Hasta La Gadget!

We’ve never seen a shred of evidence adumbrating that movies loaded onto flash cards move the proverbial meter, but evidently they’re moving well enough in Japan for Walt Disney to dive into the madness. Just today, the outfit responsible for classics that filled your childhood with innocence is announcing plans to offer pre-recorded microSD cards together with DVDs in the Land of the Rising Sun. The dual-format package will supposedly give DVD viewers the ability to easily watch their favorite films on the go, but that’s assuming you can even find a portable media player that accepts microSD cards. The bundles are expected to ship in November for around ¥4,935 ($52), or ¥1,000 ($11) more than the DVD alone. Eager to hear what titles will get this special treatment first? The “Pirates of the Caribbean” and “National Treasure” series — huzzah!

[Via HotHardware]

Filed under: Home Entertainment, Portable Video

Disney to offer films on microSD cards, consumers to pass on by originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 22 Jul 2009 10:48:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Considering that we’re still waiting patiently for any company (we’re looking at you, Call/Recall) to produce a commercially viable holographic storage solution, we’re required to tackle Millenniata’s newest assertion with a sprinkle of skepticism. The claim? It’s specially lubricated, fortified and homogenized Millennial Disk is said to last some 1,000 years, making it the world’s finest and most longevous archive solution. If it’s legitimate. We’re told that digital information is carved into layers of hard, “persistent” materials, and somehow, those carvings are able to stay fresh and readable for more years than you care to count. Still, we reckon the robot apocalypse will be in full effect by the time 3009 rolls around, so even if it only lives up to half of its claims, we’ll still be impressed.

[Via Slashdot]

Filed under: Storage

Millenniata’s Millennial Disk should last longer than you, your memory originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 18 Jul 2009 11:09:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We know you’ve got questions, and if you’re brave enough to ask the world for answers, here’s the outlet to do so. This week’s Ask Engadget question is coming to us from Robert, who is sick and tired of using two power supplies, two I/O cables and too much time to accomplish what should be a simple task.

“I commonly need to boot a system from an external disc and take a snapshot of the host system. I also then need to burn a copy of the image to a DVD. While I can do it with two separate external devices, and two power supplies, and two I/O cables, it’d be nice to find a small dual-drive enclosure. It would need to have USB, eSATA, and FireWire. Either slim-line or half-height bay for the optical burner would be fine, and space for either a 2.5- or 3.5-inch hard disc. Any ideas?”

Robert here is outfitting an entire school for a 1:1 laptop program, so needless to say this request is urgent. Any storage junkies out there know of the perfect solution? No short-changin’, alright?

Filed under: Ask Engadget, Storage

Ask Engadget: Best dual-drive external enclosure? originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 16 Jul 2009 21:03:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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On Monday, Hitachi announced several new external storage products, capitalizing on the company’s acquisition of Fabrik in February.

By far the most interesting product is the SimpleNet, a USB adapter that transforms a traditional USB drive into a NAS product. At $79, the SimpleNet is designed for consumers who own a USB drive and an existing router, and want to share the drive over the network. Several routers already include USB connections for doing this, but it also requires the purchase of this new, more expensive router.

According to Ken Higgins, Hitachi’s vice president of worldwide branded sales, the SimpleNet also has another advantage: it doesn’t require a consumer to reformat his or her hard drive. The SimpleNet is compatible with FAT32 and NTFS formatted drives, as well as the HFS+ used by Mac OS X. Apple’s Time Machine is also compatible with the SimpleNet device.

Hitachi also unveiled a series of rugged SimpleTough drives, each containing a 2.5-inch drive from 250-Gbytes to 320-Gbytes to 500-Gbytes in capacity. The SimpleTough line ranges in price from $99.99 to $149.99. A less rugged SimpleDrive Mini is roughly identical, minus the tough exterior: prices in that family range from $89.99 to $139.99, Hitachi said. Both drives are bus-powered.

These USB necklaces are the jewelry equivalent of those awful fiberboard TV cabinets beloved of lottery-winners everywhere. Instead of buying a piece of technology that looks good in the first place, the idea is to take something ugly and pretend it is a more old fashioned, conservatively acceptable object. In the case of the TV, the box that rises up from the foot of the bed is pretending to be an antique oak closet. In the case of the USB necklace, designed by Sempercura, these drives are straight out of the Franklin Mint School.

We’re all for wearing a USB drive around the neck, and there are some basic but good-looking models which you could even let hang outside your clothes. But Sempercura’s tat would look more at home on my mother’s mantlepiece next to the crystal butterflies than it does adorning the chest of any self-respecting geek.

The saddest part is that Sempercura actually takes the time to ensure that the drive part is reliable, with flash memory supplied by Alcro, and that the base case for the drives – a brushed, monolithic rectangle – is pretty smart looking before all the crushed-glass crap is applied. Go take a look at the gallery. There’s even Swarovski in there. As someone close to me said, “Ack! Gaaah!”

Product page [Etsy via Geeky Gadgets. Thanks, Julian!]