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Crystal USB Desktop Speakers look good, probably sound bad
Not a lot here that you can't already make out for yourself, but we'll give ya the down low, anyway. The Crystal USB Desktop Speakers are powered via USB 2.0 and only pack 1-watt per channel, yet somehow, they're touted as "audiophile" grade. The product description rambles on in embarrassing fashion about just how amazing these things will sound, but seriously, we'd just be happy with the decently cool looks (yes, we're being generous here) and relatively low $39.99 price tag.[Via Random Good Stuff]
iriver's Mplayer ties one on
Eww. Clearly, the jaded, nicotine-stained Engadget editor in his big-boy trousers is not the target for the latest incarnation of the iriver Mplayer. While the 1GB innards remain unchanged, iriver has slathered the ¥14,800 (about $137) MP3 player in a healthy crust of Swarovski and silk to invoke the little girl trapped inside us all. Clap clap, bounce bounce, curtsy... a few more samples after the break. [Via AVING]
MyVu Crystal a worthy travel companion, available now
Surely you remember Veronica Belmont posing with the MyVu Crystal / Shades at CES earlier this year? Yeah, the former unit is finally available to order for the three people in attendance who care, and better still, a recent review by PC World asserts that this thing actually isn't a half bad travel companion. Imagery was said to be "crystal-clear" (har) and battery life was more than reasonable, but look, even the reviewer admitted that he "wouldn't be caught walking down the street" with 'em on. Purchase accordingly.
Honeywell offers Crystal series subwoofer cable
Okay, it's not "self-healing" or anything like that, but Honeywell has added subwoofer interconnects to its Crystal Series of HT cabling products. Subwoofer cables are pretty standard fare, but we've got to give credit to Honeywell for not over-inflating the marketing hype. With the low bandwidth requirements and run lengths that tend to be on the long side (and often next to power cords), shielding is probably the most important design consideration for subwoofer interconnects; and true to form, that's exactly what the press blurb emphasizes. The 100-percent foil shield combined with a 95-percent tinned copper braid should do a good job of keeping the hum out. The cables come complete with the requisite 24-karat gold plated RCA terminations in 5- and 10-meter lengths. No info on pricing -- hopefully the lack of marketing hype around the product nets some savings at the register.
Swarovski-studded LG 47LB90FD LCD HDTV makes grand entrance
LG's Xcanvas line of LCD HDTVs look mighty sexy as-is, in our humble opinion, but we're certain a little extravagance can't hurt. The 1080p 47LB90FD has a surprisingly sparkly base that's doused in Swarovski crystals, and as you can likely glean, it'll only be released in limited quantities. Sadly, the nitty-gritty details on this thing are few and far between, but when you're talking about a ritzy ???3.3 million ($3,204) HDTV, who needs a contrast ratio?[Via CNET]
FCC outs Philips Breeze headset -- Swarovski never looked so greasy
Wow. Mr. FCC Photog trumps even Mr. Blurry Cam when it comes to blowing the easy spy shot. That's Philips unannounced Bluetooth Breeze headset with Swarovski crystals presented in a rich, man-glaze of test-lab sauce. According to the manual, the Active Crystals Breeze is your standard Bluetooth headset only this one is "designed by women, for women." Seriously, are we really that different?
Patch 2.4.2 notes released
Blizzard has released tonight the patch notes for patch 2.4.2, which means the PTR will probably be up and running sometime soon. Patch 2.4 will likely be the last major patch before Wrath of the Lich King, and we expect to see a couple more of these minor patches before WotLK comes out.Highlights of 2.4.2 include: Changes to the way arena points are calculated - essentially what Drysc talked about earlier. Void Shatter no longer has a cooldown, and other cooldowns have been reduced. Illidan will no longer despawn if a raid wipes during his death speech. If you are sheeped / polymorphed by a mob, you will no longer gain back health (ie: the mass sheep in Aran, which regens your health before he fire blasts the raid). This is a potentially large change. Many main hand weapons are now one hand weapons. A good list of bug fixes, including several problems associated with sounds. Full patch notes for your convenience after the break!
Dell's 22-inch Crystal LCD monitor gets reviewed, panned
It seems as if Dell reckoned that the Crystal's boyish good looks would be enough to push it into the hands of style-obsessed nationals everywhere, as a scalding review over at Maximum PC asserts that little else beyond that is actually going for it. Said to have exhibited "absurd glare, low grayscale range and fussy touch-buttons" the 22-inch stunner frustrated critics beyond the point of forgiveness. More specifically, the glare was said to be so bad while watching dark scenes in a film that it "destroyed the picture." To its credit, it did manage to present ultra-vivid colors and an accurate dynamic contrast, but those two bright spots were far from being enough to overcome the negatives. Needless to say, the unit did well to fetch the 5 out of 10 score that was bestowed upon it, and based upon what we're hearing, we'd highly recommend checking one of these out in person before buying this thing on appearances alone.
Wii Warm Up: To Bedazzle or not to Bedazzle
Yesterday we showed you the major award given to a Smash Bros. tournament winner: a Wii covered in Swarovski crystals, which formed the images of Mario and Bowser. It was obviously worth a pile of money, and has value as a collectors' item on top of the value of all the crystals and the work put into it. But did it look good?The comments on that post mostly tended toward calling it tacky, but we thought it would be worth blinging bringing it up in our daily discussion thread and officially soliciting your opinions. Can adding sparkly stuff to your console be an improvement? Is a crystal-covered system a conversation piece, or a ... behind-the-back conversation piece?
A Crystal Brawl for a tournament winner
Daniel Jung probably already has a Wii, since he had enough interest in Super Smash Bros. Brawl to attend, and then win, a tournament. But he's about to have another one -- this time, with stuff glued to it. As a prize for his victory in the New York City finals of Nintendo's Brawl tournament, Daniel will soon be awarded this crystal-bedazzled Wii, designed by CrystalIcing.com. It features Mario against a silver background on one side, and Bowser against a blue background on the other (picture after the break). It was somebody's job to form the shape of Bowser out of Swarovski crystals and glue that shape onto the side of a Wii. That strikes us as pretty surreal -- although our job is to write about the act of gluing a Bowser-shaped constellation of crystals onto a Wii.
Samsung unveils T-series LCD lineup for the suits
While we found Samsung's IT solutions emphasis here at CeBIT a bit of a yawn -- when executive gets up and tells you that printers are his "personal passion," you know you're in for a wild ride -- we are glad to see that the company is sticking some of its consumer design cues into its business products. Case in point, the T-series LCDs borrow from the "crystal" style elements of the Bordeaux series, but pack in some business-friendly specifications. The SyncMaster T260 is the flagship of the series, with 26-inches of real estate, 1920 x 1200 resolution, 20,000:1 dynamic contrast ratio, 5ms response time and a DTV tuner option, while the similar T240 hits at 24-inches and brings 0.3 Watts standby power. Inputs include DVI and HDMI and D-sub. More basic displays start at 19-inches, multiple color accent options are available, and everything will be available globally in March.%Gallery-17362%
MacBook Air gets smothered in Swarovski crystals, loses innocence
For whatever reason, products designed in Cupertino have a strange attraction to precious coverings -- ones created with gold and diamonds, namely. Nary a month after Apple's thinnest laptop ever started shipping out to eager early adopters, over 8,000 Swarovski crystals have somehow found their way onto a totally helpless MBA. We wish we could say it was defaced and stripped of its soul for a good cause, but sadly, it wasn't.[Via Crystal Icing]
Insider Trader: A disenchanted profession
Insider Trader is your inside line on making, selling, buying and using player-made products.Back in the early days of the Azerothian economy, enchanters performed enchants with their own mats. You didn't sell anything you didn't have all the mats for, with the exception of special items such as Righteous Orbs for exclusive, high-end enchants like Crusader. When you were out of mats, you closed up shop for the day. Players laughed in your face if you asked them to provide their own mats, and anything for sale on the Auction House was overpriced to the nth degree. Enchanters developed relationships with crafters in other professions to create items that disenchanted into useful components. Players who leveled enchanting purely to disenchant items and sell the resulting reagents were frowned upon and hid their identities behind banker alts and mules.Today, it's a disenchanter's market. Disenchanting has become a profitable "gathering" profession in and of itself. Groups expect enchanters to "shard" items on the spot during instance runs so that members can choose a more valuable shard instead of an undesirable BoP drop. Disenchanting is a whole new "profession"! Read on for Insider Trader's look at disenchanting as a money-making venture in its own right.
Video: MyVu Crystal and Shades still incredibly dorky
Look, we really want to live in a world where strolling around wearing MyVu's latest video glasses is acceptable, but we just don't -- which is probably why Mahalo Daily's Veronica Belmont could just barely bring herself to put 'em on when she stopped by the booth at CES. Check out the vid after the break!
Dell's Crystal 22-inch fashion LCD now official
Well, at least we didn't have to wait long. After a bit of a premature showing on Dell's website in the AM, the Crystal is back for realsies. Obviously the notable thing here is the design statement Dell is making with all that glass and metal -- these days it's almost like they've started paying their designers or something -- but the good news is that beauty isn't only skin deep here, since this 22-inch LCD has a 1680 x 1050 resolution, 98% color gamut, 2ms response time, 2000:1 dynamic contrast ratio, and a built-in 2 megapixel webcam. There are also built-in speakers, and fancy touch controls across the base of the monitor, all wired along the glass with style. Connections include DVI and HDMI with HDCP and DisplayPort. Perhaps the best news is that you don't have to wait until CES to pick this thing up: it's available now for $1,199.[Via Direct2Dell]%Gallery-12595%
Dell announces Crystal transparent monitor a little early
We're not sure why Dell suddenly pulled its release / launch page for the slightly overdue, slick, 4mm thick glass Crystal monitor, but it looks like last year's concept will be this year's reality. A severely overpriced, $1,200, 22-inch reality. Hope that thing is packing DisplayPort, after all.[Via Hothardware, warning: read link is probably down]
TG's LLUON Crystal reminds us that mini PCs can be sexy, too
Sure, manufacturers are stuffing all sorts of great components into inconceivably small cases these days, but all that cramming has still left plenty of room for ugly of late. TG has been honing its skinny desktop form factor for a few years now, and seems to have it down to a science with the latest TG LLUON Crystal. Specs are only so-so, running up to a Core 2 Duo T7200 processor at 2GHz, 2GB of RAM, a 500GB HDD, DVD burner, GeForce 8400 GS graphics and a bit of 802.11g, and the 1,399,000 won pricetag (about $1,490 US) is hardly a steal for this amount of power, but we're just glad that ugly spell is over -- and unsurprised it took a South Korean company to do the trick.[Via Akihabara]
Ring of Fates hits PAL regions next spring
Our excitement levels for (deep breath) Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates are steadily rising -- not only did our ears prick up earlier this year at the Famitsu score of 35/40, but this morning we got a release date for PAL territories (spring 2008, the same as the US release) and pretty screens (bizarrely in two different sizes).Most of all however, we're looking forward to wirelessly questing with chums on our handhelds. For many, getting four players together for a co-op game of Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles on the GameCube was an almighty headache, if only because the Cube itself was just so damn sparse. Fortunately, DS ownership is somewhat more common, which should make assembling parties of warriors in Ring of Fates -- dubbed "the most accessible Final Fantasy ever" in this morning's press release -- a piece of cake.%Gallery-3462%
ELAC unveils the first speakers with crystal-shaped cones
We've seen a lot of wacky speaker tech, but ELAC's new 240 series is the first we've seen with speaker cones made out of crystal-shaped aluminum. ELAC says the shaped membrane allows the speakers to provide a flat frequency response, yet still be tolerant of positioning -- something we'd have to hear to believe. On the other hand, we do love shiny things. ELAC is covering the whole spectrum of speaker needs with the 240 series, from the €498 ($670) BS 243 bookshelf units to the €1,998 ($2727) BS 249 top-of-the-line floorstanders. We've heard ELAC is showing these off at IFA this week, we'll let you know how they sound if we manage to get our hands (and ears) on them.
Viewsonic shows off crystal-clad VX2255 monitor
Viewsonic's original VX2255 display didn't exactly stand out all that much when it was first announced way back at CES, but that certainly won't be the case with the company's latest revision to the monitor, which now comes clad in Swarovski crystals like so many other gadgets. Lending a hand in that area is G Mask International, which Viewsonic has partnered with to let you customize the monitor to your liking. As for the monitor itself, you can expect some decent if unremarkable specs, including a 22-inch screen size, 1680 x 1050 resolution, 5 ms response time, and 1,000:1 contrast ratio, along with an integrated 1.3 megapixel webcam, speakers, and microphone. No word on what it'll cost, but those in Singapore will be able to check the monitor out first hand at the Comex Show that gets underway later this month.[Via Tech Digest]
