Hasta La Gadget!

It’s a little hard to believe that we’ve gone two whole months without a new device from Digital Cowboy, but at long last, the Japanese wrangler is hitting back with a striking new piece of consumer electronics goodness. The DC-MCNP1, which falls neatly into the Movie Cowboy family, is a 2.5-inch NAS drive at heart, but aside from giving you access to files on its diminutive internal drive anywhere in the world, it also streams a plethora of file formats to your HDTV. The HDMI / composite video outputs should take care of the vast majority of ya, and the USB 2.0 socket provides an expansion option for those needing to hook up an external HDD. An Ethernet port is built in for network access, but those who’d prefer to cut the cord can certainly plug a wireless adapter into that USB socket and pray continuously to the signal gods above. If you find yourself in Fukuoka next month, give this one a look if you’ve got ¥19,900 ($209) to spare.

Filed under: Home Entertainment

Digital Cowboy’s DC-MCNP1 2.5-inch NAS doubles as media player originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 30 Jul 2009 05:21:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Most other places will simply refer to this as the M2TV, but we’re not that lazy. For you, readers, we’ll dig out our bag of magical key combinations and do it the proper way: MediaGate’s MG-M²TV. Beyond the needlessly elevated name what we have here is a reasonably comprehensive media player with a title far more interesting than its look. That boring black box houses a lot of functionality, including compatibility with oodles of video formats like AVI, WMV9, MKV, Xvid, H.264 — and even RealVideo for some reason (yes, RealNetworks is still around). Music and image formats are equally comprehensive, there’s even subtitle support, and it can all be sent to your HDTV at 1080p over HDMI or Component (check out the outputs after the break). It’ll take media from a USB HDDs, memory cards, and there are plans for a WiFi module in the not too distant future. MSRP is $119, but we’re finding it for around $100, meaning WD’s HD Media Player has a little competition on its hands.

[Via Newswire Today]

Continue reading MediaGate’s MG-M²TV, world’s first superscripted HD media player, is now available

Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment

MediaGate’s MG-M²TV, world’s first superscripted HD media player, is now available originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 24 Jul 2009 09:27:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Safa’s PMPs haven’t always done that much to distinguish themselves from the masses of nondescript players out there, but it looks to have stepped up its game slightly with its new G3 model, which not only looks decent enough, but packs a still-not-all-that-common accelerometer to boot. Apart from that somewhat notable feature, you can expect to get a 3-inch touchscreen, 4GB or 8GB of storage, a built-in microphone, an FM tuner, support for all the usual audio / video formats, and a promised 15 hours of battery life for audio and four hours for video. No word on a price or release date just yet, but if Safa’s past PMPs are any indication, you can expect this one to remain a Korean-exclusive.

[Via Le Journal du Geek]

Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video

Safa rolls out accelerometer-equipped G3 PMP originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 18 Jun 2009 18:05:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We knew it was coming, now the ASUS O!Play is official. The HDP-R1 HD Media Player supports HD video playback in a variety of codecs including MPEG1/2/4, H.264, VC-1, and RM/RMVB in a multitude of packages including .mp4, .mov, .avi, .divx, and .mkv just to name a few. FLAC and OGG audio? Yup, no problem. The box connects to your display over HDMI or composite A/V with an option for optical digital audio for multi-channel setups. Media can be slung off a single USB 2.0/eSATA combo port, second vanilla USB 2.0 jack, or streamed over fixed Ethernet if you prefer to keep your content on the other side of the house. Sorry, no 802.11n because, you know, everyone’s home is wired with Cat 5 (riiiight). No price or release date given; but it would have to be cheap and soon for us to be even remotely interested.

Filed under: Home Entertainment

ASUS O!Play HDP-R1 media player won’t likely get an O-face originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 03 Jun 2009 01:53:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We don’t expect this to be indicative of any near-term projects for the now financially hindered phone maker, but one of Sony Ericsson’s recently unearthed patents paves the way for some interesting uses. From what we gather, while listening to music on your device, a picture of your face would be taken. That image would then be run through software that interprets your mood, and an appropriate next song based on those emotions would be picked — so much for the art of mixtapes. Presumably, it’d also require a phone or device with a camera mounted on the same side as the screen, so unless mobile video conferencing takes off in a huge way, we can’t see people paying extra for a phone or device with this configuration. And if you just got dumped over SMS, we hope it doesn’t intepret those tears as a good time to play that Damien Rice song you two fell in love with. Hit up the read link for the full patent details.

[Via Slash Gear]

Filed under: Cellphones, Portable Audio

Sony Ericsson’s facial recognition patent plays the perfect song to complement your mood originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 21 May 2009 23:43:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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