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Motorola Corvair 6-inch Android 2.3 tablet outed, destined for the home automation set?
There are plenty of WiFi-connected remote control apps for tablets, dongles for IR control and even an IR blaster built into Vizio's tablet, but here's a Motorola slab purpose-built for the coffee table. The Verge has received several pics of the Motorola Corvair (and its packaging), a "dedicated controller for the connected" ...something, which is apparently in testing with unnamed cable companies right now. It's a 6-inch tablet running Android 2.3, that the box shows working as a remote control and apparently mirroring its display on the TV screen. Other notes indicate it's optimized for low cost, packs a healthy 4,000mAh battery, and can communicate with other devices via IR or Zigbee's RF4CE spec (where's Android@Home?). That would line it up perfectly to tie in with home automation systems like the one Motorola and Verizon just launched, as well as potentially provide a sweet platform for content discovery. The only downside? Unless Moto goes against type, this will probably never see retail and we'll have to wait on our cable company to figure out a way to charge extra for one and slap their own ugly software on it -- here's hoping that's not the case.
Freescale Semiconductor and RealD working to improve active shutter 3D
Passive 3D seems to be the new home entertainment hotness at CES this year, but that doesn't mean the industry has given up on active shutter. Case in point, Freescale Semiconductor and RealD have announced they're developing an "enhanced 3D active eyewear solution" that combines Freescale's RF4CE platform for the over-the-air 3D synchronization with RealD's switching, filtering, and optical technology. Powered by Freescale's MC1323x System on a Chip, the new system hopes to eliminate many the problems plaguing IR-based active shutter like line-of-sight and of field-of-vision limitations. It should also allow 3D glasses to operate from longer distances, and since it takes advantage of the same radio frequency used by remotes, it could lower overall costs for manufacturers to boot. Keep in mind though that unlike NVIDIA's RF-based 3D Vision Pro Tech, all of these wondrous promises are just talk with no walk -- so we'll throttle our excitement until we can go eyes-on with some actual gear. For all the details hit up the PR after the break.
Hillcrest Labs hops on the RF4CE remote control bandwagon with TI
Nothing is more frsutrating than when your IR remote "misses" a piece of gear -- your whole carefully synchronized setup goes out of whack, especially if you've got macros programmed on that remote. Hillcrest Labs is hoping to save you some headaches by joining up with Texas Instruments to produce RF remotes that comply with the RF4CE standard that came out last summer. They'll be showing some of these new wares off at CES, and we expect RF technology is pretty much essential for use with Hillcrest's Freespace motion control where the whole point of the device is to wave it about with reckless disregard for a chicklet-sized IR sensor. Press release past the break.
RF4CE Consortium aims to develop RF standard for entertainment control
Whittling down the amount of remotes in one's living room has long since been a challenge for the amateur home theater builder, and while there are some decent universal solutions on the market, the RF4CE Consortium is hoping to make things painfully simple. The group has been formed in order to "drive the adoption of an open radio frequency (RF) entertainment control specification based on IEEE 802.15.4." If you'll recall, this isn't the first time we've heard that standard called, as it's also used in MaxStream's XBee Xtender. Notably, Freescale is hoping to incorporate its Synkro technology into the specification, and in an ideal world, we'd see said protocol filter into DVD players, AV receivers, set-top-boxes and all manners of components. Let the IR-to-RF transition begin, we say.Read - Sony's RF4CE Consortium releaseRead - Freescale's RF4CE Consortium release
