This year’s shaping up to be the year Australian TV fans finally gets treated like mature, responsible adults. For example, after years of negotiations, we now have our very own free-to-air EPG that works with pretty much and PVR to let you record the shows you want to watch at the click of a single button.
We’ll also see TiVo launching in time for the Beijing Olympics, and Foxtel is finally entering the HD era with their new Hi-Def iQ box.
Unveiled on their HD blog at the end of last year, we now know that the new box will have a 320GB hard drive, support MPEG4 compression, have HDMI connections (praise Jesus) and is a bespoke model manufactured by Pace just for Foxtel.
Aside from that, we can expect four dedicated HD channels focussing on sport, movies and documentaries, plus access to Channel 10′s Hi-Def offering through the iQ. But the best news is that it can’t be far away — I received an invite to a media briefing on January 30th for the box’s launch. As soon as I know more, so will you
The release candidate of zAlternator allows for the Zune to be synced with Windows Media Player 11, Winamp and Media Monkey, as well as itunes (Although that is untested at this point). [ZuneBoards]
It’s a sad day for the Australian Consumer Electronics industry, with Hitachi deciding to close its doors on the consumer tech arm of its Australian business as part of a global restructure.
Apparently the move is a part of a global restructure, and not the result of the Australian market’s performance financially. However there are mixed reports on whether there will be a swinging of the layoff hammer or simply repurposing the current staff across Hitachi’s other areas of business in Australia.
Losing a big player like this can’t be a good thing, and not just because it means we’ll miss out on their shiny new TVs. Competition makes the consumer tech world go round. Plus, every time a consumer tech company closes its doors, a baby angel dies.
There’s a media briefing happening tonight, so we’ll keep you posted with all the official news tomorrow.
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WonderHowTo rented a Red One video camera (the camera that shoots 4K resolution footage), took 30 kids up into the mountains and shot some snowball fight footage. The result, shown here at just slightly lower resolution than the Red can support, still shows off how much their own Perez Hilton lookalike got pelted with snowballs. Hit the jump for a higher quality version that will murder your browser.
The first signs of HD DVD ultimate demise may be coming from the UK on March 10. After the news on Universal and Paramount abandoning the exclusive HD DVD deal, it seems that Amazon UK is listing three Paramount Blu-ray titles with that definitive release date: Trading Places, Coming to America and Anchorman, which was never available in Blu-ray before. Amazon UK doesn’t list the HD DVD versions, and these are all new Zone 2 releases, not US imports. Could this be an error on Amazon’s part or just a sign of things to come? [Format War Central]
The Gadget: WiBrain’s B1E UMPC, a slightly-wider (and much thicker) than PSP-sized UMPC with full QWERTY keyboard, touchscreen, trackpad, and on-board webcam.
The Price: $US699
The Verdict: Meh.
The Phillips READIUS prototype that we showed you over a year ago, is finally materialising as an actual consumer product, but not just as an e-reader but a mobile phone. The READIUS has a slightly different design than the prototype, with a 5-inch flexible display that actually rolls up around the phone, allowing it to be stored when not in use. The phone is manufactured under Polymer Vision which is partly owned by Phillips. The Dutch company has yet to release complete specs for the phone, but the READIUS is advertised as having a large display and great battery life. With a mid-2008 release, we won’t have to wait too long to test this e-reader, mobile phone mash-up. [Reuters]
While IR is still quite useful for certain things, transferring data between devices is something very few people still use it for. Japan’s KDDI R&D labs, however, have managed to increase the transfer rate 250 times to 1Gbps with a semiconductor laser that blinks incredibly fast. Although 1Gbps is fast, it doesn’t quite transfer a full CD of music in less than a second (which is 650MB). Point is, if they can manage to put this into cellphones, we’ll finally be able to get our contacts over really really fast. [Digital World Tokyo]
Spendtastic dudes who splurged on the Eight Core Mac Pros revealed earlier this month have an extra surprise for them: 64-bit boot camp support. The Boot Camp install discs have 64-bit Vista drivers on board, meaning you can load up Microsoft’s 2^6 bit OS with little to no problems on your silver cheese-grating behemoth. [Macrumors]
