Archive for June, 2004
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Monday, June 7th, 2004
Portable Bluetooth Keyboard
Think Outside, has announced the availability of its Stowaway Universal Bluetooth portable keyboard which is touted as the world’s first portable Bluetooth keyboard, with support for Pocket PC and Symbian-based smart phones and PDAs. The Stowaway Universal Bluetooth Keyboard supports a wide variety of Bluetooth-enabled smart phones from leading companies, including Motorola, NEC, Nokia, Orange, O2, Panasonic, Sendo, Siemens and Sony Ericsson. The keyboard also supports Bluetooth-enabled Pocket PC PDAs from HP, Dell and others, as well as traditional Macintosh and Windows XP-based desktop and notebook computers with integrated Bluetooth technology. The keyboard will be available in English, simplified Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese and Spanish language versions. Shipping in mid-June, you can order one directly from Think Outside for $150.
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Monday, June 7th, 2004
Transmit HD Video Over Cat5
Most new homes these days come with Cat5 cabling in every room so when you decide to upgrade your devices to HD, you will be able to use that cabling to deliver HD video to your displays. How? Using Gefens HDTV Extender… the HDTV Extender uses proprietary, integrated circuitry combined with new chip technologies to send HD video over CAT5 cables, a solution that was before limited to 15 feet. The extension systems work through sender and receiver units that extend the video and is HDCP (high definition content protection) compliant, an encoded “key” engineered to protect content from unauthorized reproduction.
Gefen’s HD extenders are designed to accommodate DVI and HDMI equipped components that support HD video resolutions up to 1080I (1920×1200 for computer systems). Increasingly, HD displays and projectors are utilizing either DVI or HDMI to connect to the video source via cable. Both transmit the higher resolutions of HD video, however, DVI uses a 24-pin connector while HDMI uses a smaller connector that transmits video plus multi-channel audio in one cable. HDMI is backwards compatible with DVI, making inexpensive adapter solutions available for system integration possibilities. The HDTV Extender will cost you about $500 and is available directly from Gefen.
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Monday, June 7th, 2004
New Home Automation Network Protocol
Smarthome announced today a new home automation networking protocol, “Insteon” (pron: “instee-on”). It combines the home’s existing wiring, or powerline, with radio frequency (RF) communications to deliver a secure, reliable and fast connection for automatic or remote control of lighting, security, entertainment systems, appliances, climate and more. They have been working on this technology for the past four years and the result is that it works 30 times faster than X10, which has been the home automation standard for the past 30 years. By combining the powerline with RF, Insteon offers the cost benefits and efficiencies of powerline communication and the wireless connectivity required for certain applications in or outside the home. I checked out their website, but didn’t see anything mentioning Insteon. I can’t wait to check it out for myself.
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Monday, June 7th, 2004
Segway Human Transporter I170
The new Segway Human Transporter i170 was released today in a new Midnight Blue color. The Midnight Blue color palette mingles dark blue tones with grey hues and sports fenders with a carbon fiber look. The Segway HT i170 is available now at the suggested retail price of $4,495. The price for a Segway has come down a lot, once they hit $2000, I may seriously look at getting one.
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Monday, June 7th, 2004
Color iPod? No, the SONOS Media Controller
At first look I thought it was Apple’s approach to a portable media player. But it’s actual made by a company that I have never heard of, Sonos. Consider this the first and only digital music system that lets you affordably play all your digital music, all over your house and control it all from the palm of your hand. Traditionally, you’d need to spend thousands of dollars for wiring a multiroom controller (like the Russound CAV6.6)… something that isn’t easy in old homes. Unlike all the current streaming media players, the Sonos doesn’t need a PC in every room, a music server or a wireless network. Just a Sonos ZonePlayer, speakers in the rooms of your choice and a Sonos Controller in hand to access all your digital music. The controller (pictured) is used to find and control the playback of music in the zone your are in, you can also control remote zones. All the hard work is done via the ZonePlayer. It has support for multiple music sources and accesses music stored on any number of PCs, Macs, or NAS boxes on your home network as well as Internet radio and legacy A/V devices, like a CD player. It can playback compressed MP3, WMA, and AAC music files (don’t know about Apple DRM), uncompressed WAV files, and Internet radio that use “streaming MP3″ format. They also have an analog audio input with digital encoding which connects an audio source (such as a CD player or portable MP3 player) to the audio input of one ZonePlayer. That input can be selected as a source and played to any other ZonePlayers. So the more ZonePlayers, the more traditional sources you can add. The pricing for this system is very reasonable… the ZonePlayer costs $499 and the Color Controller is $399. They also offer a bundled package of two ZonePlayer and a single Controller for $1199. If I were looking for a whole house music system, and didn’t want to pull wires needed with a traditional system… the Sonos would be on the top of my list. [Thanks Justin!]
- Image Gallery
- SONOS Website
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Sunday, June 6th, 2004
Biometric Hand Reader
Compared to the standard issue Proximity Magnetic Access Cards we use today to get access to our offices, a Biometric Hand Reader looks like something from Star Trek. IR Recognition Systems has released a biometric Hand Reader that simultaneously analyzes more than 31,000 points and instantaneously records more than 90 separate measurements of an individual’s hand-including length, width, thickness and surface area-to verify that the person using the device is really who he or she claims to be. The HandReader compares this information with a “template” of the individual’s hand that has previously been stored in the reader, on a server or on a card. Once the person has been identified as a valid user, a door can be opened, access can be provided, or time recorded. The reading and verification process takes less than a second with impeccable reliability. I think I like this technology better than a retina scanning alternative.
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Thursday, June 3rd, 2004
Sony Unveils New “4K” Digital Cinema Projector
This projector isn’t really ready for your home theater, unless you have a full size 100 person theater in your house, but Sony is taking the lead in the rapidly emerging digital cinema market with the introduction of two new “4K” projectors that offer unprecedented features such as a 4096 x 2160 pixel resolution and a high contrast ratio. One is a 10,000 ANSI lumen model (SRX-R110); the other is a 5,000 ANSI lumen model (SRX-R105). Both use a Silicon X-tal Reflective Display (SXRD) imaging device that enables them to achieve nearly four times the pixel count of current HD displays. With SXRD technology, pixels are set at a pitch of 8.5 micrometers, from the center of one SXRD pixel to the center of the next, with an inter-pixel gap of 0.35 micrometers. The 5,000-lumen model is recommended for screen widths of up to 25 feet, while the 10,000-lumen model is recommended for screens of up to 40 feet. Sony is also planning to introduce a higher brightness model for larger screens. In addition to digital cinema, the projectors are also suitable for an array of large-venue applications, such as live events, staging, auditoriums or command-and-control, since they are capable of simultaneously displaying multiple high-definition images. In single-screen mode, the full 4096 x 2160 pixel image is projected. In dual-screen mode, two 1920 x 1080 images are projected and in quad-screen mode, four 1920 x 1080 images are projected. This multi-image capability makes the projectors ideal for applications where multiple, simultaneous high-definition views are required. The smaller SRX-R105 will run $60,000 and the SRX-R110 will cost $80,000… not bad when compared to the $100k+ projectors that are currently being pitched in Hollywood.
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Thursday, June 3rd, 2004
A Vacuum That’s Big on Suction But Small on Storage
Who would have thought a company could make vacuum cleaners cool? Dyson, the company that invented the first vacuum that doesn’t lose suction, has release a new telescope canister vacuum cleaner. The DC11 is designed especially for homes that have limited storage space… which is weird, cause if you can afford a $549 vacuum cleaner… you shouldn’t be living in a limited storage space. Anyways, the cool looking compressible DC11 vacuum can be bought at Best Buy, Sears, Amazon and other independent vacuum stores nationwide.
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Thursday, June 3rd, 2004
Shake, Rattle, and Roll… Part III.
So Crowson Technology, the guys that create the TES-100 (read my previous post) contacted me to tell me that they don’t use “embedded” transducers like I thought. Opps…
Here’s what they said, “Our transducers are true actuators with excursion in the vertical plane. They are designed to sit between your furniture’s feet and the ground beneath them, thus using the mass of the couch (and customer) to pre-load our proprietary spring system. Our “Linear-Direct-Drive” technology delivers FAR more accurate tactile effects than other transducers.”
If that’s the case… it makes them really worth checking out since the cost is about $27,351 less than the the only other option, the D-Box Odyssee. The TES-100 runs $649 for the couch set and $349 for the chair set. Wonder if the kind folks at Crowson Technology are willing to lend me a demo set for review… I’ll keep you all posted.
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Thursday, June 3rd, 2004
Serial ATA Hard Drives Outperform SCSI Hard Drives
The high performance capabilities of Serial ATA (SATA) hard drives were validated recently, when WD Raptor 10,000 RPM SATA drives from Western Digital Corp.
outperformed 10,000 and 15,000 RPM SCSI drives from two competitors in
separate independent, head-to-head comparison tests conducted by and published in the June issue of Maximum PC magazine. This is great news for us wanting mass storage and instant access to media assets from our whole house media servers.
About the archives
Welcome to the archives here at MAVROMATIC.
These are a collection of our previous posts. If you'd like to read about the latest and greatest, click here.
Welcome to mavromatic! My goal is to bring to your attention the latest DIY projects, the greatest home automation and home theater products. As well as, the occasional offbeat entry, to spice things up a bit.
