Gadget Access

Hitachi, world’s leading electronic makers, has brought out its new Hitachi L47S601 ULTRAVISION Full 47”LCD HDTV. The HDTV comes packed with a number of audio performance features like Bass Boost, Simulated Surround Sound, MTS Stereo SAP with dbx, Mute and Soft Mute, 20-watt speaker system and TV-as-Centre Speaker.

Features

• 4-Step Black Enhancement.
• S-IPS LCD Technology.
• EEFL Backlighting.
• 3 Preset Color Temperatures.
• Full HD1080 High-Definition Display.

Hitachi L47S601 LCD HDTV incorporates PictureMaster HD IV Video Processor for various other features like Dynamic Contrast, MPEG Noise Reduction, Automatic 3:2 Film Enhancement, 4 HD Aspect Modes and 6 HD Aspect Modes. Hitachi L47S601 is a QAM Digital Cable compatible LCD HDTV.

Source: Hitachi

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by Donald Melanson, posted Jun 26th 2008 at 4:27PM
While most folks are understandably a little hesitant to pop anything more than the battery cover off of their phone, there are thankfully a brave few like those at Rapid Repair who are willing to throw caution (and their warranty) to the wind and tear things down to the bare essentials. As you may or may not be able to make out from the image above, their latest dissection involved the fast-selling Samsung Instinct and, as is their nature, they’ve included some step-by-step instructions in case you want to have a go at it yourself. Hit up the read link below for those, and plenty more pics.

[Thanks, Aaron]

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Filed under: cellphones

by Joshua Fruhlinger, posted Jun 26th 2008 at 6:06PM

We already told you about Vizio’s new cheap plasmas, but we recently had a chance to witness the 32-inch VP322 in person. The set’s case design is very tasteful, and a welcome departure from the flashy, uber-lit displays we’ve come to expect from Vizio. As for picture quality, the set exhibited the deep blacks one would expect from a plasma display, but the snowy feed of a basketball game — which we assume was coming form the set’s internal ATSC tuner — wasn’t good enough to tell how the VP322 scales and processes to its native 768 lines. The promised three HDMI and component inputs were all there, confirming that this TV is a decent choice for those making the digital transition. For $550 at Wal-Mart, though, we’re not about to complain.

Gallery: Vizio VP322 Eyes-on

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Filed under: Displays, Home Entertainment

by Nilay Patel, posted Jun 26th 2008 at 10:35AM
We played around with the home version of the ButtKicker rumpwoofer at CES back in January, but this weekend the NHRA is going to test out the other part of the signal chain: driver Jeg Coughlin Jr. will have a special Bluetooth vibration sensor installed in his car that will eventually allow the home viewer to feel like they’re riding shotgun while planted firmly on the couch. NASA is already using ButtKicker tech as part of the Shuttle launch experience ride at the Kennedy Space Center, so it’s clearly capable of doing the job, and the plan is to eventually sell subscriptions to the ButtKicker feed as an add-on to NHRA and NASCAR races. That should make weekend afternoons a lot more, uh, vibratey — but we’re not going to be happy until our couch is pummeling us during NFL games with full-speed tackles.

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Filed under: Home Entertainment

Last night in NYC, Gadgetell was on hand for the Digital Experience, a tech press event where companies show off their latest and greatest.  Think of it as a condensed mid-year CES event.  The question everyone asked me was, “what is hot here?”.  For me, the answer was pretty easy: FindWhere.

You might remember us getting excited about adding GPS and reporting capabilities to your car we found at CES.  That is all well and fine, but this company has done it for your GPS smartphone.  As more and more phones toss in GPS, unique software solutions abound to help us take advantage out of it.  The company aims their product at two groups: families and enterprise.

As the father of a preteen, my daughter gets a very short list.  With Findwhere, I can get alerted when she crosses over our town line, travels at over 65mph, or even if she travels to a dead end street the teens like to hang out at (so I can show up with my baseball bat).  Perhaps even better, she can hit the panic button and I am alerted to her location immediately.  Maybe I will make it through the teen years…nah.

For their enterprise clients, FindWhere can offer similar conveniences: tracking, location of execs, even panic could be handy.

The key to all this is convergence.  It is not something else you have to remember.  No one goes anywhere without a cell phone these days and that makes it the perfect tracking tool.  FindWhere relys on a small downloaded program installed on each users phone.  Simple settings are set and the rest is automatic.  Users can be tracked on a web tool and there are tons of custom settings to take advantage of.  Even minimizing battery drain can be addressed individually for each phone. 

Right now the service is $19 per month (a small price to pay for that kind of piece of mind) and the company intends to offer a paired down service in the future.  The list of phones it currently works with is rather short (AT&T and T-Mobile in the US) but expanding and they are, of course, targeting the iphone.

I really like this service and will be reviewing it in the near future.

Company site: [FindWhere]

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Last night I had the occasion to play around with the new crop of phones put out by the industry’s big players.  It always surprises me how quickly a phone can feel great or not so great in your hand vs staring at it on the screen.  I was shocked at how quickly I hated one of these supposedly sexy models and how much I liked one I really didn’t think I would.  Here is the run down:

HTC Touch Diamond. One word: HOT!  This little phone is very sexy and after I figured out how to turn the bugger on, it was off to the races.  The skin over the Windows Mobile OS is the best yet in terms of speed and functionality.  I’ve played with a few of these skins and this one is rather remarkable.  The screen is very responsive, and it’s tempered glass feels very high end.  It even has a tilt game with feedback as your little ball hits the obstacles.  Overall, I was very impressed with this diminutive phone and could easily see owning this one. 

Sony Xperia. One word: Not.  Maybe it is just me (I am sure our Sony-fanboy Adam will refute my impression) but this phone just doesn’t do it for me.  Sure the slide out keyboard felt like a Sony: finely crafted of smallish buttons that looked sharp; it is a well put together beast for sure.  But I was dumped out of the UI very quick, leaving me staring at Windows Mobile which brings me back to why I look at other phones all the time: it doesn’t feel fun, new or sexy.  Perhaps my beef is with Windows Mobile, but Sony’s rendition here seems just, I don’t know, not fun.  Not for me and I don’t think it will win over the BB crowd or the iphone crowd; and really, who does that leave left?

Samsung Instinct. After realizing I was cruising through the Sprint women’s personal phone, I quit sending text messages to her favs… This phone was rather nice in navigation, everything was laid out pretty well, the response was good and the feedback was a nice novelty.  My biggest issue came with what felt a real narrow screen.  The web and movies which automatically go to landscape felt like the edges were closing in.  Forget that some real estate is taken up by buttons that were not super intuitive: it just felt crammed and that kills the experience for me.

Blackberry Bold. I’ll admit to not being a fan of the Blackberry but this bold was the nicest one yet.  The Blackberry rep was doing his best to dance around AT&T’s reasoning for delays, no news there.  The navigation was good, the screen bright and the look is rather sexy - even for blackberry.  This will be the one to beat from RIM.

All told, there are some superstars in this crop of the latest and greatest.  These manufacturers have put some effort into staying on the curve while none really push it to much.  If I had to pick a fav of these, it would be the HTC hands down.  It’s small, fun and easy to work - which really is what the teeming masses hope to get out of their phone.

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You may not get excited by mice, but I have quite a collection of the cute critters. There’s the Logitech multi-media zoomer, my pink Kensington travel model, the Wow-Pen ergonomic version, not to mention the drawer full of reject mice that weren’t up to my exacting standards.

The SlimBlade Presented Mouse by Kensington is my newest pet. It combines a full-function laser mouse and presenter in one sleek device, and is still small enough to fit in your pocket.

Bluetooth connection; switch to go to presentation mode; goes to sleep when your notebook does; ultra-thin design for traveling - what’s not to love? $59.99 at Kensington.

What Imation has been touting as a paper clip-sized Atom Flash drive has just been officially released. Like we told you not so long ago, the Atom Flash drivefeatures a unique and iconic design in aluminum finish and comes with password protection and drive partitioning software. In addition the atom flash drive is compatible with Windows Ready Boost feature, so users have an option to speed up system performance on any Windows Vista PC. 

Measuring a mere 1.20 x 0.5 x 0.22-inches, you won’t have a problem carrying the Atom Flash drive around. In fact, you might even have a problem locating it due to its small size. The Atom Flash drive will be available in 1GB, 2GB, 4GB and 8GB storage sizes with prices ranging from $18 for the 1GB model up to $100 for the 8GB model.

Via [electronista]

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Nokia has just released an updated version of OS2008, the operating system for both the N800 and N810 Internet tablets. Going by the codename of “Diablo” it consists of a few small bug fixes, some small updates and also a few new features.

The updated version is free for all current N800, N810 owners, however this update still requires users to “reflash the device in order to install this release.” One of the nice features is that this update brings the promise of future updates to come over-the-air, which means this should be the last reflash. Moving forward any OS updates, or applications updates will be offered via a notification on the home screen.

In addition the OS2008 update will also add a new email application called Modest, an updated mailbox setup wizard, as well as Chinese character support. The smaller fixes included the operating system in general, openssl and an improvement to the browser panning.

Sounds like a good time for current owners to upgrade, as always we would suggest backing up anything important before you begin the process, just in case.

Read [maemo] Via [Mobile Burn]

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HP has just unveiled a new entertainment notebook PC called the HP Pavilion dv5z. Aside from an AMD Puma mobile platform, this powerful machine can also be configured with either an AMD Turion X2 Dual-Core, Turion X2 Dual-Core Ultra or Athlon mobile processor. You’ll also never end up short with it’s relatively large 15.4-inch LCD display which could very well answer your mobile entertainment needs.

The Pavilion dv5z is packed with 4GB of RAM, either an ATI Radeon HD 3200 integrated or ATI Radeon HD 3450 256MB graphics, up to 320GB of hard drive space, a DVD burner with an upgrade option to a Blu-ray ROM, Wi-Fi 802.11b/g or 802.11a/b/g/n, an optional Bluetooth module, built-in 56k modem, Ethernet, HDMI, VGA output, four USB ports, ExpressCard slot and integrated Altec Lansing stereo speakers. You can also add an optional built-in web camera and fingerprint reader. And for its operating system, the machine comes pre-installed with Windows Vista.

If you’re in the market for a new laptop, you might want to consider getting one of these machines, they are currently available and retail beginning at $699.99.

Product [HP] Via [Laptoping]

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