Hasta La Gadget!

Almost two years after its last major set-top box rollout, Roku is ready to introduce its first third generation player. Other than a new curvier design outside the Roku 3’s main differences are a more powerful processor inside, the addition of dual band WiFi and a tweaked remote with audio out (headphones included) for private listening. Of course, hardware is only half the story and the new player debuts a reworked interface that will also spread to “current generation” players (read: Roku 2, new HD, LT and Streaming Stick) as an update in April. Roku 3 goes on sale tomorrow through Roku.com and Amazon.com for $99, taking the place of the current top of the line XS model. We’ll go more in depth about what’s new this time around, including a video preview of the new UI, after the break.

Filed under: Home Entertainment, HD

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Source: Roku Blog

We’ve known that game company and Steam operator Valve Software was going to offer prototypes of its hardware to Steam users for some time, but company head Gabe Newell niw says that those prototypes will start arriving in the next three to four months time. Moreover, beyond just the controllers we suspected to be part of the beta program, Newell tells the BBC that said prototypes will be of the Steambox, Valve’s living room-friendly PC gaming initiative. “We’re working with partners trying to nail down how fast we can make it,” Newell said.

He cited noise and heat concerns as the holdup for retail availability of various Steamboxes — both Valve itself and a variety of third-party companies are working on the initiative, including Xi3 and unnamed others. He also speculated about what control device might be included in various Steambox setups (the systems are said to range in power and price, from low to very high). He did posit that some form of biological monitoring would be built into a potential Valve game controller (biometrics). “You need to actually be able to directly measure how aroused the player is — what their heart rate is, things like that — in order to offer them a new experience each time they play,” Newell said. He also cited the controller as a current roadblock in making the Steambox available. “The main thing that’s holding us up right now is nailing … we have a couple of different controller prototypes that we’re using, and that’s one of the things that we’re giving to customers,” he added. Valve is apparently planning on including a handful of controllers with Steambox prototypes in its upcoming beta, so that users can give feedback for each and Valve can break down how players are using them.

Filed under: Gaming, Peripherals, Software, HD

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Source: BBC

There’s been more than a few Atom-based storage servers. Most of them either have to lean on the same Atom processors you’d usually get with nettops, though, which makes them less than ideal for media tasks than a chip dedicated to the job. Intel has just launched a new platform that might be a better fit for home network storage. New NAS arrays from Asustor, Synology, Thecus and others (none yet pictured here) all revolve around a dual-core Atom CE5300 system-on-chip that’s better-optimized for media processing duties: it can stream video across the network to multiple devices at once, and can automatically downscale video to accommodate smaller screens. The small chip contributes to a relatively small price at the same time, with NAS boxes starting around $299. Not everyone can suddenly justify a dedicated media server in the home just because the CE5300 is an option, but those that do may at least get more for their money.

Filed under: Storage, Networking, HD, Intel

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Source: Intel

Canon today announced the successful creation of a new full-frame CMOS sensor, designed exclusively for shooting video. The new sensor can capture full-HD video with extremely low noise in settings where it has been hard for traditional cameras to even operate at all in the past. The sensor will have immediate benefits for astrophotography and for use in security systems, but the developments here could eventually help improve the quality of professional and consumer cameras, too.

The new sensor from Canon features large pixels, each of which measure around 7.5x those found on the sensor Canon uses in its EOS-1DX DSLR. The larger pixels are paired with new noise reduction technologies that counteract the added noise effect of using larger pixels, which allows for full HD video shooting in environments as dark as an outdoor setting with just a crescent moon providing illumination. That means it can capture video with fully visible objects even in situations where the human eye would be hard-pressed to make out any definite shapes.

Canon has already built a prototype device to test out the new sensor, and captured things like footage from a room where only lit incense sticks provided any light, the Geminid meteor shower and other night sky scenes. The prototype would be most useful in the immediate future for astronomical and nature photography, medial research and security implementations, but through “further development,” Canon imagines similar CMOS sensor tech will also be able to greatly improve other more creative pursuits.

Low light video is already an impressive feature of full-frame DSLR cameras, but a sensor like this that takes things to the extreme could take nighttime video capture to a whole new level. Imagine greatly reducing the cost of filming at night, for instance, or, depending on how things progress, bringing similar improvements to mobile and smartphone shooters. We’re still a long way off from that, but this is a very impressive first step, as you can see from the sample video available on Canon’s own site.

The Assassin’s Creed video game series — beyond its trademark murderous historical fiction — is known for arriving in annual installments. 2013 is no exception, with French publisher Ubisoft recently revealing Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag, a pirate-centric next entry in the long-running franchise. Unlike last year’s game, which took players through the American Revolution as a half-British / half-Native American named Connor, AC4: Black Flag puts you in his grandfather’s swashbuckling boots as Edward Kenway of The Caribbean. Kenway’s the captain of a pirate vessel known as “The Jackdaw,” which promises a new twist in the AC series: open-world naval combat. While the last series entry teased naval combat, Black Flag is built around that gameplay; AC4 also borrows from recent Ubisoft highlight Far Cry 3, with Kenway battling sharks below water while diving for booty (a takeoff on the hunting found in that game, as well as in the last AC entry).

Of course, the conceit of the AC series has always been that you’re a modern man named Desmond Miles, a member of the ancient Assassin’s Guild, and that you’re experiencing your assassin lineage through a machine called the “Animus” in order to save the world. That story line led Desmond through a variety of eras in previous games, ending with the American Revolution in Assassin’s Creed 3. Without spoiling that game’s final moments, it’s safe to say that Desmond isn’t joining the cast in Black Flag; rather, you’re simply a modern day Templar (the long-running rivals of the assassins) searching for more secrets about the enemy. Ubisoft reps wouldn’t tell us much about how the modern day will play into the new game’s story, but did admit that it’ll play a major role.

Filed under: Gaming, Software, HD, Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo

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