News

Entertainment PCs used to be all the rage. Nowadays, Android and the like are pushing into their territory. Wouldn't you rather have a real computer serving your needs? The Sapphire Edge HD4 is just that. Put whatever OS you want on it and it is good to go.Next Page »

It has been about three years since the MobileLite G2 was released. After that time, USB3 was released in force as was the new SDXC card format. It was time that Kingston stepped up and had a refreshed of its very mobile card reader and the MobileLite G3 was born.Next Page »

Another streaming player? That's right, the Netgear NeoTV NTV200 may just be another streaming player, but they aren't all created equal. Netgear selected to leave out local content streaming on this product to focus on the experience and it clearly shows with the intuitive user interface.Next Page »

Like Netflix and Hulu, we can soon get HBO content streamed to consoles. The ability to stream every HBO show ever at anytime on a console sounds pretty awesome to me. If there's a billing option that circumvents by cable provider, I may be a new customer of theirs....

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No time table has been announced, but we'd be surprised if the service didn't launch on consoles within a year or so. Although there are no price details at this time, given that the service is free to HBO subscribers on other platforms, we expect the same for consoles.

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2011/08/03/hbo-go-heading-to-consoles.aspx

Cooler Master has built a reputation as a maker of high quality computer components and peripherals. However, there are always dangers in expanding into a new market, and today, ASE Labs has the Sirus 5.1 Gaming Headset; Cooler Master's latest entry in their Storm line of gaming and performance equipment. Does the headset stand up to the same quality standards as the rest of the Cooler Master Storm line?Next Page »

I haven't had a lot of time to post new news, but there's been some good stuff happening this week. So I figured I'd post a single news article with some interesting things that happened this week.

First, if you're a Netflix subscriber that has a plan using streaming and DVDs, you're probably pissed. Netflix split it's streaming and DVD plans into two separate billable items. Now, you'll have to pay $7.99 for each service totalling $15.98 for both at the base level. That's a significant hike from the $9.99 that was billed before. I'm in this group and I'm not thrilled with it, though I do understand that what Netlix has to pay more and more to license all of the selections. But I think they need a lot more selections to justify an increase this high. Everyone used social media to show just how pissed they were about the change. Hopefully, Netflix will reconsider. In the meantime, here's an article reviewing the alternative options:

http://howto.cnet.com/8301-11310_39-20079003-285/nine-netflix-alternatives/?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20

T-Mobile also launched their new caller ID feature. This would be awesome if it was free, but I don't think it's worth the $3.99/month they're asking for it. I think it's easier and cheaper to just let things to to voicemail and it it's important enough, they'll leave a message...

http://www.tmonews.com/2011/07/t-mobile-introduces-name-id-caller-id-for-everyone/

Google began testing the new Google + social media site. I haven't gotten an invite yet, so I guess I'll have to wait... Apparently, it's mostly dudes right now. That sucks. You'd figure since women are more social creatures by nature, that they would have jumped at the chance to try it. I suppose that if invites were given to a bunch of nerdy dudes, then there weren't going to be too many women that they knew who could get an invite.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-20079285-71/google-its-a-man-thing/?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20

The Demo for "Catherine" became available on Xbox Live. I'm not one for puzzle games, but this was really an interesting game. It's certainly one of the most unique games I've seen in a long time. I'll likely get it when it comes down in price. I don't think I can justify $60 bucks on it.

http://majornelson.com/2011/07/12/demo-catherine/

So, there you have it. A weeks worth of news in one post. Hopefully, I'll get more time to keep up.

Hulu Plus is now available for six Android devices. Shouldn't applications that work on one Android device, work on another providing they are the same version? This kind of segmentation is one of the big things that suck with Android. This is awesome for Hulu users though. I'd love to have it for Windows phone. This should also add value for those who might be interested in aquiring Hulu.

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Launching in Google's Android Market yesterday, the new Hulu Plus app allows Android users who subscribe to the $7.99-per-month service to stream TV shows and movies directly to their mobile devices.

For now, the app supports just six Android phones--the Nexus One, Nexus S, HTC Inspire 4G, Motorola Droid II, Motorola Droid X, and the Motorola Atrix. But Hulu is promising support for more Android phones as the year progresses.

http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-19736_7-20073618-251/hulu-plus-app-launches-for-android/#ixzz1Q7Oc2CSy

Beware illegal streamers, you've been warned. Evidently sreaming copywrited material to the public with intended financial gain wasn't illegal before. Who knew... I think it's funny that you have to do it 10 times before you can actually be charged.

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The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee approved a bill yesterday that would make illegal streaming of copyrighted content a felony.

The bill, known as the Commercial Felony Streaming Act, addresses what some lawmakers are calling a loophole in current copyright-infringement laws. It is currently a felony to download or upload copyrighted content, but streaming is not expressly prohibited. This bill would add that streaming copyrighted content would also be a punishable offense.

If the bill is eventually passed by lawmakers, it would allow for infringers streaming content for commercial purposes to be sentenced to up to five years in prison. According to the bill's text, infringers will be charged when "the offense consists of 10 or more public performances by electronic means, during any 180-day period, of 1 or more copyrighted works."

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-20071913-17/senate-committee-agrees-illegal-streaming-is-a-felony/#ixzz1PXdywF00

At the Microsoft event at E3, Microsoft unveiled a long list of featured that they intend on bringing to Xbox. I'm excited about a lot of them. It seems that Microsoft is really doing a good job of spanning all of their technologies into each of their products. This also gives similar functionality accross multiple devices to create a fimiliarity and comfort that the consumer will have using everything they make.

http://majornelson.com/2011/06/06/cloud-storage-and-more-coming-to-xbox-live/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+MajorNelson+%28Major+Nelson+%28Xbox%29%29

http://xboxlive.ign.com/articles/117/1172911p1.html?sms_ss=facebook&at_xt=4dedb7f26e230eee,0

I'd definately be interested in terminating my cable service and use Microsoft's if it's any good. Even more if it's reasonably priced. Hopefully, for those who have LIVE, it won't be too much more. It's only rumored though.....

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"Rumors abound that another tier of Xbox Live will add subscription TV service.

Winrumors is reporting that an anonymous source has brought them news of some big changes on the way to Xbox Live. Specifically, Microsoft's E3 press conference is said to have an announcement regarding the new Xbox Live Diamond service, which will add IPTV services to Xbox Live users"

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2011/06/04/report-xbox-live-diamond-on-the-way.aspx

Game Informer is allowing anyone to read the June issue in digital format for free until May 30th. It works pretty well with a little bit of lag. I hope they're going to make it available for download so it can be taken on the go without being reliant on an internet connection.

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For over a year now, Game Informer has offered a digital subscription to the magazine that was simple in design. With the most recent June issue we went back to the drawing board and started building digital issues from the ground up, with some added digital bonuses.

From exclusive content to interactive pages, the new Game Informer Digital magazine is all about an easy reading experience as it is created to be native to your computer screen and take advantage of all the things a computer-based digital edition can offer. Like any project however, we managed to make the product before we had all the bells and whistles in place. So if you are interested in getting a Game Informer Digital subscription you will need to visit your local Gamestop until we can make digital subscriptions available online.

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2011/05/26/game-informer-digital-june-edition-goes-free-until-may-30th.aspx

Some study done by a group that works with Comcast believes that Netflix traffic is greater than typicall web surfing traffic. I wouldn't typically post this as news, but I was drawn to a comment that was posted regarding the article. Someone mentioned that this will hopefully lead to more studios offering their movies to stream on Netflix, because it would be more profitable for them since people are downloading their movies using filesharing anyway. It's an excellent point. Not that I'm in favor of breaking the law, but at this point it doesn't seem to be a battle that studios can keep up with. If they offer the movies on Netflix, they'd at least make some money off of it rather than nothing at all from those that are sharing it. I also thought it was interesting that Netflix has more subscribers than Comcast, so it would make sense for studios to deal with them anyway. By the way, I have Comcast and they suck hard.....

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A study published Tuesday by Sandvine Inc. shows that Netflix movies and TV shows account for nearly 30 percent of traffic into homes during peak evening hours, compared with less than 17 percent for Web browsing.

Only about a quarter of homes with broadband subscribe to Netflix, but watching movies and TV shows online takes up a lot of bandwidth compared with Web surfing, email and practically every other Internet activity except file sharing and videoconferencing.

As late as last year, both Web surfing and peer-to-peer file sharing — mainly the illegal trading of copyrighted movies — were each larger than Netflix's traffic.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43059955/ns/technology_and_science-tech_and_gadgets/

There's a wide variety of iPod portable speaker/docking station products out there. Memorex is certainly no stranger to making them. The PurePlay portable speaker attempts to provide quality sound in a small and durable package. Memorex managed to step up to the challenge and succeeded. Despite some control nuances, the PurePlay still provides great sound on the go.Next Page »

The Veebeam HD is a great way to watch all of your digital high definition content on your television. There's no sacrificing quality for ease here. This is full 1080p wireless digital content from your PC to your TV and it's never looked so good.Next Page »

To many people, earbuds aren't about sound quality so much as convenience. In order to have something more suitable for traveling, clear audio plays second fiddle to size and practicality. This doesn't need to be the case, however, and today ASE Labs has the Lift-Audio Icon Series premium earbuds in order to combat that perception.Next Page »

Arctic Sound reinforces its introduction headphone lineup with another great set. The P321 offers quality sound at an affordable price. If you're a gamer that needs to be careful of what's coming out of your wallet, then the P321 is for you.Next Page »

Media players are converging to be all alike. There needs to be some differentiation in the market. Some players stream only network content, some get everything off the internet. Then there are some that can do both. What makes the WD TV Live Hub different is that it can not only consume content, it can serve it as well off its 1TB drive.Next Page »

Gaming headsets aren't all alike. Some are very expensive just because of a brand name. Some are feature packed and come with a good price. The Arctic Cooling Arctic Sound P531 USB Gaming Headset falls into the latter category. The P531 brings true 5.1 channel sound for your listening pleasure.Next Page »

The computer has become increasingly more important to entertainment in the home then it ever has before. So much, that it’s sparked the coming Internet TV revolution. Consumers want to be able to do everything they love to do on their computers straight from their TV. Imation’s Link can act as a bridge to carry us into the highly anticipated Internet TV era. It could provide us with the entrainment flexibility we’ve been aching for.Next Page »

Google has released a new image format for the web. It is called "WebP" and it originates from the WebM video codec. It also looks worse than JPG images in the examples. I guess they need to work on the encoder a bit more.

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As part of Google’s initiative to make the web faster, over the past few months we have released a number of tools to help site owners speed up their websites. We launched the Page Speed Firefox extension to evaluate the performance of web pages and to get suggestions on how to improve them, we introduced the Speed Tracer Chrome extension to help identify and fix performance problems in web applications, and we released a set of closure tools to help build rich web applications with fully optimized JavaScript code. While these tools have been incredibly successful in helping developers optimize their sites, as we’ve evaluated our progress, we continue to notice a single component of web pages is consistently responsible for the majority of the latency on pages across the web: images.

Most of the common image formats on the web today were established over a decade ago and are based on technology from around that time. Some engineers at Google decided to figure out if there was a way to further compress lossy images like JPEG to make them load faster, while still preserving quality and resolution. As part of this effort, we are releasing a developer preview of a new image format, WebP, that promises to significantly reduce the byte size of photos on the web, allowing web sites to load faster than before.

http://googlecode.blogspot.com/2010/09/webp-new-image-format-for-web.html

If I had to guess, I would suspect this would be a push to incorporate WebP decoders into smartphones and such to allow faster browsing... When that happens, Google's WebM video codec has an easy entry since the frames can be decoded by the WebP decoding hardware. Win-win for Google.

NBC is adding more content to Netflix streaming service. In a few years, we'll all get a single internet connection with no other added services (like phone or TV). Everything will be done over IP. It actually is right now, but you are being charged for the service provided at an exceptional rate. Even I'm doing that as well, though.

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Under the new arrangement, "hundreds" of "Saturday Night Live" episodes from the past 35 years, as well as "day-after broadcast" of the show's next three seasons, will be available on Netflix Instant Streaming. NBC is also offering every previous-season episode of "30 Rock," "The Office," and "Law & Order: SVU." Earlier seasons of those shows already on Netflix will still be available. All episodes of the venerable SyFy series "Battlestar Galactica" will also be available on the service. NBC Universal and Netflix said that "Monk" and "Friday Night Lights," among many other shows, will also be included in the expanded relationship between the companies.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-20017517-17.html

http://pastebin.com/kqD56TmU

I don't have the hardware to determine if this is a true master key or not, but the implications are huge. If this is a true master key, HDCP is broken and DRM has, once again, failed. You can create your own keys that will never be able to be revoked. Essentially, you've made HDCP into DVI+Audio+Breakable Encryption.

If this is true, it means a whole host of new features that have been denied to paying customers. MythTV might actually be able to hook up to a HDCP source for input instead of doing the component capture and re-encode. There are a wealth of fair use cases that just opened up. This has to be true, though. Can anyone confirm that this master key is legit?

The WD TV Live Plus has some great features over the original Netflix only players. While the Roku maybe well known for its Netflix streaming support, the WD TV Live Plus has Netflix and more. Combine tons of internet content with support for your internal network content and you've got a product ready to be at the center of your media needs.Next Page »

It sure would be nice to not listening to music with headphones in a hotel room or through the tinny laptop speakers. Arctic Cooling has a solution to the tinny sound present in many thin portable speakers. The Arctic Sound S111 may not win any awards for the size, but the sound quality is certainly superior.Next Page »

Arctic Cooling's Arctic Sound product range has already proven itself to ASE Labs by offering slick designs combined with good sound quality. Today, ASE Labs has Arctic Cooling's most recent expansion in the Arctic Sound line, the P311 Bluetooth headphones. Does this headset live up to the standards set by its wired counterparts?Next Page »

Was there a time when you were presented a document that you needed a digital copy of with no scanner in sight? VuPoint has the solution for you with their Magic Wand Portable Scanner. There are many benefits to having a portable scanner, not just for documents. Next Page »

Are there times that you are listening to your MP3 player and think that it would be great to not use headphones? Cooler Master may have the solution for you. The Choiix BoomBoom is a slim and portable speaker for use on the go. Taking power from any standard USB port, the BoomBoom can offer better audio than you're currently using on the road.Next Page »

How important is style to you when choosing a product? If product design is one of the main reasons for your product purchases, then the Arctic Cooling Arctic Sound E352 series earbuds may be for you. But how do they stand up to the Editor's Choice Arctic Sound E361 series? Today ASE Labs has a pair up for comparison in order to find out.Next Page »

Never heard of slotRadio? It is an initiative by SanDisk to capitalize on the DRM encumbered music market. For a one time fee, you get lots of music that is playable on certain devices that can play slotRadio media. We at ASE Labs thought that the market moved on from proprietary forms of media. Still, we'll see if it has some worth to it.Next Page »

These days, full-sized headphones are a novelty. They have become impractical for most music lovers with an on-the-go lifestyle, leading to a rise in the popularity of smaller designs. Today, ASE Labs looks at the Arctic Sound E361-BM, one of Arctic Cooling's entries in the crowded sea of earbud models.Next Page »