Archive for the 'Technology' Category

New Slimmer Samsung BD-UP5500 Blu-ray/HD DVD Combo Player

Samsung BD-UP5500 Blu-ray/HD DVD combo player

Samsung has announced its BD-UP5500 Blu-ray/HD DVD combo player at a press conference held at CES 2008 in Las Vegas.

The Samsung dual format BD-UP5500 supports both the Blu-ray and HD DVD formats. Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby TrueHD, and DTS-HD soundtracks playback are supported as well. Other features include standard DVDs to full-on 1080p upconversion and out-of-the-box Blu-ray profile 1.1 support (which allows for picture-in-picture commentaries on newer Blu-ray discs), an Ethernet port new firmware downloads and accessing online content, and HQV processing for enhancing HD and SD video.

The samsung BD-UP5500 Duo HD player will be available in the second-half of 2008 for about $599.

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SanDisk USB Flash Drives to provide automatic Web storage

Cruzer_Titanium_Plus_130 SanDisk has announced the Cruzer(R) Titanium Plus, a USB flash drive offering  automatic online backup for every file copied to the drive. The Cruzer Titanium Plus has a capacity of four gigabytes (GB) and is the first SanDisk flash memory device to offer online backup.

The BeInSync backup requires an initial registration. When the drive is plugged in and the user is online data will sync automatically with an online storage account. BeInSync uses Amazon’s S3 storage service provided by Amazon Web Services. BeInSync encrypts all files during transmission from Cruzer Titanium Plus to Amazon’s servers to protect user’s data.

Cruzer Titanium Plus will be available in March, with a manufacturer’s suggested retail prices of $59.99. The online backup service requires Windows 2000 (SP4), Windows XP or Windows Vista. After six months of free service, online backup costs $29.99 per year (credit card required).

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Nintendo DS - TV

dstv.jpg Japan Has Something We Dont!

Thats right! The DS-TV is an antenna that attaches onto your DS and allows for reception of television signals. The main screen becomes the viewing area and the touchscreen below handles changing channels and other features.

The DS-TV costs $62.70 US and is compatible with the current DS and DS lite. A Nintendo spokesperson told GameSpot that it currently had no plans to bring DS TV to other regions

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Samsung’s Flash Memory Laptop

Solid State Memory Laptop

At the Cebit technology fair in Germany, Samsung unvieled plans for a laptop using solid state flash memory and eliminating a hard drive. The laptop has 32GB of flash memory. The newer memory chips are smaller in size and occupy the same space as traditional 1.8″ disk-drives.

Whats The Advantage?

  1. Speed! - The new chips allow data to be reached much faster, the prototype laptop that Samsung showed off was able to boot in 18 seconds versus 31 seconds for the laptop with a regular hard disk drive. This is a great stride in speed almost 50% as fast as traditional hard disks.
  2. Reliability & Portability - Solid state memory can handle a beating, This is the same technology used in MP3 players that allows you to smack them around without skipping. This makes your data safer. Solid state memory is also much lighter than hard disks. This will open up all sorts of opportunity’s for new super light portable laptops.

The Real Problem Here?

Although there are many advantages to this new technology the only major downside is the cost. One of these 32GB chips cost’s almost 900$ making it hard to have a large amount of storage space in any medium. But technology prices are always falling so in a few years this technology will start popping up on a lap near you.

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Black Friday Nintendo Releases

zeldads.jpgnintendogs.jpg

Today Nintendo had 2 Black Friday product releases, Both were packages of the Nintendo DS Lite. The first is a gold DS bundled with Zelda: Phantom Hourglass. The gold DS has a triforce symbol engraved on the bottom right portion of the cover. The next release is a pink DS bundled with Nintendogs. The pink DS has a paw etched on the front cover.

Both releases were given to vendors allowing them to set their own prices in the spirit of Black Friday.

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