Over on Amazon, you can buy most anything cheap and easy, from TVs to home stereos to books to groceries. But have you ever thought about buying your home theater accessories from them?
You will now – no more buying badly overpriced Monster cables for you, no sir or ma’am as the case may be. Now, with Amazon Basics, you can pick up everything from HDMI cables to USB/Firewire cables to blank CDs and DVDs.
You can get free shipping on orders over $25 AND they promise that your gear will be shipped in “Frustration free packaging”, which I assume means “packaging you can open without the benefit of knives, heavy construction equipment and/or explosives”.
You can get cheap cables and such on Amazon already; you can get, for example, a six foot HDMI cable for one cent plus $3 shipping. But the Amazon Basics gear comes with the Amazon brand name, plus you’ll get a warranty, something the third parties won’t do. That and you can get a pack of blank DVDs for just over $18, which is pretty good as long as you get something else to qualify for free shipping.
So, not a bad move on Amazon’s part, I’d say–hopefully it works for them.
So in case you haven’t heard, Californian gadget buffs, there’s a push on in Sacramento to ban certain types of big screen TV that use too much energy. Of course, by “certain types”, I mean roughly a quarter of all TVs in production today and every single plasma TV over sixty inches. Needless to say, the people are not happy about this, and small businesses are firing back also, but perhaps the worst news came today with a simple pronouncement from Wired Magazine’s Gadget Lab that declared that such a law would be useless within two years, as “energy hogging TVs” would be gone by then anyway, thrown over in favor of LCD and “greener” TVs.
Basically, California’s planning to blow a bunch of money it doesn’t have to make a law it can’t enforce that’ll be rendered moot in two years anyway when the kind of TV it would ban can’t be found on the market.
Way to go, California legislature! Best start checking the want ads–come November I’d be plenty of you will be run out on a rail.
Congratulations, folks–America is now officially the Land of the Geek. We’re a nation of total gadget addicts, or so says a study from Forrester Research. Here are some highlights from said study, which surveyed 53,668 households in the United States and Canada by mail:
Half are gamers.
Sixty-three percent have a broadband Internet connection.
Three-quarters have cell phones and PCs.
Ten million American households added an HDTV in the last year.
It’s clear, folks–we love our tech. Whether we want to chronicle the growth of our children or just have some fun after work, we turn straight for boxes of plastic and metal to handle that. This survey makes a lot of sense given that our economy is somewhere around seventy percent consumer-driven, and consumers have to have something to buy. It’s small wonder we turn to devices that save labor or entertain.
The past few years have ushered in a blast of small and affordable digital video cameras that have appealed to the amateur voyeur in all of us. Looking like it has taken some design cues from the old Sony Walkman Sports line, the Median S47000 will be ready for your next adventure.
Don’t mind the little girl’s birthday party in the above pic for it is definitely not extreme let alone a sport, but the 2″color LCD screen is almost half the size of the entire gadget. That’s nice. Having only 90MB’s of internal memory, you are going to immediately need an additional card to jam into the SD/SDHC slot included with the S47000.
Other tech specs of note includes: USB 2.0 and HDMI ports, the ability to shoot in 720P through H.264 MOV files, splash resistance, earphone input, and a lanyard loop.
Looks cooler than the FlipCamcorders sans the faceplate customization options.
Since Flip Video made waves years back with their market friendly series of pocket sized camcorders, competitors like Sony and Kodak have scrambled to catch up. To stay ahead one must always up their game and in doing so comes the Flip Ultra HD. Featuring the ability to record up to 120 minutes in HD it also has and HDMI direct port and removable rechargable batteries. The body and shape is a little more bulky then the Mino but the HDMI port is a first for sure. No word yet on true availability but the price will be at $200.
If you’re like me you haven’t completely made the transition to a true HD experience. By that I mean you’re still not utilizing HDMI and instead have opted for component. Honestly, I don’t know if I could tell the difference between the two, but Gefen is willing to get you one step – actually more like a half of step – closer with the Gefen HDMI over RGB Extender. Actually, and probably more importantly, it also lets you extend your HDMI reach by up to 330 feet using just RGB plugs. The box supports 7.1 digital surround sound audio as well as HDMI v1.3 features, including deep color, lip sync, Dolby TrueHD and DTS Master Audio formats. No word on a price or launch date, but I’m checking now. It’s available now for $599.
Don’t be mistaken, the Xcaster 5000 is no ordinary HD camera. In fact, this thing is a balls out work horse. It’s able to stream HD video to and from the device, capture high quality audio and all the while let the user engage in a full on conference call. There are a few different versions available, with the top end including a semi-indestructible, waterproof build and 802.11n connectivity enabling a high bit rate wireless video stream. Every Xcaster includes a rugged touchscreen and the icing on the cake…an open source OS: Linux.
The Xcaster wil be avilable this May starting at around $8,000.
I’m sure anyone using HDMI at this point has noticed that the connection on regular cables just isn’t that secure. You’d think even expensive Monster Cable HDMI’s would provide a little more security. PPC’s new cable offering is a locking HDMI cable available at 3 lengths and promises to be 3 times stronger than your average HD cable. Other mouth watering features include: gold plated fins, 100% shielding, category 2 high speed compliance, and their special “Perfect Flex” jacket coating. The video below demonstrates the toughness of the PPC HDMI, but it’s not going to save any lives.
From the looks of this pic, this TV looks pretty frozen to me. Now I finally have a visual of my nightmares! I think beyond the harsh image of this pic, Sony is trying to impart that they are making some pretty weather resistant displays. Using aluminum on both sides of the TV, it will be completely dust proof as well. I can see the application of a TV like this for more tropical and wet locations but not so much for frozen ones for if the TV looks like that then what do I look like? Available in May for $20,000!
When setting up the ultimate home theater experience money is no object right? So why not spend an extra grand on the Gefen Wireless HDMI Extender! Suited mostly for hanging displays and ceiling projectors, the HDMI Extender can send up to 3 HD sources at 1080p to any one location from up to 30 feet away, less if not “line of sight” or through walls, etc. Containing two HDMI inputs and one component the Extender acts as a HD video switcher. I’d like to see how nice this really looks and wether or not there’s any interference. The pics look quality, but where are the mounting brackets? Looks as though it may not fit flush between the wall and the TV. Seems like a cool product, just crazy expensive.
