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Gear
Concept validation
By Staff -- EDN, 3/20/2003
Hardwear
The Version 2.5 "technology-enabled"
jacket features 21 (count 'em) pockets for various electronic devices and
the other necessities of modern life. The $129 garment also includes handy
conduits for cables: Note the concealed wire leading from the iPod
digital-audio player to the earbud headphones nestling in the tiny pocket
near the collar. The cell-phone pocket is designed to allow the user to
feel a vibrating ring, and the jacket features a patent-pending
pocket-in-pocket system that keeps expensive devices from banging into
each other. SCOTTeVEST, www.scottevest.com
Easy on the eyes
Makers of digital-audio players seem to be catching on to
the fact that users might like more than an eyestrain-inducing, grayscale
screen that shows "now playing" information in tiny scrolling letters. The
BA1000, a hard-disk-based player, features a crisp, white-backlit LCD that
presents the most robust set of information we've seen to date. What's
more, the user gets to choose whether the screen appears horizontally or
vertically with respect to the device. The 4.2-by-2.6-by-1.2-inch player
has a USB 2.0 port and comes in 2- and 5-Gbyte versions that cost $230 and
$330, respectively. Bantam Interactive, www.bantamusa.com
Does flips
Not long ago, you could buy either a digital camcorder
that would shoot inferior still images or a digital still camera that
would shoot pitiful video clips. These days, such compromises are
increasingly unnecessary. If you're willing to spend $1400, for example,
the SCD-5000 is both a 680,000-pixel DV video camera and a 4.1-megapixel
still camera. The camera's lens housing has a video lens (10X optical
zoom) at one end and a still-camera lens (3X optical zoom) at the other;
the housing flips 180 degrees depending on what you want to capture.
Samsung Electronics, www.samsung.com
Pretty pricey
The TerraPlayer uses a wireless connection to access
digital music files and Internet radio from a PC up to 500 feet away. What
sets it apart from similar digital-audio receivers is its touchscreen
display and graphical interface, which together allow you to select albums
based on cover art or via a genre-based "map." But is this eye candy
enough to justify spending $895 (for a model that has its own speakers) or
$795 (for a model that connects to an existing stereo)?
TerraDigital, www.terraplayer.com
| Dash network | |
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For whatever reason, people seem to want satellite TV in their vehicles. But the usual hardware—a dish antenna encased in a plastic dome up to 20 inches high—isn't exactly attractive or aerodynamic. The TracVision A5 achieves a slim 4.5-inch profile through the use of phased-array antenna technology. Instead of aiming a bulky hardware dish, the device employs an array of hundreds of small antennas as an electronic lens, which focuses on the DirectTV satellite even while the vehicle is in motion. A $2995 package includes both the antenna and a required in-vehicle receiver. KVH Industries, www.kvh.com |
| Stream capture | |
| The GoVideo D2730 DVD player can receive and play audio and video files streamed from a remote PC. The $299 player features a PC Card slot, which can house either an included wired Ethernet adapter or an optional 802.11 wireless-LAN card. You can use the network link to play MP3, WMA, JPEG, MPEG-1, and MPEG-2 files. The player also features progressive-scan DVD output. SonicBlue, www.sonicblue.com |
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Eight is enough?
We don't know anybody who has eight speakers attached to
a computer. But such people are apparently out there, because the
USB-based Sonica Theater delivers audio to 5.1- and 7.1-channel speaker
systems. Small enough to travel with a notebook PC, the $99 sound card
offers 24-bit, 96-kHz playback and recording. It also supports Dolby
Digital 5.1 and EX decoding, DTS output, and SRS Circle Surround II (which
expands nonsurround sources like CDs for surround-sound presentation).
M-Audio, www.m-audio.com
