Hasta La Gadget!

The CE pricing war just got really real. Gregg Steinhafel, Target‘s chairman, president and CEO, just announced a move that’ll undoubtedly get the attention of Amazon. And while we’re at it, the attention of Walmart, Sears, Best Buy, and practically every other major brick-and-mortar retailer that it competes with. Following Best Buy’s move — which saw the retailer price match Amazon during the holiday 2012 shopping season — Target is taking it one step further by announcing that it’ll match Amazon’s prices year round. Naturally, the goal here is to put a stop to “showrooming,” a term that describes the act of using B&M stores simply to ogle products before buying them for less online.

Details on how it’ll all work out, including an official start date, remain under wraps, but we’re told that if a customer “buys a qualifying item at Target and then finds an identical item for less in the following week’s Target circular or within seven days on either Amazon.com, Walmart.com, BestBuy.com and Toysrus.com, Target will match the price.” It’s not at all unreasonable to assume that Wally World and the like will end up following suit, but a part of us worries that this may end up having the opposite effect — if Amazon’s pricing begin to float higher in order to meet somewhere in the middle with B&M retailers, consumers will end up with fewer options when it comes to saving.

Filed under: Misc

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Source: Marketwatch, CNBC

Got car, need entertainment. Enter Alpine’s INE-W927HD mouthful of a new audio, video and navigation system. The device comes with a 7-inch touchscreen, built-in HD Radio receiver plus Bluetooth. There’s also access to the popular Pandora and SiriusXM services, as well as playlist support for iOS and Android audio streaming. Alpine’s heritage in this space comes through in the form of an “iPersonalize” system that tunes the sound up based on various factors including vehicle type, number of speakers and even upholstery material. How much for such options? that’s $1,200 when it launches sometime this month.

Continue reading Alpine introduces INE-W927-HD AV and navigation system, Pandora, Sirius and more on a 7-inch touchscreen

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The Livestream Broadcaster has been available since May of last year, and while the streaming add-on’s had LTE capabilities since its debut back in April, something like a USB dongle was required to get such internet connectivity. Soon, however, that’s about to change, as Livestream announced today that it’s teamed up with Verizon to offer a new version of the Broadcaster. Essentially, the appropriately named Livestream Broadcaster LTE will boast the same features as the previous revision but with the obvious inclusion of a 4G chip using Verizon’s speedy network. What’s more, the novel unit also replaces the need for AA batteries with one that’s built in, while support for 5.4GHz WiFi can be found aboard the refreshed Broadcaster as well. There’s no specific pricing details (or availability, for that matter) as of yet, but Livestream did tell us we can expect its Broadcaster LTE to ship later in the spring of this year.

Filed under: Misc, Internet, HD, Verizon

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Source: Livestream

It’s been quite a few months since Diamond Multimedia announced it’s AMP1000 set-top box, so the company likely figured there was no better better time and place than CES 2013 to release its latest Android-based media offering. With the AMP2000, the multifarious company joins the likes of Roku and FAVI in the powered-by-Google streaming race — in which it’ll give potential users the ability to wirelessly view files on any HDMI-ready TV set, as well as offering support for applications like Hulu Plus and Netflix. Diamond Multimedia notes the AMP2000 comes “with Google TV,” though it doesn’t go into much more detail, and thus it’s quite unclear whether this means you get the actual Google TV experience — you know, the one found on devices such as that Vizio Co-Star — or if it’s something a bit more like Always Innovating’s HDMI Android dongle. Speaking of the lack of details, mum’s the word on how much the AMP2000 will run you when it ships “sometime in March or April,” but we can only imagine it to be around the same price as other similar offerings.

Continue reading Diamond Multimedia intros AMP2000 Android set-top box, availability coming later this year

Filed under: Misc, Internet, Software, HD

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Source: Diamond Multimedia

Improv Electonics’ Boogie Boards will continue to lay waste to old-fashioned notepads this year, with a couple of new models joining the company’s catalogue. If their current eWriters are a little too big for your liking, you’ll be pleased to hear about the Boogie Board Jot 4.5 (stage left), a smaller and lighter entry to the range for quick scribbles, with a couple of holes in the rim for pinning the slab to a corkboard (or something similar). The Boogie Board Sync 9.7 (stage right), however, is bigger and significantly more functional. It’ll save any notes you wish to keep to its SD memory, and will also be able to send them to other devices via Bluetooth. Improv Electronics says it’ll be compatible with Evernote, OCR and Adobe Illustrator, and some free software will allow it to function as a virtual whiteboard, among other things. Both new Boogie Boards will be bringing their reflex LCD screens to stores all the way off in Q4 2013, and currently, we don’t have any info on how much paper you’ll be trading in to bring one home.

Filed under: Misc, Tablets

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Source: Improv Electronics