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IGS's Rapsody N35 media player
IGS of Japan has released a hard drive-based media player that supports up to 1TB internal drives, and plays back various high-definition video and audio formats. Similar to the MediaGate line, the Rapsody N35 supports DivX and XviD, MPEG-1,2, and 4, and WMV HD at up to 1080 lines of resolution over DVI, component, or S-video outputs. The Rapsody also plays back OGG, MP3, and WMA audio over its digital coax and optical connectors. With the 10/100-speed Ethernet jack and included NDAS software, you can connect to remote computers on your network, and the local USB port allows for connecting devices directly. The N35 is available for 28,000 ¥, or $235 US.
Iriver's tiny B20 DMB TV gets stuffed
A year after introducing us to their tiny, one-trick B10 mini DMB television, iriver is finally set to launch their B20 followup. Their latest D-Clicker features up to 4GB of flash memory on-board, a slightly larger 2.4-inch, 320 x 240 260k color display, miniSD expansion, and the ability to record voice and some of that sweet, sweet DMB TV. In addition to the FM radio found on the B10, the B20 also supports media-a-plenty including MP3, WMA, OGG, MPEG-4, WMV9, and JPG files and a battery which should muster up to 26/5/4-hours for MP3/video/DMB playback. Expect the 4GB version to hit Korea first for ???248,000 ($267) starting April 25th or ???198,000 ($213) if 2GB is enough to see you through. [Via Akihabara News]
XLD: lossless audio decoder
One big complaint of audiophiles on the Mac platform is the limited support for FLAC, the very high quality, open source lossless audio codec. Apple, of course, prefers its own (proprietary) Apple Lossless format. The X Lossless Decoder offers some help for Mac users, however. Unlike many FLAC tools on the Mac it is a Universal Binary and offers conversion from FLAC/Ogg, Apple Lossless, Monkey's Audio, Wavpack, and TTA to WAV, AIFF, PCM, Ogg, AAC, MP3 and FLAC. If you just want to play FLAC/Ogg files in iTunes, the Xiph component will allow this, but it doesn't work perfectly.XLD is open source and a free download.[Via The Lossless Audio Blog]
Mivx officially unveils MX-760HD HD WiFi media streamer
Mvix has certainly found its way to your living room before, and we've heard the rumblings of its latest HD streaming / storage device coming to fruition, but just before the holiday rush the firm is officially releasing the MX-760HD Wireless HD Media Center. This feature-laden box supports wireless media (HD thankfully included) streaming over 802.11g with full WEP support, and comes packed with an optional 200 to 750GB hard drive to store files remotely. Sporting a 7.4- x 7.6- x 2.3-inch enclosure, the Linux-based box plays nice with Windows systems and outputs in NTSC / PAL, and even includes an external LCD to give you quick updates on what's going where. Aside from WiFi, it also features Ethernet connectivity and USB ports, and Mvix even includes a remote to control the action from afar. On the rear, you'll find outputs for DVI, component, composite, stereo, and optical / coaxial digital audio to play back any of your DivX, MPEG 1/2/4, WMV, ASF, DAT, DVD, IFO, VOB, ISO, MP3, WMA, AAC, OGG, PCM, AC3, DTS, BMP, JPEG, and PNG files -- and that's just the tip of the iceberg. So if you're scouting a svelte HD streamer with internal storage to boot, the MX-760HD can be pre-ordered now (sans an internal HDD) for $329.[Thanks, Chris and Rich]
dCube unveils HD XviD-playing MV-8600HD at KES
The flashy gizmos that keep popping up at this year's Korean Electronics Show continue to impress, and next up is dCube's media-playing extraoridinaire, the MV-8600HD. This stylish box boasts an optical drive that plays nice with a myriad of formats, including HD XviD, MPEG1/2/4, AVI, VOB, IFO, ASF, and WMV on the video side, while supporting MP3, WMA, AAC, OGG, PCM, and AC3 on the musical front. The device can output video at 1080i resolution (no word on upscaling, however), and rocks DVI, component, composite, and S-Video outputs to complement the stereo, coaxial, and optical digital audio ports. It even sports a pair of USB 2.0 ports and integrated Ethernet / WiFi, presumably for attaching external storage and making it accessible over a network. As expected, there's no skinny on pricing or availability details, but you should be able to import this all-in-one wonder stateside real soon.
The Engadget Podcast now supports AAC and Ogg feeds!
Hurrah hurrah! To all our Engadget Podcast listeners who've suffered through the months without an AAC or Ogg feed, we thank you -- and we've heard your complaints. As we mentioned earlier this week, we've got our feeds sorted for the three major audio formats, so you can now have our show dropped in via RSS in your choice of MP3, enhanced AAC, or Ogg Vorbis. iTunes subscribers' feeds will automatically be switched over to enhanced AAC (or you can subscribe to the AAC feed directly if you don't want to use iTunes but want our enhanced AAC podcasts).So, as soon as our feeds are re-cached and re-crawled by RSS, we'll throw up our latest podcast for today and get the show on the road. In the mean time, we apologize if for some reason your shows start re-downloading as we're retooling our feeds. Thanks for listening, everybody!P.S. -If for some reason you're having difficulties or seeing problems, please leave a comment below, we'll get on it. And yes, we know there are iTunes tags in all our feeds right now, we're working on that.Get the podcast [iTunes] Subscribe to the Podcast directly in iTunes (MP3). [RSS MP3] Add the Engadget Podcast feed to your RSS aggregator and have the show delivered automatically. [RSS AAC] Add the Engadget Podcast feed to your RSS aggregator and have the show delivered automatically. [RSS OGG] Add the Engadget Podcast feed to your RSS aggregator and have the show delivered automatically.
Cowon's iAudio U2 2GB now in white
Cowon of Japan wish to remind you that they're still shipping the iAudio U2 player. How? By bucking the trend of dropping a limited edition pink model and throwing us the 2GB pearl-white iAUDIO U2-2G-WH instead. Everything else on this popular player, which many of you dubbed the best flash player on the market, remains unchanged: MP3/WMA/WAV and OGG support,128x64 LCD, line-input sound and voice recording to MP3s, FM tuner, and 20 hour battery with fast recharge. So get ready to enjoy that, uh "color sound" starting July 7 when these hit Japan for ¥18,980 or about $163 in greenback.
SavitMicro's Dueple: HD media player with DVD
We've seen Korean manufacturer SavitMicro a few times before, once with a hub for multi-cam recording and another time with a media-playing drive enclosure, and now they've popped up once again at Computex with yet another device that promises to simplify your digital life. Like their drive enclosure, the new "Dueple," as it's known, also accepts swappable 2.5-inch or 3.5-inch drives for multimedia playback, but throws in a DVD player as well for spinning any of those old-fashioned discs you may have laying around. The Dueple features DVI, component, S-video, coax, and digital audio outputs for hooking up to your home theater gear, Ethernet and USB ports for data transfer, and lets you watch/listen to MPEG-1/2/4, MP3, DivX, WMV, WMA, and OGG files, including high-definition content. There are probably better ways of getting your digital swag onto a TV than this particular solution, but if it sports a reasonable pricetag when it comes out within the month -- from e-tailer GeekStuff4U -- we imagine that it will draw some interest.
odd-i's P11N Win CE 5.0 PMP with GPS
Remember that peculiarly named, but otherwise damn fine odd-i P10 PMP you all (ok, ten commenters) liked so much? Well, odd-i just one-upped themselves by sprinkling in a bit of SiRF Star III GPS with a dash of Win CE 5.0 and christening the new chubster P11N. What's more, all the goodness that is the P10 carriers over so it still sports that same 4-inch, (480 x 272) 16:9 TFT LCD, unspecified dual core CPU, 2 megapixel cam, the ability to record direct from TV, up to 30GB of storage, USB 2.0 hosting, eBook reader, and support for a wide range of media formats including MPEG-1/4, Xvid, DiVx, WMV, MP3, WMA, OGG and AC3. Oh yeah, and it's still destined for Korea-only at the moment.[Via Akiharaba News]
MobiBlu Cube 2 gets specs, pricing
Diminutive DAP manufacturer MobiBlu has just released the specs for their latest miniature wonder, the 24 x 24 x 24-millimeter Cube 2, which improves upon its predecessor by letting you view photos on a thumbnail-sized, 64 x 48 pixel OLED display. Unfortunately for our love of machine translation, the Korean Cube 2 website lumped all the specs into an un-translatable image, but the sprinkling of English words indicate that there's not much more to this model than we already knew. Coming in 512MB and 1GB flavors, the 18-gram player features MP3, WMA, and OGG music file support, direct recording from the FM tuner, crossfading between tracks, USB mass storage capabilities, and the obligatory digital equalizer settings, plus the ability to hang it from your ear. Pricing is set at $154 and $192 for the half- and full-gig versions, respectively, but there's no word yet on when we'll be seeing this new model 'round these parts.[Via DAPreview]
Cowon's 4GB iAudio6 DAP reviewed
Cowon's gotten some rather mixed reviews in the past for their line of iAudio DAPs, but the outlook seems mostly positive for the upcoming hard drive-based iAudio6, with Anything But iPod finding very few flaws in the diminutive player's design, features, or performance. Especially impressive is the 1.3-inch OLED screen, which gets high marks for both color depth and clarity -- ABi calls it "simply brilliant" -- and makes watching XviD-encoded movies almost bearable on such a small display. The iAudio6, which we first spotted at CES, can handle up to 4GB of MP3, WMA, OGG, FLAC, or WAV-encoded tracks on its .85-inch drive, but it's the drive that leads to one of the few knocks on this model, which is a noticeable lag time between operations. Other nice features include USB host capability for device-to-device file transfer with other UMS-enabled hardware, software that automatically tags certain tunes with the corresponding lyrics, line-in and voice recording, and surprisingly powerful output that can drive even large headphones. If you don't mind a bit of a delay when recording or changing tracks, or a bit of eye strain when watching your flicks, then the iAudio6 sounds like it'll make for a solid purchase whenever it becomes available Stateside.[Thanks, James]
QuickTime Components 101
Ever wondered what happens when you can't view a QuickTime movie, and Apple's QT player prompts you to "download the missing component?" Essentially a QuickTime component is QT's version of a plug-in. Similar to how Flash plug-in allows you to view Flash content, or Windows Media Player used to do play WMV's in your browsers on the Mac. Apple long-ago started using an API of sorts for 3rd party developers who wished to extend the functionality of QuickTime. Extend it? Isn't it pretty fully-featured, what with the support for QTVR (yeah, what happened to their authoring tool anyway?), and 3DMF (haha, that's an unfunny joke there)? Even with all the toys packed inside, QT needs room for growth. Send in the clowns of multimedia: your 3rd party component developers. For example: I live a stone's throw from where venerable Web 1.0 company iPIX used to exist. iPIX, for those who remember, pioneered a way to record and play back immersive video just like QTVR. Initially their tech was only available via RealPlayer, which, at the time, had the most open architecture. Eventually they made a QuickTime version, as did about a dozen others. Recently I tried to play a training video, and I needed the TechSmith codec. I had to download the component, and everything was viewable. Perhaps the best known and widely used component is the MPEG-2 codec, which is needed for DVD authoring.Components can be codecs, but they don't have to be. The categories of QT components can be found here, although it's a bit technical. The hard part, honestly, is figuring out which components to install. But since there are only 11 on Apple's QT components page, I suggest installing them all and enjoy yourself. And shame on you lazy devs out there who have yet to implement a Mac version! In some cases, the open source community has taken up the gauntlet. Witness XiphQT, an effort to bring Ogg support to QuickTime. A lot of the furor over components has been laid to rest, however, as we see more specialization. For instance, video via Flash is now a popular method of putting videos on the web. This obviates the need for 3 different format buttons (remember those, along with hi and lo bandwidth versions?). Also, specialized content is being embedded in everything from Adobe's PDF format to specialized readers anyway, making the discussion less relevant every day. One special note of caution: the Apple page lists PowerPC components. Unfortunately, you have to check each component on their home site to find Universal Binary editions. The PPC versions will NOT work on an Intel Mac.
Venzero announces Venzero One
Remember that mysterious Venzero audio player that MusicMarker service was getting integrated into? Well, they announced what it is today: the Venzero ONE. Turns out it'll be a 3.8 x 2.3 x 0.55-inch 8GB audio player with an FM tuner, 2-inch QVGA display, FM radio, mic recording (for MusicMarker, of course), OGG and PlaysForSure support, video playback, a 90dB SNR, and even a lightweight RSS reader. It's also got a built-in full size USB On-The-Go port and retractable USB connector (what they're calling Shareport), so you can dock your Venzero with another -- or any other mass-storage compliant device, for that matter -- and move around data, apparently also including DRMed music (assuming, of course, your Venzero ONE is authorized with a PlaysForSure service). Should be available mid-June this year for $289.
Viliv announces new US-bound PMP, the P2
So apparently the viliv P1 personal media player is doing so well in the US, that the company has already announced plans to release their new model, the P2, Stateside as well. The P2 takes all the P1's multi-codec goodness (MPEG-1/2/4, H.264, DivX, WMV 7/8/9, XviD, MP3, WMA, OGG, AC-3, and WAV), subtracts the iPod resemblance, and adds a 60GB option as well as an optional GPS receiver. Powered by a 400MHz AMD processor, the P2 runs on Windows CE 5.0 and sports a large 4.3-inch, 800 x 480 widescreen LCD, and also can also act as a USB 2.0 host device. Expect to see these for sale sometime in the middle of August, although pricing has yet to be announced.
iRiver Japan announces 2GB T10
iRiver Japan is Reigncom's only region we've seen make the announcement today, but they've got a 2GB version of their lime green T10 due out there for ¥19,980 (about $170 US). Doesn't look too different than the MP3, WMA, OGG, ASF playing, FM tuning, voice recording device we're well used to otherwise, and it's still got that same damned single-cell AAA battery, making it one of the more capacious players to take said cells. Expect these to go on sale the 26th of this month over yonder in the land of the rising sun -- who knows (if and) when, elsewhere.
Samsung's YM-P1 20GB PMP available for pre-order
It's hitting our shores a little later than expected, but you can finally queue up for the US version of Samsung's hot little YM-PD1 personal media player (pictured), the YM-P1 (the absence of the "D" refers to the lack of a DMB over-the-air DTV receiver). Since we've been following this model for some time, you'll no doubt recall that it features a 4-inch widescreen TFT display, sports in-line recording to a 20GB hard drive, and supports a gaggle of formats including MP3, WMA, OGG, AC3, MPEG-4, DivX, XviD, AVI, WMV, JPEG, and BMP. You can also jack up the memory a bit via the SDIO slot, listen to and record FM radio, and even play some videogames (although the controls don't look all that well-suited for serious gaming). SamsungHQ spotted the P1 available for pre-order on Datavision's website at $370 (where "Our prices are too low to advertise!"), although there is no mention of when the devices will actually be shipping, so don't toss your Archos aside just yet.
