8-Inch Portable DVD Player From SonyJul 21, 2008
Watch movies anytime and anywhere you want with Sony’s amazing DVP-FX820 Portable DVD Player. With a 6-hour battery life, an 8″ high-resolution swivel screen that provides a clear and crisp picture from any angle, 2 headphone jacks for sharing, and a car adapter that ensures your movies outlast even the longest road trip. And when you want more than movies, the FX820 plays your CDs or MP3s, and lets you view your personal photo albums.

Control buttons are located on the screen bezel for ease of use. Skipping or fast forwarding a scene is so easy to do, either with the control buttons or with the dual-sensor remote control. This portable DVD Player is so lightweight and compact that you can carry it anywhere you go. Though it is designed for adults, its durability is certainly built for kids.

The Sony DVP-FX820 delivered on the two most important aspects of a portable DVD player: picture quality and battery life. By doubling the resolution of last year’s player on the same size screen, the FX820 delivers a much more detailed image–and it’s all very noticeable, thanks to your close proximity to the screen. This was most apparent when we watched an action scene from Aeon Flux that took place in a garden. The fine detail of the grass and flowers was better than any screen we’ve recently tested.

Battery life, meanwhile, was also impressive: the player hit Sony’s rated life of 6 hours right on the nose. That falls far short of the 9 hours we got from the competing Panasonic DVD-LS86, but it should still let you get in about three full movies per charge.
So what’s not to like? The Sony DVP-FX820 just doesn’t boast any other additional features. You can play back MP3 files and JPEG photos burned to discs (in addition to CDs and DVDs, of course), but that’s about it. There’s no compatibility with DivX or other digital video formats. Also absent is a USB port or flash card reader.

Of course, none of that is going to be a deal-breaker for anyone who’s just looking for a standard portable DVD player. The impressive screen, long battery life, and slick design makes for an overall winner, with the comparatively hefty 2.7-pound weight being the only notable drawback for most users. Widely available for 0, the Sony DVP-FX820 is well worth the premium over “bare-bones” portable DVD players from no-name competitors.

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by Ryan Block, posted Jul 21st 2008 at 3:06AM
Not a ton’s changed with Creative’s ZEN X-Fi — which we all well know at this point — so for right now we’re just paying closer attention to its innards all broken out like a science fair project. Careful, the teardown link below contains graphic representations of disrobed consumer electronics.

[Thanks, Josh and Mindy]

Read - Zen X-Fi teardown
Read - Anything But ipod’s review
Read - Pocketables review

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Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video

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Before you get all excited, chances are this is just someone with Photoshop that got told “Hey, I need a phone that looks like it has GPS on it” by their boss, so they whipped something up. But we can’t help wonder why the model in the photo accompanying this article is holding the Sidekick 3 so oddly. Then again she is in a mall, and why would you need GPS (let alone being to get a signal) when you’re looking for a new pair of shoes? Regardless, there have been bits and pieces about GPS getting incorporated into a future Sidekick in some way for awhile. Remember that old job posting? From a technical standpoint it would probably be possible to interface a Sidekick with a Bluetooth GPS as it stands now, it would just be a matter of getting a mapping solution on the Sidekick that’s powerful enough. Maybe with Apple’s new iphone 3G, Danger Microsoft will have some motivation to upgrade some of the hardware capabilities of the Sidekick to keep up with the location-aware mobile computing that is bound to happen in the very near future.

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Trading Standards in the UK are issuing a warning to anyone who has brought a cheap mains charger over the past 18 or so months for their Nintendo DS, Lite, Gameboy, mobile phone or digital music player.

The chargers carry the code DE62347066, or are marked as “Travel Charger”. They may also be carrying the CE safety mark, which is fake.

The following recall notice was issued via the Trading Standard website:

We are alerting consumers to potential electric shock and overheating problems we have found in certain non-branded gaming machine chargers imported from China and typically sold through on-line sites.

The chargers were supplied as accessories for charging Nintendo DS and DS Lite machines, although they could also be used to charge Gameboy machines.

One of the chargers causing concern can be identified by the product code: DE 62347066 which is marked on the black label attached. However, the other charger carries no identifying product code on the silver label and is simply called ‘Travel Charger’. On the body of the ‘Travel Charger’ the abbreviation ‘USB’ is also visible.

If you believe that you, or a member of your family has bought one of these chargers you are urged to contact your local Trading Standards who can advise you further on the matter.

The chargers in question would have cost about £6 (US$12) to buy and cause problems due to the wiring and socket plug. The wires can come loose on repeated use giving a chance of electrocution and the socket plugs don’t fit properly leading to overheating and potentially fire.

It’s not known exactly how many of these chargers are actually on the market, but it is thought to be a figure at least in the hundreds of thousands.

Read more at BBC News and Trading Standards

Matthew’s Opinion
You have to wonder how hundreds of thousands of faulty chargers have managed to enter the country for anything up to 2 years. They have actually killed someone while on holiday using a charger for his gaming handheld.

The fact they have a fake CE safety mark shows intent to sell unsafe goods and hopefully someone can be held accountable for the shipping and sale of these goods.

With electrical products it just isn’t worth the risk of buying cheap products that typically only save you a few dollars, but can put your life at risk. Always buy from reputable online retailers and check the safety standards being used.

If you are in the UK please check your chargers to ensure they are safe. If you have brought a used Nintendo DS, for example, you may actually own one without even realizing it.

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The i.Beat Movie is a new portable media player from Trekstor that comes with a three different storage capacity, 2GB, 4GB and 8GB. It supports to playback MP4, AVI, MP3, WMA, WAV, WMA-DRM9 video formats and JPEG image format. even has integrated with FM radio which include 25 preset stations. As for external storage, the miniSD memory card slot are included. If interested, you will able to buy the i.Beat Move from £24 for 2GB to £59 for the 8GB from Amazon.
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Some guys over at Hot Hardware pitted an OCZ Core Sries SATA II64GB SSD with a WD VelociRaptor with pretty impressive results. The OCZ average read speed is over 140MB/s and write speed at 87MB/s while the VelociRaptor topped out at 136MB/s for read and 134MB/s write times, respectively. The OCZ SSD clocked very fast times in applications, random-access times and in Windows Defender, gaming, photo import and Vista startup tests, getting things done at 5 times that of the VelociRaptor. Sure gives the SSD a bright future. What say you?

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Man, I’d be pissed if I were an AT&T iPhone user, and I’m pretty sure you would be too, after reading all about your mobile carrier offering free Wi-Fi access to the precious iPhone, only to retract that statement shortly thereafter. I don’t mean to place the importance of having free Wi-Fi access alongside more important things in life, but to have a company offer the hope of such convenience only to pull back its statement a while later can be quite a killjoy. Worse still is the fact that this is not the first time as it has happened before, which pretty much reminds me of Aesop’s Fables and the boy who cried wolf. While any publicity (good or otherwise) is supposed to be good, one such as this leaving no goodwill whatsoever will be viewed with disdain by the majority.

This gaffe comes about within less than half a year as AT&T mistakenly published a notice on its Web site indicating that Apple iPhone users would get free access to the wireless operator’s more than 17,000 Wi-Fi hot spots around the country. This news has been reported since Friday morning with claims that the notice has been live before 8:30 a.m. PDT, but it is presumed that AT&T folk managed to catch wind of it shortly thereafter, removing it by 9.30am. I wonder whether it was a blog-reading employee who traced down this error?

The notice published in error before it was removed is as follows: “AT&T knows Wi-Fi is hot, and free Wi-Fi even hotter, which is why we are proud to offer iphone customers free access to the nation’s largest Wi-Fi hot-spot network with more than 17,000 hot spots, including Starbucks. Now users can relax and access music, e-mail, and Web browsing services with their favorite blend in hand from the comfort of their favorite location.”

Source: CNET

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They say water and electronics don’t mix, but certainly the iBeer and the iPhone go down well along with one another. This iphone application is available for purchase at $2.99 at the iTunes store, and it simulates a mug of beer right inside your iPhone itself. Each movement of your handset will result in a corresponding beer swishing, and this will be accompanied by relevant sounds to make the experience all the more authentic. Despite being wildly popular (it is the sixth top seller in the iTunes App Store), reviews have been less than glowing, including angry comments such as “don’t waste your beer money” and “runs slow not very realistic”. Perhaps they’d be kinder with words after having a few swigs of the real stuff.

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Nicola Pugno of the Polytechnic of Turin in Italy has figured out a way to spread invisible nanotubes 5 micrometers apart that he says could support an entire human. The resulting “cable” would measure 1 centimeter in diameter and weigh just 10 milligrams per kilometer. Now, what would the implications of this discovery mean to the world of science? It could very well mean a total change in the architectural field. We’ll just have to wait and see.

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The next time you want to attend a Tupperware party, why not bring along this Tupperware iPod boombox with you? Obviously a DIY project, this unique device comprises of parts from a dollar store as well as a cheap pair of speakers, but you are more than welcome to include something better if you want to. There are different holes bored in the Tupperware itself for structure and access, and styrofoam is used to hold the speakers and ipod in place. Certainly no sandwiches can be stored in this baby.

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