Hasta La Gadget!

What was merely an indistinct outline in August is today a bona fide retail product. Cowon has made its X7 PMP official over in South Korea, letting us take a gander at the spec sheet if not necessarily buy one just yet. A 4.3-inch touchscreen takes center stage, backed by up to 160GB of hard drive storage and a battery rated to last for 103 hours of music or 10 hours of video playback. An FM radio tuner, built-in speaker, and Bluetooth chip fill out the “retro modern” body, while the software front reveals DivX-encoded video compatibility and a smattering of your usual note-taking and utility apps. The standard 160GB model is going on sale for 339,000 KRW ($304), or if you’re a globetrotter and need a set of preinstalled dictionaries, it’ll set you back 379,000 KRW ($340). There’s no word on US availability just yet, but this thing didn’t go through the chore of getting certified with the FCC for nothing.

Continue reading Cowon X7 debuts in home market of Korea with 4.3-inch screen, American ambitions

Cowon X7 debuts in home market of Korea with 4.3-inch screen, American ambitions originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 08 Oct 2010 04:57:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The North versus the South in America. East and West Germany. Quebec revolting against English-speaking Canada. Sirius and XM. History’s chock full of broken spirits, hurt feelings and splintered memories, but the latter of these mentioned touches our heart the most. We mean, just look at this new boombox — the Sirius XM Sound Dock has somehow managed to put differences and demographics aside in a mighty effort of reuniting two satellite radio companies that once wished death and destruction upon one another. Expected to ship later in 2010 for $129, it’s the first docking speaker station that’s compatible with both XM and Sirius ‘Dock and Play‘ tuners released over the past three years. If you’re nowhere near an AC outlet, it’ll also operate with an eight-pack of ‘C’ cell batteries, and there’s an auxiliary input and headphone output for added flexibility. Frankly, the release of this fellow reinstates our hope that world peace can indeed be achieved… so long as we take it one radio at a time.

Sirius XM Sound Dock unites a fractured past, accepts tuners from both Sirius and XM originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 06 Oct 2010 21:12:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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You’re filming a sports game. An argument breaks out between players, and you zoom in to get a closeup of the action. The crowd goes wild, shouting and booing. Now, you zoom the audio in to hear what the players are saying to each other, despite the din. Impossible? Not with Squarehead’s Audioscope.

Squarehead’s new system is like bullet-time for sound. 325 microphones sit in a carbon-fiber disk above the stadium, and a wide-angle camera looks down on the scene from the center of this disk. All the operator has to do is pinpoint a spot on the court or field using the screen, and the Audioscope works out how far that spot is from each of the mics, corrects for delay and then synchronizes the audio from all 315 of them. The result is a microphone that can pick out the pop of a bubblegum bubble in the middle of a basketball game, as you can see in this video.

The Audioscope is the invention of two Norwegian physicists Morgan Kjølerbakken and Vibeke Jahr. Speaking to New Scientist, Kjølerbakken says that “If we correct the audio arriving at three microphones then we have a signal that is three times as strong. Doing the same thing with 300 microphones can make a single conversation audible even in a stadium full of sports fan.”

Audio from all microphones is stored in separate channels, so you can even go back and listen in on any sounds later. Want to hear the whispered insult that caused one player to lose it and attack the other? You got it.

Catching taunts from foul-mouthed players is one application, but Audioscope could be used for more sinister purposes, too. Deployed at public gatherings, the super-mics could be zoomed in to eavesdrop on conversations between suspicious persons, or pretty much anyone the cops want to listen in on. Are you scared yet?

Audioscope [Squarehead]

Good news for lovers of giant colorful headphones: iFrogz has just released two models that are perfect for you. Bad news for lovers of giant colorful headphones: how will you ever decide?

The Mogul (shown) comes in three color combinations (the other two aren’t so vibrant) and lists for $69.99. Besides styling that wouldn’t have looked out of place in the ’80s, it offers 50mm speaker drivers, deep bass, and smooth, undistorted highs. The padded band and thick cushions are meant for all-day comfort, while the Mogul can fold up small for easy storage.

The Ronin also comes in three color combinations, one of which is seriously eye-catching (and a little dizzying). It’s the bargain-priced model at $49.99. You’ll get similar specs as the Mogul offers, but the design doesn’t look quite as high-end. 

Zoom’s Q3HD is a little like a pro version of the Flip camcorder: it’s quick to use, records to solid-state memory and has a flip-out USB-plug to transfer footage. There, though, the similarities end.

From its looks, you can tell the Q3HD is a pro-tool: it’s ugly. But behind the face only a robot mother could love is a 1080p-shooting, hi-def audio-recording machine. And in fact, this camera is pretty much all about the sound. The two microphones up top, enclosed in a cage that makes the who camera look like a squared-off Dalek, record stereo sound at up to 24-bit/96 kHz into WAV files, and you can also pipe in the audio through a stereo microphone jack, and choose to forget the video altogether and just capture sound.

Recordings are captured to an SD-card, and you can edit in-camera, although this looks rather painful to do with the little 2.4-inch screen and non-touch-screen interface. You also get HDMI-out, a headphone jack and a mic gain switch (auto, low and high are its settings). Finally, there are some color modes, including “concert lighting”, making this probably the perfect bootlegging device. It even runs on a pair of AA batteries.

The price reflects the spec sheet: $300, available in the Fall.

Zoom Q3HD product page [Zoom.jp. Thanks, Mark!]

See Also:

• New HD Flip Camcorder Slides into View
• Flip HD and Kodak ZI 6 Sample Video – Video – Wired

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