Welcome to another edition of the SlashGear Week in Review. Moneaul Labs pulled a cool new chassis out of the shadows for people that are building up an HTPC for the living room. The chassis has LCD on the front so you can see widgets and other content from the PC called the Dual Screen PC case. We had a lot of news about the iPad two this week with the tidbit surfacing that the new tablet will have a multicore SGX543 GPU. That GPU claims to deliver twice the graphics power that the original iPad GPU has.
The PlayStation phone landed on another video preview this week. If you are really looking forward to the device the new video may be worth a watch. You may be familiar with aerogel, which is hailed as the world’s lightest solid material. Scientists used carbon nanotubes to make that material even lighter this week.
A crazy Taxi concept for NYC that is split with a tunnel down the middle was shown for a contest to find future taxi designs for the city. The taxi has split seats and the tunnel in the middle is to allow bicyclists to go through without changing lanes. The HTC 7 Pro finally went on sale in Germany last week. The smartphone hit O2 and carried a retail price working out to $39 with a new 2-year agreement or $796 without a contract.
Consumer Reports has no love for the iPhone 4, they have already pulled their recommendation for the AT&T iPhone before. The publication is now “cautious” on the new Verizon iPhone 4. We reviewed the Lenovo U260 IdeaPad Notebook early in the week. We really liked the machine and it starts at a very nice price, lacks tons of crap ware, and performs well.
An interesting app surfaced for the iPhone this week that is called iCar Black Box. The app is a recording program that comes on automatically when an accident is detected to record what happened. A cool new Swiss Army Knife with a secure SSD inside was spied. The new device is from Victorinox and has a 256GB SSD inside. A really cool concept Mercedes turned up this week that looks like the car Tron might drive if he had lots of money. It’s called the Blackbird Mercedes and it’s really cool.
A special BMW edition of the Lexia X1 camera turned up this week. The camera has nothing new to offer but a different finish and BMW stamped on it along with an extra $1000 tacked onto the price. The Sony PSP2 is set to land on January 27 and the PlayStaiton Phone will hit at MWC 2011 according to tips from insiders that were offered mid-week. The renders of the PSP2 I have seen look a lot like the PlayStation Phone.
Starbucks rolled its mobile payments solution out to all stores in the nation this week. You can now get the official Starbucks app and pay for your coffee using your Blackberry or iPhone. Verizon is offering some of its subscribers $200 back if they upgrade to the iPhone 4. The user had to buy a new phone in the month leading up to the iPhone 4 announcement and then has to pay full price and get $200 back on a Visa gift card.
The Nintendo 3DS has been talked to death and now we know that the console will hit the US on March 27 for $249.99. That seems really expensive to me for a portable game system. The Nintendo 3DS has hit pre-order on Amazon as well. The pre-order price is the $249.99 that I just mentioned.
A really cool Andorid Flip Phone with three flexible OLED screens turned up in concept from mid-week. The phone has a triangle design and was designed by Kristian Ulrich Larsen. Facebook for feature phones launched this week with free data use on some carriers. None of the free data carriers are in the US though.
The wholesale price of the Nintendo 3DS turned up in the UK this week. The portable console has a 1/3 markup meaning it has some profit built-in for sure. Google co-founder Larry Page is going to replace Eric Schmidt as the CEO of Google starting on April 4. Schmidt will be taking the Executive Chairman position within the company.
A hack for the Apple TV XBMC turned the cheap STB from Apple in to a 1080p media center. The hack uses the official Apple VideoToolBox API allowing 1080p for non-Apple streams. The Notion Ink Adam tablet finally started shipping last week and it turned up on an official unboxing. The box converts into a desk stand to prop the new tablet up.
Some evidence turned up in the latest iOS SDK that points to the rear camera on the iPad 2 having only 1MP resolution. That really makes no sense considering the much higher resolution cameras out there. The Razer Onza Xbox 360 controllers hit pre-order this week. The $49.99 Tournament edition sold out for pre-orders already but the normal version for $39.99 was available late last week.
The Holocube grew to have a much larger screen than the original. The new version was spied Friday with a 70-inch screen large enough to project a full size holographic human. Duke Nukem Forever has taken…forever… to get an actual launch date. The official trailer for the game was released Friday and it looks really cool.
The Ferrari FF was unveiled with four-seat design and a weird style that looks a lot like the four-seat Porsche Panamera. The car is ugly to me, but the four-seat Porsche has sold very well in the US making the Ferrari offering likely to be popular with the rich needing four seats. The App Store officially hit 10 billion apps downloaded. The lucky soul that made the magic download has $10K coming in a gift card from Apple.
Moneual Labs is no stranger to unusual PC cases – their I*magine HTPC grabbed a CES Innovation award back in 2008 – and while the new Dual Screen PC (DSPC) case might have a more traditional basic form-factor, we’re liking the huge integrated display. Details are scant – all Moneual says is that the DSPC is “a tower?type slim PC case with a built-in screen for use in dual-screen mode with a standard monitor” – but it doesn’t take much to realise that this would make for an awesome HTPC setup.
The bulk of the fascia is taken up by a broad display – no word on whether it’s a touchscreen or not – which can be used to show icons and widgets; there’s also an optical drive slot and various ports. We can imagine slotting the DSPC under our HDTV, using the big screen for video playback and the onboard display for status and control.
The CES 2011 team obviously liked the DSPC case too; they’ve given Moneual Labs another Innovations award, one of six this year. The Moneual Labs DSPC is expected to go on sale in Q3 2011, priced at around $1,500.
PrimeSense, the motion-tracking company behind Microsoft’s Kinect and ASUS’ WAVI Xtion is obviously doing something right, as the company has just secured a new round of funding. The exact nature of the deal hasn’t been disclosed, but when we talked to PrimeSense the company confirmed it was “extremely focused” on the “living room experience – browsing your media centre on your television.”
As a result, PrimeSense is in talks with TV, STB and HTPC manufacturers, as well as service providers including traditional cable and satellite, and newer IPTV networks. While the company describes gaming as the kick-off point for “a revolution [in] changing the interface between man and machine”, it’s describing living room entertainment as “the next natural step for this technology.”
That could include PrimeSense motion sensors embedded into mainstream TVs and set-top-boxes, controlling UIs in the same manner as BLITZ has shown today with their Kinect Flash hack. While we couldn’t get PrimeSense to name any specific vendors it is dealing with, they did say there was another partnership agreement in the very near future, and confirmed that “other companies are also planning to launch PrimeSense-based systems this year.”
Press Release:
Silver Lake Sumeru Announces Investment in PrimeSense, Leading Israeli Technology Provider
TEL AVIV, Israel and MENLO PARK, California, January 12, 2011 – Silver Lake Sumeru announced today that it has made a strategic investment in PrimeSense Inc. (“PrimeSense”), the global leader in sensing and recognition technologies for consumer markets. The transaction marks Silver Lake’s first investment in Israel’s growing technology sector. Financial terms were not disclosed.
Through its proprietary Natural Interaction Technology, PrimeSense enables 3D mapping and gesture recognition capabilities in consumer electronics such as televisions, gaming systems, and personal computers. Tracking body movements and gestures, PrimeSense technology sets a new paradigm by allowing consumers to operate electronic devices without a handheld device or a remote control.
Silver Lake Sumeru is the $1.1 billion middle market tech-focused fund within Silver Lake. Silver Lake manages over $14 billion in assets and is the global leader in private investments in technology and technology-enabled industries. Silver Lake’s portfolio companies include global technology leaders such as Skype and Avago, as well as emerging leaders such as Power-One and i2.
“PrimeSense has developed game-changing technologies that revolutionize the way consumers interact with living room entertainment and video communication devices,” said Paul Mercadante, Managing Director of Silver Lake Sumeru. “The company is the global leader in gesture technology with a talented management team, experienced board, and partnerships with some of the world’s premier technology companies. We look forward to working with PrimeSense to realize its significant growth potential.”
“We are thrilled to welcome Silver Lake Sumeru as our investor and partner and appreciate this strong vote of confidence in both our team and the adoption of Natural Interaction technology,” said Inon Beracha, PrimeSense’s CEO. “PrimeSense looks forward to leveraging Silver Lake’s deep technology expertise and strategic insight as we continue to innovate and grow.”
Ajay Shah, Founding Managing Director of Silver Lake Sumeru said, “PrimeSense represents our first investment in Israel’s dynamic technology sector. We look forward to partnering with PrimeSense management and will continue to seek out investment opportunities in leading global technology companies in Israel and in emerging markets around the world.”
As part of Silver Lake Sumeru’s investment, Paul Mercadante will join PrimeSense’s board of directors.
ASUS has announced a new entertainment peripheral, the ASUS WAVI Xtion, which promises gesture-based control for PCs in the living room. The new boxes uses PrimeSense Immersive Natural Interaction technology, and hook up via UWB to connect your TV to your computer. PrimeSense, lest you’ve forgotten, are the motion-perception brains behind Microsoft’s Kinect for the Xbox 360.
As ASUS see it, users will hook up their TV, set-top box and PC, and use WAVI Xtion to control them with easy gestures rather than complex keyboards and remotes. That includes internet browsing, multimedia gallery navigation and social networking. Range is around 25 feet.
WAVI Xtion will be paired with Xtion PRO, a development package for coders wanting to take advantage of the hardware in their own apps, available in February 2011. It seems ASUS has learned from the various Kinect hacks we’ve seen implemented since the sensor-bar was released, and is looking to engage with as many curious developers as possible. They’ll have to wait until Q2 2011 to actually pick up an ASUS WAVI Xtion, however; pricing tba.
PrimeSense Teams Up with ASUS to Bring Intuitive PC Entertainment to the Living Room with WAVI Xtion
WAVI Xtion extends PC multimedia content and gesture control from the PC to the TV screen in Q2 2011
TEL AVIV, Israel & TAIPEI, Taiwan–(BUSINESS WIRE)–PrimeSense, the leader in sensing and recognition technologies, and ASUS, a leading enterprise in the new digital era, announced today that PrimeSense Immersive Natural Interaction™ solutions will be embedded in WAVI Xtion, a next generation user interface device developed by ASUS to extend PC usage to the living room. WAVI Xtion is scheduled to be commercially available during Q2 2011 and released worldwide in phases.
“This user interface is a new paradigm that represents how all CE products will eventually be naturally controlled and operated.”
The WAVI Xtion media center for the PC leverages ultra-wide band wireless link and PrimeSense 3D sensing solution to provide controller-free interaction experiences in the living room. Users can browse multimedia content, access the Internet and social networks, and enjoy full body interaction in a more user-friendly and natural living room experience.
In addition to WAVI Xtion, ASUS also adopts PrimeSense solutions to introduce the world’s first PC-exclusive 3D sensing professional development solution, Xtion PRO, for software developers to easily create their own gesture-based applications and software. Xtion PRO is scheduled to be commercially available in February 2011. Developers will also have the chance to sell their applications on the upcoming Xtion online Store.
PrimeSense and ASUS will introduce WAVI Xtion and Xtion PRO at the 2011 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES), January 6-9 in Las Vegas. It can be viewed in the PrimeSense booth (South Hall 4, upper level, Booth #36255) and at the ASUS suite (Venetian Ballroom, Level 3, San Polo 3501A and 3501B).
“Our agreement with ASUS for developing WAVI Xtion demonstrates that Natural Interaction technology is already mainstream,” said Inon Beracha, CEO, PrimeSense. “This user interface is a new paradigm that represents how all CE products will eventually be naturally controlled and operated.”
“ASUS combines its wireless cross-room solution with PrimeSense’s simple, intuitive, gesture-based control technology to allow users to enjoy and share PC content on TV with gestures. WAVI Xtion is the unprecedented living room experience that will revolutionize users’ recreational lives,” said Kent Chien, General Manager, ASUS. “Natural Interaction’s appeal to consumers means more monetization opportunities based on personalization, various branding and advertising programs inside applications.”
PrimeSense and ASUS are also working together to promote and support the OpenNI developer community with developer kits. PrimeSense’s open, smart platform and hardware/software API lets publishers and developers easily apply 3D-sensing technology to a variety of applications and create new Natural Interaction content.
PrimeSense and ASUS are at the forefront of the Natural Interaction movement for controlling digital entertainment devices in the living room – such as the TV, set-top box and PC. This next generation of user interface is bringing together the entire ecosystem of the human sensory experience and closing the gap between humans and machines.
About PrimeSense
PrimeSense is the leader in sensing and recognition solutions, enabling consumer devices to “see” environments and allowing users to control and interact naturally with those devices in a simple and intuitive way. PrimeSense offers affordable solutions for consumer markets including visual/home computing, interactive entertainment and consumer electronics. PrimeSense products include the PS1080 System on Chip and NITE middleware, as well as the PrimeSense3D sensor, plus cross-platform enabling software to make application development easy and intuitive. Headquartered in Tel Aviv, Israel, with offices in North America, Japan, Singapore, Korea, China and Taiwan, PrimeSense is a privately held company. For more information, please visit: www.primesense.com or follow on Twitter @goprimesense.
Acer has some cool little computers in the Revo line that are aimed at media fans looking for a compact system to stream video and performance other tasks. Acer has announced a new Revo 100 computer that looks really cool for the UK market that also has some interesting features. Like next generation NVIDIA Ion graphics and lots more.
The machine runs Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit and has an AMD processor inside. That processor is the Athlon II Neo dual-core and that CPU is combined with an nForce 520LE chipset. The machine can be fitted with up to 4GB of DDR3 RAM at 1333MHz. It has an integrated Blu-ray super multi optical drive and has a memory card reader inside as well.
The optical drive inside the machine supports 3D Blu-ray playback and the little computer can be fitted with up to 750GB of storage. The sound on the machine is Dolby Home Theater v3 HD and there are lots of connectivity options. The machine has HDMI out, dual USB ports, Ethernet optical audio out, and a pair of mini PCI Express slots. It also has a wireless touchpad with keyboard functionality for controlling the rig from across the living room. The MSRP for the computer is £599.99 including VAT.
SageTV’s HD Theater 300 media streamer has graduated from pre-order to finally shipping, and it’s arrived alongside the new version of the company’s HTPC software. SageTV Version 7 gets a new UI and PlayOn support, together with Blu-Ray and ISO playback (in the Windows version), Picasa integration and media streaming to iPhones and iPads.
There’s also commercial detection and skipping, the Sage MyMovies Wall with trailers and showtimes, automatic conversion of Favorite recordings to suit your mobile devices, and enhanced photo slideshows with various effects. Sage has also added integration with HomeSee and InControl home automation systems, for those users who have hooked their HTPC up to a more complex control system.
The SageTV HD Theater 300, meanwhile, is a compact STB with all the usual online and local streaming options – including YouTube and DolbyTrueHD/DTS-HD/MA support – but as you’d expect integrates closely with the SageTV app itself. It’s available on its own for $149.95 today, or in a bundle with SageTV Version 7 for $199.95. Upgrades to v7 are $39.95, while the full app is $79.95. No word on when the Mac version will be updated from 6.6, though it’ll still work with the HD Theater 300.
Sharkoon has a number of docking stations for HDDs and other storage media in its lineup of gear. The latest new product from the company is aimed at letting you watch your digital media in the living room with a docking station that looks more like a home theater component than something to go with a computer.
The new docking station is called the Sharkoon SATA QuickPort Home and supports the docking of 2.5″ and 3.5″ HDDs. The device also has a memory card reader and a USB port for directly connecting storage devices. The device is aimed at use with a HTPC in the living room and can connect to the PC with USB 2.0 or eSATA connectivity available.
The device measures 240 x 206 x 47.5mm and weighs 950 grams without the hard drives. The machine can be used with Windows XP, Vista, and 7. The device is shipping now and sells for 49.90 Euros.
VIA is well known for its ultra-compact mainboards and low power CPUs, though Intel’s Atom processors have generally cornered the market when it comes to nettops. The VIA ARTiGO A1100 is the company’s attempt to remedy that, a palm-sized barebones PC that’s smaller than a stack of DVD cases and yet, they claim, is capable of 1080p Full HD via an HDMI output. Is the ARTiGO A1100 the DIY HTPC we’ve been waiting for? Check out the full review after the cut.
It’s certainly compact enough to get lost under your HDTV, just 5.7 x 3.9 x 2.0 inches and made of sturdy metal and silver plastic. Although there are rubber feet for standalone use, you can also VESA mount it to the back of your display. Ports include audio in/out/microphone on the front, together with two USB 2.0 and a miniUSB, then VGA, HDMI, two further USB 2.0 and gigabit ethernet on the back. There’s also a DC power input – the external PSU is a reasonably small block – and a connector for the optional WiFi antenna.
Although described as barebones, there’s not a huge amount that the ARTiGO A1100 is missing. It comes with VIA’s single-core 1.2GHz U2500 Nano processor and the company’s VX855 MSP, the latter combining the GPU, Northbridge and Southbridge into a single chip. All the buyer need fit is a 2.5-inch SATA hard-drive and a stick of DDR2 SODIMM memory (up to 2GB). VIA don’t add WiFi as standard, but do offer an optional board which is easily connected, and there’s an optional SD card reader too.
Setup, then, is pretty straightforward, though you obviously also have to add the OS of your choice. Though the U2500 is happy with 64-bit platforms, don’t expect to get the full Windows 7 Ultimate experience from the A1100: the VX855 falls short of Aero compliance, meaning much of the graphical niceties in Microsoft’s flagship OS are absent, and multitasking with anything but the most basic of tasks is wishful thinking.
Opt for Windows XP or a Linux OS, however, and things are a whole lot slicker, though you might fall foul of VIA’s DirectX 9 limitations. We generally prefer the more flexible VLC over Microsoft’s own Windows Media Player app, but the VX855 lacks hardware acceleration for anything other than WMP. That leaves you at the mercy of the CPU.
In use, it’s a quiet system; not fanless, but the tiny 25mm fan is a discrete whirring and likely to be drowned out by whatever else is in the room. Unfortunately it’s also not especially capable, and the ARTiGO A1100 box gets very hot in use. We’d have happily accepted a little extra noise – and perhaps a slightly larger chassis – for a bigger, more effective fan. The miniUSB port is a neat addition, however, allowing you to hook the PC up to another computer and treat it as an external drive.
The CPU/GPU pairing was sufficient to play 720p HD video smoothly, but 1080p HD was less successful; at best we had some mild stuttering, while at worst there were multiple dropped frames and mis-matched audio. Obviously with no integrated optical drive or TV tuner, the ARTiGO’s HTPC credentials aren’t entirely solid. Office tasks and basic photo editing were more in line with the PC’s abilities, just as long as you’re content to do one thing at a time.
If the performance isn’t quite up to regular HTPC standards, neither is the basic functionality – at least not right now. We were unable to set the ARTiGO A1100 to boot up with its HDMI output active, instead finding it would always default to the VGA output. VIA is apparently working on a firmware update to fix this, but until that’s released it’s a frustrating flaw.
As with all barebones PCs, perhaps, the VIA ARTiGO A1100 isn’t really suited to a regular home user. With a street price of around $230 (budget $45 for the WiFi b/g adapter and $25 for the SD card reader) it’s cheaper than a prebuilt nettop, certainly, but factor in the time and money required to install an HDD, memory and OS, and then tweak the latter into giving the best performance with the CPU/GPU pairing, and you’re facing what’s obviously an enthusiast’s product.
If you’ve the patience and inclination, there’s plenty of potential for the VIA nettop. Its frugal power consumption makes it an ideal embedded device, as long as you’re willing to pretty much dedicate it to a single purpose: a simple file server, for instance. Unfortunately, what it won’t do is broaden VIA’s market among home users, at least until the company rolls out updated versions with faster, dual- and quad-core versions of the Nano CPU.
Zotac has unveiled a cool new mini-PC this week that is the first to put a Blu-ray player inside such a small chassis. The new machines may be the perfect HTPC systems for the user without much space wanting the ability to watch and stream 1080p content to their TV. The Zotac ZBox mini-PCs use next-generation NVIDIA Ion graphics.
Two models of the ZBox Blu-ray are offered with one called the ID33 and the other the ID34. The difference is that the ID33 requires the user to add in the RAM and storage and the ID34 ships with 2GB of RAM and a 250GB HDD installed. Both machines run the Atom D525 CPU and have HDMI out with a memory card reader, Ethernet, and integrated WiFi.
The rigs also both have USB 3.0 ports, onboard audio, and the slot-load Blu-ray players. Both machines are Windows 7 ready and support the Aero interface. Zotac is mum on the pricing and availability of the machines at this time.
Early this year Shuttle pulled the wraps off a new thin HTPC computer that is called the XS35. At the time, the machine had only one configuration to choose from. Shuttle has announced that there are now three configurations to choose from when it comes to the thin XS35 computer.
The three new configurations are ready to ship units that will be offered at leading retailers here in the US and in Canada. The three versions are all in the same crazy thin 1.5-inch thick chassis and are aimed at different users. The XS35 for everyday use packs in a Atom D510 CPU, WiFi, Intel GMA 3150 graphics, 1GB of RAM, and a 160GB HDD.
The configuration for media fans has an Intel Atom D510 CPU, Intel GMA 3150 graphics, 2GB of RAM, 320GB HDD, a slim DVD burner, and WiFi. The high-end offering is the XS35 GT for HD media fans. This configuration has the Atom D510 and packs in NVIDIA ION graphics with 1080p output. It also has 2GB of RAM, DVD burner, 500GB of storage, WiFi, and the other features of the lower-end models.
