Multimedia, AV Archive

Engadget has two great articles (Part I & Part II) on Digital Television (mobile and normal). However, if all these new standards and acronyms were not enough, Sprint is trying to push one more on us.

Ex-Amiga hacker and ex-BeOS engineer Tinic Uro, now at Macromedia, blogged about the next version of Flash Player for Linux. Apparently version 8 will be skipped and the Linux version will see some extra love on upcoming version 8.5.

If you think that RIAA is the No1 greed force in the world you obviously don't have a cellphone. According to The Register Apple was pressured by mobile carriers to remove an upcoming feature from iLife'06 that would allow users to remix their own ringtones via iTunes. The cellular networks charge between $1 and $4 for a single ringtone and obviously don't want to lose this huge revenue to Apple. Apparently ringtones are their No2 source for data revenue after SMS. My take: I don't get all the millions of people who spend money on a 10-second .mid ringtone! Use the defaults or mix your own.

The Sony PSP is a very popular gadget this year. Coupling not only 3D gaming but also web, podcast support, mp3, photo and video viewer makes it not only a formidable multimedia device but also a great Christmas present. Geeks.com sent us in a PSP for multimedia testing and we also got the newly-released Neuros Recorder II to test the full capabilities of the device as a multimedia one.

"One and a half years. A large number of developers contributing. High expectations and a lot of pressure. The wait is over, GStreamer 0.10 has arrived. GStreamer 0.10 is a huge step forward for GNU/Linux and Unix multimedia. Power, stability, functionality, deployment, industry support, GStreamer 0.10 has it all."

When Lerone Wilson saw the ad for a director interested in doing a film on software development, he was skeptical, to say the least. Wilson's resulting "Aardvark'd: 12 Weeks with Geeks," the story of intern programmers at New York-based Fog Creek Software creating a product from scratch to shipping, is now finished, one of the first films to delve wholly into the life and culture of coding.

This is the era of multimedia we are living in. PMPs and PVRs are part of most consumer's everyday lives, be it as a capable phone, an iPod or as a portable video device. Geeks.com sent in the 30 GB version of the MPM-20x to check it out and review it (a 60 GB version is also available).

We were pleasantly surprised when we discovered (by snooping on its firmware files) that the Pontis MX2020 multimedia device that Geeks.com sent us for a review actually uses Linux (embedded distribution uCLinux, kernel 2.4.19). If it's video, audio, pictures, recording or even basic PDA functionality via its touch screen, the Pontis MX2020 can do it all. And for very cheap too.

Neuros Audio LLC sent us in for a spin their latest versions of their two main products, the Neuros 442 Digital Media Player/Recorder and the Neuros MPEG-4 Recorder 1. UPDATE: Firmware upgrade adds timer recording, pause recording and a shuffle option for audio files.

Microsoft and Intel last week tried to swing the computing, consumer electronics and entertainment industry toward HD DVD in a format war to establish a higher-capacity successor to today's DVD. It didn't work.

It is no secret that the competition for global domination in the operating system market has moved from the desktop to the living room couch. The Olive Symphony, a Linux-powered hi-fi wi-fi stereo hub, stands a decent chance for a prime position before the living room throne.

The iPod, more than any other single product from Apple, has changed the company and the world. Before its introduction MP3 players were the realm of small companies with limited budgets and no content. After the iPod the entire industry has evolved and grown to the point where the largest computer companies in the world have major interests in the digital music industry. Read the history of the iPod at Braeburn.

The requirement for a fast CPU to decode H.264 HD video content will soon be a thing of the past. ATI (slides on Xbit Labs' site) is preparing a hardware-based decoder enhancement for future boards. With Texas Instruments, Analog Devices and other manufacturers releasing H.264 hardware decoders, it won't be long before NVidia and other manufacturers catch up, however ATi is not the first manufacturer to offer this specific feature.

Are you looking at buying a truly affordable & expandable mp3 player with an LCD screen & FM radio that just works? SanDisk's newest mp3 player Sansa might just be what you were looking for!