Sony launches laptops for the HD generation

Sony’s latest notebooks come with a Vista-friendly 2GB of memory and Blu-ray optical drives for those that want to watch high definition films on their laptop.

The company is pushing the quality of the 15.4in screen used on the Vaio FZ series, an X-black LCD. Sony claims the widescreen display can produce vivid, life-like colours, and says this is the most appreciated aspect in customer feedback.

But, in case you don’t to watch your HD movies on a small screen, the laptop has an HDMI port, so that it can be connected to an HDTV. It can edit full HD video and play back the results in 1080p.

Inside the stylish case is an Intel dual core processor, up to a 200GB hard disk, up to 2GB of memory and Nvidia GeForce 8400M GT graphics.

Nokia goes green with full battery alerts

Green is big business right now, and the latest energy saving idea is actually quite a good one.

Many people don't realise that once their phone's battery has been fully charged - and even if it has been disconnected from the charger - the charger itself continues to use electricity if it is still plugged into the wall socket and switched on.

Nokia is trying to combat this by adding an alert to its phones that sounds an alarm and flashes a message on the screen warning 'Battery is full, please unplug the charger'.

Initially the feature is only on the 1200, 1208 and 1650 phone models, but if a success could be rolled out across the whole range.

DRM still the focus of online music and video

It looks like the video and music industries are standing firm over digital rights management (DRM) , the controversial copy protection system they employ to protect their content.

Despite EMI and Apple reaching agreement to sell records free of DRM, albeit at a slight premium, others are unlikely to follow suite. The EMI deal gave Apple access to a rich catalogue of music to sell over iTunes. The stumbling block for EMI was in part that Apple refuses to license Fairplay copy protection system third parties, meaning that anyone buying music over iTunes is restricted on the devices it can then be played on.

This week at Internet World in London, Channel 4 reiterated that it would continue blocking Mac users from using its 4OD video on demand service until DRM issues with Apple are sorted out. The BBC is taking the same position with its new online TV service.

A new study by Strategy Analytics, called 'A Roadmap for DRM: Business Impact for Content Owners and Technology Vendors', says after extensively interviewing senior executives in the media, entertainment and consumer electronics industries, it believes DRM "will still play a critical role in the emergence of the digital marketplace".

But, it warns that DRM must "sink into the background" so that consumer choice can be broadened and the industry open up new revenue streams.

"In the right form, DRM can help expand the size of the music and video markets," said Martin Olausson, director of the Strategy Analytics Digital Media Strategies service. "Ultimately, DRM is needed to harness the commercial value of the `rip, mix, burn and share' culture".

Andrew Currah, the report's author, added: "It is time to shift the focus of the debate over DRM beyond the misleading polarity of 'corporations' versus 'consumers'. Ultimately this is a commercial rather than a technological problem. In the coming years DRM will be redefined and fine-tuned - not eradicated completely, as many have suggested."

The problem that TV broadcasters face is that most programmes are put online for download, giving those prepared to access the content illegally (in the eyes of the authorities) a very easy means of downloading the latest US blockbusters before they appear in the UK. The downloads are DRM free, generally of good quality and with a media streamer, can be enjoyed on a TV rather than the computer screen.

Channel 4 said it had learned from the mistakes of the music industry in its approach to TV online. Rod Henwood, new business director at the broadcaster said it would not waste time chasing pirates or those that illegally download programmes over the Internet, instead focusing on fine-tuning its offering.

And that's the real solution to DRM. Content providers have to make their offerings complete, easy to use and if not freely available, then at very low cost. That will mean in future that UK online broadcasters will need to think about signing deals with US programme makers to show a new series in Britain as soon as it shown in America.

Henwood told delegates at Internet World that Channel 4 was not afraid of cannibalisation. It's going to have to prove that over the coming few years if it wants to attract the Torrent generation over to its legal offerings.

Altec Lansing releases 'large screen' iPod system

Altec Lansing is bringing out a compact iPod video entertainment system that will play music, videos or DVDs - provided you have the kit that plugs into it.

The portable InMotion iMV712 is aimed at anyone that wants to watch video on a screen larger than the inbuilt iPod screen.

It has an 8.5-inch high resolution LCD screen surrounded by speakers, which Altec Lansing claims gives concert-like sound. It uses a four-inch subwoofer the company says its SFX (Stereo Field Expander) boosts the sound, giving the user the impression that the speakers are further apart than they actually are.

It's comes with an iPod dock, but other mp3 or media players can be plugged into it using the Aux jack. Camcorders or DVD players can be plugged in via an RCA connector, and it comes with a wireless remote.

“As the popularity of Internet-based video and digital music skyrockets, consumers want new iPod accessory products that amplify the entire entertainment experience,” said Robert Heiblim, Altec Lansing’s senior vice president of sales and marketing.

Review: USRobotics Cordless Skype Dual Phone

USRobotics Cordless Skype phone is an ergonomic handset with a base station that also connects to your landline, allowing you to make both free internet and traditional calls.

It was extremely easy to set up, with instructions that even an idiot couldn’t get wrong. It took little effort to get used to the menus, and call clarity was good.

Although your network will play a part in the quality of the call, USRobotics badges this phone as echo-free and that was certainly the case during calls I made in my tests of the phone for Personal Computer World.

On the downside, the base station connects to your PC via USB, so if your computer isn’t on, the Skype element of the phone won’t work. Also, the base station and charger are separate, rather than wrapped into the same unit.

And, the biggy of course – it doesn’t (at the time of writing) work with Microsoft Vista, which has now been out for three months. This is a poor oversight by the company and although it said a driver was in development, it gave no release date.

At £80, this is not an expensive option for regular Skype users, particularly those that make or receive a lot of SkypeIn and SkypeOut calls. But it is a shame that the Cordless Skype Dual Phone doesn’t work with Vista, although it is fine on XP and Windows 2000 machines.

PCW rating: 4/5
Gadget Chic rating: 7/10

Full review: This is a summary of my review of the USRobotics Cordless Skype Dual Phone, written first for Personal Computer World.

Colourific beetle holds the key to LCD TVs

There's an interesting story in The Times today about how scientists believe a beetle could help shape the future of flat screen TVs, mobile phones and laptops.

Even though the beetle is actually a mixture of red, yellow and green, laid out in a honeycomb pattern, when looked at by a human eye it appears green.

The secret is in the structure of the shell. The beetle is made up of fibres similar to those that form the human fingernail. These fibres channel lightwaves, which are absorbed by the beetle, "except for very specific shades of red, green and yellow, which they reflect".

Sharon Jewell, of the University of Exeter, told The Times that the beetle’s shell will provide clues to improve LEDs so they produce purer light. “If we can mimic the method used by the beetle and use it in LCDs we can produce high quality, intense colour without the same need for a power supply,” she said.

If scientists can combine this with technology such as OLED (used for the super-thin Sony TVs above), then it would allow manufacturers to build extremely bright, highly energy efficient TVs in the future.

She has since found five more beetles with the same reflective powers, all of them appearing green to humans.

Full story: Beetle that could colour the future of TV

Mobile TV hampered by competing standards

There's been a lot of debate about whether or not people want to watch TV on their mobile phones, but research firm Strategy Analytics is warning that the fragmentation of standards is hampering progress.

While Europe pushes the DVB-H (Digital Video Broadcasting - Handheld) standard, others are being developed elsewhere in the world. In the US, Qualcomm is working on the MediaFlo standard. The company also make the CDMA chipsets used in mobile phones around the world, so its influence is considerable.

Speaking about the findings in its report, rather stodgily called 'Enabling Technologies: Entertainment At Heart Of OEMs Brand & Profit Strategies', Chris Ambrosio, director of Wireless Practice at Strategy Analytics, said: "These regulatory delays, combined with the success of ISDB-T in Japan, the momentum of DMB services in Korea, the commitment of the two largest operators in the US to using MediaFlo, and the rising chorus of support for MBMS in 3GPP2 will create a much more fragmented mid-term for mobile TV adoption globally."

Mobile TV services are springing up now in the UK. Vodafone was quick to launch its service in late 2005, Virgin came out with its Lobster mobile TV phone in Q4 2006, while more recently 3 released its X-Series service.

Among its multimedia services, the latter streams internet TV to the handset and allows owners to access and watch their home TV via Sling Media's Slingbox. The Slingbox is a nifty device which gives you complete control of your home TV from anywhere in the world, as long as you have an internet connection and a device to use it on - usually a computer, but in this case a Nokia handset.

I tested the service in February and at first it was great to access the TV via 3G. But the thrill soon waned and by the time 3 asked for the return of the handset it was sitting unused, so I didn't feel the loss.

I still think there's a market for TV to mobile handsets, but standards are not the only barrier. There's still the emotional barrier of convincing people to watch TV on the tiny screen, and the need for better services before it can really appeal to consumers. And of course, every time I've tested a mobile TV service it has caned the battery life, which won't please owners who find their handset is drained of life after only a couple of hours of TV use.

Dell spins towards a solid state future

Dell is shedding more weight from two of its Latitudes laptops by replacing their hard disks with solid state drives (SSD).

It's using SanDisk's 32GB SSD, flash memory that uses no moving parts, unlike traditional hard disks used in computers. The helps make the laptop lighter, more reliable and in theory should improve battery life a bit because the notebook will require less time with the fans spinning to cool the unit. The move comes hot on the heels of Sony making a similar announcement for its ultra-portable laptops.

Dell said it "sees potential for flash-based drives" because they enable better reliability, increased performance and noise reduction. It claimed that solid state drives are more reliable than traditional hard disks and so less prone to failure. Hard disks have spinning discs and read/write heads, which can fail.

The downside is current capacities are small, having only recently reached 32GB, and they are expensive. The SSD adds $549 to the cost of the D420 and D620 Latitudes, which will initially be available in the US, with Europe to follow later. While some laptops come with only 40GB hard disks - making the solid state drive only a tiny drop in capacity - this is still low-end and would be considered too small by many potential buyers.

In January, SanDisk has said that it can double the capacity of its SSDs within a year, which brings it to a more realistic size for a laptop. So towards the end of this year, we could start seeing laptops using 64GB solid state drives, and the beginning of the end for traditional hard disks in not just laptops but portable media players as well.

Sony claims world's lightest HD camcorder

Sony is adding two camcorders to its range; one it claims is the world’s smallest, lightest high definition camcorder, while the other is a 100GB hard disc drive model.

The Handycam HDR-CX6EK uses its proprietary Memory Stick for storing images and video – it has no internal hard disk or space for a tape or DVD. While this contributes to its small size and weight of only 370g (without battery), it does mean you’ll need a steady supply of high capacity Memory Sticks, especially if shooting in storage hungry HD.

It shoots video in 1080i and can take still photos at a resolution of 6.1megapixels. You can take 4megapixel photos while it is in Dual Rec mode, which means you can capture both video and stills at the same time. It has a Carl Zeiss Vario-Sonnar T* lens with a 10x optical zoom, Super SteadyShot optical image stabilisation to prevent handshake at low light levels and a 2.7in touchscreen widescreen LCD.

Video is recorded using AVCHD (Advanced Video Codec High Definition) , a format developed by Sony and Panasonic. AVCHD uses the Mpeg-4 AVC video codec, so can apply more compression to captured images while still keeping the quality, which means it uses less space on the Memory Stick when recording.

The HDR-CX6EK comes out in July and there was no indication of price. But you’ll need to factor in the cost of buying expensive (compared to DVD or tape) Memory Sticks. An 8GB Memory Stick Duo Pro costs around £110 upwards, and that in standard definition LP mode this holds just under three hours. Set the mode to HD and it will be closer to an hour, so you’ll need to own several if your plan is to use it on holiday or out and about.

The second camcorder, the HDR-SR8E comes with a whopping (for a camcorder) 100GB internal hard disk, allowing for up to 38 hours of recording – more than enough to bore even your closest friend post-holiday.

Again, its HD (so encourage friends to use this mode on holiday; they’ll be able to record a lot less footage). Other HDD camcorders in the HDR range include the 40GB SR5E and 60GB SR7E (pictured).

The range shares many features with the HDR-CX6EK, including AVCHD compression, lens, zoom, while the SR7E and 8E also have the image stabilisation and Dual Rec features.

iGrill, you grill, geeks and maggots

It sounds like an April Fool's joke that has missed the deadline, but Engadget reports that this really is George Forman's latest creation - the iGrill.

As the photo shows, it's as much designed for use in the garden as indoors, and claims its tech tag by incorporating a 10w speaker system, USB port and iPod dock so that you can listen to music while you cook, not the complaints of hungry guests at your BBQ who are still waiting to be fed because you got your timings all wrong.

You can buy it for $150 on the Linens n Things site but there's no sign of it on George Foreman's Lean Mean website at the time of writing

For the original working iGrill though, you have to let the true geek in you come out, and enjoy the sight of a George Foreman Grill that's had its guts ripped out and turned into a working computer. Ahh but does it grill? And is it fat-busting? Well, according to its 'inventor', it might manage a "cheese toastie". It even comes with clear, step by step instructions to build your own.

As an aside, I worked until recently with someone who'd turned his George Foreman Grill into a working maggot farm. The steps were dead easy:
1. Go out and get very drunk
2. Get home with extreme munchies
3. Cook chicken on Grill
4. Drunkenly cover hot - but now unplugged - grill (complete with bits of chicken stuck to it) with damp cloth
5. Leave for several days
6. Get drunk again, have munchies, turn on Grill and in the smog of alcoholic confusion, wonder why it's sizzling and smells odd.
7. Question sanity because you don't remember cooking anything with breadcrumbs.
8. Cook chicken anyway
9. Remember smell next day, investigate grill and recognise the breadcrumbs for what they were.

Samsung to bring out hybrid high definition player

Samsung has admitted that its rumoured dual format high definition player will come out later this year in the US.

It follows hot on the heels of LG’s dual format player, which was announced in January at CES in Las Vegas.

The Duo HD player (BD-UP5000) will play both Blu-ray and HD-DVD discs. Hybrid players and discs will become more common, because they give consumers greater freedom to buy the films they want, particularly as many are released in one format or the other, but not both standards.

But that freedom will come at a cost. Although the company has not revealed the priced, Samsung told Twice that it would be in the same ballpark as LG’s Super Multi Blue (pictured right), which cost around $1,200. There was no news on when it will come out in the UK, but it is unlikely to be until early 2008.

HD sales are now rising rapidly. In the first quarter of this year, around 1.2 million discs were sold, although the bulk of these were of the Blu-ray format. But there is still a great deal of confusion around the standards – and reluctance to make the HD plunge for fear of backing the wrong standard.

Reid Sullivan, marketing VP for Samsung's Digital A/V division, said: “Consumers are hungry for more HD content but are currently confused about competing formats. Samsung's Duo HD player will allow consumers to access to every HD movie title available regardless of the authoring format.”

Sony unveils compact flash line up

Sony today revealed its compact flash line up, following its surprise announcement in January that it would begin production of the format after years of doggedly making only the Memory Sticks that are used in its devices.

In reality, the decision wasn’t such a surprise. It entered the digital SLR camera market last year with its Alpha D100, and the Memory Stick simply wasn’t going to cut it with photography enthusiasts. So, if it was already selling a product that supported compact flash, why not make the damn things as well.

The biggest surprise in its compact flash line up is the lack of an 8GB capacity, it’s sticking with 1GB, 2GB and 4GB cards, with transfer speeds of 66x and 133x. They are available to buy from May.

“Our first product line-up is designed to handle the demanding speed and performance requirements of ambitious amateur and semi-professional photographers,” said Renaud Isnard, from Sony Europe’s Network Media division.

The slower 66x transfer speed cards have a data transfer read rate of 10MB/s and 9MB/s for writing an image to memory. The 133x cards have a read/write rate of 20MB/s. This means it is quicker to save an image to the card, allowing you to take more photos in for instance continuous shooting mode, although most people would be unlikely to notice any difference in the speeds.

The cards come with a five year warranty, but enter a crowded, very price competitive market.

First Look: Samsung S1050 digital camera

I've just taken delivery of Samsung's latest digital compact camera, its £200, 10.1megapixel S1050, which I'm reviewing for Personal Computer World.

It's got a huge 3in screen, which dominates the rear of the camera. This is used as the viewfinder as well as to review images, and in bright afternoon sunlight, it was easy to see. It's intuitive as well - you get used to the controls very quickly.

On the downside, it may be too bulky for some people; it will fit into jeans worn by a man but not a woman - although it is handbag friendly.

Obviously, I'll have a more in-depth opinion once I have used it extensively, but first impressions are pretty good. I'll link to the full review once it's done and they have posted it.

Online music hits a "turning point"

The decision by EMI and Apple to drop the hated Digital Rights Management (DRM) from online iTunes tracks is expected to help push sales of global music downloads to $2.7bn this year.

That’s a 62% increase over 2006, but slim pickings when you think that predicted sales are expected to hit $6.6bn by 2011. It means that the music labels will start to see profit from online music sales – and maybe we’ll hear less bitching from them about file sharing and illegal downloads.

According to Strategy Analytics, author of the Online Music: Global Market Forecast report, the big rise in online sales (almost 800 million tracks and 43 million albums were downloaded last year, making sales of $1.23bn worldwide) is not yet enough to offset the drop in physical sales, but it expects the next 12-18 months to become the “turning point for the music industry”.

"The music labels are finally starting to see digital sales having a positive impact on the bottom line," said David Mercer, VP and Principal Analyst at Strategy Analytics. "This year will likely be the turning point for the music industry, and a return to overall revenue growth."

Part of the reason for this rapid growth is because iTunes, which is responsible for the bulk of online music downloads, will be able to sell tracks that will work across a range of devices, such as mobile phones.

Martin Olausson, director of Strategy Analytics' Digital Media Strategies service, said the move by EMI and Apple means iTunes can be positioned "to sell content not only for its own devices but for all connected devices - both in the online and wireless domains".

HD sales break the million barrier

It looks like Blu-ray is currently winning the high definition war, with around 70% of people buying new high def DVDs opting for that format. Combined first quarter sales of both the Blu-ray and HD-DVD formats broke the one million barrier in the US.

The Blu-ray camp has always been the more aggressive of the two, often releasing bullish figures and claims about it sales. At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this year, the Blu-ray group rolled out execs from the main film makers, and claimed that even by January it was out-selling HD-DVD.

Blu-ray is supported by five of the six major studios, while HD-DVD’s support numbers just three. Two, Paramount Home Entertainment and Warner Home Video, support both standards (Warner announced a hybrid, dual format disc at CES). What this creates is the crazy situation where you have to be a fan of a film format rather than films, because some are not available on both standard.

Hybrid Blu-ray/HD-DVD players are coming out (LG was first to make its move with its Super Multi DVD player – and it is bringing out a dual HD drive for the PC too), giving consumers a comfort blanket in case one format does crash and burn.

Sony, the main backer of Blu-ray, always expected sales of both the players and discs to outstrip those of HD-DVD, but given that its Playstation 3 houses a Blu-ray player, and that it gave buyers of the console a free Blu-ray movie, that’s no surprise.

So news that Blu-ray is becoming the dominant format is good for its backers, but it still doesn’t clear up the confusion over standards in the marketplace, and means some consumers will be making expensive mistakes when they find support for their chosen player fades.