GadgetReview

In the hopes of keeping rival Blu-ray at bay, Toshiba, developer of HD-DVD, has announced its 51GB capacity HD DVD. Blu-Ray has long been regarded as the technically superior disc with a 50GB capacity. Previous HD DVD discs only held 15GB or 30GB of data. The extra capacity is accomplished through a 3rd layer. It remains to be scene if the “3rd layer� will increase cost and production time significantly.

51 GB HD DVD disc rivals Blu-ray capacity [TGDaily]

If you’re like me, you’ve some how achieved two light camera tix upon arrival into a new state – this was my experience when I first moved to La, CA. In my quest to avoid all Red Light tix, and more importantly cameras, I managed to stumble upon a site that appears to depend on users submitting Red Light or Speed camera locations. They’ve used Google Maps to make them easy to find and clicking on the Light icon will display the intersection and reported price of the ticket. Good stuff.

Check out the site here.

Amid concerns that Costco’s ‘bottomless’ or ‘endless’ return policy was impacting margins and ultimately its stock price, the warehouse retailer today revised its Consumer Electronics return policy to reflect a 90 day window. I’ve emailed their customer service department to see if consumers that purchased electronic devices (defined as Televisions, computers, cameras, camcorders, iPOD/MP3 players and cellular phones) prior to the change would be ‘grandfathered’ into the old return policy. Stay tuned for more details.

UPDATE: We found a Costco memorandum indicating that those who purchased before the new policy rollout will be grandfathered into the old policy. Furthermore, Costco will extend the manufacture’s warranty by 2 years for those purchasing under the new return policy.  See the memorandum just below for complete details.

Costco’s Revised Return Policy here.

Reuter’s article here.

You can reach Costco customer service at customerservice@costco.com or 1-800-955-2292.

Thanks Nick

As predicted, the highly anticipated Blackberry 8800 is now available for purchase at Cingular’s website for $299 after signing a 2-year contract and a $50 mail-in rebate. If you ask me, there isn’t much to be excited about here. The device may contain Bluetooth 2.0 and a full QWERTY keyboard, but it lacks 3G compatibility and although its a biz device, at least some sort of camera for those just-in-case situations. I didn’t realize it until I clicked on the ‘accessories tab’ but you can ‘bedazzle’ the crap out of the Blackberry in Pink or Blue jewels for $9.99 – ya, I’d like to see that. The coolest feature would have to be the “integrated GPS navigation with telenav support”. Other devices generally require some sort of dongle for the GPS to operate. Course this may mean being not only tethered to the office via email, but tracked by your boss and/or girlfriend to see if you are really dropping off that ‘TPS Report’ or picking up milk on the way home.

Hit up Cingular for complete details.

Finally pictures of the new Blackberry 8800 have emerged. Head on over to BoyGenius for the full scoop, but rumor has it that we should expect the 8800 later this month around the 20th. BoyGenius notes that his test version has WiFi, but that the Cingular one, released later this month, won’t. Boohoo, I wan’t my WiFi.

If you recall, after the release of Apple’s ‘i’ products we saw copycats and URLs pop-up everywhere. This product seems to leverage the recent release of the iPhone, but this time they’ve opted for the latter half of the name. The Hatphone by Nike, is not a phone or an accessory for the iPhone, but an accessory to the iPod Nano (isn’t this so yesteryear?). Apparently you can store your nano in the hat, use what is a ‘power mesh window’ to access the Nano’s scroll wheel, and run the headphones direct to your ears without the cords dangling at your neck. Since this product seems a little ‘out there’ namewise, one’s gotta think they are making a move to simply protect a trademark much like Cisco Systems tried to do with the iPhone.

Men’s and women’s versions available here for around $60.

Nike Hatphone: All Nano, No Phone [MobileMag]

If you’re aren’t willing to bare network configuration to stream your recorded shows or movies from your PC to your media center, then the SanDisk USBTV has the quickie fix. From what we gather you essentially transfer up to 2GB of data/media (expect actual capacity with firmware to be lower) to the thumb drive like device and then plug it into the included USB-to-video out dongle, which also includes the necessary video decoder. Control looks like it can be harnessed from the cradle portion of the device (almost an all in one device) which includes, from the looks of it, your standard DVD controls – pretty slick. According to EverythingUSB many LCD TVs now include a USB input – I’ll have to inspect next time I visit my local electronics retailer – thus making the dongle not necessary. No word on release or availability, but apparently SanDisk will be giving out free devices for testing and feedback.