Hasta La Gadget!

It’s about time Sony brought some of its Bravia learnings over to the VAIO side of things, and both the new L Series all-in-one and VAIO F 3D laptop clearly show Sony’s home theater roots. The L Series may appear to be just another multitouch 24-inch AIO, but the display is surrounded by a new infared border that contains shortcuts for closing windows, opening programs or shutting down the machine. What’s the point of that? Sony tells us it was built to take advantage of the extra screen real estate and add some easy shortcuts on top of Windows 7. Besides that, the Core i7-powered system has HDMI in and out ports in case you want to just use the system as a display and can be configured with a Blu-ray drive/burner for writing all those recorded Jersey Shore episodes. We told you it was more like a TV than previous versions. Starting at $1,200, the L can be configured to your liking, but all models will come with NVIDIA’s latest GeForce GT500M graphics, Dolby Home Theater speakers as well as a wireless keyboard and mouse.

On the more mobile side, Sony’s brought its 3D talents down to the 16-inch VAIO F Series. Packing Intel’s second generation quad-core Core i7 processors and NVIDIA’s latest GeForce GT540M GPU, the F isn’t just a mother of a gaming rig, but its built-in 3D transmitter, Full HD 3D LED backlight, and its 1920 x 1080-resolution display provides one heck of a viewing experience. Sony is using NVIDIA’s 3D technology at the core, but it’s also done some significant tweaking on top to enhance refresh rates and viewing angles. Oh, and did we mention that it has a 3D button to convert 2D video and Blu-ray and DVD to 3D in real time? It’s pretty much the multimedia laptop of the year, but be prepared to set aside $1,700. Both the F Series 3D and L Series will be available next month from Sony, but it shouldn’t be too long before we can bring you some more impressions from the show floor. Until then enjoy dreaming up what you’d do with either one of these with the shots below and the press releases after the break.

Sony intros new VAIO L Series Touch HD PC/TV all-in-one and VAIO F 3D laptop originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 05 Jan 2011 20:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Hey, Rocky! Watch me pull a 3-D TV out of my hat!

That trick never works, you’ll groan, and the consumer electronics industry will respond: “This time for sure!”

Gadget manufacturers will try a similar rabbit trick with tablets this year, too, hoping that the doodads they hyped a year ago will actually take off in 2011.

But, like Bullwinkle, what comes out of the industry’s magic hat might be a little different than what the hypemasters are hoping for.

3-D televisions are still as useless in your living room as they were last year, but there’s an array of new gadgets and software to let you create your own 3-D photos and video.

Tablets are poised to hit the market en masse in 2011 — just in time for Apple to release the second generation of its hit iPad.

Phones and wireless media will be seeing some seismic shifts in the coming year, too, with the advent of Windows Phone 7 and a new crop of Android phones. Although here, too, Apple will steal thunder, most likely by announcing a Verizon version of its massively popular iPhone. The real winners might be ARM and Nvidia, makers of the ultra-low-power chips inside many smartphones.

Whatever gadgets wind up dominating 2011, we’ll get a preview of them at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, which Wired will cover January 4-8. (Check our CES 2011 tag page for the latest stories from the show.)

Here’s a preview of the top gadget trends that will rock CES in January — and rock your world later in 2011.

3-D Consumer Cameras

Panasonic's $1,400 3-D camera is just the tip of the iceberg. Expect lots more — and cheaper — 3-D cameras and camcorders in 2011. Photo credit: Panasonic

Thanks a lot, Avatar.

Yes, the cinematic phenomenon from James Cameron has helped usher in a new era of fascination with 3-D and all its potential consumer applications. But with little 3-D content to watch on them, and a slow economy besides, the 3-D televisions touted last year just haven’t taken off.

Instead, look for 3-D to break into a new arena in 2011: Consumer-priced cameras.

Last year, just as Avatar was building box-office momentum, 3-D cameras made few waves at CES, but offerings such as a $21,000 3-D-enabled camcorder from Panasonic were hardly budget friendly.

Camera manufacturers are more serious this time around about enabling consumers to produce their own at-home, three-dimensional media. Sure, it won’t be enough for you to act out your favorite Na’vi fanfic pieces, but it’s a critical step — and those Paris vacation photos would look great in 3-D, wouldn’t they?

Expect to see plenty of big-name manufacturers expanding on last year’s models and dazzling us with fresh ones, with price points for 3-D-capable point-and-shoot digicams hovering, for the most part, around $500.

The inherently annoying thing about shooting in 3-D is that it often requires a bit of savvy on the shooter’s part, often necessitating the shooting and re-shooting of a scene from a slightly different angle to order to let the camera generate the intended 3-D effect. Those models that can incorporate an easy-to-use 3-D functionality for those down on the far end of the digicam long tail will immediately jump out to the front of the pack.

Those 3-D camcorders should still remain prohibitively out-of-budget for most show-goers, but Panasonic has led the way so far, especially considering this summer’s release of the $1,400 HDC-SDT750. Whether the volume of new releases at CES can help the market push that price point down below $1,000 is doubtful.

Still, the tech (as it relates to consumers) is still relatively green, so we’ll look to 2012 as a potential tipping point for all you budding Cameron wannabes. Until then, you’ll have to do with the ever-expanding roster of budget 3-D pocket cams, like those from Aiptek, DXG and Viewsonic.

So yes, we’ve come a long way from the red-and-blue-lensed glasses of yesteryear, but 3-D has also encountered a newer, more tech-savvy generation of users, as well.

Unfortunately, 3-D TV penetration will have to explode over the next few months (and years, really) in order for consumers to go all-in on 3-D-capable cameras. But the beginnings of a major new art form are in place. – Erik Malinowski

Top photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Lookin’ to get a jump on the rest of the folks, eh Onkyo? Rather than waiting for CES to kick off next week, the aforementioned firm has just let loose its TA117, proving that it’s totally kosher with supporting both Microsoft and Google in the tablet wars. A duo of models will be made available — the TA117C3 and TA117C1 — with both of ’em getting a 10.1-inch touch panel (1024 x 600 resolution), Android 2.2, NVIDIA’s Tegra 250 (1GHz), 802.11b/g/n WiFi, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR, a microSD expansion slot, USB 2.0 connectivity (x2), HDMI out and a 1.3 megapixel front-facing camera. There’s also a docking port to use with an optional stand, and if you’re looking to spot the differences between the two models, the C1 is home to 512MB of DDR2 RAM alongside 8GB of integrated storage, while the C3 doubles up with 1GB of memory and 16GB of NAND. There’s nary a word on price nor release, but we hear Samsung’s Galaxy Tab is now feeling a bit small. If you know what we’re getting at.

Onkyo blesses 10.1-inch TA117 Android tablet with NVIDIA’s Tegra 250 originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 27 Dec 2010 12:57:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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When first announced, we had fears that the new NVIDIA GeForce GT 500M-series graphics would be little more than a tweak of a clock speed here and a new sticker there, as the specs of the 540M (96 CUDA cores, 128-bit memory interface) match the 435M series bit-for-bit. But, a Notebook Journal review of the first laptop to bear NVIDIA’s latest, the Acer Aspire 5742G, finds that the performance boost is tangible. “Much stronger,” even, scoring 8315 points in 3DMark 06 — a good bit higher than the 435M scores we’ve seen. The laptop otherwise is said to be quite a powerhouse, with a massive 8GB of DDR3 memory onboard, but it’s a gentle machine too, Optimus letting the thing run cool and long (up to five hours on a charge) when you’re not getting your frag on. Indeed it’s deemed the most powerful notebook you can buy for €700, and while that translates to roughly $920, we’ll have to see what Acer decides to charge when it comes Stateside.

[Thanks, Markus]

Acer Aspire 5742G laptop with NVIDIA GeForce GT 540M graphics reviewed, es ist schnell originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 21 Dec 2010 14:35:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It sounds like all of NVIDIA’s wrangling and cajoling finally paid off, if a couple of analysts are to be believed — both say the company’s dual-core Tegra 2 chipset is racking up wins in the tablet space. We’ve seen it seemingly raise the bar for smartphone silicon in the LG Star and tease us in slate after slate, but Citigroup’s Glen Yeung says that Samsung has “placed a sizeable order with Nvidia for Tegra 2 chips in the first half of 2011, geared for both tablets and smartphones,” and BMO Capital Markets analyst Ambrish Srivastava anticipates the next Galaxy Tab will be one of the devices that use it. If that sounds obvious, remember that Samsung was supposed to be producing a dual-core chip of its own. What could cause companies to embrace Tegra 2, if that’s indeed what’s happening? Any number of reasons, to be sure, but Glen Yeung also says that Google has made Tegra the reference design for Honeycomb, aka Android 3.0, and so Tegra 2 may sound like a fast track to victory in the budding tablet space. Here’s hoping it’s a good choice for consumers, too.

Samsung nabs Tegra 2 for Galaxy Tab 2, Google makes Tegra the Honeycomb reference platform? originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 19 Dec 2010 14:13:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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