You actually know what some of the crazy doodles on the side of an HDTV means when it comes to video--720p, 1080i, 1080p. Congrats, you're ahead of most people, like my mother. But do you understand the alphabet soup of audio, the confounding constellation of logos on your Blu-ray player's box? While there are basically two rival home-theatre audio encoders--Dolby and DTS--they each have several different quality levels and options for different scenarios. Yeah, it's a lot to keep up with, and it annoys us too. So we asked Dolby and DTS to put down their guns for a sec and help us sort it out.

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It's the third birthday of Sony Ericsson's Walkman phone label, and to celebrate it's launching three new music-based mobile phones. The W302 and W902 (left, centre in the image) are both candybar handsets, with the 302 having an FM radio, and 2-megapixel cam, and the 902 with a 5-megapixel cam and apparently matching the high audio quality of the W980 phone. The W595 is a slide phone with built-in stereo speakers so users can "share sounds with their friends" (read: annoy passers-by with irritating tunes) but it also has twin jacks so you can share music privately. All four phones are quad-band GSM, have "shake control," come in a selection of colours and will hit the streets at the end of the year. Press release below, which also details some new accessories like wireless portable speakers.

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Got a lot of money to spend and a fetish for obsolete technology? The Certus Turntable by Teres Audio will play whatever records you still own for the hefty price of between US$13,900 and US$25,500. For the annual wage of a migrant farmer, you get a "magnetic damped multi-phase synchronous drive system to directly drive a massive, heavily damped brass and hardwood platter"—supposedly some kind of technology that makes music sound amazing. Right. Call me a plebeian, but I think I'll stick with some lossless audio format and my iPod, thanks. [Born Rich]

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We love open source hardware, especially when it can throw some MIDI flange and fade into your party like the Aurora--a dual-channel, USB-powered DJ mixer. All the schematics, bills of materials and source code can be nabbed for free online, or you can have one built and shipped. And it can pull off a pretty mean LED lightshow...

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So you got yourself a fancy new stereo for your car. It's all well and good while you're driving, but when you're out of the car you know damn well that it's a magnet for ne'er-do-wells who are just itching to take a crowbar to your window and forcibly remove your fancy apparatus from your dash. What to do? Simple: disguise it with a really crappy looking stereo faceplate, complete with a half a cassette sticking out.

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The Gadget: Aerielle's i2i Stream allows users to share audio from any source between two or more i2i devices using a wireless 2.4 GHz frequency. Just plug in a set of headphones and listen to the music your friends are broadcasting on their i2i Streams (up to 7 audio sources).

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This image of the Samsung U4 MP3 player appeared on Samsung's Korea site over the weekend, promising "freedom from monotony." And while there are no hard specs surrounding this rendering except that it's "coming soong," it will likely pick up where the Samsung U3 left off, which is to say it wants the iPod Shuffle's head. [YEPP via GenerationMP3 via AnythingButiPod]

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Some information has leaked out about Samsung's upcoming M3510 music-player mobile phone, and it looks like it'll have some accelerometer-driven control built-in. A bit like the ShakeSMS app for Nokia phones and the Sansa Shake MP3 player, the M3510 will let you shake it in different directions and turn it around to control the music player and other apps. Other than that it's a 1cm deep candybar, with 2-inch screen, 2-megapixel camera and FM radio, and it'll cost somewhere between US$310 and US$390 when it's released. [Unwiredview]

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Weird... but I kinda want to hear more. That's roughly how I'd describe the sound output of the Thingamakit, a strange "noise monster" DIY synthesiser. I like the fact that it uses some sort of optical feedback: adjusting those tentacles affects how the sounds are generated, which then gets fed back to the LEDs in the tentacles. So it's a pleasingly tactile gizmo, and if you're really a strange-noise-machine-ophile, you'll also appreciate that you can buy it as a kit from maker Bleep Labs. [Bleep Labs via Hackaday]

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This transparent, glowing USB speaker is either missing one glowing arm to make it look like a flux capacitor, or has one arm too many to be the light on top of the TARDIS. It's weird. But if you're into EL-wire PC case modding, then I suppose this blue LED-lit USB speaker from Brando might be up your street. Measuring 15cm long, it takes power from USB, has an audio-in socket and costs US$22. [Brando]

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