GadgetReview

Strap in and brace yourselves all over, kids, because I got a HOT list of deals here for the upcoming Black Friday sales!  Seems that Office Max dropped the dime a bit early on what they’ll be offering up for cheap the day after Thanksgiving (early?? It’s not even HALLOWEEN and they’re talking Black Friday!), but their incredibly gauche behavior brings you a whole lot of deals.  Check THIS out!

How about an Acer netbook for $150?  I know, you’re probably blinking rapidly and reading that again, but it’s true.  And it’s not where the deals end…but where they BEGIN, my friends. How about a Compaq Presario AMD Athlon II dual-core CPU for $240?  Maybe you like the DVDs…well, you can get a Memorex portable DVD player with seven-inch screen for $30.  Start hunting for couch change now and by Thanksgiving you should have enough for even a Magellan RoadMate 1440 GPS.  Just $70!

It’s enough to make even the most hesitant shopper think twice about clutching the wallet in a death grip.

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Here’s a new and interesting piece of gadget news for you this morning, folks–I’ve just heard about the Epson Dreamio, a strange projector with one really impressive feature.  That strange feature?  A built in DVD player.

Most projectors don’t include DVD players for a handful of good reasons–it’s entirely too simple in most cases to hook up a DVD player to a projector is tops among them.  But also included are the fact that they usually end up looking like thirty miles of bad road and how they end up badly overpriced.  This would definitely seem to be the case with the thirteen hundred dollar Epson Dreamio, especially given that the projector itself is a 720p as opposed to a 1080p.   It does, by way of consolation, include a USB port and an HDMI slot for hooking in extra components, so it clearly wants to go the distance as far as your home theater setup goes.

So for movie buffs who want that projector experience but can’t offer a lot of space for components, the Epson Dreamio may be what you’re looking for.

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Generally speaking 9 month incubation periods are reserved for humans and other mammals, but it looks like iLuv is willing to make an exception for their 9-inch portable digital media player, the i1166.  If you recall it was announced back at CES last year and was even awarded a Best Innovation award from the show.  Now it will finally go on sale this October for $269.99. …Continue reading: iLuv’s i1166 Portable Media Player With iPod Dock And 9-inch Screen Receives Price & Ship Date

What a tight little package this is.  Lacie’s new USB-powered portable dvd burner may be just what you need of you have and older Mac or PC without one.  Weighing less than a pound and standing only an inch tall it can probably fit into a laptop bag.

It will burn DVD’s at x8 and CD’s at x4 in a variety of formats, and comes with Toast 9 Basic for Mac systems and Creator Suite 10 with LightScribe for Windows.  The Mac version will cost $120 with the PC version costing $90.  Also bundled with the package is a power sharing USB 2.o cable.

Stay burnt.

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With the emergence of Netbooks and super slim laptops, built-in optical drives are no longer part of the computer’s standard hardware.  So it’s no surprise that we keep seeing more and more of these tiny external optical drives.

Pioneer’s latest, the DVR-XD09, has a footprint that is so freakin’ small it could be easily mistaken for a CD jewel case.  It boasts an 8X DVD write speed, USB 2.0 connectivity and the rights to being one of the world’s smallest and lightest on the market today.

The DVR-XD09 will hit store shelves this August and retail for $79.99.

[via Ohgizmo]

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One True Media, or OTM, is an online service that allows you to easily create video and photo montages, and allows you to easily: post them on your favorite social networking website, email them, post them on YouTube, send them to a cell phone, make a public gallery, or burn to a DVD that you can purchase directly from the site.  You can even upload your video to a Tivo channel and watch it on your TV.  The site caters to people who know little or nothing about video editing, and it holds your hand the whole time, if you let it.

An already established company with a staff of around 20, One True Media has over 3 million registered users producing about 70,000 videos a week that see 4 million views a week.  Going well I’d say.  Having previously never heard of One True Media, I must say I was pleasantly surprised.

One True Media’s website is very colorful and flashy.  At first it looks like there are too many options, and you don’t know where to start. Fear not, after browsing through the menus for a bit, it became very simple to navigate the interface, and go where I wanted to go.  The first step is to upload all the video/pic files I wanted to associate with my montage.  After that it’s extremely easy and user friendly to customize your montage in a variety of ways.  OTM gives you the option to fine tune or cut out frames by actual visible frame, or by seconds, if you want your clips to be of a certain length.

You can also add music from the OTM library or add your own to whatever length, across whatever video clip, or pic that you want.  You can also add text to wherever you want in the montage.  There are lots of transition options between clips, and there are even more themed varieties for whatever the topic of your montage.  All of the themes have animated segues to tie all the videos and pics together, and they are all really fun and whimsical.  I made my girlfriend a Valentines day montage, and there were a couple lovey dovey themes I chose from.  After you do all that, you can choose to upload to myspace or what have you, or make a DVD.  There are more easy options you can use to design the cover and back of your DVD.  One thing I wanted was to use a stand alone pic for cover art, but it seemed unavailable.  I had to add the pic I wanted to use on the cover within my montage. That was fine, but I just wanted to do it the other way.  The whole process of making and editing my video montage was way easier that I thought it would be when I first got to the OTM site, and I felt like I had actually made something special when I was done.

DVD pricing works like this:

1. Buy 1 for $25 a piece
2. Buy 2-3 for $20 a piece
3. Buy 4-9 for $16 a piece
4. Buy 10 or more for $10 a piece

Three days after placing my order through OTM, I received it in my mailbox.  The DVD itself and the packaging had a nice glossy sheen to it and looked very professional.

OTM is a total quality service that is great for anyone looking for a great way to showcase their digital media.  Soccer moms, teenagers, or anyone looking to make a great gift that will last a lifetime.  I was very pleased with the way my DVD came out and I’m sure it will make my girlfriend very happy.  I will definitely use One True Media in the future to make my parents gifts for Xmas, or to post a montage of me partying in Vegas for CES 2009.

Pros:

• Super easy and intuitive interface allowing for streamlined video editing
• Fun theme options for a variety of scenarios
• Fairly priced for such an easy to use and quality service

Cons:

• None

Check out One True Media here

What kind of day would it be without yet another iLuv announcement.  Seriously iLuv, your wearing out your welcome.  Without further a due I present to you the i1166.  It’s basically a portable DVD player with a 9-inch screen, but includes an iPod/iPhone dock, media card reader and USB input.  It can also play DiVX flavored videos, display photos and from what I can infer from the pic the remote bay doubles as an iPod dock.

No word on price or availability.

Samsung has produced a burner that promise DVD write speeds of 22x. As of now, there is no other media capable of that, making it the fastest drive out there.
Samsung’s Super-Writemaster is a quiet burner, which makes a difference, as many drives are quite loud. It also works very quickly which is its main sellable feature. It features Light Scribe as well; an optical disc recording technology that utilizes specially coated recordable CD and DVD media to produce laser-etched labels with text or graphics. Other great feature of this drive are the SpeedPlus, which allows for writing at the fastest speeds and the Speed Adjustment Technology, low noise and Buffer Under Run Technology.

The Samsung Super Write-Master will burn a 16x DVD at over 18X speeds, coming in at just a little over 5 minutes to burn a DVD, with the closest competitor coming in at almost 6 minutes.

Quite fast, wouldn’t say?

What was that?

[GadgetBlog]

According to the Netflix blog, we can expect the LG BD300 around the first full week in October.  I’m gonna guess October 7th, since it’s only fitting they release the product on a Tuesday, the same day movie and video game titles are distributed to the public.  Course, as of 9/11, Netflix’s VP of corp communication vaguely said that the “BD300 will be available at retail in about three weeks”. So who knows, they could push it back.

The LG BD300 feature a Blu-ray and Netflix player in one box and will cost $399.

Don’t even think about hitting the Netflix API site today, because you’ll receive a login prompt.  If you’ve got the dev talent then Netflix has the 100,000 movie and TV episode title database for you to whip up your very own ‘iPhone app’, or whatever inspires you.  The API includes access to data via REST API, a Javascript API, and ATOM feeds (tech stuff beyond me).

Go here for the Netflix API lowdown

[Readwriteweb]