Three Dimensions

The graphics of Metro 2033 are very good, to be sure, but they’re nothing better than any other major release from the past year. What made the experience great was the 3D. It was amazing how much was added to the feel of the game.

Leaving an underground tunnel into a post-apocalyptic Moscow at night, my vision was filled with floating specs of snow and dust in some lights. But closer to me were some cracks in my gas mask, which represented damage to my character. In the middle distance were some other characters and piles of rubble. Off in the distance was a huge tower.

Each level of depth stood out completely and made the screen feel like a window. Aiming was easier, as I could immediately tell just how far off an enemy was, even when I hadn’t seen it before and was unsure of its scale.

Back underground in the subway tunnels that make up 70% of the game, everything was much closer. But I could pass a cracked-open doorway and peer inside at the people sitting there, and it felt like I was really looking into someone’s private room.

When You’ll Be Able to Get In on the Fun

In short, 3D makes games feel more real than ever before. And this is just the beginning. With Natal, Microsoft will be able to do head tracking, which when combined with 3D really looks like the future of gaming to me. A next-gen Microsoft console with Natal and 3D built-in, complete with the guts to make 3D run smoothly, will completely change the way we play games.

And while 3D tech will take a bit of time to become affordable, if you really want to experience it now, you can. Games today are created in 3D already, so it’s just a matter of processing to turn those 3D spaces into something you can see with glasses. Unreal just announced its Unreal Engine will be able to go 3D with the flip of a switch, and it powers loads of popular games. A gaming rig with a good enough graphics card hooked up to a 120Hz monitor can run many games in 3D right now, but Nvidia’s 3DTV Play, just announced today, will let you hook up a gaming PC to a 3D HDTV in your living room. So if you’ve got the motivation and the money, you’ve got the ability to enjoy 3D gaming on the couch right now.

Really, this isn’t going to hit the mainstream until consoles are pushing it. And that probably won’t be for a couple of years, at least for console AAA titles, which is a bummer.

But if you’re an early adopter looking to buy a first-gen 3D HDTV and Blu-ray player, you’d be crazy to not at least think about grabbing a gaming PC that can handle 3D games. Because trust me, you’ll use that a lot more often than you’ll watch Avatar.

Right on schedule, the FCC has submitted its National Broadband Plan. There’s a lot to go through — note the calls for broadband benchmarking and pricing reports — and we’re still combing, but here’s what we’ve noticed so far. The six goals set out for “the next decade” propose that every American have the affordable access (the key, oft-repeated phrase) to “robust broadband services,” and, more specifically, at least 100 million US homes with affordable access to at least 100MBps down / 50Mbps up speeds. All communities should have at their disposal 1Gbps service, every first responder should have “access to a nationwide, wireless interoperable broadband public safety network,” and here’s an interesting one: every citizen should be able to use broadband to “track and manage real-time [home] energy consumption.”

The appeal to our taxpaying wallets comes in the form of the FCC expecting the “vast majority of recommendations [to] not require new government funding”, and that the 500MHz of spectrum going on auction is “likely to offset the potential costs.” The plan, as the paper itself says, is in beta and be perennially in flux. Set aside 15 minutes of your day and hit up the PDF for all the details, or 25 if you’re having to download over dial-up.

Update: Here’s a friendly reminder to keep the discussion friendly and on topic — that is, about the broadband proposal itself. All other comments will get deleted and the respective users run the risk of being banned.

FCC submits National Broadband Plan to Congress: at least 100M US homes with access to 100Mbps download speeds originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 15 Mar 2010 16:08:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This week Inhabitat took a peek into the future of our built environment by showcasing the most incredible designs from the 2010 eVolo Skyscraper Competition. From water purifying buildings to cities stacked on stilts and self-sufficient underwater skyscrapers, there’s no shortage of futuristic thinking on tap.

Alternative energy was also a hot topic this week as China launched plans to tap “combustible ice” as an energy source and researchers at MIT discovered a new way to produce electricity by sending thermopower waves through carbon nanotubes.

We also saw several exciting advances in efficient transportation as South Korea rolled out an EV that is recharged by electrified roads and researchers at UT Dallas revealed a heat-scavenging tailpipe that may one day help power cars. And if you think your Prius gets good mileage, get a load of this super-efficient gas engine that gets 98 MPG. Finally, if you rely on that morning cup of coffee to get your engine running, you won’t want to miss this coffee-powered car that gets 56 espressos per mile

Inhabitat’s Week in Green: skyscrapers, combustible ice, and coffee-powered cars originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 15 Mar 2010 15:46:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We just got out of a meeting with Microsoft’s Todd Biggs, who dropped a little bombshell on us: the only official way to get apps on a Windows Phone 7 Series device will be to download them from the just-detailed Windows Phone Marketplace. That means developers will have to abide by Microsoft’s technical and content guidelines in order to make it in, with the very real possibility of rejection — sound familiar? Todd told us Microsoft plans to avoid Apple-style submission headaches by making the process transparent and predictable, with a group of Microsoft execs regularly meeting to examine edge cases and refine the guidelines as needed, but even the best intentions can be led astray by a sexy app or two. We also got some additional details on Marketplace and how it’s going to work, catch the highlights after the break.

Update: Microsoft wanted us to clarify that enterprise customers will be able to deploy apps to employees outside the consumer-facing Marketplace — details on that will be released in the future.

Continue reading Confirmed: Marketplace will be the only way to get apps on Windows Phone 7 Series

Confirmed: Marketplace will be the only way to get apps on Windows Phone 7 Series originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 15 Mar 2010 15:24:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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