It must be Australian Blu-ray day or something. After finding out about Samsung’s free Blu-ray player promotion and LG launching their BD300 in Australia, Panasonic has decided to join the BD Profile 2.0 bandwagon and release the DMP-BD35 in Australia just in time for Christmas.
Along with all the standard Profile 2.0 features (BD-Live, HD audio decoding, PIP), it also offers some pretty sweet benefits to owners of their PZ850 series plasmas (like me). There’s x.v. color and Deep Colour for more realistic colour reproduction, and PHL Reference Chroma Processor Plus, which reproduces the colours as close to the original film as possible. There’s also 24Hz mode (granted, you don’t need a Panny plasma for this one) and support for 7.1-channel audio, even if your system doesn’t decode all eight channels.
If that sounds like it might entice you, then you can pick up the DMP-BD35 for $495 RRP, or cheaper in the shops.
This weekend marked the fifth anniversary of the last commercial flight of the Concorde. Capable of flying at a cruise speed of Mach 2.02 thanks to its four Olympus 593 Mk 610 afterburning turbojets, the Concorde bridged London to New York in just 3.5 hours. Still today, this supersonic jet remains one of the most technologically advanced, probably the prettiest–in that futuristic 70s aesthetic that would make Jon Ive faint–and, as you can see in the video, perhaps the most amazing commercial air ride ever created. The fastest-ever Concorde returned to the Intrepid museum in NYC a few days ago, where it “flew” for the last time thanks to a 500-ton crane:
Thanks to a f*****g stupid error, the iTunes Music Store in the UK has accidentally censored thousands of songs, albums, and artists’ names. Innocent songs–like Danny Kaye’s “I Thought I Saw A P***y Cat”–and not-so-innocent ones–like Nirvana’s “Smells Like T**n Spirit”–have been asterisked by what an Apple spokeswoman has described as a “database glitch”. Why “teen”, “hot” or “Johnny” can be considered offensive, I really don’t have a flying f**k, but things look rather silly in there:
Considering that Netflix doesn’t operate in Australia, it’s hardly surprising that LG has dumped the Netflix support from its local version of the BD300 Blu-ray player. Instead, they’re offering a bonus BigPond DVD rentals promotion, which includes four months worth of DVD (or Blu-ray) rentals from BigPond’s Netflix-like store (we’re talking physical media here, in case anyone’s confused).
The unit’s priced at $499, which looks like it’s going to be the sweet spot for Blu-ray players this Christmas. On top of being a BD Profile 2.0 machine, it also plays back DivX discs and JPEG, MP3 and WMA files from a USB stick, plus supports the latest HD audio codecs.
Of course, there’s no word on whether or not it will ever support the BigPond Movies download service, but we’ve got our fingers crossed.
Looking for the best way to feed the world’s hunger for energy, James May visited a solar furnace to see how powerful they really are. Usually, solar furnaces are used to boil water into steam to generate electricity or make hydrogen fuel. But May thought that the best way to make people understand their insane power is to do something equally as insane: Melt steel almost instantly.
Bluetooth carkits aren’t exactly what we’d call exciting. They all do the same thing – connect to your phone via Bluetooth and let you make and receive handsfree calls. Some of them even let you make calls using your voice.
The Sudio Vogue’s claim to fame is that it’s Australia’s first “coloured” Bluetooth handsfree speakerphone.It comes in a range of colours, including metallic blue, pink, black and white. You get 10 hours worth of talk time and 480 hours standby on a single charge, plus regular call features like one touch answer, call waiting, last number redial mute and call reject.
Like I said: Exciting.
Still, even though it’s not the most riveting product, it’s priced well at just $89. And sometimes the cheap and useful products that come in a range of colours are the best ones. Sometimes.
This one will probably make the Greenpeace douchebags moan with pleasure: It seems that the Apple replacement parts department didn’t get Steve’s memo pushing for green this, recycled that, and reduced packaging materials. At least judging from the needlessly huge box used to ship this iPhone tiny USB power adapter replacement:
As promised, you can finally use Netflix’s Watch Instantly streaming video service on a Mac. The juiciest, most ironic part? The magic happens with Microsoft’s Flash-wannabe Silverlight—which you probably grew to know and maybe hate during the Olympics—since it keeps the DRM voodoo intact. The only real catch is that it works exclusively on Intel-based Macs, leaving anyone on an aging PowerBook out in the cold. Full details below—it’s not live yet, but it should be soon.
One of the biggest battles Blu-ray has on its hands (aside from fighting the infinite format war), is that to really take full advantage of its Full HD picture, you need to have a Full HD TV. And those things aren’t cheap. That’s why Samsung are giving away one of their BD-P1500 Blu-ray players with the purchase of selected Samsung TVs. That way, you get both Blu-ray player and TV at the same time.
Of course, you’ll still need to fork out the coin for the actual Blu-ray discs (hint: start with Iron Man – It’s frickin’ awesome!), and there’s a $30 “postage, handling and administration” fee (so it’s not really free), but you get something worth $500 for next to nothing, so stop your whinging.
The full list of eligible Samsung TVs is below the fold. The offer is valid up until December 24.
A truly bizarre day to announce a new notebook, Dell’s Inspiron Mini 12 is officially the most gargantuan netbook on the block. I wasn’t exactly blown away by it when I scoped it briefly a couple months ago, but Laptop was sufficiently impressed in its more in-depth hands on to compare it to the MacBook Air and Voodoo Envy—but you know, 5mm thicker, more ports and you know, a thousand dollars cheaper at only $US599.
AU: The Aussie dollar strikes again – Locally we’re looking at $999. And if you want to know how it really handles, David Flynn (the netbook maestro) got his hands on it for an exclusive review over at APC Mag.
