Hasta La Gadget!

The media streamer waters are awfully crowded, but Cirago’s paying no mind to that. The company has this month introduced its new CMC3200 media player, hailed as the only 1080p system to offer 2TB of built-in storage, a WiFi adapter and a full year of PlayOn goodness. It’s priced at $299.99 with the hard drive included, and it’ll sport all of the basic functions already found on the 500GB and 1TB CiragoTV Platinum devices. In related news, the outfit’s also dishing out its NUS2000 Link+ adapter, which provides remote access capabilities to up to four USB-connected storage devices. It’s a compact device that’s obviously set to rival Pogoplug’s stable of NAS enablers, boasting a $100 price point and a foursome of USB 2.0 sockets. Moving on, Cirago’s also announcing that its NUS1000 USB Network Storage Link features remote access, so there goes your excuse to upgrade. Hit the source link for the whole schpeel.

Continue reading Cirago launches CMC3200 media player, NUS2000 USB network storage link

Cirago launches CMC3200 media player, NUS2000 USB network storage link originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 26 Jan 2011 07:48:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Add another one to the (short) list of obscure things that slipped our net at CES. 3M, a company concerned with the materials and components that go into your delicious new gadgets, spent its time in Vegas this month discussing a new way for building capacitive touchscreen panels. By employing silver as its conducting material, 3M says it has made it possible to shrink the circuits at the edge of a touch panel by a whole order of magnitude, resulting in finger-friendly screens unhampered by bulky bezels. Additionally, due to silver’s high conductivity, response times have been shown to dip down as low as 6ms, which is ten times speedier than the currently used Indium Tin Oxide stuff. It’s arguable that neither advancement is revolutionary today, as bezels serve a purpose in providing a gripping surface for slate devices and touch responsiveness is currently constrained by software lag more than hardware capabilities, but 3M sure looks to have a nice building block for the future. The future being 2012, according to the company’s estimates.

3M touts capacitive touchscreens with tiny bezels, 10x faster responsiveness originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 24 Jan 2011 16:57:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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CES is a big place, way bigger than your first apartment, so hopefully you’ll forgive us for missing the Moneual Lab DSPC on the show floor. That stands for Dual Screen PC, a case sporting a decidedly tall display that could make for a useful desktop extension despite subscribing to no aspect ratios heretofore known by man. Unfortunately no specs were provided for resolution or size, but we could see throwing your image editor’s toolbox over there, maybe a chat window, or just loading it up with widgets as in this picture. However, with an anticipated cost of $1,500, we’re thinking you could instead buy a properly large second monitor — and a new desk to put it on.

Moneual DSPC puts a monitor on your computer case, welcomes your widgets originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 18 Jan 2011 06:08:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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There has been a lot of discussion in the Windows Media Center community about the product’s death. The theory is that Microsoft is throwing in the towel, focusing on the Xbox 360 and intends to let the best DVR software available become stale — or worse, eliminate it from future versions of Windows altogether. After watching the Ballmer keynote at CES last week, it was hard not to get on this train as we all watched the 360, Windows Phone 7, and Windows highlighted on stage. But then something happened when the show floor opened: Windows embedded products were highlighted in private meetings and elsewhere. There was a buzz around Media Center embedded and even a price and ship date; meanwhile, home theater PCs got no love. So after years of trying, it appears that all hopes that HTPCs will ever emerge from their niche status are gone, but the same can not be said for Windows Media Center.

Continue reading The home theater PC is dead, long live Windows Media Center

The home theater PC is dead, long live Windows Media Center originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 14 Jan 2011 14:31:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Even amongst the ever increasing competition, it seems that Research in Motion is fairly confident of the success of its upcoming business-minded tablet, the Playbook. According to that perennial source of third-party supplier rumors, DigiTimes, the BlackBerry manufacturer will be shipping more than one million PlayBook tablets in the first quarter of this year. BlackBerry parts provider Quanta would not comment on the number.

The tablet, which was announced back in late October, made a public debut last week at CES in Las Vegas–along with around 80 or so other tablets. Unlike the largely Android-and Windows 7-based tablets, RIM’s version runs the company’s own proprietary software.

DigiTimes recently reported that another top tablet from CES–Motorola’s Xoom–is expected to ship between 700,000 to 800,000 units.