We’ve got Aliph’s new Jawbone Prime in hand, and while it’s not much different to look at compared to its predecessor, there’s enough new on the noise reduction and ergonomics front to warrant a quick look. Follow along after the break.
Continue reading Aliph Jawbone Prime hands-on and unboxing
Filed under: Peripherals, Wearables
Aliph Jawbone Prime hands-on and unboxing originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 22 Apr 2009 22:46:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Roku hooked us up with an early preview of Amazon Video on Demand in HD for its Video Player, and while we didn’t have much time to poke around, but what we saw was mostly impressive. Video took a little longer to buffer in than Amazon SD or Netflix’s HD streams on our 10Mbps cable connection, picture quality was noticeably better, although still not at Blu-ray levels. Apart from the HD content, the experience on the Roku box is essentially same as always: there’s still no search in the interface, so be prepared to hunt around for what you want — anything other than popular or blockbuster titles requires a little digging. Selection and pricing seem to be about on par with Apple TV / iTunes, but you’re getting a little less for your money, since audio is stereo-only compared to Apple’s 5.1 encoding. That’s a potential dealbreaker for us, but it might not matter to you, and Roku’s $99 Video Player is now an undeniably appealing way to beef up your HD content options. Short hands-on video after the break.
Gallery: Amazon Video On Demand in HD on Roku
Continue reading Amazon Video on Demand HD on Roku Video Player hands-on
Filed under: Home Entertainment
Amazon Video on Demand HD on Roku Video Player hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 21 Apr 2009 16:54:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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We first caught a glimpse of Leyio‘s Ultra-wideband-pushing personal sharing device back in January, and while UWB is still teetering near mostly dead and slightly alive, Le Journal du Geek has acquired a pair for some fun unboxing action and video hands-on accompanied by lovely French narrative. The reviewer predicts most people will be discouraged by the 179 euro (US $233) price tag, and with wireless filesharing here limited pretty much to just other Leyios at the moment, we can’t say we disagree. Check out the video for yourself after the break — if you’re not a native French speaker or your babel fish is on the fritz, you should still be able to figure out what’s going on.
Continue reading Leyio’s UWB-touting personal sharing device unboxed, handled on video
Filed under: Wireless, Storage
Leyio’s UWB-touting personal sharing device unboxed, handled on video originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 17 Apr 2009 23:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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We had a chance to sit down and play with Verizon’s next iteration of its Hub (already guys?), and while it wasn’t a mind-blowing affair, they do seem to making some moves in the right direction. Firstly, the new version is detached from the handset completely — right now at least — making it much more of a “fourth screen” internet device, and less of what you’d think of as a standard landline… er, VoIPline. The redesigned unit is considerably more contemporary in industrial design as well, making it look something like a big iPhone — which is probably what they’re hoping for. We were told the screen is still resistive touch, though it seemed a little more responsive than the original unit we toyed around with.
Additionally, Verizon is working on further updating the software, adding new functionality like internet radio, a Webkit browser (which is kind of a no-brainer here), and yes — an app store (or as they call it, the App Mart). The idea seems to be about moving the Hub more towards a role as another connected device for a kitchen or living room, and less about trying to sell it as a fancy phone, and that’s definitely a step in the right direction. Verizon is still tweaking the box and adding features, but what we saw is very promising indeed. Now, if they just throw in some Bluetooth support, a speakerphone option, and lose that dated looking handset altogether (all suggestions we made when we met with them), we might be seeing the start of something magical.
Gallery: Verizon’s iPhone-like Hub 2 hands-on
Filed under: Household
Verizon’s iPhone-like Hub 2 hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 16 Apr 2009 10:56:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Team Engadget got a chance to go fully legs (and crotch) on with Honda’s latest nutty invention — the walking-assist line of robo legs. There are currently two models the company is testing, one which helps with correct stride and assistance for forward movement, and the other which is meant for supporting your weight while doing tasks that require lots of bending at the knee. The former is intended to help the elderly, the disabled and those suffering from muscle or joint weakness walk more easily, and the latter is geared towards workers who are constantly performing leg and knee movements that can cause strain or injury. Since most of the editors at Engadget are unnaturally, monstrously large (like if Frankenstein and The Thing had a child out of wedlock) — and could therefore only fit into one of the devices — we brought along our more reasonably sized intern, Kevin Wong, to step up into the other’s shoes (which he did with aplomb). Perhaps the most interesting facts we went away with today were about Honda’s attitude on their new technology; they seemed adamantly against selling the stride-boosting stilts to the military, but they do plan on selling them at a consumer level (a la car and motorcycle sales), and… they didn’t seem too keen on our ideas about outfitting our “gang” with them for help doing murders. Oh well. Check out the wildly entertaining video of all the action after the break, and enjoy a swim in the stacked gallery below.
Update: Since some of you have asked, we’ll try to explain a little like what walking with the legs (the ones in the above picture at least) was like. Firstly, the leg motors run on a kind of timer, once you start moving, the computer on-board gets a “sense” of how quickly you’ll be walking and begins to push and pull the motor to that rhythm. As you speed up or slow down, you can feel that “timer” catching up. The general feeling wasn’t that it was adding that much to our movement — it’s obviously intended for those with some issues already, not people who are necessarily walking normally. Still, you could definitely feel the “legs” exerting a kind of tension on your muscles as you moved back and forth, and the feeling of having more power in your gait was absolutely present. Kevin’s description of the second unit was that it was more difficult to walk (and there was no push / pull of a timer), but that he could sense the unit supporting his weight — though it wasn’t as if he could simply put all of his weight on the device. That unit certainly seemed to have a more substantial impact for those without a medical issue or related impediment. If you’ve got more specific questions, feel free to let us know in comments and we’ll try to answer them!
Continue reading Engadget goes legs-on with Honda’s walking-assist devices (with video!)
Filed under: Robots, Transportation, Wearables
Engadget goes legs-on with Honda’s walking-assist devices (with video!) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 15 Apr 2009 16:34:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
We’ve been getting friendly with iriver’s latest touchscreen masterpiece over the past few days, and have a few impressions to share. In many ways, though, the P7 is exactly what the pictures and spec sheet make it out to be: great design, great specs, few surprises, and little in the way of “interesting” functionality. While the Apples and Microsofts of the world keep on merging the world of PMPs with PDAs with phones, iriver seems content here to build a “mere” media player and leave it at that. Read our full impressions after the break.
Gallery: iriver P7 unboxing
Continue reading iriver P7 unboxing and review
Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video
iriver P7 unboxing and review originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 14 Apr 2009 15:04:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Now that you’ve seen press shots, early previews, sample images and enough text surrounding the D5000 to make your eyes ache, why not feast those weary retinas on something a bit less stressful? PhotographyBLOG has a beautiful hands-on gallery up of Nikon’s newest mid-range DSLR from the company’s UK press event, and all the fun is tucked away in the read link below. Give it a visit, won’t you?
Filed under: Digital Cameras
Nikon’s D5000 DSLR gets hands-on treatment originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 14 Apr 2009 11:32:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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The Gadget: Ideative’s Socket Sense surge protector that expands in order to fit more bulky AC adapters all on one strip.
The Price: $29.99
The Verdict: One of the best expandable surge protectors we’ve used yet. It’s incredibly useful on road trips (CES) as well as at home, and beats even the Power Squid in our eyes in a general comparison.
The special thing about Socket Sense is that it can be expanded from 13 to 18 inches and has 6 angled outlets, allowing you to fit more adapters on one strip. Because of this, the Socket Sense is significantly bigger than a lot of other power protectors—fully extended, it is the length of a 5’4” female’s arm—and weighs a lot more too.
However, compared to squid outlets, the design and size of the Socket Sense gives it a heavy, flat bottom, which makes it easier to use without having to deal with bundled up cords and cables all over the place. Moreover, surge protector allows you to individually extend each outlet when needed, allowing you to adjust how much space it takes up to some extent. Also, there is enough tension on extender so that the strip doesn’t flimsily slide open or close, but it doesn’t give off so much resistance that a relatively weak girl can’t extend it easily.
Overall, Socket Sense is a reliable piece of hardware for those who need a power strip that offers more space between each adapter. It has 2160 joules of surge protection, compared to the 540 joules of the $30 power squid (the $50 squid offers 1080 joules and the $70 squid offers 3240 joules). For $30, it’s hard to find a better overall surge protector with this amount of space per socket, although the EZSpace UFO is pretty good as well. [Ideative]
Large enough to allow you to plug in six of just about anything in the strip
Slightly larger than a normal power strip
Slightly pricier than a normal strip at $30
Over the past six months or so, electronic cigarette manufacturers have been pushing their products in a big way. Not to the general public–not yet, at least. While the devices have managed to get something of a foothold in Asian and European countries, the concept of an electronic nicotine-delivery system is going to require a good deal of positive PR before the notoriously tech-weary American populous begins to consider adopting it, especially as e-cigarettes have a much higher entry-level cost than, say, a normal pack of cigarettes.
Recently, though, we’ve been bombarded by several PR companies looking to get us to try their clients’ products. I’ve been hesitant; after all, I’m not a smoker, never have been, and the idea of getting myself hooked on nicotine for the sake of a story–no matter how fascinating–isn’t really one that interests me (especially at my salary).
So I needed a guinea pig–a smoker or former smoker still in the shaky-handed grip of nicotine addiction. As far as I know, no there aren’t any smokers on the PCMag editorial staff. It became clear that I would have to venture beyond our office walls to find a candidate willing to risk his own well-being for the sake of entertainment–and drugs.
That someone was Marc Maron.
The Gadget: Elgato’s turbo.264HD video encoder, a USB dongle meant to be a fast and easy way to potentially speed up video conversions to H.264 file format for your iPhone/iPod/AppleTV.
The Price: $129.95
The Verdict: Elgato’s turbo.264HD is a great encoder for those who need to basically do a lot of video encoding and want it done quickly. It’s extremely intuitive, making it quick and simple to use, and is also the fastest one we’ve tried to date.
Using an episode of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia (which was 20.5 minutes long and a 175MB AVI file) as our guinea pig, we tested the turbo.264HD converter against older encoding programs including iSquint and the previous version of turbo.264.
Encoding times for an h.264 file
From these results, iSquint’s conversion times seem to jump drastically depending on what platform it is converting for. But with turbo.264HD and it’s previous version, they were both consistent in their conversions—a couple of them only differing by 3 seconds, with Elgato’s upgrade being consistently faster—up to 5 times as fast as iSquint in some cases— than the others. However, one thing you have to remember with the turbo.264HD though is that you cannot use the program unless you have the USB plugged in, forcing you to use something else (iSquint) if you don’t have it on you. Also, the dongle only works with its designated turbo.264HD software, rendering it useless when used with any other program and with any other application that has Quicktime export as well.
As for quality, I honestly can say that all the encoders produced pretty much the same type of video when converted for the iPod: slightly grainy and blury like a crappy, pirated video rip, but nothing to truly nitpick considering the medium it’s for.
Before purchasing turbo.264HD, it would be smart to think about whether you have $130 worth of video you need encoded, or if you’d rather spend more time encoding to save some money. Basically, what is worth more to you: time or money?
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
