Boxee Box gets the requisite teardown; would you look at that heat sink!
November 11, 2010 No Comment
Lest you forget, the Boxee Box is a capital C computer, just like Google TV . In fact, both products share nearly identical processors, with the Intel CE4110 in Boxee and the CE4150 in Google TV, each clocked at 1.2GHz. Turns out, much of the mass of the Boxee Box is used for the heat sink and fan that are cooling that sucker, as revealed in iFixit’s timely teardown of the media powerhouse. Other things they found inside include 1GB of RAM, 1GB of flash memory, and a digital-to-analog audio converter to allow for 1080p video out of HDMI while still using legacy audio hardware. Sounds like some good stuff — so, after years of hacking the Apple TV for Boxee use, who will be the first to repay Boxee the favor and get something else running on here? Boxee Box gets the requisite teardown; would you look at that heat sink! originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 11 Nov 2010 09:03:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Continue reading …Hulu Plus now available to all PS3 owners in the US, Europe lets out a wistful sigh
November 11, 2010 No Comment
Yes indeed, the expected wide availability of Hulu Plus on the PlayStation 3 has just been enacted, allowing any US PlayStation Network member to get streaming with Hulu’s premium offering. Until now, you needed to be a paying member of Sony’s PlayStation Plus club to qualify, but that requirement has now finally been dropped. Check out our experience with Hulu Plus on the PS3 if you still need help deciding whether the $9.99 TV streaming service is worth your hard-earned greenbacks. Those of us unlucky enough to be living on another continent will just go drown our sorrows with another round of Black Ops mayhem. [Thanks, Robert] Hulu Plus now available to all PS3 owners in the US, Europe lets out a wistful sigh originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 11 Nov 2010 08:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Continue reading …Wall Street Journal releases Android Tablet Edition app, phones need not apply
November 11, 2010 No Comment
Given that the first truly respectable Android tablet just came out , the Wall Street Journal is timing its Tablet Edition app release pretty much perfectly. It aims to offer a faithful reproduction of the printed version of the paper while augmenting it with full-screen video, market data, customization options, and the ability to save articles for offline reading. $3.99 will net you a week’s worth of access on both Android and iPad Tablet Editions along with subscriber privileges on WSJ.com. The app itself is free, so if you have a Galaxy Tab just hanging around (it doesn’t work on phones, we’ve already tried on a Desire Z) you can give it a test-drive — it’s certainly what we intend to do, check back later for our impressions! Continue reading Wall Street Journal releases Android Tablet Edition app, phones need not apply Wall Street Journal releases Android Tablet Edition app, phones need not apply originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 11 Nov 2010 08:11:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Continue reading …Speculative Kinect sales figures announced, looks to have handily trumped PlayStation Move
November 11, 2010 No Comment
We’ll get this out of the way right up front: VGChartz won’t say where it gets its sales figures and, because of that, they’re not to be taken as gospel or treated with much validity on their own. But, comparing one set of the site’s numbers to another can be useful in showing trends, and with that caveat firmly in mind let’s take a look at Microsoft’s Kinect vs. Sony’s PlayStation Move . According to the site, Kinect Adventures (bundled in with the camera itself) sold just under 480,000 units in one week after launching on November 4th, while the PlayStation Move sold 200,000 “units” in its first week, which according to VGChartz is not individual pieces of hardware but bundles of hardware tied to a single console. (This contrasts to Sony’s figure , which counts each piece of hardware — nunchuck, wand, and camera — separately.) So, by these rather early and decidedly unofficial numbers it looks like Microsoft’s Kinect investment might just be paying off, though of course it’s the long-run that counts in these things. Speculative Kinect sales figures announced, looks to have handily trumped PlayStation Move originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 11 Nov 2010 07:49:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Continue reading …AMD publishes CPU roadmaps through 2012, runs a quad-core Bulldozer through the laptop realm
November 11, 2010 No Comment
Heard of Trinity, Krishna, Wichita and Komodo? You have now — they’re the codenames of brand-new processors that AMD plans to ship in 2012. AMD dropped preliminary details on the basic platform lineup earlier this week, and it looks like there are some sweeping changes in store — like the fact that every single chip will have a DirectX 11 capable GPU on board in true Fusion style. Also, if you thought Bulldozer was a desktop processor and Bobcat limited to laptops, you’ll be interested to know that’s not at all how it’s going to work — powerhouse notebooks and mid-range towers can get the same four high-end cores in the form of a 32nm Trinity APU, while Krishna and Wichita mop up the low-end and hopefully address low power consumption scenarios with 28nm silicon. Of course, there’s a little something extra for the desktop enthusiast, and that’s where the octa-core Komodo will come in (picture after the break). AMD’s also enacted one other very important change, and that’s to provide the handy-dandy AMD Codename Decoder[TM] for telling all these platforms apart. You’ll find it at our more coverage link. We kid you not. Continue reading AMD publishes CPU roadmaps through 2012, runs a quad-core Bulldozer through the laptop realm AMD publishes CPU roadmaps through 2012, runs a quad-core Bulldozer through the laptop realm originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 11 Nov 2010 06:24:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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We know Boxee wanted its Box launch to have an impact, but we doubt this was the way the company intended. A great many of our readers are reporting this morning that their browser-based streaming attempts from Hulu have been greeted with an error message telling them that they’re trying to access the service “from Boxee.” Needless to say, these Windows 7 and Mac OS X users are not amused and we suspect Hulu will have only a short time to sort out its blocking algorithms before a full-on frenzy of discontented geeks engulfs its forums. Reported browsers to have fallen afoul of this unplanned ban include Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Safari, leaving us to wonder whether anyone is able to stream content from Hulu right now. Have you had any luck? [Thanks to everyone who sent this in] Hulu’s block on Boxee streaming affecting more than just Boxee Boxes originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 11 Nov 2010 05:36:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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We’ll rarely be accused of being proper economists here, but we do have to question Hanvon’s calculations in throwing up a pre-order price for its brand new color e-reader of 3,500 Chinese Yuan. That’s the report coming out of DigiTimes this morning, placing the device at around the $530 mark in a market that’s not exactly known for its rampant consumption of tech luxuries. Then again, what we’re talking about here will indeed be the very first E Ink Triton -equipped device anywhere once deliveries commence in February, so there’s the cachet of short-term exclusivity to look forward to. Or it might be very long-term exclusivity if nobody thinks that color is worth paying that massive premium over more conventional e-readers. We shall wait and see. Hanvon’s color e-reader up for pre-order in China — for just $530 originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 11 Nov 2010 05:25:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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If you’re the proud owner of a Samsung Focus or Omnia 7 , you can scratch a pretty major item off the list of basic features missing from WP7: USB tethering. A couple of sites have come upon a quick and relatively easy hack to enable using your handset as a 3G modem on Microsoft’s new platform. You’ll need to dial up ##634# to get into a diagnostics menu, switch over to a “Modem, Tethered Call” mode and deal with a few more prompts along the way, but the end result is that you’ll have a pretty much automated USB tether setup on your hands. Our own testing on HTC’s Trophy and LG’s Optimus 7 hasn’t been quite so productive, perhaps because those devices require a different route to achieving it, but it seems like Windows Phone 7 is perfectly capable of performing the USB tethering task. Let us know how you get along in the comments below! Windows Phone 7 USB tethering uncovered on Samsung phones originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 11 Nov 2010 04:46:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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The ATI name might be dead , but Radeon graphics cards are only growing bigger, bolder and better. AMD’s recent financial analyst day has made official what many of us already knew or suspected: there’ll be three new high-end GPUs forthcoming in the first quarter of 2011. The slides explicitly describe the recently launched HD 6870 / 6850 as mere refreshes, aiming to bring HD 5800 series performance in a more efficient package, but peek beyond them and you’ll see an armada of HD 6900 chips just itching to bring the fight to NVIDIA and its newly crowned GTX 580 king of the single-GPU hill. No specs yet, of course, but at least we now know there’ll be some fireworks to greet us early in the new year. Oh, and if the mobile realm is more your thing, we’ve got a shot of AMD’s plans on that front waiting for you just after the break. Continue reading AMD GPU roadmap points to a happy 2011 for Radeon lovers AMD GPU roadmap points to a happy 2011 for Radeon lovers originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 11 Nov 2010 04:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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It’s not official but that image above sure as hell looks like an official AT&T training document. AT&T already announced that it would carry the Samsung Galaxy Tab but has been coy with details about launch date, pricing, and custom apps. Now, if the screengrab above can be believed, we know that it’ll hit AT&T shops on November 21st for a “HQ recommended” price of $649.99 without contract and featuring the same data plans (250MB for $14.99 per month or 2GB for $25 per month) AT&T offers alongside its $629 16GB WiFi + 3G iPad offering . Right, that’s 20 bucks and change more for half the display and $50 more than the base price of T-Mobile’s or Verizon’s Galaxy Tab offering. Of course, AT&T will preinstall the Nook eReader and the AT&T Account Manager app for on-device activation and monthly credit refills. Not sure that’s worth the premium though. Hold tight to see how this plays out as we should see an official pricing and launch date announcement any day now. Gallery: Galaxy Tab hitting AT&T on November 21st for a $649 premium? [Thanks, tipster] Galaxy Tab hitting AT&T on November 21st for a $649 premium? originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 11 Nov 2010 03:28:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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