Betaenglish: vox

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1785. Norwegian game store breaks Halo 3 release date

Choi Wang mailed in MaxConsole to reveal that a Norwegian game shop called Expert today sold at least two copies of Halo 3 to the public, he added a picture with a gamer with the retail box in hand and the Halo 3 menu displayed on his TV in the background.

2388. Sphaeron Excalibur puts a large marching band in your living space

If you ever thought a tuba and a baritone’s horns would make good speakers, it turns out you were right. As proven by these speakers enclosing 4 subwoofers and a ceiling-high box and then letting what literally looks like the bells from those two instruments be the only outlet for sound, you get some amazing sound quality. There also appears to be a rather large tweeter on the side too. The efficiency of this speaker is amazing at 100dB/1watt/1meter and the amplifier outputs a mere 15 watts. If you want the full dimensions of this behemoth, its 90.5×59x51.2 inches and weighs in at 1364 pounds each. You can get the horns in your choice of automotive finishes, and you can buy them for an astronomical $387,700 right now. Trust me, if I were a millionaire, I’d have a pair of these in my gaming/computer room. Sphaeron Excalibur: Raising limits of dimension and variability [via bornrich] Relevant Entries on SlashGear


Copyright © 2006-2007 SlashGear

1987. An iPod touch ships without OS X - hints at disabled Bluetooth (Thomas Ricker/Engadget)

An iPod touch ships without OS X — hints at disabled Bluetooth  —  You can argue that the iPod touch is an iPhone without the phone.  So what's an iPod touch without OS X?  You're looking at it.  That's Dave's swanky new iPod touch, fresh off the boat and out of the box with nothing more than a diagnostic utility. Source:   Engadget
Author:   Thomas Ricker
Link:   http://www.engadget.com/2007/09/14/ipod-touch-ships… Techmeme permalink

2234. Vudu TV Set Top Box - 5,000 Movies on Demand

vudu.jpg
Want to watch new movies without the hassel of running to the video store or downloading them from a torrent site? The Vudu set top box might be the right for you. At $400 the Vudu currently gives you access to over 5,000 movies at $2 to $4 a rental (24 period) or $15 to purchase outright. All you need is a fast ethernet connection and and of course a television. Vudu offers near DVD quality picture and sound, something that the xbox 360 and apple tv can't claim at the moment. The company is aiming to have over 10,000 titles available within the next couple of months.

2359. Sony XEL-1 OLED TV unboxed

Filed under:
Sony's XEL-1 OLED TV -- with its 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio and a ridiculous 3mm thin enclosure -- has been unboxed over at TV Snob. Next to all of its accessories, the XEL-1 looks rather less appealing when compared to the clean press shots. In particular, we're left a little confused as to what the deal is with that ugly external power brick: isn't that what the big box underneath the screen was for? Read | Permalink | Email this | CommentsOffice Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

2435. Elecom ASP-S750 portable speakers

How can you call a speaker set portable if it requires a power outlest? Regardless, these speakers are small, compact if you will, and crank out a total of 5 watts of sound from the pair. The right speaker has a power switch and LED for power indication. It also has a volume knob, and is likely the speaker that the AC adapter plugs into. These speakers would be good for your MP3 Player or laptop provided you had access to a power outlet. They’ll be available in December in Japan for about $45. Elecom ASP-S750 compact portable speaker system [via fareastgizmos] Relevant Entries on SlashGear


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2437. Everything But The Box Venus and Sputnik 12S speakers

Everything But The Box is and interesting name for a company, but I like it, kind of like I like the look of their latest speakers. The speakers themselves look like eyeballs, and they dangle from the ceiling kind of like some high end track lighting, but like I said, I like it. Ceiling-mounting speakers has always been a fairly tricky adventure, which is generally narrowed down to cutting a hole in your ceiling a buying a pair of high end in-ceiling speakers, sure, that’s nice, but if I spend any kind of money on any audio components, they are generally small works of art and I want them shown off not hidden away. Well, the Venus and Sputnik 12S speakers from EBTB offer up a ceiling-mount option, as well as some good audio. The Venus speakers have both a woofer and a tweeter, likely offering up mids and highs for an addition to your system. But if you really want to hear the bass, its going to have to the Sputnik 12S you add as it looks, and works the same, but its just a subwoofer. The wiring is all built in (likely coming through the suspension cables) and the speakers probably mount similar to a surface mount light fixture, easy enough just about anyone could do it. Attack of the ceiling eyeball speakers [via crave] Relevant Entries on SlashGear


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2438. Q-Jays Dual Micro Earphones Reviewed

So, the people over at Pocket-Lint (across the pond), got their hands on a pair of Q-Jay’s noise canceling earphones and reviewed them. They seem to like them, but not so much their price or the cabling. What they liked was all the extras, and of course the sound quality. When you open the package, there are the earphones, with different sized in-ear attachments, which should make finding the proper fitting one for you a lot easier. There were also two extension cords, one with and angled plug, the other a straight plug, lastly there was a leather pouch that you could stow your earphones in. They like the sound quality, apparently a lot as they gave the earphones 8 out of 10. They said that you had to turn the volume up a bit before they started cranking out their best. As I said, the main things they didn’t like were the flimsy cable which seemed prone to breaking, although it might not be, and the price, at £129.99 or close to $260, I can see why. Q-Jays Dual Micro Earphones Review [via pocket-lint] Relevant Entries on SlashGear


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2440. Microsoft and Goods pair up to make Gold Zune 2s

Microsoft commissioned Goods to make 20 gold Zunes. 10 are 80GB models, 10 are 8GB flash models. They look nice, and they are obviously made with gold. No word on price, and I am sure the line is short for a gold Zune, but its still probably longer than 20 people, so it will be interesting to hear what price was actually paid for each of these limited edition models. I’ll admit, I used to hate the Zune, I still do hate the first edition one I have, but these new Zune 2s are quite attractive. The Zune Originals makes them even more attractive, but taking that step further and covering them in gold and slapping the Goods artwork on the back, well, that just makes it so much better. However due to me having an iPod Touch, and monetary restrictions, I won’t be jumping in line for one of these Zunes. Music entwined in gold: Limited edition Zune 2 [via born rich] Relevant Entries on SlashGear


Copyright © 2006-2007 SlashGear

2445. World of Warcraft Dell XPS notebooks urges you to scream “For The Horde!”

So Dell, not too long ago, sold a pair of WoW customized laptops for charity, well, now you can buy one for yourself without the charity price. The customizations aren’t all external with some cool decals slapped on a XPS M1730, they went all out. Inside, they start buy going ahead and installing both versions of WoW, the original World of Warcraft and The Burning Crusade as well as all major client patches, and as time goes on, as long as they are still selling this laptop, they’ll continue to test and pre-install the latest patches. They also load up the system with customized WoW screensavers and backgrounds. You can get the laptop in your choice of Horde or Alliance, which one you choose determines what the lid of your laptop looks like, as well as what backgrounds and screensavers your system comes pre-loaded with. With your system you also get a Quest Envelope, a WoW backpack full of stuff, and then your computer, obviously. The Quest Envelope comes separate from the system via certified overnight mail and contains some interesting things including a Golden Ticket, the Blizzard Beta Club Card, and the Collector’s Edition Account Upgrade Certificate. The Golden Ticket nets you a real life figurine of your character with weapons and armor of your choice, this is done by FingerPrints, and they pull your characters data off the server to make your figurine. The Blizzard Beta Club Card gets you into the next 5 betas including the Wrath of the Lich King. The Collector’s Edition Account Upgrade is right now only good for a special pet in the game. Now for the Backpack, it has the WoW BattleChest which has full, retail versions of WoW and the Burning Crusade as well as WarCraft III and the Frozen Throne expansion for it as well as the strategy guide for both. It also has the WoW soundtrack, a making of WoW behind the scenes DVD, the Heroes of Azeroth and Through the Dark Portal starter decks for the WoW trading card game, the BradyGames WoW strategy guide, the Burning Crusade Strategy guide, the Rise of the Horde book, and the Tides of Darkness book. Now then for the notebook, you get an XPS M1730 customized for WoW, it has a 17” HD LCD, illuminated speaker grills and faction honor badges, a backlit keyboard, an integrated Logitech GamePanel LCD stats tracker, nVidia SLI with an AGEIA PhysX mobile card setup (that’s better than any pre-configured desktop I’ve ever seen), and the rest is the standard XPS M1730 notebook configuration. If you want it, it will cost you a cool $4500 with the base configuration, which if I do say so myself, is far from basic, me want. And finally, “FOR THE HORDE!!!” World of Warcraft Notebook: Horde or Alliance-Which One Are You [via Engadget] Relevant Entries on SlashGear


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2532. Who's in on the 700MHz auction?

Filed under: Feel free to shout it out in the comments, we know y'all are gunning for a piece. What's that? Don't quite have enough change in the couch to hit the $4.6 billion minimum bid on the 700MHz C block? How lame. Lucky for us, there are quite a few companies out there that do have that kind of cash earmarked for this and other highly desirable parts of the spectrum, which should make for some exciting bidding. Too bad FCC's auction process, which begins on January 24th, is totally blind, and with the exception of the few companies that have publicly stated their intentions to bid, we won't know much about how the auction went down until February or March. The following, however, are confirmed:

Sounds like slim pickings, but there a bunch of wild cards out there, including satellite providers, smaller wireless carriers and even big box retailers.

[Via paidContent.org] Read | Permalink | Email this | CommentsOffice Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

2619. Poll: Extended warranties, necessity or shakedown?

Filed under:
As former tech retail geeks in another life, we know better than anyone the kind of pressure salespeople at the big box retailers put on adding extended (often 3rd party) warranties on gadget purchases. Oh sure, it preys on uninformed customers' fears that their expensive new toys will break down a exactly 91 days after purchase and they'll be left in the lurch -- but sometimes those warranties can actually come in handy. That is, if you can convince the warranty people to pony up, which is just a step below the frustration of dealing with most HMOs. So, what's your take on extended warranties?

View Poll Permalink | Email this | CommentsOffice Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

2641. Keepin' it real fake: lunar evidence edition


Not content with just KIRF'n popular gadgets, our favorite reversers of engineering are back and this time, doing it up in space. Notice any difference between the 1994 Pentagon photo (on left) of the moon and that taken by China's Chang 1 last week in almost exactly the same location? Hint: look in the yellow circle. Right, what appears to be a new crater on the geologically dead hellscape we call the moon. Well, since the image was released under great fanfare in China, it's been heavily shouted down as a fake by flat-Earthers in the West. It's not, at least not in the traditional sense. According to Emily Lakdawalla of The Planetary Society, the image is real (and likely original) but the "new" crater is just an artifact from the process of stitching and blending 19 image strips taken on different orbits. The correctly stitched image (achieved by sliding the left-most crater up, and the right-most down) is presented in the yellow box above. Unfortunately, the chief scientist of the Chinese lunar exploration program, Ouyang Ziyuan, said that the emergence of the crater was proof that their photograph was original. Sorry Charlie, the crater is not new, only the lighting angle and resolution is... we think.

[Via MSNBC] Read | Permalink | Email this | CommentsOffice Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

2686. MagneFlashCT Light Table For Professional Looking Product Shots

By Andrew Liszewski If you only occasionally sell things on eBay or Craigslist then you can probably get away with a less than stellar photo of the item in question. But if selling things online is your bread and butter, you’re going to want your products to look their best. A light box is an essential [...]

2688. Sequiam BioBox For Securing Non-Digital Valuables

By Andrew Liszewski There are plenty of biometric security solutions when it comes to backing up important files or securing your computer. But the Sequiam BioBox is actually designed to protect those things that can’t be copied to a hard drive for safe keeping like cash, jewelry or important documents. The box uses a biometric fingerprint [...]

2709. RIP, CompUSA: 1984 - 2008

Filed under: digg_url = 'http://digg.com/business_finance/RIP_CompUSA_1984_2008';Days after we first reported that CompUSA could be shutting down for good very, very soon, the WSJ everybody is reporting that the beleaguered big box retailer has been sold to Gordon Brothers Group for liquidation, which will occur shortly after the holidays. Somehow we don't think it'll be too missed, but Carlos Slim's in some pain today -- we didn't realize dude put $2 billion into the chain since the late 90s. Check out the Best Buy victory rap after the break.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]Continue reading RIP, CompUSA: 1984 - 2008 Read | Permalink | Email this | CommentsOffice Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

2738. New Slimline and Stylist Compact Stereos from Kenwood

New Slimline and Stylist Compact Stereos from Kenwood Kenwood announced trio of slimline CLK compact stereos in Japan today. It plays redbook CD, CD-R/RW, MD media (only on CLK-7i-S) and works with IPOD, MP3 as well as MP3 with USB connection. The top model CLK-7is only available in silver, weighed in 5.7lb and will be selling at 50,000¥ (~$449) The rest of the two CLK-5i-S/W models are available in black or silver finish. It lacks MD support and roughly 1lb lighter than CLK-7is but 10,000 yen cheaper (about $110 USD)

Kenwood presents a new stereo [via akihabaranews] Relevant Entries on SlashGear


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2743. Playboy announces their picks for Hottest Cars of 2008

The 08 car of the year, the sultry Audi R8, it’s a work of art, a real thing of beauty on par with whoever your favorite actress is. It has a 4.2-liter V8 cranking out 420BHP, which for a car that small, is a lot of ponies. The best luxury sports coupe goes to Maserati and their GranTurismo pushing 405 ponies, and I am sure, just like all of Maserati’s other vehicles, looking simply stunning. The smartest purchase of the year (wait for the pun) is the SMART ForTwo, sure, its not all that attractive, but the gas mileage is impeccable, and the crash test ratings are off the charts, Top Gear, the British car show, literally took one and ran it into a cement wall at 70km per hour, sure it had dummies in it, but there wasn’t any physical damage to them, just the car was really messed up. The best sports sedan is the Cadillac CTS and the best SUV is the Land Rover LR2. the best convertible is the BMW 335i (how did a 3-series BMW make it on this list?) and the best Earth Day car was the MB E320 Bluetec. The best pint-sized performance whip was the Volvo C30 and the best crossover was the Buick Enclave CXL. So, there’s a few tips if you were looking for a new vehicle. Playboy Picks the Hottest Cars of 2008 [via i4u] Relevant Entries on SlashGear


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2832. The Movie Gallery is Out of Beam

Moviebeam, a Video On Demand services via local TV spectrum to OTA receiver is to show down the 2nd time. It was a failed project originally founded by Walt Disney sold for a big lost to the video rental chain Movie Gallery. The acquisition was a desperate attempt to utilize the same concept developing movie delivery system in digital platform. They paid $24 million for the acquisition cost, shelled out another 10 plus a 50 million cash infusion from investors for further implementation. All of that funding lasts about 9 months; they are informing current customer that the movie service will be out at December the 15th. moviebeam The final cease of the defunct is predictable. It was a proven technology that failed to deliver because of two major factors, price and content. The service is only available in 31 cities and customer is required to pay $250 up front for a set-top box (price been dropping to $149 lately), no monthly service charge but $2-4 for a movie, extra $1 for HD. There are 10 new movies updates per week with barely a few in HD only. With the affordable online rental rate going these days, who’s in their right mind paying for a hardware that’s only working with one VOD system. The titles are limited, cost extra and you only get 24 hour grace period per purchase. It’s a tough service to sell considering consumer have other choices or existing service that already provided VOD movie selection but comes with national and premium networks.
Movie Gallery to Shutter Moviebeam Set-top Download Service [via digitalmediawire] Relevant Entries on SlashGear

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2937. Switched On: Vudu starts on its to-dos

Filed under: , Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about technology, multimedia, and digital entertainment.
Imagine a history in which broadcast television programming was not sent directly to television sets. Rather, it was sent to another, more expensive device in the home with a smaller screen. If you paid $40 per month, you could access at best only about 10 percent of the shows you really wanted. These shows were available on demand, but under ideal conditions needed a few minutes before you can start watching them. Furthermore, to watch them in the comfort of your living room, you had to rely on a slow, unreliable connection between the box and the TV set.

This bleak situation characterized the state of much broadband video at the debut of Vudu earlier this year. Vudu's $400 glossy black box sports a curvy perimeter that is a bit taller than an Apple TV. It delivers instant access to about 5,000 movies (with capacity for double that amount) using a slick and sophisticated combination of local caching and distributed computing. Rent or buy the movie and it starts playing. Vudu just introduced its first high-definition movies -- the Bourne movie trilogy, offering the high-definition media-free version of The Bourne Ultimatum for sale for the first time.

The physical version of that movie is available exclusively on HD-DVD, but with Vudu you don't have to worry about the alliances of studios or video rental chains. The company has struck deals with all major studios and the Vudu device is hundreds of dollars less than dual-format high-definition disc players from Samsung and LG Electronics. On the other hand, nearly all of its content is more of a quality match for the dirt-cheap and universally-supported standard DVD player today.
Continue reading Switched On: Vudu starts on its to-dos Permalink | Email this | CommentsOffice Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

2971. Kanguru intros pricey standalone USB Duplicator

Filed under: We aren't about to believe Kanguru's latest is really the "first of its kind," but it's not exactly something you see everyday while perusing the aisles at your local office supply store, either. The standalone USB Duplicator does an excellent job of describing its sole purpose in life with its title, but we'll humor you, anyway. This box comes in two flavors -- 1 master to 9 targets or 1 master to 24 targets -- which allows USB 1.1 / 2.0 thumb drives and / or USB hard drives to be hooked up and mirrored with extraordinarily little effort. Reportedly, the system is mostly automatic, and it will play nice with "all major file systems." Think you could put one of these to good use? Yeah, we're sure you could -- but how long will it take you to recoup the $2,999.99 (for the 10-port version, no less) you'll be laying down up front?

[Via I4U News] Read | Permalink | Email this | CommentsOffice Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

3138. NOT CES 2008: Exclusive video of what WON'T be in Las Vegas this year

Hey everyone. What with all the talk of this "CES" thing that's going on at the moment, I thought I'd give you an EXCLUSIVE look at a few of the products that won't be on the show floor this year. I'll be revealing a two-year-old TV with NO HDMI sockets on it whatsoever, a six-year-old games console and a literally ancient digital cable box that's definitely NOT rocking the crowds at the Vegas Convention Centre right now. You won't see these anywhere else! (apart from maybe at a dump or really poor friend's house).   

 

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1/14 | Idea conceived
1/17 | Semester starts
1/19 | Design completed