Microsoft's much-lauded Zune HD is finally officially coming the UK.

The Zune has had a turblent life so far but has still managed to gain a loyal following, and not without reason the Zune HD is to come sporting a few key features certain other i-prefixed portable media players do not, chief among which is its ability to play 720p HD video over HDMI. Which, as your gasps correctly point out, is awesome.

But the hardware is only as good as the software that's supporting it. And the last Zune desktop software was crap, and it was released on Windows Vista, which was crap, and Marketplace, Microsoft's iTune equivilent was a lumpy over-priced experience, at best you'd probably call it crap.

But we have hope. With Marketplace debuting on Xbox Live this autumn Microsoft look set for a Christmas release, which would be nice.

But here's the most important thing: Will it ever out-sexy the iPod touch? Will Microsoft ever be able to make Marketplace as appealing an ecosystem for app developers? The big thing the iPod touch has going for it is iOS, and Microsoft isn't so much behind in its mobile OS development, rather it's in another era.

Apple is flying around in hover boots and Microsoft is still fiddling around with a bleeding harpsichords. And are Apple going to let their momentum slip? No. You're right, the answer is absolutely not.

Samsung have revealed details of a snazzy new personal media player, the YP-Q3.

Featuring wide-ranging file format support, including playback of H.264 and XviD videos and OGG and MP3 songs, it'll be more-or less compatible with anything you throw at it. It's also packing in an FM tuner if you'd rather someone else directs your listening habits.

Of course the elephant in the room is tomorrow's Apple music launch, which many are expecting to be a brand new iPod Nano model, complete with touchscreen. It's going to be no mean feat for Samsung to match the buzz surrounding what is expected to be yet another Apple circus.

The YP-Q3 will be out later in the year. No word on pricing or release date yet, probably as Samsung are looking to undercut the competition considerably.

Via: Samsung Hub

Hmm, not so sure about this lot, Sony. I've always quietly coveted your S640 and S740 S-Series Walkmans with their 2-inch LCDs, 720x480 TV-out and quality MDR-EX300SL earbuds with noise cancellation tech.

But these Japan-only Mickey and Minnie mouse engraved monstrosities look like the sort of knock-off gear I'd imagine Del Boy to be peddling out the back of his Robin Reliant. Were Del Boy an Akihabara tech-dealer with a Robin Reliant, that is.

One for mental Disney die-hards only then...

Via: Engadget

While we sit patiently waiting for the Zune HD to hit our shores, it looks like Philips are about to sneak around the back and pop a sweet 720p outputting PMP under our noses.

The old Muse has undergone a bit of a facelift. Silver is in and black is out, with a 3.2 inch touchscreen, SD card slot and HDMI output meaning you can get 720p quality video on your flat screen from just this tiny device alone.

Also getting a bit of an update is the Philips Cam. A small, still-and-video camera packing MP3 player, this 8GB PMP looks to go head-to-head with the iPod Nano.

US readers can pick up the new Muse for $149.99 (around £92), with the Philips Cam weighing in at $99.99 (£60).

With a blatant gap in the market left by the Zune HD, will Philips capitalise and send the Muse PMP in the UK's direction? It seems a missed opportunity not to.

Via: dapreview

The Consumer Electronics show, the behemoth of tech, the Valhalla of gadgetry, has come and gone for yet another year. But this time, rather than arriving with a bang, it slinked into sight with something more like a whimper.

CES 2010 had really had the wind knocked out of it before it had even got into the ring this year. All eyes were already on Apple and their rumoured Tablet in the run up to the event, despite the fact that Apple are traditionally a no-show at CES, instead planning their own top-secret unveiling at the end of January. Likewise, Google delivered a sucker-punch in the shape of the Nexus One, their flagship handset revealed at their own event on the eve of CES 2010's opening.

To make matter's worse, Microsoft's opening keynote speech (delivered by walking personality drain Steve Ballmer) was pretty darn dull. First a power cut, then a load of waffle on the 2 month old Windows 7, Ballmer hardly seemed to be trying to keep our attention. Though the Christmas release date for Project Natal was welcome news, it revealed nothing new about the device, whilst the partnership with Hewlett Packard for the new Slate device seemed merely like a case of keeping-up with the Joneses. Or should that be the Jobs-es?

But the Las Vegas event wasn't without its highlights. Far from it in fact. Maybe it's the recession, or the generally pocket-pinching mood in the air these days, but for once the most sought after tech wasn't in the realms of dreamy aspiration, but was actually fairly affordable.

Take for instance the brand new 3D TVs on show, of which the Sony BRAVIA XBR-52HX900 (video above, courtesy of Ashley) was the pick of the litter. Finally shaping up to the standards set by its cinema siblings, company reps promised that the average 3D TV will cost little more than a top-end Full HD set. Skype and video calling in many TV sets too will help turn your living room into somewhere the Jetsons could only dream of.

E-readers are also looking to be both big and affordable in 2010. As a comic book fanatic I'd have liked to have seen more attempts at a colour screened e-reader (I'm not including the MSI offering, which is really just a dual-touch screened PC, super-cool as it is). Plastic Logic's Que Pro e-reader looked great though, with a massive, durable screen, and was far lighter than the hundreds of books you'd be able to store on the tabloid-sized device.

There were, of course, tablets aplenty. The dual-booting Viliv P3 may be an underdog in the category, but seemed way more exciting than Microsoft's offering. The offer of both Windows and Android on the same device showed a respect for user choice not often seen in the back-slapping world of consumer tech.

There was still time for fun too. The Parrot AR Drone Quadricopter was fun and fresh, combining real-world toys with augmented reality controls. A little less high-tech but full of retro-chic was the Lasonic i931 iPhone dock/ghetto blaster mash-up. Odd's on its at the top of Flava Flav's Christmas list. And there was still some time for the weird and the plain old dumb, too.

Though less prevalent than other years, there were some great examples of brand new tech on show that were genuinely exciting. A real head-turner and my favourite item of the show was the Light Blue Optic Light Touch. Using a pico projection engine and a touch sensitive sensor, it'll turn any flat surface into a touchscreen. It works ridiculously well despite still being in the development stages, and has almost unlimited potential.

Some detractors say that, recession or not, CES looks to be on its last legs. It's sad, but not unlikely, when you consider the audiences that companies like Apple and Google can command for just a single product launch. However, for emerging companies like Light Blue Optics CES is still vital to gain some exposure, not to mention the fact that such a prominent date in the calendar forces the tech giants to have made some significant, competitive advances in their gear, year-on-year.

So here's hoping the old dog's got a bit of life left in it yet. Hopefully next year will kick off the recessionary cobwebs and kick the show back into high-tech gear. It wouldn't take much to tempt us back to the City of Sin once more.

Click here for full CES 2010 pre-show, day one, day two and day three round-ups.

Another day, another Tech Digest CES 2010 round-up. Fancy Tweeting hands-free in your car or controlling your PC by breathing? Check today's top stories below and find out how.

Twitter coming to Ford cars
The digital equivalent of drink-driving?

Motorola announce Backflip Android Phone
Hinged smartphone is Motorola's big CES 2010 offering

Ion launch the iType full QWERTY keyboard add-on for the iPhone
Making the portable unwieldy

Vuzix demo Wrap 920AR Augmented Reality visor
Turning your trip to the shops into a scene out of Robocop

Zyxio's new breathing-based PC controller, the Sensawaft
Affordable accessibility gadget, perfect for disabled PC users

3D gaming headed to the Palm family
Apple isn't the only mobile now capable of some hardcore gaming action

Is the Viliv P3 the underdog tablet to look out?
Dual-booting tablet is looking very tasty indeed

Razer and Sixense bring motion gaming to the PC
But will it catch on within the incredibly competitive PC gaming peripheral market?

UK getting the Dell Mini 3i
Android phone hitting UK shores in the not-so-distant-future

Video- Armour Home Q2 Tilt Internet radio
Innovative and simple radio from Brit-based Armour

Video - "World's smallest Windows PC" the UMID M Book 1
It makes a gnat's bum look big. Well...not quite. But you get the idea

Video- Casio's Digital Art Frame
Making all those dodgy Facebook snaps look good

Video - The coolest retro iPhone hi-fi ever, Lasonic's i931
Bring 80's boom box street-chic bang up to date

Video - Toshiba's Cell TV that is controlled by hand gestures
Innovative tech, but it makes you look a bit of an idiot; not sure I want a work out in front of the telly

Video - Sony's BRAVIA XBR-52HX900 3D TV
Their flagship 3D set is a stunner

Video - Panasonic's 3D camera
Bet the adult-entertainment industry cant wait to get its mitts on this one

Click here for more CES 2010 coverage from Tech Digest

Tech Digest at CES is sponsored by Best Buy. For more CES stories and videos go here

With all the buzz sorrounding the HP Slate and the Dell Streak, this one almost fell under the radar. But the Viliv P3 tablet is shaping up to be a very impressive underdog.

First up, it's got a pretty impressive 3.7 inch AMOLED screen 32GB of storage and a 3.5mm audio jack.

But what's most intriguing is that the device, which runs Android by default, can dual boot Windows CE. Nice.

Looking like a super flexible, web-enabled piece of kit, it's certainly one to look out for when it launches in the US this summer.

Via: Electric Pig

Click here for more CES 2010 coverage from Tech Digest

Tech Digest at CES is sponsored by Best Buy. For more CES stories and videos go here

Sony's super-slim, super sexy NW-A845 Walkman has been wowing music lovers in Japan for some time now, and now Sony are finally unleashing the flagship PMP upon European audiences.

Measuring just 7.2mm thick, the music player features a 2.8 inch OLED screen and is bundled with a premium set of EX earphones.

Perhaps best of all, the NW-A845 has a mammoth 29 hour battery life, more than enough to work through an entire one of those Time Life "Sounds of the Sixties" box sets always advertised on the telly.

The NW-A845 will be hitting stores in February. No word on pricing yet, but we'll let you know as soon as we do.

Click here for more CES 2010 coverage from Tech Digest

TechDigest at CES is sponsored by Best Buy. For more CES stories and
videos go here.

ViewSonic has introduced two brand new palm-sized media players, the MovieBook VPD500 and VPD400. Capable of supporting a variety of file formats, they boast 4.3 inch and 5 inch TFT screens for portable entertainment.

Features include 800 x 480 LCD panels, 720p video output, 8Gb of built in memory and a micro SD card slot for memory expansion. The players are compatible with several audio and video formats, including AVI, RMVB, FLV, MP3, WMA and WAV, APE and FLAC.

Weighing as little as 134g (VPD400), the portable players are designed to fit in the palm of the hand. Viewsonic claims that the devices can play up to four hours of video content or fifteen hours of music (display off) with one charge. The ViewSonic MovieBook VPD400 and VPD500 will be available in October with estimated street prices of £105 and £115 respectively.

www.viewsonic.com

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Queston: When does a media tablet become a mini PC?
Answer: When it's an Archos 9.

Another year, another two inches and a Windows 7 platform for everyone's favourite PMP. The Archos 9 sounds more like a netbook with its Intel Atom Z515 800/1200Mz CPU, 1GB DDR3 RAM, 120GB HDD and other assorted capped up letters. In fact, it basically is, minus the keyboard.

Word has it that Microsoft is preparing for the launch of a Zune phone. Yes, we've heard these kinds of rumours and seen all sorts of mock ups before but this time it's slightly different.

Microsoft has apparently put the cat amongst agency pigeons by searching for an advertising team to work on something known as "Pink". Now on the one hand this could just be the colour scheme for Stevie B's next bathroom suite but sources say that it's most likely software for mobile phones.

Now it sits rather odd that The Soft would undermine Windows Mobile like that, despite what many consumers think about the platform, so it's not out of the question that Pink could in fact be a Zune phone unto itself.

What we do know for sure is that the ad agencies are in a frenzy trying to get the account and in one shape or another, it looks like decent gaming might just be coming to mobile phones by CES 2010.

(via PMP today)

If you're a fan of Archos' brand of MP3 and video players - and lots of people are - then you might moderately excited by the news that some pictures of new models have just leaked. Well, if you call 'being put up on Amazon' leaked.

The specs aren't anything to run through the streets, naked and screaming, about. There's 8GB capacity for the "2", MicroSD slot and 1.8" display. It's only .35 inches thick, though, and costs a similarly miniscule $60. I'd imagine that'll probably translate directly over to £50 to £60, especially as a 16GB version has hit Amazon DE for €68.

(via Engadget)

After Dan covered the Wave-Home multimedia communicator the other day, I did a little more digging, and found a bunch of other matching products that iRiver unveiled at CES.

I've always quietly been a fan of iRiver's design work. Their latest MP3 players look incredible, and these sleek new gadgets wouldn't be out of place in a documentary called "The home of 2100". Click the Wave-Home below to view the gallery.

iRiver (via Akihabaranews)

This beauty is the new Sony WALKMAN X range - featuring a 3" OLED touch screen to make videos look marginally better than they have ever looked before. Although they won't look very good when you've had your fingers all over the screen for six months.

The X1050 and X1060 both feature digital noise cancelling technology, FM tuners, the 3" 432x240 screen and come with 16 or 32GB of storage space. Here's a big photo of it, as it's rather pretty. That's not my music. That's someone else's music.

The WALKMAN X is even packed with a wi-fi chip and custom BBC iPlayer tool for watching telly wherever there's some wireless broadband to nick, plus it'll do YouTube and play MP4 videos, WMVs and H.264 material. Sony says you'll be able to have a WALKMAN X in "spring 2009" - and we think quite a few people will be taking it up on that offer.

There's more like this on our vast CES 2009 mega-page.

Samsung has launched something much less expensive at CES 2009 than everything of theirs mentioned so far. This is their take on the iPod touch known as the P3. See, it's like mp3 but without the m. Clever, huh? No, not really.

The P3 is 0.39" thick and comes with a familiar 3-inch WQVGA TFT-LCD touchscreen complete with haptic feedback which works all very nicely in 16:9 widescreen. No word on the exact file types it can handle - probably just about everything you own - but they'll be coming in 4GB, 8GB, 16GB and 32 GB sizes some time in the first half of the year.

Perhaps the most interesting feature is that it's Bluetooth enbaled and, should you be popular enough to receive telephone calls, you'll be able to speak through the P3's built-in mic while listening on your headphones. Price point will probably be the crucial factor in its success.

Step this way for more of the finest from CES 2009.

It's a bit of a day for portable players of one type or another and although the Samsung Yepp YP-P3 here is not quite as pulse-raising as the Maxian, it does make for interesting competition for the iPod Touch.

The previous model, the Yepp YP-P2 never made it to the UK but if Samsung is serious about taking on Apple you might think they'll give it a whirl this time around. We had rumours before about the electronic giant making an offer for SanDisk and a greater piece of the MP3 pie. This step up to a serious DAP is very much in line.

Well, well, well, what's this little sexy creature all about? I imagine that's what you're saying in your head right now as you feast your peepers on this, the Maxian M1T pocket PMP.

It's often hard to get excited about new portables these days. They all seem to be missing something. This, however, isn't. It basically seems to have everything you could possibly want. Ever.

Sony is preparing to jump on the touchable media player bandwagon, according to sources, with an all singing, all dancing, all touching PMP set to be unveiled at this coming January's Consumer Electronic Show tech binge.

The WALKMAN-badged player will, so some bloke on the internet told some other bloke on the internet, have a 3" OLED screen for super-nice colour reproduction and long enough battery life to watch series one of Billie Piper's Secret Diary of a Call Girl in one euphoric sitting, a custom embedded YouTube client that'll hook in automatically via any nearby wi-fi slot, plus a web browser - and more.

Or it could be a lie. That's a very real possibility. We've read lies before on the internet. We'll see. 2009's CES starts on January 8, and Tech Digest will be there to camcorder anything with an LED on it.

(Via Sony Insider)

Related posts: Sony Ericsson does Android | Bond's C902 review

The global gadget development arms race to see who can fit the most stuff into the smallest, whitest box has taken a dramatic turn today, thanks to this clever little everything-in-one miniature... digital... wi-fi... thing.

You can write on it, browse the internet on it, listen to music on it, take photos on it, watch films on it and, most importantly of all, get it out of your very smallest pocket or the change compartment of your wallet and impress people with it by showing them all of the above.

Dr William Maisel, a cardiologist at the Boston-based Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, caused heart-murmurs across the internet this weekend thanks to his claim that music player headphones could break pacemakers - and stop defibrillators restarting dodgy hearts.

It's all because of the magnets in headphones, which could, possibly, if held very close to them, make pacemakers and other "embedded" medical devices stop working.