Pioneer has long been a friend of DJs, producers, and audiophiles alike, turning out lines of audio products that can make club DJs and at-home listeners equally happy with the audio quality they get for the money. If you have the money to spare, the new Pioneer S-DJ05 and S-DJ08 speaker systems can put out impressive sound. Both series will be available in January 2011, but you can reserve a pair of the S-DJ05 speakers for $899 or the D-DJ08 speakers for $1199.
The DJ05 5-inch speakers and DJ08 8-inch speakers are both active reference speakers and are aimed at DJs and music producers looking for sound worthy of a music studio. Both models allow you to control speaker settings from a single external controller that’s included with the package, and have a built-in linear equalizer that you can manage from that controller.
The new speakers also allow you to easily switch among the four built-in audio terminals so you can quickly toggle between computers and your DJ equipment, or additional mixers and amps connected to them without the need for a sub-mixer. The speakers even feature a built-in LED display that will show you the active source and the EQ status.
Since the Epic 4G launched on Sprint August 31, we’ve been receiving notes from owners on various issues they’ve experienced with the phone. We’ve heard about and experienced problems with the supposedly-fixed GPS, to surprisingly slow 3G uploads (fix on the way), to odd issues with battery drain and glitchy market install problems. Now that we’re facing the end of Sprint’s 30-day return period, we’re wondering if Sprint and Samsung have shown enough of a commitment to resolving any problems to keep owners and potential buyers hanging on. Check after the break for a few of the issues we’ve found and what can be done about them, and let us know in our poll how optimistic you are about the future of this otherwise well-received device.
If you tend to travel with your phone or Bluetooth-enabled music player and spend much more time listening to music than you do placing or receiving calls, Motorola’s new S10-HD Bluetooth headset may be ideal for you.
The headset is lightweight, wraps around the back of your head, and has a pair of cushioned earbuds that fit into each ear. The S10-HD is designed to function more like a pair of headphones than a headset, but there is a microphone in the unit, and if you have it paired with your phone, incoming calls will automatically pause playback while you’re speaking and start playing the music again when the call is over.
The Bluetooth antenna, receiver, and controls are located in the back of the headset, which keeps the weight in the back and improves antenna performance outdoors. Even so, the S10-HD is still Bluetooth audio, which is notorious for suffering from compression issues. Headsets like the S10-HD are generally designed for people who have to have wireless audio or who want to take their music with them on the go without wires. It will be available late October at Best Buy retail stores and online retailers for $79.99 list.
With it, presumably, people can interact in front of a television set with distant relatives and friends. The cost for a small unit could be as low as $200, but that price would be heavily subsidized. pOriginally posted at a href=”http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-20018066-92.html” class=”origPostedBlog”News – Business Tech/a/p
As a follow-up to this morning’s announcement, we now have some shots of Nintendo’s colorful new Wiimote. Still no extra details, but what we do have is confirmation from Nintendo that they are indeed building the Wii Remote Plus, which combines a Wii Remote with its Wii MotionPlus gyro add-on into one Wii Remote-sized package. We spotted the controller in a FlingSmash bundle last week, the telltale “smile” text below the Wii logo, and now all we really need is a price and a launch date. Hopefully we’ll be getting all of these colors when this lands in the US as well, but since this is a Japanese presentation that Nintendo is making this announcement, we can’t be too sure.
The new Apple TV could be Steve Jobs’ best sleight-of-hand trick yet.
During his modest introduction of the device, Jobs called the Apple TV “one more hobby.” But a closer look at the code and the hardware powering the Apple TV reveals that there’s a lot more going on under the hood than the CEO shared.
Interestingly, Jobs didn’t mention that Apple TV runs iOS, the same operating system running on its flagship product, the iPhone, and some other big hits — the iPod Touch and iPad. And there’s more, too: The Apple TV’s software may already be jailbroken, and some hidden software should eventually allow you to share the Apple TV’s media with other iOS devices.
These secret ingredients could be the recipe Apple needs to shake up the television industry. For years, Apple executives have labeled the set-top box a “hobby” product because of its mild success compared to blockbuster sellers like the iPhone and iPod. Now that Apple TV has been revamped into a streaming rental service with an arsenal of stealth features, maybe Apple has a chance to change the TV business — if not today, perhaps later.
“The most important hint of Apple’s real ambitions in the living room come from AirPlay, which puts iPhones and iPads in the driver’s seat and makes the TV just an output device for the Apple ecosystem,” said James McQuivey, a Forrester analyst, in a recent e-mail statement. “Expect Apple to gradually push more and more in that direction, but as of this moment in 2010, Apple has not yet made a significant play for control of the TV.”
Here, we round up the juicy tidbits we’ve heard about Apple’s mysterious new set-top box.
iOS and third-party app support
There’s more than enough evidence proving that the Apple TV runs iOS. Dispelling any doubts, Apple recently posted a build of iOS 4.1 specifically for the Apple TV.
This piece of information about iOS is important because of a new feature called AirPlay, which streams media from your iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch to the Apple TV. When Jobs demonstrated AirPlay, he only showed the feature working with an iPad’s built-in video player, photo app and music library. Now that we know Apple TV runs iOS, it’s likely that third-party apps such as MLB at Bat or ABC Player will be able stream media to the set-top box, too.
DaringFireball blogger John Gruber confirmed that an AirPlay button is showing up in the MLB at Bat app, and he adds that apps using the built-in media controller will be able to integrate AirPlay.
Long story short, you’ll be able to wirelessly stream media from some third-party apps straight to your Apple TV with an AirPlay button. AirPlay is shaping up to be Apple’s secret weapon to reshape home entertainment.
In addition to AirPlay, the fact that Apple TV is running iOS means that — in principle, at least — it may someday be able to run applications from the iTunes App Store. For now, that capability is not included in Apple TV, but the underlying operating system certainly supports it, so Apple might open a TV App Store in a future software update.
Jailbreaking hacks
Third-party app support will probably be limited for the Apple TV, but that’s where the jailbreakers come in. In the same way that we’re able to override restrictions on the iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch with a jailbreak, we should be able to run unauthorized apps on the Apple TV — something Jobs would never advertise, of course.
In fact, hackers already have a head start, because a tool called Shatter, which was used to jailbreak the newest iPod Touch, already works with the Apple TV, according to the iPhone Dev Team. That means we should be expecting hackers to code some unauthorized apps soon to unlock additional capabilities such as video conferencing via your Apple TV.
On top of that, existing hacks for the old Apple TV should work, too. Dev Team member Will Strafach explained that “the new AppleTV OS seems to be a mashup of the old AppleTV OS and iOS,” meaning “frappliances,” plug-ins that add functionality to the old Apple TV, should work as well.
‘Lowtide’ app
The Unofficial Apple Weblog’s Erica Sadun, a popular iOS programmer, took a close look at the Apple TV’s software and discovered that it runs an application called Lowtide — the software containing the set-top box’s media interface.
Sadun dug deeper and found lines of code that suggest that Lowtide might eventually be extended to other iOS devices. In other words, you should be able to share media from the Apple TV to your iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad, whereas originally we thought we’d only be able to do the converse with AirPlay. This functionality would be comparable to a Slingbox or an EyeTV.
Lowtide isn’t readily available for Apple’s iOS mobile devices yet, but iOS developer Dustin Howett has already managed to load Lowtide on an iPod touch running iOS 4.1, demonstrated in the video above. He recommended against doing it yourself, though, unless you’re ready to reformat your iPhone on a regular basis just to turn it back into a phone.
Apple’s cheap, puny Apple TV set-top box shares many of the same internals as the iPad, according to a teardown of the device.
The nimble engineers at iFixit cracked open the Apple TV earlier this afternoon and found the same type of Samsung flash chip that’s also inside the iPad, holding 8 GB of capacity. iFixit speculates this storage will be used for caching while streaming TV shows and movies.
The teardown also revealed that the Apple TV features the same A4 processor and amount of RAM (256MB) as the iPad.
Of course, the Apple TV has connectivity features that the iPad doesn’t: Ethernet, HDMI output, an AC adapter and an optical audio-out port. But it’s pretty interesting how similar the two devices are otherwise. Perhaps this is a clue that the Apple TV and iPad will be very tightly integrated in the near future (going beyond the AirPlay streaming feature we’re already familiar with).
An 8-GB drive doesn’t sound like much, but it’s pretty good considering the Apple TV’s $100 price tag. And because the Apple TV’s focus is streaming media, 8GB should leave more than enough room for extra third-party apps, if Apple later decides to open an Apple TV app store, which some have speculated to be a possibility.
“Of course the new Apple TV gets a teardown, silly,” is what we would tell you should you have the audacity to question its inevitability. But alas, we’re too busy analyzing every photo of iFixit’s gallery to even dignify your raised eyebrow with an unprovoked response. The site gives it 8 out of 10 in its metric of repairability, opining it might be “the most eco-friendly set-top box of all time.” With that said, here are the big takeaways we’re seeing so far: 8GB of storage provided care of a Samsung K9LCG08U1M NAND Flash chip, and the same one found in the iPad. Speaking of which, there’s also the exact same markings on its Apple A4 processor as the iPad and new iPod touch, K4X2G643GE (not the same as the iPhone 4, as it turns out), the exact same Broadcom BCM4329XKUBG 802.11n WiFi / Bluetooth / FM chip as the iPad, and at 256MB, the same amount of RAM. Also interesting and of note are the solder pads near the side of the logic board, which look to be a perfect fit for an Apple dock connector. At any rate, with all that’s under the hood, we expect the jailbreak community to have an absolute field day.
Goldline might be a bust (sorry, Glenn), but you’re not gonna let that stop you from preparing for the imminent collapse of society. Or maybe you just want to hang with your friends at the Ayn Rand Book Club (The Fountainhead again?) and they prefer Krugerrands to the fiat currency of the USA. Any way you slice it, Americans (including our friend Scott) have “gold fever.” Luckily, it turns out that the Gold To Govending machines we saw early this year are on their way to the states. Stocked with up to ten different gold bars or coins, these bad boys accept cash or plastic and use a VPN to phone home to Germany for updates on the cost of precious metals every 10 minutes. They also feature an ID scanner / camera combo for preventing (or at least slowing down) potential money launderers. The devices can be found currently in the Emirates Palace Hotel in Abu Dhabi, Bankshop in Reutlingen, Germany, The Westin Palace in Madrid, and the Orio al Serio International Airport, and they’ll be hitting Las Vegas and Florida sometime this year. There might also be one next to the Coinstar machine at the Murray Ave. Giant Eagle (we’ll check it out and let you know).
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If you tend to travel with your phone or Bluetooth-enabled music player and spend much more time listening to music than you do placing or receiving calls, 
