Hasta La Gadget!

The FlipShare TV is a new set-top box from the Flip video folks, and it looks like nothing as much as a smoke alarm. The little box hooks up to your TV (HDMI or composite) and receives video wirelessly from a nearby computer via a proprietary USB dongle (using a tweaked version of 802.11n). A small remote control lets you, well, control things from the comfort of your sofa. It costs $150.

$150 for plug-and-play wireless video connection sounds pretty good to me (or it would, if my TV screen wasn’t smaller than my laptop screen), but there’s a catch (you saw that coming, right?). First, you’ll need to be running Flip’s own FlipShare software, an you will be limited to the formats that you can play, just like the Apple TV. You can stream standard-def video in AVI and MPEG-4 format, and HS (1280×720) in MPEG-4. Any other formats (including some actually created by the software), will need to be converted.

There are some other features, like the ability to share your clips on a kind of private YouTube for Flip owners, allowing grandparents to watch videos of the grandkids, for example, but it seems like an afterthought.

These various “solutions” (Apple TV, FlipShare TV and the Slingbox) are all temporary fixes. Soon enough, our TVs will be computers, and this stupid differentiation between types of screen will be dead. Until then, I’ll stick to watching my RSS triggered BitTorrent TV shows on my MacBook. In bed.

FlipShareTV [Flip. Thanks! Jamie!]

Pure Digital FlipShare TV Review [Wired.com]

Every now and then tech companies will launch a product that’ll make you think, “Wait, why weren’t we doing this all along?” Universal Studio’s new “Flipper” disc is one of those: a two-in-one disc that’s Blu-ray on one side and DVD on the other.

Universal is rolling out the dual-format disc beginning with the Bourne trilogy (Bourne Identity, Bourne Supremacy and Bourne Ultimatum). Each Flipper disc will cost about $30 — about the same as most Blu-ray titles cost brand new.

Why is this a good idea? Well, say you want to bring a movie over to a friend’s house, but it happens to be a Blu-ray disc — and alas, your friend doesn’t own a Blu-ray player. Or, say you have more than one television set, but one of them only has a DVD player plugged into it. Third, say you own a DVD player and are waiting to purchase a Blu-ray player in the not-too-distant future. Buying a Flipper would future proof your movie.

CNET notes that the now-discontinued HD DVD format tried the two-in-one format back in 2007, so this is hardly a new idea. Still, even if overdue, the Flipper is a welcome option with the rising popularity of Blu-ray players and high-definition TVs.

See Also:

• Netflix Subscribers See Red Over Cracked Blu-ray Discs
• Star Trek Blu-ray Box Comes With Virtual Admiral’s Uniform …
• Panasonic Announces Sexy, Pointless Portable Blu-ray Player …
• Blu-ray Sales Will Seriously Grow Over Next Four Years: Report …

Photo: Amazon

Sega’s Mega Drive was first born in 1988, made its way to the US a year later and at last to Europe in 1990. In the United States, it got a change of name: Genesis. At the time, the 16-bit marvel was just amazing, giving us an almost perfect home version of Streetfighter II and the iconic (and dizzying) Sonic the Hedgehog. I had one, and I loved it.

So imagine how I felt when I found one on the street corner this past weekend, sitting alone without controllers, cables or games, but in otherwise perfect condition. That’s how we recycle in Barcelona — we leave things on the street — so I grabbed it, took it home and opened it up. Guess what’s inside? Not much:

This is the control center. You have headphone volume (also used to hook the machine up to a stereo), a reset button and a cartridge lock which, I have discovered, works by stopping the double flap on the game cart slot from opening.

The underside. Not much here but patent numbers and and a slide-off hatch to access an expansion port on the side.

The controller ports, just like VGA sockets. At this time you only ever got two ports, so you’d have to buy a 4-way multitap adapter to add more players.

The logo. If I remember right, only the early models had that hideous burgundy-colored strip below the cart-slot (in my photo, it has come out pinker than it really is). In later models it changed to white.

In and out. This is where you would hook up to the TV, providing a stunningly high resolution of 224 lines (US NTSC) and 240 lines (PAL). One great hack was to buy a US model and hook it up to a TV capable of accepting an NTSC signal. Because NTSC runs at 60Hz and PAL at 50Hz, doing this would give your games a 20% speed-boost. I owned a US SNES which I used for this purpose.

No torx screws here. The Mega Drive is held together with plain ol’ Philips-head screws.

The innards, most notable by the amount of empty space and lack of fans. The old Motorola 68000 chip must have run a lot cooler than today’s power-guzzlers.

The chip.

Close-up: It’s like a tiny cityscape in there.

The reverse of the circuit board. And finally, just because I can:

Yes, it works: I just slid an iPod dock inside, secured it with gaffer tape and ran the USB cable out of a hole. Once the circuitry is out of the way, there is plenty of room in there for modding. I considered putting the guts of active speaker system in there to make a standalone iPod music center, but it’s just more junk taking up space. This Mega Drive will be going back to the street from where it can find a new home.

Photos by Charlie Sorrel under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

Leander Kahney, ex-Wired.com editor and Cult of Mac boss, just dropped $800 on an amplifier for his computer. He reckons he got a bargain.

Back in the days before the MP3, I was something of an audio geek. My spike-footed, floor-standing speakers sat atop pennies to protect the parquet and were fed by an amplifier with just two knobs: volume and source. Into those went CDs, and that was it. It sounded amazing.

So I’m getting nostalgic (and jealous) twinges when reading about Leander’s new T-2 amp, from Neuhaus Laboratories. The T-2 is a tube amplifier with a digital input (optical or USB). Leander has hooked one end up to a Mac, of course (this model will work with any computer but was designed with the Mac in mind) and the other to a pair of 1980s Polk speakers and a JVC subwoofer. Here’s how it sounds:

I’m definitely no audiophile. I love music, but I’m happy listening to a cheap radio or a pair of iPod headphones. Or so I thought.

Crank it up and woah! What a sound! It’s gorgeous. Fat and meaty. Beautifully detailed, with a solid kick from the sub. There’s no comparison to the old computer speakers. They’re nasty and horrible now, like a cheap tranny radio.

We’re not sure why he’s comparing anything to a transvestite’s radio, but the rest is as clear as the sound he’s getting out of his new setup. With a good stereo, you can really hear things that are buried by an inferior setup.

The specs are, well, the specs are here. What you need to know is that the 2 x 20W amp weighs a chunky 20lbs and comes in stainless steel. It even includes the cables and a pair of white gloves.

Of course, Leander is now entering the world of lossless audio — MP3s just won’t cut it any more. And there’s another problem, summed up by this line from the final section of his review: “Now everything else sounds like sh*t.”

Neuhaus Labs’ T-2 Tube Amp Transports You To Audio Heaven [Cult of Mac]

Product page [Neuhaus]

Apple is mighty protective of its iPod trademark, and if you violate it, you’ll get no sympathy from Steve Jobs.

Apple recently sent a letter to software company Little App Factory, requesting that it change the name of its most successful application: “iPodRip,” an app that enables you to copy and transfer songs from your iPod.

In response, John Devor, CEO of Little App Factory, sent a lengthy, emotional e-mail to Jobs. An excerpt:

Dear Mr. Jobs,

….
We are in desperate need of some assistance and we beseech you to help us to protect our product and our shareware company, both of which we have put thousands upon thousands of hours of work into. Our company goal is to create Mac software of the highest quality with the best user experience possible. I myself dropped out of school recently to pursue a path in the Mac software industry, and you yourself have been a consistent inspiration for me.

If there is anything at all you can do with regards to this matter, we would be most grateful.

Best,

John Devor

Jobs’ reply?

Change your apps name. Not that big of a deal.

Steve

Sent from my iPhone

Complying, Little App Factory has since renamed iPodRip to iRip.

That’s unfortunate for Little App Factory, but we have to admit it’s pretty funny Jobs didn’t even take the time to check for correct punctuation. In any case, it’s understandable why Apple is protective of its iPod trademark: It’s the name of one of Apple’s most successful products. From a business perspective, Apple’s legal team has to pursue companies big or small trying to use the mark “iPod.” (On the other hand, it’s more difficult to sympathize for Apple when it’s chasing down companies using the word “Pod.”)

Little App Factory’s full letter is available at CrunchGear, which originally reported this story.

See Also:

• Apple Bullies iPhone Accessory Maker Over the Word ‘Pod’
• Apple Aggressively Pursues ‘Pod’ Trademarks
• Apple Battles Entrepreneur Over ‘Pod’ Trademark

Photo: happylandfill/Flickr