D-Link's Xtreme N Duo MediaBridge enables HD streaming

Posted May 16th 2007 8:34AM by Darren Murph
Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment, Wireless, Networking

It's not too tough these days to find a router with HD streaming in its arsenal, but D-Link is aiming for a slightly different set with its dual-band Xtreme N Duo MediaBridge. Essentially, this liaison connects to your existing router in order to add 5GHz 802.11n abilities to your setup, which purportedly "helps avoid interference by allowing the user to use the 5GHz frequency band to provide a stable high-performance wireless link for streaming HD video." Clearly designed with the DIR-655 in mind, this device also allows up to five Ethernet-enabled media devices to become attached on a separate unit for even more high-definition WiFi streaming. Notably, the DAP-1555 itself doesn't seem to double as an Ethernet router, and unfortunately, you'll have to wait until the thing ships in Q3 to find out how much it'll dent your wallet.

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Steinway & Sons, Peter Lyngdorf partner for high-end A/V equipment

Posted May 16th 2007 11:19AM by Ben Drawbaugh

Filed under: Home Entertainment

In the world of fine audio there aren't many names more prestigious than 154-year old piano maker Steinway & Sons, and now the renowned American manufacturer has partnered with Danish industry-vet and Lyngdorf Audio founder Peter Lyngdorf to release a new line of ultra-high end audio visual systems. Steinway Lyngdorf, as the joint venture is known, claims to be "offering unsurpassed performance, exceptional value and, most importantly, an extraordinary experience for discerning clientele the world over" -- though considering the company's first product has yet to be released, that statement may be a bit bold. The product in question is the so-called Model-D music system which will include a full set of speakers and receiver featuring Lyngdorf's RoomPerfect automatic acoustic calibration system. Sadly for big spenders, less than 100 Model-D's will be available when they hit undisclosed sales channels this fall, so you might want to put down your $150,000 in advance if you hope to grab one.

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enano's latest mini PCs tout Core 2 Duo, energy efficiency

Posted May 16th 2007 3:19PM by Darren Murph Filed under: Desktops

Joining Epson and a growing host of others in the miniscule PC arena, enano is throwing its own offerings in the hat while boasting about greenness all the while. The generation e2 lineup sports "book sized" enclosures, a sleek black paint job, and four different models to suit your fancy (and budget). All four units rely on one of Intel's Core 2 Duo processors, but apparently, none are sporting the Santa Rosa love just yet. The machines can be configured with up to 2GB of DDR2 RAM, 160GB of SATA hard drive space, an integrated TV tuner, gigabit Ethernet, 802.11b/g, 7.1 surround sound audio, and feature Intel's GMA950 integrated graphics set, an SD / MS / MMC card reader, a total of four USB 2.0 ports, one 4-pin FireWire connector, DVI or VGA out via adapter, S-Video out, and audio in / out ports to finish things off. The box itself weighs in at just three pounds and measures 8.8- x 6.8- x 1.65-inches around, and while the company claims that you'll save a bundle on energy costs with this power sipper, the up front charges ranging from around $1,200 to near $2,000 probably makes up for it.

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Samsung develops 8GB microSD card

Posted May 16th 2007 11:48PM by Chris Ziegler

Filed under: Cellphones, Peripherals

Wow, it seems like we were just marveling over the introduction of the world's first 8GB SD card a few moons back. Ah, that's right, we were. Alas, Samsung took it to heart that SD doesn't cut it for your average cellphone (they run a bumpin' mobile business, after all), announcing that it has managed to pack a full eight gigabytes into the microSD form factor for mid-2008 production. That's particularly timely considering that 4GB examples haven't even gotten into widespread circulation yet -- "8GB" just has a nicer ring to it -- not to mention that the new card handily surpasses SDHC guidelines with 16MB/s reads and 6MB/s writes. For the record, a microSD card rocks a little over 20 percent of the surface area of its SD counterpart, so does this mean we can expect 40GB SD cards, like, now? Not quite.

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Samsung and LG.Philips announce AMOLED displays

Posted May 17th 2007 7:54AM by Thomas Ricker Filed under: Displays

A busy day on the OLED front this morning with both Samsung and LG.Philips announcing new AMOLED goods. Samsung announced the "world's thinnest" 2.2-inch Active-matrix OLED display (pictured above) which touts a 320 x 240 resolution, 262 million colors, 10,000:1 contrast ratio, 100% NTSC color gamut, and life span of about 50,000 hours when set at 200cd/m2 brightness. Better yet, the 0.52-mm thin wafer of a display is ready for mass production. That trumps LG.Philips' new 4-inch AMOLED which rocks the same resolution but only 16k colors. That is, unless the whole flexible display thing gets ya hot. If so, then you'll want to check the pose after the break. Read -- Samsung 2.2-inch Read -- LG.Philips' 4-inch

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