If you live in a country with DVB-T terrestrial digital TV, then Asus' new O!Play Media Pro set-top box might be of interest to you, as beyond being a DVB-T tuner with EPG support, it's also a media player that supports just about every format you can throw at it. On top of that, it will also stream video from a wide range of online services.
Sony Singapore has launched their Walkman Z series mobile entertainment player which claims to be the first to be powered by Google Android. It will be available at all Sony stores and authorized outlets this month.
Normally we wouldn't cover a product announcement from IKEA, but today the company has unveiled a product that falls in the technology department and it's called Uppleva (experience). For whatever reason, IKEA has decided that just selling furniture that fits your home entertainment equipment isn't good enough and as such the company went and integrated a TV and a Blu-ray player into a piece of furniture, although it's a little bit more complicated than that.
By now the market for PMP's have to have shrunk to one that's barely worth making new products for, although a dedicated PMP still has one advantage over your average smartphone, battery life. iRiver is getting ready to unleash its B100 PMP upon the world come the 6th of April and with 36h battery life for music playback and a touch screen interface, there might still be some takers.
Once in a while you run into the oddest companies at trade shows and although Korean Valueplus isn't that odd in itself, as it's a manufacturer of a wide range of Android powered media players, but its retail branding which is TizzBird, is rather odd. Still, the company has some interesting products and its latest addition is the Stick N1, an HDMI adapter that turns your dumb TV into a smart TV.
By the end of this quarter, or early next quarter Intel should be unveiling its next generation of Atom CE processors, currently codenamed Berryville. Although as amusing as the code name might be, Intel has gone through great lengths to make Berryville a real contender in the consumer electronics market space and maybe even giving some high-end ARM solutions a run for their money.
With Intel having lost its opportunity with Google TV, the company is now re-focusing its efforts in the smart TV business towards its own Linux operating system – no not MeeGo, but rather Tizen. There will be a smart TV specific version called Tizen TV which will run on Intel's CE range of Atom processors, but the question is if it'll be good enough to compete with Google TV on ARM.
Buffalo has just announced its latest generation LinkTheater series LT-V200 which is basically a suped up multi-format capable media player for the lounge, featuring an internal SATA port to add in a HDD alongside the USB connectivity (in the form of a couple USB 2.0 ports; one on the front and one at the rear) that allows it to work as a DLNA-compliant NAS server.
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No more worrying about your child playing loud music that can hurt their hearing. Kidz Gear has launched this Apple Wired Headphones for Kids, designed especially for iPod, iPhone and iPad. It features "KidzControl" volume limiting technology for safe volume listening and comes with a special microphone and remote control.
Apple has posted its financial results for the first quarter of its fiscal year 2012, beating Wall Street analyst predictions and showing that the company still has huge growth potential after the passing of its co-founder and former CEO, Steve Jobs.
In a surprise to no-one move, Google or rather Marvell has come clean on the fact that Google TV will be moving away from Intel and onto ARM. The first new Google TV boxes should be based on the Marvell Armada 1500 HD media SoC and should make a debut at CES next week.
It's hard not to get a bit frustrated with Intel and its many proprietary technologies, although at least a few things seems to be changing slowly but surely when it comes to WiDi, Intel's video streaming technology over Wi-Fi. We've managed to dig up a fair bit of news as to what to expect in 2012 from WiDi and some things are being improved while others remain the same.
It's really a shame that Roku's products are only available in the US due to the technicalities of streaming content over the internet, something the traditional TV companies obviously are very much against even though they are allowing for it to a degree. The company has come up with a simple and elegant solution that would turn any TV into a smart TV, without the need of a clunky box.
Just ahead of CES, Broadcom has announced four new solutions related to Smart TVs which will be displayed at the show. Some of the chips are intended for integration inside the TV unit while others are destined for media streamers or what Broadcom calls Over-the-Top media players.
We have seen smartphones and tablet devices running Google Android mobile operating system. And apparently SiriusXM has recently introduced their new Android portable satellite radio called Lynx.
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