Filed under: Displays, HDTV

While Evesham’s 47-inch LCD TV may have a long list of niceties that would surely bring a smile to any HD addict’s face, the rather hefty pricetag might just scare a few folks away. Apparently making sure that its got the low and mid-range customers covered as well, Evesham is busting out a bevy of new displays at much lower price points. The Alqemi lineups boasts 32-, 37-, and 42-inch panels, with all five sporting WXGA resolutions, 8-millisecond response time, 500 cd/m2 brightness, 1000:1 contrast ratio (save for the bottom-end’s curiously high 1200:1 spec), and integrated stereo speakers. Evesham further segregates the models by offering a low-end 32-inch version (peep a pic after the jump) with the bare necessities (HDMI, component / S-Video / composite, VGA, and an analog tuner) for £499 ($970), while offering mid-range units with DVB-T / analog hybrid tuners (with Digital Tick support), and a 42-inch flagship (Alqemi SX; pictured after the break) that boasts PIP and Virtual Dolby surround sound. Evesham’s budget lineup tops at £1,399 ($2,718), with the mid-range units ranging from £599 ($1,164) to £899 ($1,747), and can be picked up now on the other side of the pond.

Read – Evesham 32-inch Alqemi LCD TV
Read – Evesham 32-inch Alqemi SX LCD TV
Read – Evesham 37-inch Alqemi S LCD TV
Read – Evesham 37-inch Alqemi SX LCD TV
Read – Evesham 42-inch Alqemi SX LCD TV

Continue reading Evesham unveils budget lineup of Alqemi LCD HDTVs

 

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BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time

Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Gaming

This whole PS3 delay game has really become something of an amusing sideshow at this point: after so much bad press concerning nearly every single aspect of the console, you’d think that Sony would do everything possible to ensure that things run smoothly from here until launch, and yet word on the street is that Europe may be victim to still another postponement. It should be noted we have no independent confirmation of the following information, but Spanish gaming site MeriStation is reporting that Ken Kutaragi recently admitted that supply problems for Japan and North America could force the European PS3 launch to be delayed until May — which would mean that Japanese and American consumers might have their systems nearly six months before the eager gamers in the rest of the world. Now keep in mind that Kutaragi also supposedly said that Sony has not modified its European launch plans at this time, so right now we’re only looking at a “what if” scenario. Still, this rollout has been plagued with nothing but problems since day one, and as much as we’d like to see Sony pull this one off considering the shaky condition it’s currently in, we’re starting to think that these little issues and public gaffes may add up to big problems.

[Thanks, Mercenary]

 

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BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time

Filed under: GPS, Portable Audio, Portable Video

As if we needed another Europe-only GPS device that brings nothing new to the table, Adapt is busting out their all-in-one navigation system which sports a few PMP features and an SD slot, but looks just as bulky as the rest of the similarly-specced devices on the market — with a particular TomTom Go flavor. The 279 Euro ($354 US) unit sports a 3.5-inch touchscreen display, and is powered by a 400MHz processor from Samsung, along with that ubiquitos SiRF Star III chip and software courtesy of Route 66. There’s 64MB of built-in storage, and some sort of music / photo / movie/ eBook playback ability, but we’re not sure about formats or codecs. No word on the release date for this little guy either, but we’re sure it and five other West Europe-only units will make it to market in the time it takes us to get a single one onto our lowly shores.

 

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SPONSORED BY: BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time.

Filed under: Home Entertainment

Much like Pioneer, Samsung is still bumming us out by not whipping up a combo Blu-ray and HD DVD player. But good ol’ Sammy is announcing its first Blu-ray player, the BD-P1000, to be released in Europe in October 2006, with price estimates reaching €1,400. It’s due to go head-to-head with Toshiba’s HD-E1 and HD-XE1, which ares due to come out the following month. Guys, can’t we bury this hatchet already and just settle this war? It’s obvious that building a hybrid player is entirely possible, and to motivate you to get on it we’re officially going to sulk and go on hunger strike. Go on, try us.

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Filed under: GPS

Ryan Caron over at Defense Tech has some hefty analysis on China’s plans for their very own satellite navigation system, named Compass. No one is really clear what China’s intentions for the system are, with rumors ranging from a minor upgrade to their regional Beidou system, to a full-on competitor to USA’s GPS and Europe’s Galileo. So far the most solid step China has taken towards actually building the system is an order of 18-20 rubidium atomic clocks that are necessary for syncing up satellites, but which have many other military uses. Ryan theorizes that China might just be bluffing about building a system of their own, in a bid to regain a piece of the Galileo pie, which they, along with all other non-European countries, have been unceremoniously written out of starting next year. More alarmingly, a global satnav system run by China would have the potential to operate as a jammer of US and European signals, another reason the various groups involved are so guarded with their systems. However it plays out, China currently has 32 satellite slots registered with the International Telecommunications Union for Compass, and bluff or not, there’s a lot of potential there.

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Filed under: GPS

It looks like LG is poised to muscle its way into yet another product category -- in Europe, at least -- with the new LN710 in-car navigation system. Running on Windows Mobile CE.Net 5.0, the SiRF Star III-powered model features a 300MHz processor, 4-inch, 320 x 240 pixel display, 64MB RAM / 32MB ROM, and an SD slot for loading up maps from the included CDs -- not too bad, but nothing that Garmin, TomTom, and friends will lose any sleep over. It's not exactly clear who's getting this model or when they'll be getting it, but we did see it on a German website for about $467 (including a 1GB card; packages with 256MB, 512MB, or 2GB cards will also be available), so that should give you some idea of the pricing structure.

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Filed under: Transportation

Even though air travel has gotten marginally safer since the tragedies of 9/11 -- thanks in part to fortified cockpits, increased air marshal presence, and a ban on toenail clippers -- it still doesn't seem impossible for a group of determined individuals to hijack a plane and turn it into a deadly missile. And should such a suicide-style attack happen again, the only surefire way of protecting targets on the ground would seem to be shooting the plane out of the air -- a nightmare scenario that no one wants to see. Well, soon airlines may have another, much safer option at their disposal in the form of a software platform being developed by a consortium of 30-odd European businesses and research institutes that would make an aircraft's systems completely unusable in the event of a cockpit breach -- control of the plane would be passed to officials on the ground -- even if one of the hijackers was among the 1337est of hackers. The $45 million program is being spearheaded by Airbus (already big fans of auto-pilot), Siemens, and the Technical University of Munich, with the first results of the collaboration scheduled to be revealed at an October conference in the UK. Here's to hoping that the group comes up with a working solution sooner rather than later, because this is one technology that just can't be deployed quickly enough.

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Filed under: Peripherals, HTC

If your HTC-branded TyTN just doesn’t feel complete without the matching branded range of accessories, it looks like HTC feels your pain. Browsing on over to the company’s European site, a couple of accessories have popped up with more promised in the pipeline: the BH S100 A2DP headset and BH M100 mono Bluetooth headset, both with expected August availability. Neither unit looks exciting, special, or different in any notable way — just HTC branded. If you’re into that sort of thing.

[Thanks, Tim]

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Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless

We've been pining after Unlicensed Mobile Access and the promise of seamless VoIP / cellular handoffs for so long, we've admittedly become a little jaded, so forgive us if we seem a bit desensitized to the news that Samsung has launched its SGH-P200 UMA slider in Italy this week. Samsung's claiming that the P200 is the world's first commercially available UMA mobile, and we're inclined to believe them, despite a string of promising announcements over the past couple years that have yet to materialize. UMA aside, the P200 sports a 1.3 megapixel camera, EDGE, smallish 220 x 176 display, and 80MB of shared internal memory in a 22.5mm thick package -- fairly pedestrian specs, but hey, the draw of VoIP is strong, is it not? Expect the phone to spread elsewhere in Europe shortly, while our American friends shouldn't have much longer to wait for the similarly styled T709 on T-Mobile.

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Filed under: Handsets, Samsung, T-Mobile, GSM, GPRS, EDGE

We’ve been pining after Unlicensed Mobile Access and the promise of seamless VoIP / cellular handoffs for so long, we’ve admittedly become a little jaded, so forgive us if we seem a bit desensitized to the news that Samsung has launched its SGH-P200 UMA slider in Italy this week. Samsung’s claiming that the P200 is the world’s first commercially available UMA mobile, and we’re inclined to believe them, despite a string of promising announcements over the past couple years that have yet to materialize. UMA aside, the P200 sports a 1.3 megapixel camera, EDGE, smallish 220 x 176 display, and 80MB of shared internal memory in a 22.5mm thick package — fairly pedestrian specs, but hey, the draw of VoIP is strong, is it not? Expect the phone to spread elsewhere in Europe shortly, while our American friends shouldn’t have much longer to wait for the similarly styled T709 on T-Mobile.

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Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

So Palm has officially announced one of those three Treos we were promised at the end of last year, and just as we expected, this Windows Mobile 5 AKU2-powered model will be sold exclusively overseas. Unfortunately the company neglected to include a detailed spec sheet in its press release — more information will be available closer to the as-yet-unspecified launch date — so all we really know at this point is that it’s destined for Vodafone’s 3G UMTS network in several European countries. Also unclear is how this model relates to other upcoming Treos we’ve seen under such codenames as Hollywood, Lowrider, Nitro, and Lennon — we sure wish Palm would be a little more forthcoming with its product roadmaps. As usual, though, you can always count on us to bring you every little bit of Treo news we get our hands on, even if Palm and friends don’t give us much help putting it in context.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

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Filed under: Handsets, Palm, Vodafone, Windows Mobile, GSM, UMTS

So Palm has officially announced one of those three Treos we were promised at the end of last year, and just as we expected, this Windows Mobile 5 AKU2-powered model will be sold exclusively overseas. Unfortunately the company neglected to include a detailed spec sheet in its press release — more information will be available closer to the as-yet-unspecified launch date — so all we really know at this point is that it’s destined for Vodafone’s 3G UMTS network in several European countries. Also unclear is how this model relates to other upcoming Treos we’ve seen under such codenames as Hollywood, Lowrider, Nitro, and Lennon — we sure wish Palm would be a little more forthcoming with its product roadmaps. As usual, though, you can always count on us to bring you every little bit of Treo news we get our hands on, even if Palm and friends don’t give us much help putting it in context.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

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Filed under: Handsets, Palm

We're guessing Treo 650s aren't exactly a hot ticket item anywhere these days -- let alone in smartphone-heavy Europe -- but for what it's worth, Palm's old standby has been mercifully put down across the pond. It seems the 650 wasn't up to snuff on the EU's RoHS regulations, and rather than incrementally update the 650 to satisfy the requirements, Palm announced during their most recent quarterly earnings call that they're going to leave Europe out to dry until they're ready to ship their next model -- allegedly Europe-specific -- in Q4. With Lennon and Nitro in the pipeline, we think it's likely a variant one of those devices will play the role of RoHS-compliant hero here, but in the meantime, snap up those Black Tie 650s while you still can.

[Thanks, Rich]

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Filed under: Robots

It’s likely that many of our readers are vocal proponents of the benefits derived from robotics research, but how many of you would be willing to put your money a robot where your mouth is — literally — and let it crawl down your throat to explore your guts? While we would certainly never volunteer to be guinea pigs for such a nascent technology, a team of European researchers are surely going to have to find someone to test out their latest medical device: a small bot whose locomotion was inspired by so-called “paddle worms” (and which sounds very similar to a Korean invention we once saw). It turns out that mimicking their fleshy counterparts allows the wormbots to effortlessly navigate the slippery, elastic walls of human intestines, and equipping them with cameras would offer doctors a degree of investigative freedom that’s impossible with traditional “smart pills” or endoscopic procedures. Sounds good, but we’re gonna wait until at least several thousand people have successfully ingested these bots — and more importantly, successfully purged them afterwards– before we sign up to star in our own personal remake of Fantastic Voyage.

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Filed under: Culture, Orange, T-Mobile, Vodafone

It looks like the days of bloated roaming fees within Europe are nearly over. Orange, Telecom Italia, Telenor, TeliaSonera, and Wind have joined T-Mobile in an agreement to cap the rates they charge eachother within the European Economic Area – 45 euro cents per minute from October 2006 dropping to 36 euro cents per minute by October 2007. In time, that should result in a savings of nearly 50% for consumers travelling within Europe and from abroad as the proposed cap is extended to operators outside the sub-continent. An independent watchdog group will then monitor fee reductions on the open market and publish an index every six months. And what of Europe’s largest carrier, Vodafone? Well, they’re apparently sticking to their rather dubious “Vodafone Passport” scheme said to save punters 40% on roaming fees after registering for the service, after a “connection fee” of 75p per call and after April 2007 when the rate cuts would go into effect. Now this isn’t the first time the cabal European operators have agreed to lower roaming tariffs so we’ll just have to see how this plays. Just remember dear carriers, the world and Viv is watching.

 

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Filed under: Gaming

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Filed under: Gaming, Handhelds

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Filed under: Handsets, HTC, Windows Mobile, GSM, GPRS, EDGE, HSDPA

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Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

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Filed under: GPS, Transportation

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Filed under: GPS, Transportation

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