Well, we haven't heard anything interesting from Archos for quite some time now, but it would really seem that things are about to change dramatically, as the company has just introduced a whole new family of products, dubbed Internet Media Tablets. While the name is a bit vague, the truth of the matter is that the 5, 5G and 7 models included in this new family of devices are a hybrid between a WiFi-enabled MID and an advanced portable media player, providing both large displays and extremely long and comprehensive specs lists. First of all, we'll talk about the Archos 5 and 7 models, which share pretty much the same features and ... [read more >>] Since the Internet has become the world's largest content-delivery vehicle (whether we're talking about news, music, videos, etc.), it's no wonder that the most important manufacturers of various consumer electronics are trying their best in order to integrate online capabilities in just about every product they manufacture. And that's also the case with Panasonic, which has finally announced the pricing and availability details regarding its web-enabled PZ850 series of VIERA PDPs, a family of devices announced way back, at CES 2008. The most important feature offered by the new HDTVs (which, by the way, are available in... [read more >>] GPS navigators with multimedia features are not exactly a novelty, most high-end products from this segment providing MP3 and multimedia playback features. But what about the other way around? What about a portable media player with GPS functionality? Well, looks like that's exactly what Archos has managed to pull out of the hat this time, alongside several other goodies which might actually help push the company's forward in the customer's wish lists.The first (and probably the most important) novelty brought about by the French company is the one related to GPS. Thus, the owners of the Archos 605 WiFi portable media player ... [read more >>] The format war might be over for Toshiba's HD-DVD, but it seems that the next target on the list of casualties will be the victorious Blu-Ray. Those of you who are already prepared to toss the Blu-Ray movie titles and jump in the new format's bandwagon, are advised to wait a little more, as the new format is still in diapers.The mighty Red-Ray format is a new standard, able to deliver "Beyond-HD" video quality, namely movies at impressive 4096 x 2048 pixels screen resolutions. Blu-ray players are also marketed as "Beyond-HD" devices, but this labeling is at least misleading, since high-definition specifications say that the HD sta... [read more >>] Now that Sony has remained the only major player on the high-definition players' market, with Blu-ray scoring an overwhelming victory over HD DVD, the Japanese company is free to focus on some additional products, capable of providing various extra-functions beside the basic, playback-related ones. And that's exactly the case with its latest announcement, namely the BDZ-A70 and BDZ-T90 Blu-ray recorders, which provide a very interesting feature aimed directly at Sony PSP and Walkman owners. As the company informs us, the two new recorders offer users the possibility of transferring the recorded video content onto their portable de... [read more >>] The moment everyone's been expecting for the past couple of weeks has finally arrived! Thus, after receiving a couple of decisive blows over the past few weeks, culminating with Wal-Mart's announcement, Toshiba has finally decided to acknowledge the fact that it has lost the next-gen format war and declared that it has decided it will no longer develop, manufacture and market HD DVD players and recorders. "We carefully assessed the long-term impact of continuing the so-called 'next-generation format war' and concluded that a swift decision will best help the market develop," said Atsutoshi Nishida, President and CEO of T... [read more >>] Everything tends to go wireless, from the smallest to the biggest pieces of tech, engineers are struggling to embed wireless communication capabilities and have everything running with as few cables as possible. Well, if in the case of data transmission of wireless remote controlling things are pretty clear and a lot of equipment can be provided with proper cord-free operation, in the case of audio and more precisely - loudspeakers, things are still not done with, yet.[admark=1]Usually, besides the claims of manufacturers, there is more than a power cord involved in today's wireless loudspeaker systems...and this is bad, because we... [read more >>] Everyone knows (or at least suspects) that huge amounts of money are involved in just about every move in the movie industry, and even more so when we're talking about content distribution media, Blu-ray and HD DVD, to be more precise. However, it would seem that things might be a lot worse than we had imagined, at least if we were to believe that there's any truth in Michael Bay's latest statement (read rant) on this subject. Thus, after being questioned by a fan regarding the availability of his movies in the Blu-ray format on his personal "Ask Michael Bay" sub-forum , the director who brought us "Transformers" lost his tem... [read more >>] It would seem that there's absolutely nothing out there, no type of copy protection system that can resist the hard efforts of ingenious "security researchers", especially when the respective system is designed to protect valuable multimedia content (namely, movies). And the latest such example is none other than Sony's famous next-generation DVD format, the Blu-ray, which, apparently, has just been cracked by a company specialized in developing DVD copying tools. Thus, according to the German website Golem.de, it would seem that the SlySoft company (the maker of such disc cloning tools as the AnyDVD, CloneDVD, etc.) has announced... [read more >>] Although the rumors regarding Samsung's hybrid HD DVD / Blu-ray player have been circulating on the web for quite a long time, the company decided to keep it all under wraps for the past few months (in order to increase the customer's interest, perhaps?). However, the long wait for the official announcement has finally come to an end, since the Korean company has just showcased the new player, alongside some entry-level Blu-ray models. The hybrid, dubbed BD-UP5000 Duo HD Player, is considered to be the company's flagship model and for good reason, too. Thus, the device supports both Blu-ray and HD-DVD formats as well as their... [read more >>] | 
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