Hasta La Gadget!

Content is king. That’s a given in a world now dominated by me-too devices. That’s why Acer is launching clear.fi, software meant to ease the process of sharing and playing your media — be it pictures, recorded TV, eBooks and music — over a variety of devices including Acer notebooks, desktops and smartphones connected to your home network. Content can be stored centrally and then easily distributed to any compatible device via the clear.fi console. Acer’s Revo family sits at the heart of the clear.fi network, a suite of devices that includes the Revo multimedia center, RevoView media player, and RevoCenter home storage appliance.

The Revo all-in-one media center (pictured) comes packing a funky RevoPad wireless controller with touch-sensitive backlit QWERTY keyboard that turns into a multi-gesture touchpad with a click. Sorry, no specs yet on that. The RevoView is a set-top media player that plugs into the TV and home theater sound system. It can play content from USB, hard disk, flash cards, optical disk, or UPnP compatible devices. It also features a hard drive that can be swapped with Aspire M Series desktop PCs and the Acer RevoCenter — a compact NAS supporting UPnP streaming and up to four hot-swappable SATA disks. Check the press release and pics of the RevoPad and RevoView after the break.

Continue reading Acer launches clear.fi on Revo family of multimedia devices

Acer launches clear.fi on Revo family of multimedia devices originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 27 May 2010 07:33:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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From the man that brought you the OS Xbox Pro and the Cinematograph HD comes… a cockpit canopy filled with hard drives? Not quite. Meet the Black Dwarf, a custom network-attached-storage device from the mind of video editor Will Urbina, packing 16TB of RAID 5 magnetic media and a 1.66GHz Atom N270 CPU into a completely hand-built Lexan, aluminum and steel enclosure. Urbina says the Dwarf writes at 88MB per second and reads at a fantastic 266MB per second, making the shuttlecraft-shaped 12.7TB array nearly as speedy as an SSD but with massive capacity and some redundancy to boot. As usual, the DIY guru shot a professional time-lapse video of his entire build process, and this one’s not to be missed — it showcases some pretty spiffy camerawork as well as the man’s welding skills. See sparks fly after the break.

Continue reading Homemade 16TB NAS dwarfs the competition with insane build quality (video)

Homemade 16TB NAS dwarfs the competition with insane build quality (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 07 May 2010 04:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Having a box sitting on your network and offering up terabytes of storage is a lovely thing, but it’s even lovelier when that box can kind of take care of a variety of other problems as well. Such is Digital Cowboy‘s DC-MCNAS1, a case with dual 3.5-inch SATA bays into which you can slot whatever volume of storage your budget allows. Once connected to your network (over gigabit Ethernet) it can serve up MySQL instances, accept files over FTP/SSH, manage your printers, and of course handle however many torrents you can throw at it. The box ships to Japanese buckaroos next week and, while there’s no price set on this one yet, hopefully it won’t break the bank.

DC-MCNAS1 Movie Cowboy NAS will wrangle your torrents, herd your HDDs originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 23 Apr 2010 10:26:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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You’d better have a backup plan, one that includes every computer on your network. To help you out, Plextor is announcing the PX-NAS2, its first consumer NAS drive. The PX-NAS2 is a two-bay network-attached storage (NAS) device that can help you store data and share it. The drive is Windows and Macintosh compatible. It will also keep your confidential files private, while still letting you share other files with the computers on your network.

An included utility detects any PX-NAS2 attached to your network and, after only a little configuration, starts to share, download, and transfer files. You can use it to upload photos and videos to Flickr, YouTube, and other sites. You’ll also get Memeo, an automatic backup program, as part of the bundle.

The PX-NAS2 comes in three configurations: a two-bay NAS with no hard disks installed lists for $225, one with two 500GB disks goes for $355, and one with two 1TB disks lists for $565. All three versions will be available this month.

Thermos audio wasn’t the only idea Sony Japan introduced this week; there’s also the company’s glossy new speaker docks, the NAS-V5 and NAS-V7M, whose intense reflection make us remember that time mom told us never to stare at the sun. Unfortunately, NAS doesn’t stand for Network Attached Storage here, but the ¥50,000 (about $535) NAS-V7M does have 16GB of internal memory onto which you can rip audio CDs with a single touch, and both it and the ¥40,000 ($428) NAS-V5 have internal WiFi that’ll have your Japanese counterparts pumping internet radio jingles from Shoutcast, vTuner, your PC and anything else with a compatible wireless audio stream when they hit Akihabara on June 26. They both feature 32-bit DSPs for what we can only guess will be crisp, clean audio quality, have all the standard AM-FM radio features you’ve come to expect, and include an AUX jack and a powered USB port. Oh, and lest we forget amidst all the bedside table aural goodness — they’re also Walkman docks. Hear a deep, soothing Japanese voice explain why you need one, after the break.

Continue reading Stylish Sony Walkman docks sport WiFi radio, ludicrous sheen

Stylish Sony Walkman docks sport WiFi radio, ludicrous sheen originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 09 Apr 2010 02:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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