Eyes-on: Verizon LTE gaming and live TV on the Acer Iconia Tab (video)

We said we’d bring you an Verizon LTE speed test on the Acer Iconia Tab A500, but we can give you better than that — here’s a test of latency in cross-platform online multiplayer gaming and a FiOS app that streams live television. Hosting a game of Dungeon Defenders on an Alienware M11x laptop (also connected to LTE), Verizon joined the party with an Acer Iconia Tab, and a pair of the slates were able to go head-to-head in a peer-to-peer Asphalt 5 race over LTE as well. What’s more, the carrier showed us an experimental version of its FiOS DVR Manager app, which streamed live television to the Iconia over LTE — similar to what we saw on the iPad. Unlike the games, it was choppy and took some time to cache, but we’ll have to see what it’s like when (or if) it’s finalized. Of course, if you had just clicked the play button on the above video instead of reading these words, you’d already know all that.

Eyes-on: Verizon LTE gaming and live TV on the Acer Iconia Tab (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 07 Jan 2011 18:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Working RED Scarlet appears at our trailer, we go hands-on! (video)

Last year at CES, we had a surprise visit from RED’s Ted Schilowitz showing off their non-functioning RED Scarlet prototype. Ted just stopped by our trailer again, this time with a working version and it’s a seriously impressive piece of hardware. We grabbed a camera and sat down with Ted for an in-depth hands-on, so head on past the break for the exclusive video and some details!

Continue reading Working RED Scarlet appears at our trailer, we go hands-on! (video)

Working RED Scarlet appears at our trailer, we go hands-on! (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 07 Jan 2011 17:57:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Vizio CES hands-on with ultrawidescreen TV, passive 3DTV, OnLive and Android clock radios

Predictably, as the leader in North American LCD sales, Vizio’s booth was absolutely filled with LCD HDTVs, including the slew of displays announced this week during CES. We got some hands-on time with the OnLive implementation Vizio’s bringing to its VIA Plus (read: Google TV) as well as the Versus single screen head-to-head gaming setup — which you can check out on Joystiq — a quick look at new soundbars with wireless subwoofers, new headphones and even an interesting Android-powered clock radio with integrated iPod dock, but our biggest question was if the new Theater 3D tech based on LG’s FPR passive 3D screens was ready for prime time. Check out a few more pics in the gallery and our impressions after the break.

Continue reading Vizio CES hands-on with ultrawidescreen TV, passive 3DTV, OnLive and Android clock radios

Vizio CES hands-on with ultrawidescreen TV, passive 3DTV, OnLive and Android clock radios originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 07 Jan 2011 17:46:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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iHome iA63 motorized spinning iPhone alarm clock hands-on

In addition to its slick new AirPlay speaker systems, iHome’s here at CES with its usual array of iPhone alarm clocks — and the craziest by far is the new iA63, which offers a crazy motorized dock that pivots your phone from portrait to landscape at the touch of a button. Why you’d be watching anything from an iPhone from so far away that you couldn’t spin things yourself is an open question, but hey — for a list price of $99 we’ll take all the extra motors we can get. Video after the break.

Continue reading iHome iA63 motorized spinning iPhone alarm clock hands-on

iHome iA63 motorized spinning iPhone alarm clock hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 07 Jan 2011 17:31:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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SQ Blaster Pro is a WiFi, Z-Wave, and IR blaster home automation powerhouse

We’ve seen plenty of IR blasters around the Engadget trailer but few, if any, include WiFi and Z-Wave home automation radios. But that’s exactly what the boys over at Square Connect have planned as a followup to their existing SQ Blaster product. A trick that lets you control your home theater equipment, window coverings, lights, and HVAC systems from the company’s own SQ Remote iPhone app. At least that’s the plan when it ships sometime around Q2, possibly touting WiFi Direct capability and Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS). The device above is a non-working prototype that just happens to look nice with the Apple TV. It features cutouts for a USB port (power and setup), IR extenders, built-in blasters, and removable antenna. Working models are already in field testing with shipments expected to land in the homes of consumers sometime in Q2.

SQ Blaster Pro is a WiFi, Z-Wave, and IR blaster home automation powerhouse originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 07 Jan 2011 17:25:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Kno single and dual-screen tablets hands-on (video)

You know about Kno right? Yep, it’s that giant dual-screen tablet up there that’s meant for students, and while we had seen an early version of it and its single-screen brother about six months ago, we figured we’d take a closer look at the shipping versions here at CES. Our first impression of the thing is that it’s one awesome tablet for taking notes. Both the dual-screen and single-screen versions come with a magnetic stylus, which not only latches onto the side of the screen but provides an incredibly smooth inking experience. As you will see in the video below, you can write over text in a textbook and even create a Post-it note. The palm rejection is also top notch, and considering your entire wrist has to rest on the display to take notes at the top of the screen, it’s pretty clutch. The rest of the hardware is equally as first rate — the metal make obviously makes ’em both quite heavy (the single tablet is 2.6 pounds and the dual-screen one 5.6 pounds), but they feel very rigid and we really dig the etched edges, which were designed specifically to mimic pages in a textbook. The bright 1440 x 900-resolution IPS displays provide very wide viewing angles.

So, how’s the Linux-based software interface? Unlike the version we saw a while back, it was pretty responsive and intuitive. You’ve got the My Apps section, which contains links to web applications, and the My Library section, which is where you’ll be able to purchase books and open them. The browser supports multiple tabs and the on-screen keyboard is obviously quite wide. At this point there’s no way to convert handwriting to text, so you’ve got to use the keyboard within web apps. We’ve got to say, Kno has made a solid piece of hardware with an equally impressive textbook reading and note-taking experience, but we’re still not convinced that anyone out there wants to carry around one, nevertheless two 14-inch touchscreens. (Kno claims that students actually carry more weight around than that between textbooks, laptops, etc.) But hey, the only way we know how to find that out is to get one of these, throw it in the backpack, and try using it in real life. Until that happens, hit the break for a hands-on video.

Continue reading Kno single and dual-screen tablets hands-on (video)

Kno single and dual-screen tablets hands-on (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 07 Jan 2011 17:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Viliv X7 and X10 Android tablets hands-on

Viliv had its new Android tablets on display for us to get our grubby hands on, and the company continues to impress us with its sleek designs and attractive feature sets. The X10’s claim to fame is its monstrous 8300 mAh battery which should yield over ten hours of use even with its 10.2-inch display. What we saw was only a prototype, but it doesn’t seem that the battery added any additional bulk to the svelte design. The X7 seven inch model should look pretty familiar, considering it has essentially the same exact enclosure as that X70 slate we spent time with earlier (the only difference is the OS and some tweaked buttons). Both tablets have a Cortex A8 processor chugging away at 1 GHz, front and rear 1.3 / 3 megapixel cams respectively, and support for 3G. They were currently running Froyo but will ultimately ship with Gingerbread. When we mentioned Honeycomb we couldn’t exactly get a straight answer, but it’s a safe bet that won’t happen off the bat and a very vague “3.0 (TBD)” note in the press release doesn’t make anything more clear. Check out these twin tablets getting cozy in our gallery shots below.

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Viliv X7 and X10 Android tablets hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 07 Jan 2011 17:20:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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LG 3D smartphone display eyes-on (video)

You can’t have all this 3D stuff happening on the home entertainment front without it trickling down to smartphones, right? Sharp’s already planning to bring its autostereoscopic wares to US shores at some point during 2011 and today LG’s busy showing off a prototype of its own, right here at CES. It’s a 4.3-inch panel, pumping out glasses-free 3D (using the parallax barrier method) and is presently embedded in an enormous demo box, but the ultimate goal is to have it in media-centric handsets. To be honest, yes, there’s some glasses-free 3D effect going on, but for the most part we just noticed the two frames splitting and didn’t find the video before us enhanced in any major way. The best parts might even have been the ones that didn’t have any 3D-ification applied to them — the display on show is certainly a lucid and bright one. Skip past the break to see what we’re talking about.

Continue reading LG 3D smartphone display eyes-on (video)

LG 3D smartphone display eyes-on (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 07 Jan 2011 17:12:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Oliver Stone, Michael Mann and Baz Luhrmann extoll the virtues of Blu-ray, Stone suggests stocking up (video)

Panasonic took a break from its usual CES business this afternoon to host the inaugural directors’ panel at the show (in conjunction with 20th Century Fox), where the unexpected trio of Oliver Stone, Michael Mann and Baz Luhrmann showed up to talk about technology in Hollywood, and Blu-ray in particular. As you might expect, the general theme was that Blu-ray is great, but the directors certainly weren’t shy to make their opinions known. While Mann said that Blu-ray would be the “premier format for six, seven or eight years,” for instance, he also took a moment to reminisce about the photochemical process used on Last of the Mohicans, which he notes still can’t be fully replicated on Blu-ray. Luhrmann also talked at length about the great colors Blu-ray allows, and stated simply that “it’s better,” before picking a fight with a noisy booth next door.

Oliver Stone was unsurprisingly the most opinionated, however, and lamented the fact that Blu-ray will be “last hardware” in the face of digital distribution. He even suggested that people should “be different, go against the grain” and collect Blu-rays, which he says will be very valuable by 2050 or so in much the way comics and baseball cards are today. On a more general note, Stone also said that watching kids try to watch a movie on a computer screen and multitask so much these days is “very depressing to me” and that, in a way, “we are the last of the Mohicans.”

Richard Lawler contributed to this report.

Update: Now with video! Check it out after the break to hear their words directly.

Continue reading Oliver Stone, Michael Mann and Baz Luhrmann extoll the virtues of Blu-ray, Stone suggests stocking up (video)

Oliver Stone, Michael Mann and Baz Luhrmann extoll the virtues of Blu-ray, Stone suggests stocking up (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 07 Jan 2011 17:09:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Exclusive: Verizon Slingbox in the wild

Well, lookie here: we just came across an extraordinarily trapezoidal device that we’re told is the new Slingbox to be offered by Verizon on a monthly subscription basis to LTE customers. Not much to see, really, but they’ve definitely dialed down the industrial design here in favor of a tiny, matte black shell that’s got some creative angling to it. It’s standard definition only, as far as we can tell — the only connections on back are for composite video. If you’ve already got something like a Solo or a Pro-HD, we’re not sure there’s any compelling reason at all to consider it — but it might be a good way for Sling newbies to get into the game. Check out more shots below.

Exclusive: Verizon Slingbox in the wild originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 07 Jan 2011 17:05:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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