Archive for January 13th, 2010

It’s been quite a while since Samsung announced the first actual memory device to result from its 30nm manufacturing process, but it’s now back with an announcement for another pair of memory products that should both be hitting the market relatively soon. The larger of those is a new 64GB moviNAND embedded memory device, which joins the company’s exisiting 32GB, 16GB, 8GB and 4GB options, and measures just 1.4mm thick while still packing 16 30nm-class 32Gb MLC NAND chips and a controller. That’s joined by a new 32GB microSD card, which fully doubles the capacity of the highest capacity microSD cards currently on the market, and is apparently now being sampled by OEMs with mass production slated to begin sometime next month.

Samsung announces 64GB moviNAND flash, 32GB microSD card originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 13 Jan 2010 16:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’re just cleaning out the rest of our memory cards from CES, and we totally forgot this moment of unintentional hilarity while grabbing a quick hands-on with Panasonic’s new point-and-shoot line — that’s the new touchscreen DMC-FP3, asking for the name of our baby. Sadly, we were not able to provide it with one, and it responded by continuing to have a somewhat wonky hybrid touchscreen-and-buttons control scheme. We’re assuming some of the lag we saw had to do with an early software build — we’ll see if things are cleared up when this guy ships, since we’re big fans of touch-to-focus. As for the rest, well, they’re Lumix point-and-shoots — they all seemed competent and sturdy, and we can’t wait for the day when Panasonic hires a design team to clean up that straight-from-1983 all-caps interface. Check out the rest in the gallery!

Panasonic 2010 point and shoot line hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 13 Jan 2010 15:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Rest easy, broadcasters: your hard-earned spectrum is safe, at least for the moment. The FCC’s full-court press to round up additional spectrum for wireless broadband services had led it to suggest reclaiming some spectrum from broadcasters in recent months — a move that would arguably make sense considering the ever-shrinking importance of over-the-air television and the availability of more efficient broadcast methods — was met with considerable resistance from the broadcast industry, ultimately leading it to back off the message this week. The Fed’s director of scenario planning for its broadband task force has gone on record saying the commission had never seriously considered implementing such a plan, instead looking at “a scenario that establishes a voluntary marketplace mechanism so that broadcast TV stations have a choice in how they want to use their spectrum.” In other words, sell it if you want, keep it if you want — and in all likelihood, the FCC would be looking to repurpose any offloaded frequencies for broadband. Of course, this kind of plan could leave the country with a fragmented system of spectrum slots where individual stations have elected to sell part or all of their airwaves, not really an optimal solution when some estimates have us needing to clear several hundred additional megahertz to keep up with data demand over the next few years — but it’s a start.

FCC backs off talk of forcefully reclaiming spectrum from TV broadcasters originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 13 Jan 2010 13:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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So, you’ve sold a few kidneys and got yourself one of those fancy new 64GB SDXC cards. What do you put it in? Well, how about one of these new HDC-series camcorders from Panasonic? Just launched in Japan, the three cameras shoot 1080i HD with 25x optical zoom, optical image stabilization and 2.7-inch flip-out LCDs. The big difference between the AVCHD shooters is the onboard storage, with 96GB of flash in the HDC-TM70, 64GB in the HDC-TM60, and a 160GB HDD in the HDC-HS60. Of course, who needs internal storage when you’ve got 64GB in your SD card and a terrible, well-compensated empty feeling in your gut? No word on price for this trio, but they should be out in Japan later next month.

Panasonic’s new AVCHD camcorders put that SDXC memory to good use originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 13 Jan 2010 11:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Continue reading ‘World’s first’ LCD greeting card captures your child’s adoringly banal moments for posterity

‘World’s first’ LCD greeting card captures your child’s adoringly banal moments for posterity originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 13 Jan 2010 10:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Well, would you look at that? Materializing after the fog of CES, ASUS’ Eee Box EB1012-B0257 nettop, known colloquially as “the low-cost home theater PC we’ve been longing for,” has popped up on Amazon. In case you forgot, this little guy’s packing Intel’s 1.6GHz Dual Core N330 Atom processor, NVIDIA Ion, 2GB RAM, 160GB HDD, Windows 7, HDMI out, 802.11b/g/n, and a sextet of USB 2.0 ports. Still no release date but at least we have a better idea as to its cost of entry: $399, with a 3 percent / $12 discount care of the online retailer. Only color being shown right now is a sleek black, but as we saw last time, there should be a white model in the pipeline for some point in the indeterminable future.

[Thanks, Joel]

ASUS’ Ion-powered EeeBox EB1012 resurfaces on Amazon in sub-$400 range originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 13 Jan 2010 08:24:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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As you might well know, we’re not the biggest fans of analyst blather, but this piece of research by Gartner is backed by some substantial numbers. The FT reports that DRAM prices have recently risen by 23 percent, followed closely by LCD prices with a 20 percent jump, both in response to the financial crisis the whole globe seems to be suffering from. Because the effects of recently renewed investment in capacity building won’t be felt for a while, we’re told to prepare for higher prices throughout this year — a significant combo breaker from the previous decade’s average of around 7.8 percent drops. Oh well, let’s just cling to the encouraging signs for the future and ignore this bump on the road to gadget nirvana.

[Thanks, Ben W]

Component shortages lead analysts to forecast rise in prices of personal electronics originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 13 Jan 2010 07:05:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Many a mind might’ve strayed from all the CES crazy-talk about future tech and wondered as to what exactly is going on in the war against bad graphics on otherwise totally sweet laptops. The answer from NVIDIA is, disappointingly, not much. The green giant of GPUs quietly snuck out its 300M mobile GPUs over the turn of the year, and there was good reason for the lack of fuss — the top tier GeForce GTS 360M sports the same number of processing cores as its 260M predecessor, accompanied by the same 2GHz memory clock and identical 128-bit memory interface. But don’t despair yet, sailor! There’s the stark omission of any GeForce GTX models among the new 300Ms, which should fuel hopes that this gap in what NVIDIA calls the enthusiast market will be filled by Fermi-shaped chips come March of this year.

NVIDIA outs 300M mobile graphics series, causes little excitement originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 13 Jan 2010 06:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Interested in getting prepared for all your Wireless Display (WiDi) needs? Looks like Netgear’s Push2TV wireless TV adapter is already on the shelves of at least one Best Buy, right in front of a $99 price tag that matches the press release from before. The back of the box photo, seen after the break, doesn’t shed any new light on the device. Unless you’re really into (near term) future proofing of your wireless display needs, it might be best to wait for a few more options when it comes to fancy-schmancy new compatible machines.

[Thanks, Colin]

Continue reading Netgear’s Push2TV wireless TV adapter caught nonchalantly hanging out in the wild

Netgear’s Push2TV wireless TV adapter caught nonchalantly hanging out in the wild originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 13 Jan 2010 03:21:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Underwater Scuba Mask Camera does photos and videos, lets you breathe originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 13 Jan 2010 02:03:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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