Hasta La Gadget!

At one point in time it seemed like iriver had a monopoly on insane, imaginative designs. Sure, it was mostly centered around PMPs, but iriver’s stuff in its heyday was fun enough to make even a screenless MP3 player seem interesting. Lately, however, things seem a little more conservative. Take this iriver Story, for instance: it’s a sexy device that seems very on par with other e-readers on the market… and that’s about it. We played around with it a bit on the show floor, and found the keyboard to be pretty great, the design solid and slim, and the software pretty slow. With all the extra function-specific buttons on the keyboard, there’s less of the arbitrary UI navigation limitations posed by some of the more simplistic e-book readers, but there’s nothing so amazing or useful on the device that it would tempt the Kindle faithful. We’re particularly worried about book load times, but it’ll take some more time with the unit to really see how it stacks up across the board. For now you can check out a video walkthrough of the device after the break.

Continue reading iriver Story e-reader hands-on

iriver Story e-reader hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 08 Jan 2010 22:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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When we approached the just-introduced Viliv P3, we were cautiously optimistic that we were looking at a phone. Needless to say, our hopes would go on to be mercilessly dashed, but in the wake of the carnage, we were still left with an intriguing PMP with a big AMOLED display and an 800MHz Cortex A8 processor. You could argue that the most compelling feature, though, is that it clocks in at just 9.8mm thick — a full 1.7mm thinner than the Nexus One while still managing 800 x 480 resolution. It felt a little creaky, but we were assured that the unit on hand was an early prototype — and honestly, we’d even be willing to take a little creakiness on a production model if you get this kind of thickness (or lack thereof) in return. It’s also got 720p TV-out, storage up to 32GB, optional T-DMB and DAB tuners, an exposed microSD slot on the bottom, and — check this out — Windows CE dual-boot capability, although the unit here only had Android installed. Stuff an HSPA radio in there and call it good, guys. Follow the break for a quick video of the P3 in action.

Continue reading Viliv P3 is like the Zii Egg of devices that don’t run Plaszma OS (hands-on)

Viliv P3 is like the Zii Egg of devices that don’t run Plaszma OS (hands-on) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 08 Jan 2010 21:37:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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D-Link’s Boxee Box might be the Tegra 2-powered star of CES, but it’s not the only hardware running Boxee — NUU Media’s NUU player runs the grown-up version of XBMC on an Atom processor alongside some other custom apps. It’s also got a 160GB local hard drive and runs a WebKit browser, compared to no local storage and Mozilla on the Boxee Box. What’s more, there’s also a Skype app and Bluetooth support, so you’ll be able to make and take calls from the couch using a headset. Of course, all that means it’ll cost “around $300” instead of the Box’s “under $200” when it launches around March, but we know some of you might spend the extra coin for the more home theater-rack friendly form factor alone. Pics in the gallery, video after the break!

Continue reading NUU Player runs Boxee on Atom

NUU Player runs Boxee on Atom originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 08 Jan 2010 21:14:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’re sort of hoping the third year’s the charm for Ostendo and the CRVD display — we first spotted the crazy 43-inch curved monitor at CES 2008 with Alienware and NEC branding, then just NEC branding at Macworld 09, and now it’s CES 2010 and Ostendo is actually selling it directly. Even better, the company’s hooked up with ATI for a pretty sweet Eyefinity demo — sure, you might have seen the three- or six-screen Eyefinity demos in the past, but having three CRVD screens wrap 180 degrees around you is pretty wild. We played a little Dirt 2 and did a little Google Earth zooming on the rig — we might never scrape the $6,499 per screen for a setup like this, but we can certainly watch the videos after the break and pretend.

P.S.- Yes, the CRVD still has the same weak 2880 x 900 resolution, but Ostendo tells us they’re working on something with more pixels for the future. Just don’t make us wait another three years, okay?

Continue reading Ostendo multiple CRVD display games-on

Ostendo multiple CRVD display games-on originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 08 Jan 2010 20:32:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’ve already seen a pico projector here at CES that packs 1GB of internal storage, but Syndiant and Foryou have now finally announced a new device that has an upgrade where it really counts: resolution. Unfortunately, it’s still just a prototype, and there’s no word about pricing or availability, but the projector does use Syndiant’s 1,024 x 600 resolution SYL2061 panel (pictured at right), and it still fits in a shirt pocket. Nothing else much in the way of details just yet, but this one’s definitely the pico projector to beat when it comes to pumping out pixels.

Syndiant and Foryou break the low-res mold with 1,024 x 600 pico projector originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 08 Jan 2010 19:56:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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