Hasta La Gadget!

Jealous of Comcast customers with their 105Mbps cable hook ups or those lucky residents of the Kansas cities relishing in Google’s 1Gbps service? Well add Londonites to the list of people that drive you to indulging in one of the seven deadly sins. Virgin Media has finally started testing its DOCSIS2-powered 1.5Gbps network in the heart of merry ol’ England. Right now it’s being enjoyed by a group of test sites around Old Street that also get a 150Mbps upload connection. Virgin claims it’s the fastest broadband in the world, which may be true if you’re not counting lab experiments. The really good news is that it’s based on the same tech already delivering 100Mbps to residents across the country so, if the trial goes well, it should be trivial to deliver these mind numbing speeds to the rest of its customers. PR after the break.

Continue reading Virgin Media testing 1.5Gbps internet for lucky Londonites

Virgin Media testing 1.5Gbps internet for lucky Londonites originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 25 Jul 2011 18:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Redpark’s iOS cable lets you interact with Arduino hardware through iPhones, iPods and iPads. Photo courtesy of Make

With the introduction of a new cable made for Apple’s iOS devices, hardware modders are no longer beholden to the Android platform alone to fulfill their hacking desires.

Electronics accessory builders Redpark introduced a serial cable on Monday, which lets you connect your iPod, iPad or iPhone devices to physical computing peripherals. After hooking your iOS device up to hardware like Arduino — one of the more popular open-source hardware platforms with the DIY community — you can download a software developer kit that allows you to control the unit using your iPhone like a remote control.

Over the past few years, open hardware computing platforms have grown in popularity. ARM Holdings’ mbed project gives non-programmer types the ability to program small computers known as microcontrollers, while encouraging integration with unconventional objects. In May, Android introduced its accessory developer kit (ADK) based on the Arduino hardware at its annual developer conference in San Francisco. Using the ADK and Arduino’s free software tools, those familiar with coding for Android can make programs that interact with other devices, from a simple LED to a remote-controlled robot.

While the iOS platform remains far from ‘open,’ Apple gave Redpark’s cable its official stamp of approval. That means unlike previously, you won’t have to jailbreak your iPhone to connect it to an Arduino unit.

The cable costs $60 from Redpark’s site, and works with devices running iOS version 4.3 and above.

Head on over to Make magazine for a great rundown of how to hook the cable up to your iOS device and get coding right away.

[Redpark via Make]

If you’ve been thinking about buying a one piece Mini DisplayPort-to-HDMI cable to bring vids from your Macbook to an HDTV, you may want to get it now. According to a report from TechRadar, the group behind HDMI has decided they don’t meet the requirements and cannot be tested or licensed for compatibility. Their sin? Not having a male HDMI plug on each end as required by the spec, which only allows for dongles featuring an all-female pairing of Mini DisplayPort and HDMI to get the job done. We’ve contacted the group to find out exactly what’s going on, but until we hear back it may be prudent to keep an eye on suddenly black-market cable pricing like gasoline before a big holiday.

HDMI group reportedly putting a stop to Mini DisplayPort-to-HDMI adapters originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 10 Jul 2011 13:27:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Thought Thunderbolt was the only superfast interconnect in town? Well, it is and will be for a little while yet, but the PCI Special Interest Group has just held its annual meeting and developer conference in California, where plans for a 32Gbps PCIe cable were revealed. Details are still fluid on precisely what such a connector would look like and do, but the expectation is that it’ll be built out of copper wire, will be flatter and thinner than Thunderbolt’s rotund construction, and will be able to channel power as well as data through to devices up to 10 feet (3m) away. Targeting consumer applications, and extra skinny tablets and laptops in particular, this cabled variety of PCI Express will start off based on the 3.0 spec in 2013, but will then move on from there to PCI Express 4.0 and, potentially, optical data conveyance. Oh yes, PCIe 4.0 also got announced by the PCI SIG, though that’s at least four years away at this point — no need to sweat about having it in your next motherboard, not yet anyway.

PCI Express cables could take us to 32Gbps speeds by 2013 originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 23 Jun 2011 02:16:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Think your cable connection’s fast? Arris thinks it could be a lot faster. At today’s NCTA Cable Show in Chicago, the company will demo a new system that can support download speeds of 4.5Gbps, and upload rates of 575Mbps. To achieve this, Arris devoted more of its DOCSIS 3.0 cable channels to broadband (128 downstream, 24 upstream), sourced through a C4 cable module (pictured on the left). Of course, this would leave less space for conventional TV channels, but we’re guessing the accelerated streaming speeds would more than make up for it. Unfortunately, the prototype is still in the proof-of-concept phase, so it may be a while before you reap its benefits. Head past the break for the full PR.

Continue reading Arris’ cable technology teases us with 4.5Gbps download speeds

Arris’ cable technology teases us with 4.5Gbps download speeds originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 14 Jun 2011 11:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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