Hasta La Gadget!

Looks like consumers are about to get another option in their search for an affordable connected TV solution: Hisense is building its own Google TV set-top box. The product doesn’t have a price — let alone a name — but will sell for under $100 when it hits shelves later this year. “Hisense adds even more innovation to the growing list of Google TV-powered devices available around the world.” Says Google TV partner manager Mickey Kim. “We’re working closely with partners like Hisense to bring services from Google and multiple other providers to your TV with an experience tailored for the living room.” Details are scarce, but the outfit promises to reveal more at IFA next week. Can’t wait? Check out Vizio’s Co-Star.

Filed under: HD

Hisense building budget-friendly Google TV set-top box, will put Android in your living room for under $100 originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 25 Aug 2012 03:45:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Vizio’s Co-Star Google TV hub has been public knowledge for more than half of 2012, but it might as well have been a black box as far as its internals were concerned. It’s mostly been a mystery beyond the acknowledgment of a Marvell ARM chip inside. The teardown gurus at iFixit certainly weren’t content to let that riddle go unanswered. Their exploration of the box shows that Vizio is very much clinging to the initial Marvell vision of using a dual-core, 1.2GHz Armada 1500 to handle 1080p video at that $100 price — albeit with just 4GB of flash to store everything the Android OS demands. What may interest hobbyists is simply the accessibility of the set-top box: just about every board and component comes out easily, which could lead to some cheaper DIY surgery. The full parts list is waiting at the source if knowing how your Google TV box operates is as important as catching up on Netflix.

Filed under: Home Entertainment

Vizio Co-Star teardown supplies the tech specs we never had originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 22 Aug 2012 13:14:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Primed goes in-depth on the technobabble you hear on Engadget every day — we dig deep into each topic’s history and how it benefits our lives. You can follow the series here. Looking to suggest a piece of technology for us to break down? Drop us a line at primed *at* engadget *dawt* com.

As you’re hopefully aware, this is a gadget blog. As a result, we’re innately biased towards stuff that’s new and preferably fandangled. More cores, more pixels, more lenses; just give it here and make us happy. The risk of this type of technological greed is that we don’t make full use of what we already have, and nothing illustrates that better than the Graphics Processing Unit. Whether it sits in our desktops, laptops, tablets or phones, the GPU is cruelly limited by its history — its long-established reputation as a dumb, muscular component that takes instructions from the main processor and translates them into pixels for us to gawp at.

But what if the GPUs in our devices had some buried genius — abilities that, if only we could tap into them, would yield hyper-realistic experiences and better all-round performance from affordable hardware? Well, the thing is, this hidden potential actually exists. We’ve been covering it since at least 2008 and, even though it still hasn’t generated enough fuss to become truly famous, the semiconductor industry is making more noise about it now than ever before.

So please, join us after the break as we endeavor to explain why the trend known as “GPU compute,” aka “general purpose GPU (GPGPU),” or simply “not patronizing your graphics processor,” is still exciting despite having let us down in the past. We’ll try to show why it’s worth learning a few related concepts and terms to help provide a glossary for future coverage; and why, on the whole, your graphics chip is less Hasselhoff and more Hoffman than you may have imagined.

Continue reading Engadget Primed: The crazy science of GPU compute

Filed under: Cellphones, Desktops, Tablet PCs

Engadget Primed: The crazy science of GPU compute originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 20 Aug 2012 16:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Microsoft and its OEM partners haven’t been particularly forthcoming on how much the first round of Windows 8 tablets are going to cost, but one Lenovo executive just gave us a hint. In a recent interview with Bloomberg, David Schmoock, Senior VP of Lenovo’s North American division, said that full-on Windows 8 tablets would ring up between $600 and $700, noting that ARM-based Windows RT slates would sell for $200 to $300 less. “RT will play in consumer and retail at very aggressive price points,” he said. This echoes previous reports that suggested Microsoft would introduce the Surface with a competitive $200 price tag. The Lenovo VP didn’t reveal any specific prices, of course, but his estimates would put the ThinkPad Tablet 2 somewhere between $300 and $500. Schmoock also commented on Ultrabook sales, stating that he didn’t think Intel would meet its lofty saturation goals: 40 percent of the market by the end of 2012. “They’ll be a lot bigger than they are now,” he admitted, “but I don’t know if it will get all the way up to 40 percent.”

Filed under: Tablet PCs

Windows 8 RT tablets to sell for $300 less than Intel-based counterparts, says Lenovo exec originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 17 Aug 2012 02:26:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Microsoft was quick to champion its new Windows RT partners, but it’ll have to count one out. Toshiba has opted not to join the ARM crowd at first and will limit itself to Intel-based Windows 8 systems, at least in the early days. The abstinence isn’t coming from any misgivings about the platform — there are unnamed “delayed components” that would make it “impossible” to put out a Windows RT system on time, Toshiba’s Eric Paulsen says. There’s no mention of when the company might dip its toe in the pool later on, and we’re not getting any reassuring signs that it’s anytime soon given that the firm is only “monitoring market conditions” rather than committing to a plan. Although Toshiba isn’t hurting for tablets given an abundance of Excite devices, the absence narrows an ecosystem that Microsoft was no doubt hoping would grow wider.

Filed under: Tablet PCs

Toshiba backs out of Windows RT devices on launch, pins it on part delays originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 14 Aug 2012 15:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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