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Sony doubles production capacity of BRAVIA LCD HDTVs to meet demand in Europe
Whoa, Europe. We thought only 5-percent of your HDTV owners even bothered to check out programming in high-def, right? Just days after Sony dished out a plethora of HDD / DVD recorders across the pond comes word that the firm is doubling the annual production capacity of BRAVIA LCD HDTVs in order to "meet growing demand in Europe." More specifically, the outfit is aiming to boost production from two million sets in 2007 to four million sets by the end of 2008, and its Nitra, Slovakia factory is all set to become its largest producer of LCD TVs worldwide. This also means that the amount of employees there will increase from 2,300 to 3,500 by December. Aside from expanding the capabilities of the aforementioned Nitra Technology Center, it will also construct a logistics facility nearby in order to better manage distribution. Now, if only content providers would give these obviously HD-hungry citizens something good to watch, the circle would be essentially complete.[Via I4U News]
Toshiba dreams of 512GB SSDs, invites you to join in
Move over Samsung -- that 256GB SSD you've been touting is now half as cool as it used to be. According to reports stemming from a Japanese seminar which saw Toshiba's Shozo Saito take the stage, the firm is hoping to flesh out its line of solid state discs within the next few years. More specifically, it's looking to offer drives with as much as 512GB of room, and Mr. Saito himself expects a full quarter of laptops sold in 2011 to come equipped with an SSD. Figure out a way to get those stratospheric prices down, and we doubt it'll take that long.[Via CNET]
Qualcomm announces improvement in CDMA network capacity
Qualcomm's latest release has left us smothered in technobabble, but frankly, it's a breath of fresh air to not see any sort of vitriol spewed in Nokia's direction. Announced today, the aforesaid outfit has developed a method for improving capacity of CDMA2000 networks; more specifically, its technology will enable "operators to support more than double today's capacity of 35 simultaneous calls in 1.25MHz of spectrum while delivering the same level of voice quality." Unfortunately, the improvements are slated to be featured in Qualcomm's forthcoming Cell Site Modem CSM8xxx-series chipsets, which aren't supposed to go commercial before 2010. Oh future, you seem so far away.
Samsung intros Spinpoint MP2, reiterates plans for 256GB SSD in 2009
Not quite a year after Samsung joyfully brought the Spinpoint MP1 into the world, the MP2 has arrived to rightfully take the baton. According to Sammy, the 2.5-inch drive is best suited in desktop replacement lappies, workstations and blade servers, and it's said to provide quicker read / write speeds than the 500GB M6 announced at CES. The 7,200 RPM drive is slated to land at $299, but an 80GB version will be available for a bit less cash, too. In less sluggish news, the firm has also restated its plans to deliver a 256GB SSD by 2009, and if you were looking for even more bulletin board material, Jim Elliott, vice president of memory marketing for Samsung Semiconductor, proclaimed that it was "trying to double SSD capacity every 12 months." Music to our ears? You bet.Read - Spinpoint MP2Read - Samsung's SSD plans
TDK also looking to boost hard drive capacity
Just try naming a major player in the hard drive biz not touting some sort of stupendous breakthrough to boost HDD capacity, and you're likely to come up fairly empty. Nevertheless, TDK is hopping on the ever-growing bandwagon, as it has reportedly "developed the technology to more than double the data storage capacity of hard-disk drives compared with the most advanced products now available by modifying the design of magnetic heads and disks." Notably, we've heard of similar processes before, but TDK is suggesting that its method can offer up the capability to "read and write 602-gigabits of data per square inch" while producing drives up to 3TB in size. Best of all, this all seems to be a bit beyond the drawing board, as the outfit hopes to mass produce the heads sometime in 2010. [Warning: read link requires subscription]
Macworld clears up confusion around iPhone 'charge cycles'
In addition to confirming a widespread bug in the iPhone's charging meter, an Apple representative spoke with Macworld's Jason Snell to clear up some confusion surrounding the term 'charge cycle.' A lot of media outlets and iPhone haters are running a little too far with Apple's rating on the iPhone battery of '400 charge cycles,' assuming that, after plugging the phone in 400 times to charge up, the battery is dead or useless. As Snell states in his article, this couldn't be farther from the truth.To summarize: a charge cycle is defined as draining the battery and charging it back up - not simply plugging in to top off when you get home from work. According to Snell, charing your iPhone's battery up 25% is equivalent of spending 25% of a charge cycle - not the entire cycle. Further, after 400 charge cycles the battery is in absolutely no way dead or useless, nor is it in need of a warranty replacement or support from AppleCare. After those 400 cycles the battery's total capacity simply drops to about 80%, just like an iPod and many other lithium-based batteries. In other words: unless you're completely draining your battery every day and charging it back up completely every night, you shouldn't have anything to worry about for the life of your iPhone.While it may still be a bummer for some ultra-mobile users that the iPhone's battery isn't user-replaceable on the fly, it should still offer plenty of juice for the typical user's habits for many years to come.[via Daring Fireball]
TUAW Tip: Tapping on the capacity bar in iTunes
Many iTunes users are unaware that the capacity presentation for iPods and iPhones actually is interactive. Tap on the bar to switch from between views. These views include the default view (space occupied), an item-count view (number of items for each category) and a duration view (the length of playback for the items loaded onto the device). It's just one more sweet little Apple feature.
Activation Video reveals some interesting details and... an 80GB iPhone?
Oh Apple, you're so sly with the way you slip in the useful (and sometimes bizarre) details with your iPhone demo videos. In the activation video posted today, more intricacies of what and how the iPhone synchs have been revealed with a walk-through of how to get one's iPhone set up at home with iTunes. First, it appears as though Apple and AT&T have thought of just about everything: The setup asks whether you already have an AT&T account and you'd just like to add your iPhone to it, or if you're creating a brand new account. Users can also activate two or more phones all from the comforts of their pajamas and iTunes.
NHK's 15k RPM optical disc recording system utilizes Blu-ray technology
Pulling out the 15k RPM card this late in the game would usually be frowned upon, but in the case of NHK, its latest development to spin at 15,000 revolutions per minute has nothing to do with a hard disk drive. Researchers at Nippon Hoso Kyokai are working with engineers at the Science and Technical Research Laboratories (STRL) to create an "optical disc recording system based on consumer Blu-ray disc technology that can spin as fast as 15,000 RPM" without worry of a disc experiencing a complete meltdown and shattering within the drive. The first iteration was reportedly demonstrated just last week, and could purportedly be used to record 250Mbps HDTV streams; furthermore, researchers have seemingly dodged the disintegration issue by "making a flexible disc that is just 0.1-millimeters thick." The disc was co-developed with Ricoh and is "essentially the recording layer from a Blu-ray Disc without the 1.1-millimeter plastic substrate that is used to give the disc rigidity," thus, a "thick stabilizing plate has been added into the drive" to keep volatility at a minimum. NHK reportedly claimed that this newfangled approach was similar to that seen in the Stacked Volumetric Optical Disc, but unfortunately, it wasn't able to hand out any hard numbers as to when we'd see this stuff in action.[Image courtesy of DigitalArts]
Toshiba's NC-MR technology could boost HDD capacity 'tenfold'
Just days after Fujitsu tooted its own horn and suggested that it could increase hard drive capacity by 500-percent in a mere two years comes word that Toshiba coincidentally has a similarly grandiose claim. Aside from the obvious leapfrog game that's being played here, Tosh has apparently been working hand-in-hand with Tohoku University to develop "a phenomenon" dubbed Nanocontact Magnetic Resistance, or NC-MR, in which an "enormous difference in magnetoresistance is achieved when two magnetic materials are situated close together and connected by a contact point that narrows to around 1-nanometer." Put simply, the prototype NC-MR structure is twice as large as today's read heads, and elements based on the NC-MR structure would have a "lower resistance than existing TMR elements, enabling the read heads to be miniaturized and still operate quickly." Of course, these sensational claims have yet to make it beyond the drawing board, and while you may be anxious to get one of these in your rig, you'll be waiting about five years or so if things continue as planned. [Warning: Read link requires subscription]
'Layered-layered' materials promise longevous Li-ions
It's been a tick since we've heard details on an emerging battery technology that promises to trounce even the best products currently available, but researchers at the Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory have reportedly developed yet another approach to boosting Li-ion capacity and stability. The technology is "based on a new material for the positive electrode made of a unique nano-crystalline, layered-composite structure," which allows an active components to provide for charge storage while residing in an inactive components which assists in keeping the risk of explosion low. Current claims are putting the capacity right around "double that of conventional Li-ion cells," and it could be used in a variety of wares from "mobiles, laptops, pacemakers and defibrillators, or even hybrid / electric vehicles." Unfortunately, there was no timetable as to when scientists expected said technology to actually be available commercially, so until then, we'll consider this yet another promise on pause.[Via I4U]
The Burning Crusade: Lag and Instability
The vast amount of coverage I have seen on The Burning Crusade rollout has been positive. I'm having very negative experiences. For the first time since I started playing Warcraft I got to bed early last night. Not because a raid got cancelled, or because I was tired, but because I couldn't actually do anything.Every quest spawn in Outlands was camped. As a warlock, I'd typically get a couple DoT's on a mob, and some warrior would charge it. DoT's don't tag mobs until they do damage. It was taking, oh, 20-30 seconds for DoT's to tick because of the breathtaking lag. So I'd do about half the damage on the mob, the warrior would do the other half and get all the quest credit. Excellent. At least I was still out mana for the cast.So I rolled a new Draeni. Every quest spawn in the Draeni starting zone was camped. As a mage, I'd typically get 8 seconds into a 10 second frostbolt cast (did I mention it was laggy?) and a shaman would earth shock the mob, and I'd kill it half and get no credit. Nobody wanted to group, because of the XP penalty. The Outlands and the new starting zones are all on the same server. How do I know that? They all crash together. So I went back to my warlock, back to Outlands, and decided to get a guild group together to try the Ramparts. We zone in, the server crashes. Twice. Before the first pull.Then I get clever. I go to bed early, use flextime for the early in-early out and get home at 4. That would give me 3 hours of playtime before prime time. And they rebooted the servers this afternoon. I got 20 minutes in before the waves of crashes started again. I'm moving one of my level 60's over to a different server. A server that isn't crashing the outlands over and over and over again. Maybe I'll hit 70 there. Because it's not happening on my main server. So far this patch has been a uniformly horrible experience for me. Anyone else having bad experiences? Vent (but keep it civil) below.
Ritek boasting ten-layer HD DVD / Blu-ray discs?
Forget single-layer media, that dual-layer stuff that was all the rage last year, and even the triple-layered flavor that got announced just days ago. Heck, even an eight-layer disc would be forced to bow down to the sure-to-be-outdone-soon ten-layer rendition supposedly crafted by Ritek. No sooner than we all celebrated the idea of a 51GB HD DVD, Ritek has reportedly "designed HD media with a full ten layers," not to mention the supposed three- and four-layer coasters it has laying around while working its way up. As if that weren't impressive enough, it also claims that this multi-layer process can be applied to both HD DVD and Blu-ray, a feat that Toshiba's recent creation can't quite compete with. Of course, Ritek officials were quick to point out that the "real barrier to this advancement is the lack of reader / writer laser diodes to support the additional layers," but if there really are 250GB BD discs just waiting to get spun, those lasers aren't too far behind.[Via Slashdot]
Panasonic develops more capacious Li-ion laptop battery
While the IEEE is "hard at work" revising the laptop battery standard so these explosive cells permanently become a thing of the past, Panasonic has developed a new rechargeable battery pack with increased capacity and energy density, hopefully working on previous heat issues as well. The prototype, which is being shown here at CES, reportedly boasts a "20- to 40-percent" increase in capacity by using "an alloy material for the negative electrode instead of a commonly used carbon material" such as graphite carbon. Additionally, energy density per volume is increased to 740 Wh/L, which is 40-percent higher than that of the company's existing product. Notably, Panasonic claims that this newfangled Li-ion pack will tout a "heat-resistant layer made of insulating metal oxide," which purportedly "ensures improved safety while maintaining a current capacity as high as 3.6 Ah." As expected, there was no word on if (or when) this prototype would actually hit production, but the firm did state that it would like to commercialize it "within a few years" if everything progressed nicely.
Is Blizzard prepared?
The tagline for The Burning Crusade is "You Are Not Prepared." Based on what I saw tonight, Blizzard is not prepared for the expansion either. It took me awhile to grab a good screenshot, I started out at 583 in queue, 57 minutes. Post after post on the General forums complaining about long queue times. With the number of people coming back to the game for the expansion pack, what kind of queue times and problems can we expect? Oh well, it gave me time to get a few new raids scheduled. Hopefully people can get logged in when I want to start.
Realm Splitting?
According to a post by Tseric on the World of Warcraft General Forum Blizzard may decide that certain largely overpopulated worlds need to be split, and Blizzard has created a mandatory world split procedure and is testing it on Hellscream. The way the process would work is that a user would log on, be prompted to choose one of two worlds, and when split day happens will be moved. Players that don't choose a world to move to would be moved to the same world as their guild master, if they aren't in a guild they'd be moved with the rest of their arena team, and if they aren't in either a guild or an arena team Blizzard will pick. Also, Blizzard may override your choice of a destination if the problem that caused the split isn't being resolved.They've got some good reasons for doing this, but I can see a lot of very bad things coming out of this. Guilds getting split up, friends getting split up, guild alliances getting torn apart. The reaction in guild chat when someone brought it to our attention was very negative, but I'm torn. I've seen what long queue times do to gameplay and raid attendance. What do you think? Do the good results outweigh the consequences of moving people around?
Seagate hoping to get 120GB drives into the iPod?
If you're as burned out about iPhone rumors as we are, maybe rumors of new storage capacities (finally) coming to the iPod can grab your attention. Engadget found some comments in Business Week from Seagate CEO William Watkins on the state of small-format storage, including whether the Flash memory craze has fazed the company and what's coming down the pipeline in 1.8 inch hard drives. Apparently, the company will have a 120GB 1.8 inch hard drive ready for the December quarter, which would be ripe for the iPod - as it's been stuck at 60GB since Fall 2004.This is obviously no indication of whether these drives will actually make it into the iPod, but it's great to know they're available, which means there's a chance. Hold your breath at your own risk.
Seagate hoping to get 60GB and 120GB drives into iPods
If you haven't been paying close attention to the theoretical glass ceiling that the iPod has struck, you may not realize that Apple's darling has been capped at 60GB for quite awhile now. While the iPod with video is, in our humble opinion, very ripe for a refresh, the holdup could be history if Seagate has anything to do with it. The world's "largest hard drive manufacturer" isn't fazed by the recent flash-based memory craze, and feels that even NAND can't oust the tried and true storage platters on its own. William Watkins, the company's CEO, recently stated that he felt quite secure in his operations, and that while flash memory had its place, consumers needing spacious drives for backup and home / vehicle media storage will be skipping over the small stuff and heading straight for the hard drives. Regardless, recent analyst reactions to the less-than-stellar financial performance from the company has sparked questions about how it plans to stage a comeback in a flash-driven world, and the answer just might be the iPod. Watkins noted that Seagate hasn't been competitive in the high-capacity 1.8-inch drive arena, but we latched onto a certain comment regarding his intentions to change that -- in regards to 60GB and 120GB 1.8-inch drives, Watkins claimed that the company "will have one in the December quarter," which is obviously prime fodder for new iPod speculation (you know, since that's the holiday shopping season and all). While we weren't told outright that Seagate was in line to supply Apple with these larger drives, we sure hope somebody hooks it up with more capacity, and besides, there's never a time like the present to crank up the rarely-stagnant Apple rumor mill once again.
