Hasta La Gadget!

PrimeSense provides some of the brains behind Microsoft’s Kinect, and wants a bigger piece of the pie; ASUS has a reputation for announcing wonderfully wacky peripherals every year. At CES 2011, the Wavi Xtion will check off both boxes nicely. In a nutshell, the Xtion is a PrimeSense 3D depth camera built exclusively for PC, but with an important twist — it connects to a pair of ASUS Wavi boxes, which wirelessly streams its data to your living room PC between your TV and a Windows PC over the 5GHz band. Oh, and should ASUS attract enough developers, it will even pull down applications from an Xtion online store. ASUS says we’ll see the package commercially available around the world in Q2 of next year — with a UI and selection of apps and games on board — but they’ll release an Xtion PRO developer kit in February to tempt all you Kinect hackers into coding magical things for the platform. No more details for now, but there’s an event in Vegas this week where ASUS is all but guaranteed to show it off. PR after the break.

Update: Did we say HTPC? Turns out it doesn’t quite work that way — the Wavi are actually a pair of boxes that wirelessly sling data between them. You put the Xtion sensor on top of your TV, connect it to Wavi #1, then plug Wavi #2 into a PC up to 25 meters away. Mind you, it looks like the Xtion may not be quite as capable as Microsoft’s unit, as there’s only infrared hardware inside — it might be fine for gesture control, but don’t expect any augmented reality lightsaber fights. See some mockups below!

Continue reading PrimeSense and ASUS team, bring Kinect-like Wavi Xtion to your living room TV (update)

PrimeSense and ASUS team, bring Kinect-like Wavi Xtion to your living room TV (update) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 03 Jan 2011 13:11:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Oh dear. Google TV isn’t having the best of starts to its life in the internet-connected TV world and Logitech seems to have taken notice. DigiTimes‘ nameless sources today report that Gigabyte, the company charged with building Revue units for Logi, has been instructed to stop production of them for the period covering December 2010 through January 2011. The restart in manufacturing will be conditional, we’re told, either on a significant update to the current Google TV software or a whole new version rolling out. The Revue is still available to buy through Logitech — shipments are only drying up in the channel between manufacturer and vendor — but if the insiders have their story straight, this’d be a clear indication that early sales expectations have not been met. Better luck next year, we say.

Logitech said to be halting Revue production until Google TV software revamp originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 24 Dec 2010 02:24:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Welcome to the Engadget Holiday Gift Guide! The team here is well aware of the heartbreaking difficulties of the seasonal shopping experience, and we want to help you sort through the trash and come up with the treasures this year. Below is today’s bevy of hand curated picks, and you can head back to the Gift Guide hub to see the rest of the product guides as they’re added throughout the holiday season.

A brand new HDTV is a gift that can get plenty of use throughout the year, but it’s also one of the more expensive items on Santa’s list. If you’re shopping for the home theater enthusiast who has everything, there’s always room in the cabinet for another streamer or demo disc. From 3DTV to network connected to throwback disc-based media, there’s a lot of new options on deck for the 2010 holiday season – let’s see if we can narrow the list a bit and make sure your gift scores a ten out of ten even if your budget is more like a two.

Continue reading Engadget’s Holiday Gift Guide: HDTVs and home theater

Engadget’s Holiday Gift Guide: HDTVs and home theater originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 14 Dec 2010 13:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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There’s not a lot of details available yet, but according to the Wall Street Journal, Comcast has begun testing features that rival what Google TV and TiVo are doing in the living room by letting cable set-top boxes access streaming video from the internet. Known to participants in Augusta, Georgia as Spectrum and within the company as Xcalibur it combines a DVR with unified search across cable VOD and the internet, plus social media tie-ins, but does not include a full web browser. So far the available content is described only as “limited,” so we’re going to guess that Netflix isn’t on the menu but with rumors indicating it could launch to other areas in 2011 it could very soon be taking its place as the next Xfinity branded tie-in next to current efforts bringing TV content to iOS , Android and other platforms.

Comcast ‘Xcalibur’ test program brings web video, unified search to cable boxes originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 13 Dec 2010 20:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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No one said that hobbies were easy to throw away, and it’s pretty clear that the Apple TV still holds a dear piece of Cupertino’s heart. In fact, we’d argue that the box’s streaming abilities now tie into Apple’s overall mission more than ever before, and with iOS 4.2.1 for the iPad (and the accompanying introduction of AirPlay), it’s feeling less like an afterthought and more like a focal point. That said, we’re curious to know if early adopters feel satisfied by their $99 box. Have you found it to function as-advertised? Still fuming over those output and / or color issues? If you were given the keys to the design kingdom, how would you turn the Apple TV into your perfect media streamer? Ditch the iTunes integration? Offer access to more content portals? Paint it pink and line it with LEDs? It only costs $0.02 to play, and the deposit slot’s just below.

How would you change the second-generation Apple TV? originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 10 Dec 2010 22:36:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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