Hasta La Gadget!

Just as we had all recovered from the January trip to Vegas, it was time to ship a pack of editors to Barcelona for another week-long barrage of gadget news. In a freshly e-printed issue of our slate ‘zine, we go hands-on with the best of what Mobile World Congress served up in 2013. To round out this Mobile Issue, Brad Molen decodes the new unlocking policy in the US and Sharif Sakr examines the death of the form factor phone. There’s a truckload of other tech-centric goodness to peruse, so grab your copy and get to it.

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Filed under: Announcements, HD, Mobile

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The future of TV is supposed to involve streaming video, and it’s also supposed to involve 4K TVs — but melding the two has been difficult. Telefonica wants to show that the feat is at least possible with mere mortal connections: it’s been using Mobile World Congress to show 4K video streaming on a 100Mbps fiber-to-the-home link. As our Spanish teammates can attest, the (admittedly very local) demo works as well as you’d hope, providing all the fine details without buffering or other hiccups. There’s no estimated timeframe for a commercial service, but we wouldn’t hold out hope of a version that would fit on cable or DSL when there’s a raw 40Mbps bitrate.

Filed under: Home Entertainment, HD

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Source: Engadget Spanish (translated)

When Kellee Santiago resigned from her previous gig as president of thatgamecompany, she left behind a job running one of the most highly acclaimed indie game studios in the industry. But she left on a high note, having helped craft Journey — not just one of the best games of 2012, but a high mark on the medium. Her next move is similarly bold, taking the reins of the Android-powered OUYA console’s digital content library as “Head of Developer Relations.” On Santiago’s LinkedIn profile, she describes her new job as, “curator of content for the games section on OUYA” (among other things); a job she’s plenty qualified for given her time on the board of the Indie Fund (an angel investment group of successful indie game devs). “This role seems almost like a logical extension of everything I’ve done up to this point,” Santiago told us in an email interview this afternoon. Indeed it does. In her new role at OUYA, Santiago will be “working with many developers globally and in different capacities,” she said, as well as managing the digital library that users at home see.

“I’m very passionate about empowering new voices in game development so we can have more variety in game content — that’s what initially led me to co-founding thatgamecompany, and Indie Fund, and working with the Independent Games Summit, and IndieCade,” she added. The job of course includes courting devs, even if that means OUYA assists in the funding and publishing of those devs’ games. “OUYA is doing both,” Santiago told us — that’s no doubt assisted by the $8.5 million OUYA pulled in during its Kickstarter funding campaign.

Despite her passion for indies, she said there’s no “arbitrary restrictions for developing on OUYA,” and that her guiding principle is identifying, “developers and content that for whatever reasons wouldn’t be able to exist on any other console.” In other words, there’s no reason one of the biggies — think EA, Activision, Ubisoft and others — couldn’t get in on the action. Square Enix has already promised a variety of titles, so it seems a given that others will sign on. One developer who’s still curiously uncertain about the console, however? Santiago herself. Though she teased on Twitter earlier today that she’ll, “still be making stuff, too,” and not to worry, she wouldn’t offer us any more details about her plans for development on OUYA. Again, it seems a given, but we can’t help but want to know more sooner than later.

Filed under: Gaming, Software, HD

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Geeks who are into fast cars and stereoscopic displays must think that watching F1 races in 3D is the bees-knees. However, FIA, the sport’s governing body, has often been resistant to new technology — only adopting HD a few years ago. That’s why when the FIA asked Sky to produce a test-broadcast of the practice testing laps in the run up to the Barcelona Grand Prix, the British broadcaster jumped at the chance. Naturally, BSkyB wanted to show off its technical marvel, and so invited us to come and see what it was like. Of course, like the good geeks that we are, our attention was focused on keeping Sky’s chief engineer Chris Johns in a corner and needling him with questions. Curious to find out what he said (apart from “please go away,” of course)? After the break is where all the cool kids are at.

Filed under: Home Entertainment, HD

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One of LG’s more surprising product introductions at CES 2013 was its “HECTO” laser projector, which — when combined with its accompanying 100-inch screen — is capable of tossing a 1080p image from just 22-inches away. While we’d heard it’s coming to the US in March, the projector is out in Korea today branded Cinema Beam TV, available for those ready to drop 9 million won ($8,322) on the package. It has a claimed 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio and can accept video via WiDi or Miracast for wireless streaming from a PC or mobile device, while LG also says its laser light source is eco-friendly thanks to a mercury free design and extra long lifetime. The price tag is said to be around $10K when it ships here, apparently the company feels its unique capabilities make it a perfect fit for commercial installations like sports bars, or just high-end home theater customers that value its small footprint.

Filed under: Displays, Home Entertainment, HD, LG

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Source: LG Korea