Hasta La Gadget!

CES just wouldn’t be CES without a few new introductions from LaCie, now would it? Nah. Up first from the sexiest name in storage is a fresh member of the LaCinema multimedia hard drive family, the Mini HD. Equipped with 802.11n WiFi and a penchant for serving up 1080p video, this DLNA media player boasts an HDMI output, internal hard drive, USB socket (for uploading media or playing files back from a USB drive) and an extensive list of supported codecs that includes MKV, AVC and DivX. This one should be filtering out now in the US and Europe for an undisclosed amount. Moving on, we’ve got the simply titled Network Server, which sports five drive bays, gigabit Ethernet and Windows Home Server running the show. LaCie also enables users to backup their backups via its own Wuala technology, though exact pricing and availability details won’t be revealed until later in Q1. Lastly, there’s a new trio of USB Keys, which look an awful lot like actual keys. Sadly, these aren’t ready to handle the beast that is SuperSpeed USB, but they do promise transfers as fast as 30MB/sec, and they’re also waterproof and available in sizes as large as 32GB. The company’s also throwing in 4GB of web-accessible Wuala storage for the first two years of ownership, with the CooKey and WhizKey available in 4GB, 8GB, 16GB, and 32GB capacities for $19.99 and up, up, up. The full releases are just past the break.

Continue reading LaCie serves up LaCinema Mini HD, Network Server and Wuala-infused USB keys

LaCie serves up LaCinema Mini HD, Network Server and Wuala-infused USB keys originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 05 Jan 2010 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’ll have to wait until tomorrow to get our hands on the Popbox, son of Popcorn Hour C-200, but in the meantime we’ll chew on this healthy list of specs and content providers to imagine what the future of media streamers has to offer. Netflix and 1080p have already been mentioned, but the lists reveal that even as a slimmed down and more affordable option than the box it replaces, it still has the file and codec compatibility fans have come to expect. We’ll soon see if this combo of wide appeal online services like Twitter and MLB.tv, existing media streamer framework, a greatly improved UI (able to pull down IMDB info for appropriately tagged content) and Popapp Center — openly courting developers to take advantage of the SDK since this box was codenamed DAVID — is a winner.

Continue reading Popbox v1.0 hardware specs and content partners revealed

Popbox v1.0 hardware specs and content partners revealed originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 04 Jan 2010 17:21:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Do you love funky proprietary software enough to force your loved ones to run it too? That’s the question Cisco seems to be asking with the FlipShare TV, a new set-top box designed to help make sharing Flip videos super-simple for even the most basic user. Unfortunately, some puzzling design choices and big limitations combined with the less-than-wonderful FlipShare software make this seem like more of a hassle than it’s worth. What do we mean? Read on for the full review.

Continue reading FlipShare TV review

FlipShare TV review originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 15 Dec 2009 12:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Boxee‘s growing up! The media center’s hit beta status, and with the new Greek letter comes a revamped UI and some new functionality. For starters, the front page has been redesigned to highlight the menu, your personal queue, featured content, and recommendations that are fed in from Facebook or Twitter. For video, local files and online content are integrated into the same menu, can be filtered by free or pay content, and television shows are now sorted by season and episode. We’re particularly fond of the new global menu for quick shuffling through the menu and to shortcuts. At an event tonight in New York, the company’s also announced three new apps: The Escapist, Suicide Girls, and most interesting of all, “TV Guide to the Web” Clicker. On the more technical side of things, the graphical backend has switched from OpenGL to DirectX, and NVIDIA’s been cooperating to better optimize the software for use on the Ion platform via DXVA and Flash 10.1. Good changes all around, except we did just hear that it won’t support 64-bit in Karmick Koala — sorry, Ubuntu fans. As previously mentioned, there’s no wide release available yet, so you’ll just have to live vicariously through the gallery below!

Boxee Beta unveiled: refreshed UI, DirectX support, and new content partners originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 07 Dec 2009 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We first saw the Cisco FlipShare TV hit the FCC just over a month ago, and now that’s it’s official (well, official in the sense that Walt Mossberg broke the embargo by two hours) we’re still sort of underwhelmed and a little befuddled — although it’s made by Cisco, the Flip-focused media player doesn’t actually connect to your home WiFi network. Instead, the FlipShare software transmits data from your computer using a proprietary USB dongle, which means the player itself is useless unless your computer is on with Flip’s funky FlipShare software running and the dongle connected. Flip tells us the decision to go proprietary was made to make things easier for non-technical users to set up (like Flip’s cameras, the FlipShare software is preloaded on the dongle) but we can’t help but think it’s actually a bit more complicated, since Gran won’t be able to just turn the thing on and subscribe to your new Flip user channels enabled by FlipShare 5.0. Instead, she’ll have to get out her laptop, plug in the dongle, launch the software (which pulls the content from the internet), and then start using the FlipShare TV’s RF remote to get at your videos, which seems pretty complicated to us. Yeah, we’re just not sure, especially at $149 — we’ve actually got one here for review, we’ll let you know how we feel in the next couple days.

Continue reading Flip Video FlipShare TV beams video to the big screen

Flip Video FlipShare TV beams video to the big screen originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 01 Dec 2009 23:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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