Hasta La Gadget!

Back in March 2009 at the iPhone OS 3.0 debut event, Apple’s Scott Forstall pointed out medical devices specifically as one of the more interesting class of peripherals that could leverage the new custom app interface capabilities. And while it’s certainly an interesting concept — keeping tabs on your general health from the comfort of your own home — we haven’t really seen it catch on (only a couple of products come to mind). That isn’t stopping iHealth; the company’s blood pressure dock, available today from its online store (we’re told it should be filtering through Apple’s own channels later this month) ties in with a specialized iPhone / iPod touch / iPad app to monitor and track blood pressure from the comfort of your home, where theoretically there shouldn’t be a stranger in a white coat making you extra nervous. In our brief time with the device, the interface seemed fairly intuitive and the whole process simple and not at all intimidating. The cost of entry is $99.95 for the hardware; the free app should be hitting iTunes today. Press release after the break.

Continue reading iHealth blood pressure iPod dock: another sort of Apple to keep the doctor away

iHealth blood pressure iPod dock: another sort of Apple to keep the doctor away originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 04 Jan 2011 08:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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After buying up Gennum and its VXP video processing technology back in ’08, Sigma Designs has finally managed to shoehorn its “professional grade” scaling (previously sen in high priced boxes from Kaleidescape and Mark Levinson) into a chip destined for consumer set-top boxes. The SMP8910 system-on-chip claims to have enough power for all manner of over the top application or middleware, while the VXP processing cleans up video well enough for it to claim Netflix streams of higher quality than on competing hardware and reduced ghosting on 3D content. We’ll need to actually see the chip at work in a Blu-ray player, IPTV box or similar device to judge its capabilities for ourselves but if it was good enough to make some people consider a $4,000 DVD player and is available for more reasonably priced applications, then we’re all ears.

Continue reading Sigma finally brings ‘professional grade’ VXP video scaling to consumer boxes

Sigma finally brings ‘professional grade’ VXP video scaling to consumer boxes originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 04 Jan 2011 04:46:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We might already be here at CES in Las Vegas, but that isn’t stopping Samsung from doing some very last minute teasing. The Korean maker of everything electronic has released a few teaser images for its new flagship 9 Series LED-backlit 3DTV. This new panel features a striking asymmetric design, with the stand offset to the far right, and a metallic construction accented with a (hopefully tasteful) Touch of Color. No further details or specs are available as of yet, but mysteries like that don’t tend to hang around for too long in this city and at this time of the year.

Samsung’s new 9 Series LED-backlit 3DTV goes for asymmetric beauty with a Touch of Color originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 04 Jan 2011 01:49:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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AMD might have let the Radeon HD 6500M and 6300M out a little early, but today marks the formal launch of its new, second-generation DirectX 11 mobile chips, the HD 6000M family. The new arrivals are the HD 6900M / 6800M in the gaming-centric high-end (offering up to 1.3 teraFLOPS of compute power), the HD 6700M / 6600M in the upper midrange, and the HD 6400M to provide mainstream users with all the discrete graphics loving that they desire. The 6000M range introduces AMD’s new HD3D hocus pocus, which will allow apps, games and other media to present themselves in 3D to you — provided devs care to make them so — while EyeSpeed is a marketing name for a set of technologies designed to improve video streaming and gaming performance by taking on more tasks with the GPU. You’ll care about that if you’re a big online media consumer and you’ll also want to know that AMD has an exclusive on hardware acceleration for DivX video. Full press release awaits after the break.

Continue reading AMD launches Radeon HD 6000M series, endows them with HD3D and EyeSpeed skills

AMD launches Radeon HD 6000M series, endows them with HD3D and EyeSpeed skills originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 04 Jan 2011 00:42:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Is this real? Is this happening? It’s been over four years since AMD and ATI completed their $5.4 billion merger with the promise of Fusion hybrid CPU / GPU chips, and after what’s seemed like nearly endless delays, the company’s delivering here at CES 2011. And it’s delivering in a big way — the first Fusion chips are a direct assault on Intel’s Atom and the netbook market, offering what AMD says is better CPU performance, vastly better GPU performance with DirectX11 support, dedicated 1080p HD video processing and HDMI out, and “all day” battery life that can hit 10 or more hours. There are four total chips in two families built around the new “Bobcat” CPU core to start: the “Zacate” E-Series for mainstream laptops, AIOs and small desktops will have an 18W TDP and come in the 1.6GHz dual-core E-350 and the 1.5GHz single-core E-240, while the “Ontario” C-Series for HD netbooks and “other emerging form factors” will clock in at 9W TDP and come in the dual-core 1.0GHz C-50 and the single core 1.2GHz C-30. The “Llano” A-Series designed for mainstream laptops will offer up to four cores and arrive later this year.

We’re expecting to see a number of systems based around the E-Series — the Lenovo X120e and HP Pavilion dm1 have already been announced — and we’re anticipating quite a flood in the days ahead, which we’re more than eager to test out. AMD’s making some serious claims — it says “Fusion processors are, quite simply, the greatest advancement in processing since the introduction of the x86 architecture more than forty years ago” — and if can deliver on its performance promises, it’ll pretty much turn the entire netbook market upside down. What’s more, the company says tablets and other embedded devices are coming in the first half of 2011, so things could get seriously interesting. PR after the break.

Continue reading AMD announces first Fusion chips: 10+ hour battery life with DirectX11 graphics

AMD announces first Fusion chips: 10+ hour battery life with DirectX11 graphics originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 04 Jan 2011 00:10:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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