Posts filed under 'News'
November 16th, 2006
Jason Dunn
“Sling Media, Inc., a digital lifestyle consumer electronics products company, and the 3 Group, the global leader in 3G mobile broadband, today announced that they are partnering to give customers access to their home TV channels on their mobile handsets. The announcement was made today as part of Hutchison Whampoa’s global launch of the X-Series from 3, which unveils the true power of the internet on mobile broadband. A live Webcast of the event can be accessed at the following URL, starting at 11 a.m. GMT Thursday morning. A recorded version will be available starting at 6 p.m. GMT Thursday afternoon. This is the first time that Sling Media has partnered with a major mobile operator and signifies the increasing consumer demand for the Slingbox and the increasing focus on mobile TV services that deliver a truly personalized one-to-one experience to the customer.”
MobilitySite published a story about a new service that media-loving Windows Mobile people will be interested in, so be sure to take a look.
September 14th, 2006
Jason Dunn
“NVIDIA Corporation, the worldwide leader in programmable graphics processor technologies, today announced that its NVIDIA GoForce handheld graphics processing units (GPUs), are powering some of the world’s first mobile TV production roll outs. DVB-H, or Digital Video Broadcasting for handheld devices, delivers digital broadcast quality TV to your mobile phone. NVIDIA GoForce handheld GPUs provide hardware acceleration for Mobile TV, delivering higher quality visuals than devices using only software, and with less drain on the battery thanks to innovative power saving technologies employed by the GPU. The first of these devices to launch were the Samsung P910 and P920 in Italy, and soon to be available in the US is the Forseer device, designed and manufactured by HTC, and coming to market with Modeo, a subsidiary of Crown Castle International.”
It’s great to see NVIDIA taking steps in the mobile space - Windows Mobile devices are sadly lacking when it comes to GPU horsepower. The Intel 2700G was a great solution, and allowed for some impressive games and video performance, but it wasn’t in enough devices to make a significant impact. If NVIDIA can create a compelling solution, in this case by offering DVB functionality, we’ll see the mobile entertainment take an important step forward. More information.
June 19th, 2006
Jason Dunn
Engadget has a report and some photos of the new Philips Portable Media Center, dubbed the PMC7230. According to the Engadget report, it’s going to have a 30 GB hard drive, a 3.5 inch 320 x 240 display, a kickstand on the back, and will be PlaysForSure compatible. It will apparently sell for $349 USD, which is better than the $500 price point the first generation units were at, but there’s not a lot that impresses me about this unit. Where’s the memory card slot? Being able to dump photos from a SecureDigital or CompactFlash card into the PMC is one of the killer scenarios offered by second generation PMCs, and this thing certainly looks big enough to handle a memory card slot of some sort. I continue to believe that the PMC has great potential, but so far it doesn’t seem like any of the OEMs other than Toshiba are willing to really push the boundaries beyond what we saw in the first generation units - though the LG also looks slick. This week I’ll be profiling the forthcoming second-generation Portable Media Centers.
June 17th, 2006
Jason Dunn
If you’re beta testing Windows Vista, this update will interest you:
“Tonight, a update to Windows Vista Beta 2’s Windows Mobile Device Center has gone up on Windows Update. This update gives the Windows Mobile Device Center full capability of syncing your Windows Mobile Phone or Device with Outlook. It even supports OneNote 2007 Mobile as well. It offers an impressive UI arrangement giving you full access to syncing your device and accessing its files. It even tells you how many images you have on your Mobile Device when you move your mouse over “Photos, Music and Video”. I’m certainly impressed with this update and expect it will only get better here on out.”
There’s been a lot of confusion around Vista, the Mobile Device Center, and ActiveSync - and I can’t say that I understand it fully myself. I believe what’s going to happen is that ActiveSync as a stand-alone client is going to fade away, and every copy of Windows Vista is going to have this Mobile Device Center built in. It will be used for everything from MP3 players to Pocket PCs - and the really impressive part is that if every install of Vista will have it, that means you can conceivably sync your Windows Mobile device with any computer running Windows Vista. That’s something I’ve wanted to see happen for a long time, and it’s finally going to be a reality - if I understand all this properly. 
I’m running a beta of Vista myself, but I haven’t booted it up in a couple of weeks, nor have I installed this update. Have you? How’s it working for you so far?