If you’ve ever lamented the absence of USB ports on your netbook, then here’s the obvious solution: details of Cambrionix’s second-generation USB Hub have emerged, and as 49 port interfaces go it’s not too shabby. Intended for quality assurance testing, large-scale USB network-attached storage and heavy duty image replication, each port gets 500mA of power and there’s a single USB connection to the host computer.
Wireless video is one of those things that you really wouldn’t think would be all that hard, but high-profile retreats such as Belkin’s FlyWire are showing it isn’t necessarily as easy as squirting HDTV across the open air of your living room. Everything USB have been testing out IOGear’s Wireless USB AV Kit, and finding that you’re not so much cutting cables as rearranging them.
Remember that Active Media charity penguin flash drive from back in June? Someone has obviously told Active Media that not every portable storage buyer likes penguins, as the company is back with a polar bear version offering up to 16GB of storage and a donation to the WWF with every purchase.
BeamBox’s Evolution R1 pico-projector wasn’t exactly a giant, but the company obviously decided they could do better with their next-gen model. The BeamBox Essential G2, then, drops both bulk and weight to come in at 75g, together with 20 lumens brightness and VGA 640 x 480 resolution.
Lifestyle audio firm Bose have announced a wireless music system, the SoundLink, which promises to free your audio from its PC or Mac prison. The setup consists of a battery-powered speaker, complete with remote control, and a USB transmitter dongle that plugs into your computer.
Atlona Technologies have announced the HDAiR, a wireless USB to HDMI or VGA adapter which allows cable-free connectivity to a display from up to 30 feet away. Using UWB, up to 720p or 1440 x 1200 resolution video can be transmitted from a Windows XP or Vista PC; unfortunately that means that wireless 1080p Full HD video still isn’t possible.
An acoustic instrument bristling with buttons and knobs is always off to a good start, but Patrick Sébastien Coulombe’s “la Guitare à crayon” goes a few steps further into strangeness. Taking the body of an acoustic guitar and then strapping a Wacom digitizer to the front, the unusual instrument translates sketched images into sound.
Video demo after the cut
Hitachi have announced a new range of simple USB hard-drives, together with a basic NAS adapter which can connect two external drives to a network. The SimpleDRIVE Mini and SimpleTOUGH portable USB drives are available in 250, 320 and 500GB capacities, with the former adding ruggedness and the latter basic colors.
LaCie have given their LaCinema Rugged multimedia hard-drive an HD upgrade, in the shape of the unsurprisingly-titled LaCinema Rugged HD. The 500GB external hard-drive keeps the shock-resistant chassis, HDMI port and remote control, but now supports 1080p high-definition media in H.264, MKV, WMV9 and MPEG-4 formats.
Sharp have announced a new range of AQUOS LED-backlit LCD TVs, the LE700 series, ranging in size from 32- to 52-inches. Each offering Full HD 1080p, they use Sharp’s X-Gen LCD panel with 10-bit processing and a dynamic contrast ratio in excess of 2,000,000:1.
SlashGear Japan
