Hasta La Gadget!

IOGear is more commonly known for its desktop and laptop KVM switches and peripherals, but at CES this year, home theater and media devices dominated the company’s booth. It is making a strong push into the home theater market, including the ability to wirelessly transmit HD content from the devices in your entertainment center to your TV. 

LAS VEGAS — A host of video services on the web enable you to watch your favorite TV programs and movies anytime you wish, and Boxee is an open platform striving to weave them all into one neat interface. To get the Boxee experience onto a TV, D-Link has launched a set-top box dedicated to the open video platform, along with a special remote.

The Boxee box is pretty simple. Video outputs through an HDMI connector. For audio, you can plug in through an optical digital audio-out jack or regular composite audio. An SD card slot and two USB ports allow you to expand storage. For internet connectivity, the box supports 802.11n Wi-Fi and ethernet.

Boxee was previously a piece of open source software that you’d download to view media on your computer. Most users would download Boxee onto their notebook, which they’d then hook up to a TV. The box eliminates that need, and it’s also compatible with a new remote that just launched at the Consumer Electronics Show.

The remote sports a full QWERTY keyboard for typing in search queries. On the back of it there are three buttons for hitting Enter, accessing the main Boxee menu and playing or pausing video.

We’ve been fans of Boxee for some time: The menu is beautiful and intuitive, and it’s really zippy with loading multimedia files with thumbnails. The remote does indeed make the experience more enjoyable. It’s sturdy, smooth and comfortable, and the keys feel high quality.

Boxee’s primary purpose was to streamline video entertainment, but since it’s an open platform, it can do a lot more. There’s a Boxee app store for downloading third-party apps provided by developers. The main menu has buttons to access music and photos, too. Think of the Boxee as a restriction-free Apple TV.

The Boxee box and remote are shipping the second quarter of 2010. Pricing has not been announced, but Boxee estimates $200.

For a detailed look at the Boxee platform, see Epicenter’s coverage of the Boxee box launch.

Product page [Boxee]

See Also:

• Boxee Unveils Public Beta, ‘Boxee Box’ Hardware
• Boxee Gets a Box, Made By D-Link
• Boxee Beta Is a Web Video Streamer’s Dream

Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com; images courtesy of Boxee

LAS VEGAS — If you had any doubt that the big thing in televisions this year will be 3D, then Samsung’s CES press conference would have finally convinced you. The company is throwing its rather large manufacturing weight behind 3D in the home, bringing not just TVs but 3D Blu-ray players and home theater systems into stores this year.

The TVs were the focus today, and consist of LEDs, LCDs and even a plasma model. The star, though, and the one that Jeffrey Katzenberg couldn’t keep his hands off (more on that in a second), was the 9000-series. This 3D TV features a proprietary 3D engine that, like Toshiba’s new sets, can convert 2D video to 3D (although Samsung presented this as a temporary solution until more 3D video is available). The 9000-series will come in screen sizes from 19” to 65”, but that wasn’t why Katzenberg was fingering the thing and gawking at it as the presentation wore on. One look at the photo will tell you the answer — the TVs are thin, as in a third of an inch thin. Turn one of these sideways and it all but disappears. Add to that a gorgeous steel body and you get a TV that even an impossibly rich movie mogul will covet.

Better still, the 9000 series will come with a large touch-screen remote. And why waste that second screen when you aren’t actually doing any controlling? Samsung lets you watch live TV on the remote itself while the big screen continues to play your 3D movie.

Samsung is jumping on the App Wagon, too, and in the spring there will be a range of free apps (they’re not called applications any more) in its own store, called “Samsung Apps”. The store will be open, so anyone can write software for your TV, and paid content will follow in the summer, followed by software for other platforms such as phones.

So why was Katzenberg on stage? Because his company Dreamworks has, along with Technicolor, teamed up with Samsung to get some 3D content onto the televisions. After a rather monotonous speech, he announced the company’s first 3D Blu-ray title, Monsters vs. Aliens. These 3D movies will, he optimistically predicted, “reduce piracy”.

Samsung’s New Lineup of Led Hdtvs Raises the Bar for Tv Excellence [Samsung]

See Also:

• Toshiba Introduces Web-Connected, 3D-Capable Cell TV

Seagate has a 2.5-inch hard drive that measures 7mm thick. LG now has a big frickin’ television that’s even thinner. Today at the company’s CES 2010 press event, the “future” of LG’s TV business was briefly unveiled. At just 6.9mm thin, it’s easily one of the slimmest sets we’ve ever had the opportunity to ogle, and when speaking with executives afterwards, they confessed that more details would flow (including a real model name and estimated pricing) later in the year. As for availability? You could actually see this mythical creature and its 10mm bezel on store shelves by the end of this year, though we got the impression that it may ship first in Japan before heading Stateside. Oh, and we’re guessing LG will utilize that newly forged WHDI partnership to get this thing to operate wirelessly. After all, who has room for an HDMI socket when the whole chassis is slimmer than your pinky finger?

LG’s 6.9mm thin LED-backlit LCD hands-on at CES originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 06 Jan 2010 12:28:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments

The world needs another wireless HD system like it needs another thousand gallons of goop spinning in the middle of the Pacific, but regardless of the facts, ProVision is set to introduce one such system at CES this week. According to details scrounged up by Pocket-lint, the AXAR technology will function much like WHDI does currently. The difference? Increased range and a knack for distributing to more than just an HDTV. It’s expected that AXAR will find its way into TVs, set-top boxes and a range of network devices in time for Christmas 2010, where it will allow any AXAR-enabled device (a laptop, phone, PMP, HDTV, PC, etc.) to receive 1080p content from a media player, Blu-ray player or similar. Better still, it can also distribute those signals to WiFi-enabled products if your network can handle it. Currently, the tech can support two separate HD streams at the same time, and it can broadcast ’em to a living space that’s three times that of the Buckingham Palace. We’ll be sure to poke our nose around for more at CES, but in the meanwhile, feel free to catch a few first impressions down in the source link.

ProVision’s AXAR to wirelessly stream HD content to just about anything originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 03 Jan 2010 17:04:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  Pocket-lint  | Email this | Comments