Hasta La Gadget!

Looks like we’ll soon have another heavyweight to throw into the renewed cameraphone wars, as Panasonic has put up a teaser site for its first Lumix-branded phone. Lumix is of course Panasonic’s camera label, which counts among its luminary membership the likes of the GF1 and the newly refreshed LX5. The new phone shooter promises to beat both in terms of pure resolution with its 13.2 megapixel CMOS sensor, which is accompanied by a 3.3-inch LCD atop a 146-gram body. Much like Nokia’s N8 and its protruding sensor compartment, this Lumix handset will have to make room for its expanded imaging equipment, which is why it’ll offer a comparatively chubby 17.7mm thickness, to go along with a 116mm height and 52mm width. We’ll know more next week when CEATEC 2010 gets rolling over in Tokyo.

[Thanks, Anton]

P.S. — It’s also noteworthy that Panasonic’s press release indicates a folding mechanism for this handset, which, given current trends in Japan, makes it most likely to be a clamshell device. It’s also got some DLNA voodoo inside and is coming out by the end of this fiscal year (April 2011).

Panasonic teases a 13.2MP ‘Lumix phone’ for October 5 unveiling originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 01 Oct 2010 05:38:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s an interesting time for Roku — the upstart device company has owned the cheap’n’easy Netflix streaming market since the beginning, and its platform has been getting more and more flexible over time, adding various channels like Amazon Video on Demand, MLB.tv, UFC, and others. But cheap and simple aren’t necessarily good enough anymore, not with the new $99 Apple TV set to launch in just a few weeks — and while Roku already took the preemptive step of slashing prices across the board, it’s following up with some promising new hardware and features. The new Roku HD offers basic 720p streaming capabilities for just $59, the new Roku XD adds 1080p streaming support for $79, and $99 Roku XDS — which we tested — offers 1080p support, a USB port for local media, optical and component outputs, and dual-band WiFi. Apart from the new case, the HD and XD are extremely similar to Roku’s previous offerings, but the XDS is immediately interesting — it offers a number of features absent on Apple’s offering. So does the newest flagship Roku have what it takes to remain our favorite inexpensive streamer? Read on to find out!

Continue reading Roku XDS review

Roku XDS review originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 22 Sep 2010 21:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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In our excitement over HTC’s announcements this morning (that’d be Desire Z, Desire HD, and Sense enhancements, in case you missed it), we missed one other nugget of good news. The HTC Media Link wireless DLNA streaming adapter does exactly what you’d expect from a name like that — namely, it’s a box that allows you to stream media (photos, audio, video up to 720p) to TVs that don’t natively have DLNA support. The pic above shows off what appears to be micro-USB and mini-HDMI ports. According to SlashGear, it’s due out in Q4 this year, but price is still TBA.

HTC’s Media Link provides the wireless DLNA support your phone and TV crave, coming Q4 2010 originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 15 Sep 2010 16:19:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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That’s not a PMP wirelessly mirroring the TV’s dipslay. It’s a Samsung remote control that first blew us away at CES in January when Samsung’s ultra-thin LCD 9000 series TV was first announced. So why revisit it? Well, for starters… look at it! It’s a 3-inch touchsreen remote control in its production form that’s now shipping with the LED backlit 200Hz (not 240Hz, it’s Europe remember) Samsung C9000 — a TV measuring just 7.98-mm thick with a 55-inch diagonal. The remote control itself is built on a 600MHz ARM 11 processor with a custom remote control layer sitting atop Linux and a 2.4GHz 802.11n radio. As such, this little powerhouse gives you lots of options to control and view your media including the ability to continue watching the game even as your bladder drags you into less, shall we say, comfortable rooms. You can even preview other channels without interrupting that vast expanse of LCD viewed by others in the room. It also supports DLNA for streaming your media from any number of compatible devices. Naturally, it also functions as a programable remote for all your new gadget additions. Really, the entire package is quite amazing. Check it for yourself after the break.

Continue reading Samsung’s 55-inch C9000 LCD and its amazing Touch Remote control land at IFA

Samsung’s 55-inch C9000 LCD and its amazing Touch Remote control land at IFA originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 08:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This week Netgear made a battery of new product announcements related to home entertainment and Powerline networking. On the media side, the NeoTV 550 & 350 HD players look a lot like last year’s Digital Entertainer Elite, minus the 500GB of internal storage and access to VOD services like CinemaNow. Both are however capable of playing a robust list of codecs in full HD from a variety of attached sources like USB, eSATA (in the case of the 550) or SD storage, as well as streaming content from UPnP, DLNA or WMP11 networks. The 550 adds in support for external Blu-ray drives and BD-Live too, all for $219, which should appeal any of the poor souls with an unused standalone drive.

Three new Powerline kits — AV 200, AV 500, and AV+ 500 — were also announced to help consumers avoid the pain of stringing Ethernet in every direction. The entry level AV 200 appears to improve on the previous HDXB101 kit by offering the same theoretical 200mbps in addition to push button security enhancements and greener power consumption. The AV 500 kit provides the same and ramps the networking speeds to up to — you guessed it — 500mbps, while the “+” version throws in a pass-through filtered AC socket to avoid sacrificing precious outlets. Priced all below $200, every kit will available by mid November for all the fall home networking networking your heart could desire. Peep the galleries and PR below for further details.

Continue reading Netgear announces NeoTV 550 & 350 HD Media Players plus other networking goodies

Netgear announces NeoTV 550 & 350 HD Media Players plus other networking goodies originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 27 Aug 2010 02:39:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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