Sony announces 3 new Mini DV Handycams

Along with all those new DVD-based Handycams announced this week, Sony's also seen fit to give its line of Mini DV camcorders a bit of a boost, introducing three new models for those who prefer to keep things tape-based. The top-end of the three is the DCR-HC48, packing a 1 megapixel CCD, 25x optical zoom, a 2.7-inch widescreen LCD, and a Memory Stick slot, although you can't record video directly to a card, just still pics. Moving down the lineup, there's not a whole lot separating Sony's DCR-HC38 and DCR-HC28 from each other, each boasting 680k CCDs, 40x optical zooms, and 2.5-inch LCDs, with the HC38 adding a still image mode and USB streaming capability, among other minor upgrades. Look for all three to hit sometime next month, coming in at $400, $330, and $280 for the HC48, 38, and 28, respectively.

AMD introduces DTX open standard to boost SFF adoption

Although vanilla desktop PCs have (generally) been the same size and shape for years, the small form factor world has never really settled down, and while various other protocols have been thrown out there, no one has actually stepped up the task of standardized an SFF chassis until now. AMD has just announced the DTX "open standard," which the firm hopes will "enable broad adoption" of the SFF PC in order to deliver "innovative solutions to market that are smaller, quieter, desktop-friendly," and less taxing on the ecosystem. Reportedly, the DTX standard "will be designed to embrace energy-efficient processors and allow an optimally designed small form factor system to consume less power and generate less noise." Additionally, an open standard that's widely embraced will make the lives of OEMs much easier, and will hopefully give us folks looking for those wee PCs a bit more choice when it comes to picking one up. Notably, it seems that Asus has latched on already, boasting that it will start busting out DTX-compliant motherboards here shortly, likely to be bundled in some fashion with an AMD chip. If all goes as planned, this open standard should actually decrease manufacturing costs across the board over time, and AMD stated that a "review copy of the DTX specifications" should be made available sometime this quarter.

Hands-on with the LG Shine

We knew it was here, so we tracked down LG's new GSM variant of the Shine phone and gave it a quick go-around. Straight up, the Shine is one fine slider. We were surprised to find it lacking the same, touch sensitive controls found on the Chocolate. Instead, the Shine is equipped with a spinning thumb wheel across the midriff which scrolls like butter. The feel is solid, not heavy, and the slider springs with a satisfying pop into place to revel that laser etched keypad. We didn't put it though a rigorous suite of tests by any stretch of the imagination. However, it certainly looks like a winner based upon first impressions.

Series 3 8.1 upgrade at CES

The Series3 has been around for about 3 months now and among other missing features the Series3 didn't ship with some basic features available on other TiVos including "Recently Deleted" and KidZone. The exact reason isn't known, but considering other more important features that are missing; it is reasonable to believe that somewhere along the way the code base split and TiVo has some work to do, to catch up on the Series3. Almost immediately after the Series3 released there was talk of a .1 update and at TiVo's CES booth they were demoing the Series3 with the latest software. We can't wait for this to be released into the wild and many other features to be enabled on the Series3, especially the new features that are only available on the Comcast version.

The Belkin Bluetooth Dock Adapter for iPod

Almost missed this one: Belkin announced a Bluetooth dock adapter for the iPod yesterday. The product's name? Why, it's the, uh, Belkin Bluetooth Dock Adapter for iPod, which more or less consists of an attachment for your iPod that can wirelessly stream audio to a pair of included speakers from up to 30 feet away (they describe it as turning your iPod into a "wireless remote"). Better still, it's compatible with all stereo Bluetooth devices, like A2DP headphones. Retails for $129.99.

Philips unveils DCP lineup of portable DVD and iPod video docks

Philips announced a couple of iPod docks at their press conference yesterday which deserve a bit of attention. The 7-inch DCP750 and 8-inch DCP850 feature swivel screens, DVD player, and dock for the iPod. The player also supports DivX playback on DVD+-R, DVD+-RW, and (S)VCD formats. The kit includes a car adapter to keep the entertainment flowing when not being drive by the 2.5-hour battery. Nice looking rig for a decent price; just $150 or $200.

Bigger & Biggest HDTVs : Sharp's 108 vs Samsung's 102

It's hard to decide. We're seeing so many great HDTVs every day like these two giants -- and some not so giant -- but still, which one of these screens would we rather take home? On the left we've got Samsung's old school 102-inch plasma, on the right Sharp's new 108-inch 1080p Aquos LCD. Some people could be content with a mere 102-inch or even 103-inch screen and prefer plasma to LCD, but with 120Hz motion and other advancements coming off of Sharp's 8th-generation manufacturing line its impossible to say no to the new size king in town. Check out the gallery for a couple more pictures of both.

LG hybrid Blue-ray/HD DVD standalone drive coming soon

Not to be outdone with just a combination set-top Blu-ray/HD DVD player, LG has also announced the GGW-H10N combo standalone drive for computers. The drive -- which presumably incorporates the same Broadcom integrated chipset as the BH100 -- can read both blue-laser formats, but only writes to Blu-ray or standard DVDs and CDs. According to the LG press event from Sunday, the PC drive will support all iHD functionality for HD DVD titles, whereas the set-top box will not due to hardware limitations. The SATA drive is set to be released before the end of January for $1200.

Sprint announces large scale WiMax rollout,start with Chicago and DC

Sprint's been rolling this whole WiMAX idea around for quite some time, but it finally looks like all the pieces are actually coming together. The firm chose CES to announce that Chicago and Washington, D.C. should get that coveted 4G service "by year-end 2007, with a larger rollout encompassing at least 100 million people by year-end 2008." Apparently Sprint's not backing down either, as it's named Nokia, Samsung, Motorola, Intel, and LG as critical partners for making this happen, which ought to be enough corporate manpower to get something launched, eh? Although we're not positive as to when Chi-town and the Capital City will get their WiMAX fix, we've got just over 11 months to find out, and hopefully by then Sprint will be a bit more forthcoming about who those "other 100 million" are.

Microsoft confirms Zune will play games by July 2008

Microsoft's Peter Moore, chief Xbox-exec and avid bicep tattooer, confirmed a plan to add video games to the Zune (Xune?) at CES yesterday. This would bring the Zune up to speed with the iPod's ability to offer games, albeit several months late. Moore said the Zune's large screen would provide a better platform for handheld gaming, gushing, "I love the interface, I love the screen." We know you do, Peter. We know you do. While this isn't quite what we were thinking when pondering a Microsoft-branded handheld gaming system, everyone's gotta start somewhere (we're looking at you, Zune). Of course, Peter Moore -- perhaps prematurely -- told BusinessWeek last year, "It can't just be our version of the iPod ... in addition to playing music and videos, a Microsoft device would include games." And now it will ... err, rather, it will in about eighteen months.

iTV becomes Apple TV

Well now we know that iTV has officially become Apple TV. It's real folks: we got 802.11 b/g AND 802.11n, USB 2.0, Ethernet, WiFi, HDMI, bunch of standard outs, plus a 40GB hard drive -- all powered by an Intel CPU. So resolution is only 720p -- looks like a few folks are gonna be out of luck, but TV manufacturers are sure gonna be happy to sell all those new sets. Not just one, two or three but five computers can connect to the Apple TV box, making a true hub for all your PCs. You can watch content stored on your rig -- movies, TV shows, photos, etc. -- and you can also pull streaming vid directly off sites like...Apple.com! Plus, the box will even grab content from PCs outside of your house -- finally, we can watch all the great swag that our rich can afford. Interested? You'll be able to grab one immediately for $299.

The Apple iPhone runs OS X

Capping literally years of speculation on perhaps the most intensely followed unconfirmed product in Apple's history -- and that's saying a lot -- the iPhone has been announced today. Yeah, we said it: "iPhone," the name the entire free world had all but unanimously christened it from the time it'd been nothing more than a twinkle in Stevie J's eye (comments, Cisco?). Sweet, glorious specs of the 11.6 millimeter device (that's frickin' thin, by the way) include a 3.5-inch wide touchscreen display with multi-touch support and a proximity sensor to turn off the sensor when it's close to your face, 2 megapixel cam, 8 GB of storage, Bluetooth with EDR, WiFi that automatically engages when in range, and quadband GSM radio with EDGE. Perhaps most amazingly, though, it somehow runs OS X with support for Widgets, Google Maps, and Safari, and iTunes (of course) with CoverFlow out of the gate. A partnership with Yahoo will allow all iPhone customers to hook up with free push IMAP email. In a twisted way, this is one rumor mill we're almost sad to see grind to a halt; after all, when is the next time we're going to have an opportunity to run this picture?

N76

Nokia has taken its Nseries line of smartphones in a decidedly more fashionable direction than it's used to going, announcing the 13.7 millimeter thick N76 clamshell this week. Specs aren't quite up to snuff with Nokia's latest and greatest, but hey, they're not bad either: QVGA display, 20MB of internal memory, and 2 megapixel cam, topped with a standard 3.5 millimeter audio jack (which may not be internal to the phone itself, but rather provided via dongle -- we need to investigate this one) and UMTS data for 2100MHz-friendly portions of the globe. As we've seen with other Nokia models, a second variant of the N76 will be made available for us broadband data-hating Americans that simply removes the UMTS support while retaining quadband GSM with EDGE. Look for the N76 to find its way into fashion-conscious hands starting later this quarter for around €390 ($510, give or take).

Dell's sideshow-enabled,Bluetooth sportin' MP3 player

We thought Dell was out of the DAP game for good once they killed off the Ditty, but our agents spied a gadget that may possibly be that SideShow-enabled Dell digital audio player we heard rumors about a few days ago. Nothing official yet, but what you're looking at is a "production-ready concept design" for a DAP that's supposed to pop into a dock on your laptop or desktop where it would double as a SideShow display. The model we spotted sported 1GB of storage, Bluetooth (no word on A2DP), and touch-sensitive controls. No word on when, or even if, this thing might see the light of day, but now we're pretty damned curious. Click on for a couple more pics.

Casio EX-V7 zooms up to 7x without breaking a sweat

It's been a few months since we saw the latest EXILIM, Casio's line of super-tiny shooters. But this is the time of year when nearly every product line is getting updated, and fortunately for us, Casio didn't disappoint. Enter the EX-V7 digicam, a 7.2 megapixel number with a 7x optical zoom (yes, you read that right -- this is a 38mm to 266mm equivalent in a tiny little ultracompact) kept nicely tucked inside the body. Furthermore, the EX-V7 apparently has new software that will lighten up aspects of a darkened photo, which is a feature that not every photographer will want to use -- but surely your non-techie grandmother might appreciate it. We're still waiting on the sticker price and the release date, so just sit tight for now.

Nokia N800 hands-on

We're sure you're bored to tears of this thing by now, what with all the spy shots, unboxing pics and specs we've been running by you. But if you have room in your heart for just a little bit more Nokia N800 love, we've spotted this thing live and in person at Digital Experience, and all the pics are after the break for your perusal. Or you could just head over to CompUSA, but it's your call.

Duracell FM Transmitter,extended battery comba for iPod Video

Already available for the iPod nano, Battery-Biz is rolling out their Duracell PowerFM line to the iPod Video, complete with FM transmitter, extended battery, and bonus protective silicon case. The extended battery more than doubles the iPod's run-time while powering the FM transmitter, with unlimited channel selection. It also replicates the iPod's dock connector, so you can still use all those other accessories without unplugging your 'Pod. No date yet (they're saying end of Q1, early Q2) but expect a retail price of $79.99.

Playstation 3 hacking challenge ends ; winner :no one

It looks like there weren't any hackers l33t enough to meet the "0wn a PS3 and own it" challenge, wherein a modified PlayStation 3 was up for grabs to anyone who could replace a specified JPG image without violating the site rules disallowing your run-of-the-mill DoS attacks, etc. That means the tricked out PS3 featuring a 160GB hard drive, HDMI cable, Fedora Linux pre-installed, and a free game isn't going anywhere, losers! Fortunately for the PS3-less masses, you probably won't have too much trouble picking one up without resorting to beefing up your mad hax0r skill.

Kohjinsha SA1F00A UMPC Hands-on

Nice, we got to spend a few fleeting moments with the Kohjinsha SA1F00A convertible tablet UMPC. It's kind of pushing the boundaries of what a UMPC actually is since, well, as we said it's a convertible tablet, but it's a damned tiny and small one. It's also rather solid-feeling (hey, Japanese engineering at work). Image gallery, hop to it.

S-Xgen Hands-on

Finally, we got to play with the S-XGen, that cellphone handheld that apparently will do pretty much everything but cook us dinner. Translated into specific spec-language, this one runs Windows CE 5.0 with a 520MHz Xscale processor, a 20GB drive, 128MB of SDRAM and shows itself off with a 4.25-inch screen at 470 x 270 pixels. Beyond that, you've got nearly every kind of connectivity known to humankind, with WiFi, tri-band GSM, Bluetooth, Ethernet, USB OTG and that good ol' Infrared (we're not totally sure whether you can sync it with your Newton). Unfortunately, we didn't have time to do a full dance with this device, but we gave it a quick spin and it's light, plasticy, and definitely unique.