Dr. Augustine Fou's Online Scrapbook

Monday, January 07, 2013

The Tegra 4 Is Here

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5973635/the-tegra-4-is-here

Here it is: the next biggest, baddest mobile processor, the silicon monster that'll power your next coveted super-smartphone. It packs 72 GPU cores, 4 A15 CPU cores, and a built-in LTE.

In a (somewhat simulated) head to head test between a Nexus 10 tablet and and a Tegra 4 mystery machine, the latter loaded 25 webpages in only 27 seconds, with the older chip taking 50. Not many of us will be loading up 25 webpages simultaneously, but Nvidia is hammering beefed up browser performance here—as well as topping the iPad 4's A6X processor across the board. Nvidia says it's simply the fastest mobile processor in the world. Nvidia says.

The Tegra 4 will also have supercharged HDR photo rendering, Nvidia says, beating out the iPhone 5's abilities with better capture speeds thanks to all of those aforementioned cores working at once. In actual life terms, Nvidia says it'll be the difference between two seconds of rendering on the iPhone and 0.2 seconds on a Tegra 4-powered mobile camera.

One particularly nifty feature is "live HDR," which actually shows a video preview of the difference between a shot with and without HDR. Very impressive, and nothing we've ever seen before.

Nvidia is banking pretty heavily on the virtue of HDR here! Sometimes it looks nice, sometimes it looks tacky—but at least with a live preview you'll be able to tell beforehand.

A demo of Dead Trigger 2 running on Tegra 4 yielded some highly purty visuals—think early-PS3 era—though there was some slowdown. Still! This is phone and tablet tech. Fancy stuff.

No word on when we'll start seeing these things in our things. Soon!

Kaboom: Nvidia Is Making Its Own Gaming System

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5973640/kaboom-nvidia-is-making-its-own-gaming-system

Before today, Nvidia made parts to put inside gadgets other people build. Today, it has its own gaming device: a Tegra 4-powered handheld system with both an integrated controller and screen. It does 4k. And it looks like a hell of a lot more than just games.

Nvidia says the device, nicknamed "Project Shield," will pack a 10-hour battery life, audio quality on par with a Jambox, a console-quality controller (bumpers, triggers, analog sticks, and a d-pad), and of course it runs Android. No skin. In the back you'll find plenty of ports: HDMI, micro-USB, microSD, and audio-out.

But of course, that screen: a 5-inch, 720p display with touch capabilities too. The entire package looks to be about the size of an Xbox 360 controller, plus that screen popped out. This is a serious shot at not only Android gaming, but all mobile gaming, and even the likes of Wii U. Why? The thing isn't just an Android GameBoy—it's a mobile set top box and computer, capable of playing 4k movies to a full 4k TV via HDMI, hopping around Facebook, multitasking with your music in the background, and pretty much everything else you'd want from a modern tablet or smartphone. It just happens to look like a big green x-treme gaming controller.

Dell's XPS 13 Ultrabook getting a 1080p screen option later this month

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/01/06/dells-xps-13-getting-a-1080p-screen/

Dell's had a fairly minimal presence here at CES 2013 but it does have this bit of news to share: its XPS 13 Ultrabook is getting a 1080p screen later this month, according to a company spokesperson. In general, it's encouraging to see PC makers step it up on the resolution front, but it's particularly good news here, as the XPS 13's mediocre 1,366 x 768 screen was one of the few things we criticized in our review. Now that the weak display is getting taken care of and the trackpad drivers have been fine-tuned, that leaves just one lingering flaw: no SD card reader. Perhaps we can't have it all, but it does sound like this will be a stronger choice than it had been. No word yet on how much that upgrade will cost or when, exactly, it will become available, but we'll keep you posted.

Filed under: Laptops, Dell

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Hands-on with Toshiba 84-inch L9300 Series Ultra HD 4K LED TV

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/01/06/hands-on-with-toshiba-84-inch-l9300-series-ultra-hd-4k-led-tv/

The latest to announce its entrance into the Ultra HD market with its 84-inch 4K LED TV is Toshiba. The L9300 series is also available in 65-inch or 58-inch models and will be available this summer with no word on price. According to a representative of the company, the key to Ultra HD is the processing as there won't be much native content at launch, and it has the best with its CEVO 4K Quad+Dual Core Processor and CQ Engine. The demo model on display sure impressed, but we'll hold our final judgement when the product finally ships.

Gallery: Hands-on with Toshiba 84-inch L9300 Series Ultra HD 4K LED TV

Filed under: Home Entertainment, HD

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Hands-on with Toshiba's new LED Cloud TVs and Media Box with Blu-ray

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/01/06/hands-on-with-toshibas-new-led-cloud-tvs-and-media-box-with-blu/

Although a mixer isn't exactly the best place to spend quality time with new TVs and Blu-ray players, we did take advantage of the time with the new hardware that was on display at Toshiba's CES party. We saw a few new Media Boxes with Blu-ray as well as new cloud-connected LED TVs. They all shared a common look and feel, which is part of Toshiba's new corporate design elements. Cloud can, of course, mean just about anything these days, but to Toshiba it means things like network upgradability, peer-to-peer WiFi, Skype, as well as an event calendar and photo album. The slimmer L7300 line and higher includes a wireless keyboard with trackpad, while that is only an accessory on the L4300. We'll have to wait a little longer to learn the price, but everything is set to come out by this summer.

Gallery: Honds-on with Toshiba L7300 LED Cloud TV