Mustek SI302A Webcam

The ugly days of round-ball-on-top-of-pivoting-tripod webcam days are over, according to Mustek. They have created the SI302A webcam. The 1.3-megapixel camera, and integrated mic only compliments the stainless steel and black finish that could be the cherry on top of your ice cream Sunday of a personal computer. This webcam should be giving Logi-ugly-tec a run for its money come March.

Read More

Roland kicks out trio of new audio gear at NAMM

While we certainly had our fun at this year’s CES, Roland is off doing its own thang at NAMM this week, and the audio gurus have blessed us with a trio of new gear to tinker with, including a svelte guitar modeler. The VG-99 packs just about every guitar / amp model a player could ever find a use for, gives the owner full control over the dynamic controls, and provides alternate tuning on the fly for even more bizarre riffs. The device even features a guitar-to-MIDI converter for “direct connections to keyboards, sound modules, soft synths, computers, and other MIDI-compatible devices,” which means it won’t be too long before all these MIDI hacks get a dash of pickin’ added to them. The MV-8800 “production studio” allows direct connection of an LCD and mouse for all-in-one mixing and producing action, and even boasts an internal hard drive, optical drive, and support for multitrack mastering / burning. Bringing up the rear is the V-Synth GT Elastic Audio Synthesizes, which looks to pull double-duty as a keyboard when you’re creating tones to interact with the extraterrestrial. Although pricing information isn’t yet available, all three of these units should be hitting showrooms (and sound rooms) real soon.

More on this…

Canon beefs up its line of budget PowerShot cams

Canon’s really loving on the budget set, with them ZR and DC camcorders it released a couple weeks ago, and now a trio of PowerShots that go ultra-easy on the pocket book. The new A-series cams include the PowerShot A550 and A460, which go for $200 and $150, and sport 7.1 megapixel and 5.0 megapixel CCDs, respectively. The new cameras, which should be available mid-February, feature 2-inch LCDs, 4x optical zoom lenses and the fancy DIGIC II image processor for speedier performance and less battery drain. Both cameras are SDHC compatible, feature AiAF “smart” autofocus, and the A550 can pull off 30 fps VGA video, but that’s about all that’s going on here — no image stabilization for this kind of mula. Canon’s also introducing an A450 model to certain markets, which mirrors the A460 other than an inexplicable 3.2x optical zoom. More reasonably, Canon is also tossing a pair of AA batteries and a 16MB MMC card into each box, so you or the technophobe buddy of yours you end up buying one of these for should be able to start shooting right away. Peep the other two cameras after the break.

Read More

Dealzmodo: Sennheiser RS100 Wireless Headphones, $44

Buy.com has these 900 MHz wireless headphones for half-off. The list price is $90, and after $46 of instant savings it brings them down to $44 out the door. The large wireless transmitter prevents any kind of portable iPod usage, but they could still be great around the house.

Read More

Jabra BT8010 Bluetooth Stereo Headphones

Hey you! Yeah, you, with the doofy Blueooth headset on that looks like you are talking to yourself. Have you ever wanted to enjoy music through that headset in glorious stereo sound? Sure you have! That is why Jabra developed the BT8010 Bluetooth stereo headphones. This Bluetooth headset has the option to plug in an additional earpiece to listen to music with stereo quality sound. Not a bad idea, and it looks sexy as hell, to boot. The BT8010 will be available soon at Verizon stores for $150 and don’t worry, it still allows you to talk to yourself make hands-free phone calls in public.

Read More

ASUS reveals Pegasus Pocket PC phone

There’s not a whole lot of details to go on here, but it looks like the iF Design Awards got the first look at ASUS’s latest Pocket PC phone, with the Unwired View blog spotting these two pics of the candybar-style handset. Dubbed Pegasus (a throwback to the origin of the company’s name), the phone appears to be a slightly slimmed down revision to ASUS’s P525 smartphone, measuring in at a mere 0.6 inches thick while still packing built-in GPS and a camera of unspecified megapixels. Otherwise, about all that’s known about the device is that it’s Windows Mobile-based, has a full numeric keypad and jog dial, and supposedly has a brushed aluminum finish and diamond-cut edges, although it’s tough to discern that from the pics. For the rest of the specs, not to mention details on pricing or availability, it looks like we’ll just to wait for a more official announcement.

Read More

Sony’s VAIO VGX-TP1DT media PC stack: streams and records HDTV over your home network

If Sony’s latest living room PC lineup is just a bit too big and boxy for your tastes then check their VAIO “Television Side PC” and digital tuner stack. Collectively known as the VGX-TP1DT, it consists of the already announced VGX-TP1 PC and a new VGX-DT1 (bottom cylinder) digital tuner. The TP1 PC loads Vista Home Premium and packs a 1.66GHz Core 2 Duo, 1GB (up to 2GB max) memory, 160GB (up to 500GB) disk, super multi-drive DVD, and terrestrial tuner at its core with HDMI, analog RGB and optical digital outputs, 4x USB and 1x Firewire, memory stick and SD slot, 802.11b/g WiFi, and wireless keyboard. The DT1 digital tuner features the ability to stream hi-def, broadcast television over Ethernet or WiFi for viewing or recording on the TP1 or any up-to-spec PC on your home network. 1080i video is recorded at either 1920×1080 pixels / 24Mbps or 1440×1080 pixels / 10Mbps for half the storage requirements. We imagine they’ll add a matching Blu-ray burner to the stack just as soon as they can squeeze the drive into that same 270-mm (10.6-inch) diameter footprint. The whole kit should go up for sale in Japan in the next few days for about ¥200,000 or right around $1,661.

Read More

Avega Systems intros pearly white Oyster WiFi speakers

While we got a small taste of Avega Systems’ master wireless scheme at CES, SciFi has sniffed out a forthcoming set of tower speakers from the company that looks to utilize that WiFi freedom the Aios platform supposedly enables. Requiring just a power source, these pearly white towers feature a trio of full-range drivers, a tweeter for the highs, and an Oyster nametag. Additionally, they can purportedly “accept wireless music streams from your PC or media server, game consoles,” or essentially anything capable of stream audio over WiFi. Although there’s no word just yet on price, we don’t envision these coming cheap, but we’ll find out for certain when Avega rolls ’em out in March.

Read More

LG’s BH100 Blu-ray / HD DVD combo

LG already told us that its new dual format player would be available in the first quarter of 2007, but we are surprised that we are already receiving unconfirmed reports from Best Buy employees that the date is going to be February 4th. Apparently the BH100 is already live in the company’s system, according to our tipster. This isn’t as surprising as seeing it on Best Buy’s website almost instantly after the announcement, but we’re still wondering what LG plans to do if the DVD forum disaproves its lack of support for HDi. We understand that rules are rules, but it’s hard to imagine the DVD forum suing the only company to make a standalone player other than Toshiba.

Read More

HD DVD Turns It Up To 51GB With Triple Layer Goodness

Toshiba’s closed the gap between HD DVD and Blu-ray releases with the triple-layer 51GB HD DVD disc. That’s one more than currently marketed 50GB Blu-ray movies.
One of the main ticks in the comparison sheet between Blu-ray and HD DVD was the higher storage capacity of BD (50GB discs just debuted a few months ago) compared to HD.
Going up to 51GB, the HD camp can finally say they’re equal to BD in storage, even though it takes three layers to do it—which in turn amps up the price to make these discs. However, the 51GB disc doesn’t exactly level the playing field, seeing as Blu-ray has discs of up to 200GB (8 layers) coming.

Read More