Author: Daniel Sung
Ofcom okays wireless HD for UK TVs
Goodbye expensive HDMI cables, hello even more expensive TVs. Ofcom has agreed to free up some of the UK electromagentic spectrum to allow us to stream high definition content wirelessly in our homes.
What this means for you and I is that we’ll no longer have to have cables between our TVs and BD players/set top boxes. Instead there’ll be really expense transmitters and receivers buried in our already expensive hardware and, although I’m not willing to pay to rid my house of a few short ties, I do like the idea of streaming downloaded HD content straight from my PC. Plus any system that allows me to use the Asus Keyboard would make me a very happy mangeek. Oh, and just in case you’re worried, there’s no compression involved.
What I like best about this story, though, is how Ofcom has done it. They’ve basically just made an announcement and then said they’ll free up the small 57GHz-66GHz part of the spectrum by the end of the week. Seems pretty quick. I wonder if I could get myself a couple of GHz of airwave real estate? Sounds like Ofcom might have some down the back of the sofa.
(via Digital Spy)
RUMOUR: T-Mobile UK to sell iPhone 3G
Could it be true? Do we want it to be true? Is T-Mobile really in negotiations with Apple to break O2’s exclusivity on the Jesus Phone? In truth, I don’t know, but a report on the Register says that’s what’s agoin’ on.
Now, bear in mind that this would only be a deal to stock the iPhone 3G and not the 3GS which only arrived a few weeks back. That’s still staying with O2 only but I have heard some time ago that the deal between them and Apple is to run out in the next couple of years; 2011, I believe it was.
The story goes that T-Mobile is keen to climb the UK mobile provider ranks from its current fourth spot and prove to the Deutsche Telekom bosses that it’s worth keeping. Stocking the iPhone would certainly be an interesting way of doing that, providing that the UK market isn’t already saturated with them. The deal would be attractive to Apple who currently rely on network subsidies to keep the cost of the iPhone as low as possible.
Naturally, all parties have refused to comment on the matter apart from T-Mobile who called the report “merely speculation”. It may well be but I thought you’d better hear it just in case there’s a kernel of truth within. Wouldn’t want to surprise you all with an announcement like that out of the blue.
So, let’s say it does happen. Good thing? Would you go for a 3G over a 3GS? Would it make any difference if it was the same price as on O2? And do you think it could spark a mini price war if not?
(via Brand Republic)
RUMOUR: Samsung B7620 Georgio Armani 2 mobile phone
Before you get too excited, this picture does not in any way relate to the Samsung B7620 which is now widely expected to be the second luxury Georgio Armani mobile phone.
It’s based on the Omnia Pro and will run Windows Mob…zzzzzzz..sorry, Window Mobile 6.1 Pro (possibly later 6.5) on a 800MHz processor. It’ll have Stereo FM Radio with RDS, Wi-Fi, A-GPS and Bluetooth as well as a host of office software and multimedia editing options but somehow I doubt that’s the reason people will be buying a designer label phone.
There’s support for all sorts of codecs in the shape of MP3, WAV, AAC+, WMA, DivX, XviD, MPEG4, H.263 and H.264, and there’s even talk of a slide-out QWERTY. Pretty high spec all things considered.
No word on whether it’s actually going to make it to market this time around but Samsung would look a bit silly if it didn’t happen twice.
(via Samsung Hub)
Sony Walkman x2! B Series & E Series MP3 players
The Sony Walkman B140 is very nearly a true MP3 player, except it plays WMA files as well. There’s no poncey video screen on this 26g device, just a 3-line LCD that tells you what music’s playing. What it does do, though, it appears to do very well.
It takes just 3 minutes of USB charging to get 90 minutes of listening time but, if you’re not in any hurry, it’ll offer 18 hours of playback after a 70 min’s wait. They come in 2GB and 4GB models, in pink, orange, red and black, and even with an FM radio too.
Features-wise there’s a very early 90s sounding Bass Boost but, best of all, I’m just glad to see small MP3 players sticking to the USB roots for both charging and music transfers. Cables are so two Tuesday’s ago.
The Sony Walkman E440 is a slightly larger creature with much more to play with and back. It comes in 4GB, 8GB and 16GB sizes and adds H.264, MPEG-4 and WMV video codecs to the party which you can watch on the 2-inch QVGA LCD. A full recharge takes 2 hours and offers 30 back in music or 6 in video. There is a 45 minute 80% quick charge but, frankly, that’s not that quick.
Black and red are the colour choices, as you can see in the rather nice image below, and this 54g player has a five-band EQ along with a volume normaliser which makes sure your tracks are all at the same level. There’s also some sound technologies in the shape of Clear Stereo and Clear Bass to control sound leakage and low-end frequency distortion respectively.
Sadly, I can’t tell you how much they’ll cost. For some legal reasons, to which I’m not sure I wish to hear the explanation, Sony is no longer allowed to give out its RRPs. However, I’m expecting around the £69 mark for the B160 and maybe £80/90 for the E series. Just a guess. We’ll find out when they pop up in stores in the next couple of weeks.
Sony Press Release
Best Buy requiring job applicants to have 250 Twitter followers
US stack ’em high, sell e’m cheap tech mega store Best Buy recently put out a job ad with a difference. Applicants for the role of “senior manager – emerging media marketing” were required to have two years plus of mobile media experience, one year plus of blogging experience, a bachelors degree and 250 Twitter followers.
Before you start applying – popular web 2.0 people that you are – the position has already been filled, but it’s certainly a very interesting ask in this day and age. For a senior social media manager, I’d say it was probably a far enough demonstration of an experience and understanding of the most important social app of the moment. Besides, the head honcho of Best Buy, Brian Dunn, has 1,679 followers himself.
Even if you’re not in marketing – if, perhaps, a journalist – then one might consider it equally important. It’s rather like a contacts list. Essentially, how many eyes can you attract to whatever it is that you do. How many people can you draw to the work that your company does?
So, is this something that we’re going to start putting on our CVs? Is that how people should be viewing Twitter? What do you reckon? Let me know in the comments below. You can also boast about how many followers you do/do not have.
(via Brand Republic)
Windows 7 for pre-order tomorrow from £49.99
Anyone planning to buy themselves a copy of Windows 7 needs to be on their mark at midnight tonight. From 12:01am on Wednesday 15th July, you can pre-order a copy of Windows 7 Home Premium for £49.99 or Windows 7 Professional £99.99 saving yourself up to £120.
They haven’t said how many cheaper copies there’ll be but have quoted that “stocks are limited”. So, with RRP set at £149.99 and £219.99, the smart move is to get in fast.
If you don’t fancy it, there’s probably still time to download a free copy of the Windows 7 RC and that’ll last you a year before you have to do something about getting a new one. Otherwise, get yourself over to the Windows 7 pre-order site tonight or to any of their UK partners below is stocks run thin.
Windows 7 pre-order sites UK
Amazon
Currys
Dixons
Micro Anvika
PC World
Play.com
Tesco
Microsoft
Samsung PL70, PL55 & ES17 – user friendly digital cameras
The Samsung PL series is all about making digital photography fun, easy and fairly cheap, and what the Korean tech overlord has done today is to add on a little functionality to that list.
PL70
The PL70 comes with a 12.2-megapixel sensor, capturing stills and 720p HD video through a wide-angle 28mm lens with 5x optical zoom and displaying them for your pleasure on the 3-inch, 230K colour, LCD screen on the back. It measures 95.8mm × 59.5mm × 23.9mm, comes in black, silver, red or pink and gives you 11 scene modes to play with as well as an intelligent auto mode that will make the choice for you.
Naturally, there’s image stabilisation, whether you’re in optical or digital zoom modes, and it comes with all the usual beauty shot, smile shot, face detection, blink detection and self portrait modes that most good compacts have these days to help you get the results you’re after. A very reasonable £199 from August.
PL55
Essentially the same beast as its bigger brother here but no HD video shooting mode. You can still capture moving footage but only in 640 x 480 MPEGS rather than the H.264 encoding on the PL70.
That brings the price down to £149 but you also switch to a standard, non-wide, 35mm lens and a smaller 2.7-inch LCD and I’m not sure that’s worth the saving. However, if you are on a budget, you can pick up this 97mm x 59mm x 24.5mm model in either black, silver, red or blue from next month.
ES17
The baby of today’s three is the £89 Samsung ES17. Just face detection and beauty shot to play with but a reasonable enough 12.2-megapixel sensor and 3x optical zoom. There’s still image stabilisation, not that you’ll really need it at that magnification, and although you’ll get more functionality on a cameraphone these days, they ES17 will probably still give you a better picture. You get what you pay for.
Microsoft to launch free music streaming service in July
Yesterday was a big day for Microsoft. Office 2010 went into trials, they announced a suite of free cloud based applications to rival Google Docs, Zoho et al and the sneaky one that no one was expecting was the launch of a music streaming service to take on Spotify too. I’m surprised they didn’t launch their own social networks to go after Twitter and Facebook.
It’s not clear, as yet, as to how large the catalogue will be or quite how many ads, if any at all, we’ll have to put up with. What has been indicated in an interview with the Telegraph is that you’ll also be able to pay to download the tracks, much like 7Digital do for Spotify, and that the service will link in with the Xbox 360.
They’ll be more details within days, no doubt, as the service is set to launch by the end of the month. Now, why do I have a nagging feeling that Microsoft are going to throttle the whole operation somehow and actually make it rubbish?
Samsung Flips out the Full HD HMX-U10 pocket camcorder
Pocket camcorders are all the rage and the best way to blow away the market leader, Flip, is by introducing a 1080p version of what they do so well. The Samsung HMX-U10 is a Full HD shooting, 10-megapixel stills capturing, 2-inch LCD sporting chunk of loveliness.
It measures a very comparable 56mm x 103mm x 15.5mm and weighs in at the all important sub-100g category – 95g to be exact. There’s no mention of a zoom, so, presumably, you’re getting a tiny bit of the digital variety at best but at least they’ve stuck in a decent 1/2.3 inch CMOS image sensor.
It appears to have a much more adult design than the competition but no sign of the nice, neat flip out USB-type feature and I’ve a feeling you’ll have to stick with cables on this one. It’s out from September and will doubtless go down a storm.
Better pictures and prices when Samsung pull themselves together
Samsung
Flip Mino HD review:
Samsung intros two SMX HD upscaling camcorders
Why bother with fancy, expensive storage sucking HD camcorders when you can record in standard definition and upscale in playback through an HDMI cable? That’s Samsung’s philosophy with the release of two flash memory camcorders, the SMX-K40 and SMX-K44.
The two sport healthy sounding 52x zoom Schneider-Kruznach lenses that you can tweak out to 65x if you’re happy to use the digital intelli-zoom which is designed to hold on to some of that quality that’s usually lost to pixelation. Then shoot up to 10 hours and 20 minutes on the 16GB SSD, if using the SMX-K44, or however much you like if you’ve got the SMX-K40 with its zero onboard storage and gaping SD/SDHC card slot.
Naturally, there’s image stabilisation so that you can actually hold the picture steady at maximum zoom and there’s even a YouTube button so that you can flaunt share you vids, you generous soul, you.
Both are out next month which is August 2009 in case you’re reading in the future. If you do happen to be in the future then please tell us what it’s all like. Do we have flying cars yet, do hover boards exist and any of the next few years Grand National winners would be most helpful.
Better pictures and prices when Samsung pull themselves together
Samsung
