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Xbox, Xbox 360 taken to console heaven by water jet cutter
While there's no shortage of interesting ways to dissect (or completely obliterate) your favorite gizmo, this one came straight out of left field but still manages to impress. If you've never been around a pressure washer and had vivid thoughts of cutting up your precious Microsoft console with it, you're probably in the (vast) majority, but the zany folks over at Waterjets fulfilled their own fantasies. Offered a bunch of malfunctioning Xbox and Xbox 360 consoles, they put their laser water cutting skills to the test by making an "X" out of an original Xbox, carving out Xbox logos from the circuit boards, and creating a hole in the middle of an Xbox 360. Sure, the utility here is questionable, and the methods are most certainly unorthodox, but we can't deny the wow-factor. So if you're interested in seeing just what else happens when that oh-so-powerful jet gets fired up, be sure to hit the read link for the full rundown of slicing and dicing.[Via MAKE]
Nintendo's Wiimote gets dissected, inspected
While the console launch frenzy has given us some exciting innards to look at lately, it's good to see someone finally take a big step away from that potentially hazardous (and sued) Wiimote, pick up a screwdriver, and delve right in. Similar to the precise movements that splayed the Wii itself, these folks used utmost caution (and a fairly nice digicam, too) when dissecting their brand new Wiimote. Beneath the casing was the IR sensor, capacitors, a Broadcom BCM2042 Bluetooth chip, vibration motor, LEDs, accelerometer, EEPROM, and a myriad of other random forms of circuitry. Interestingly enough, the kids behind the scenes got a little carried away and found that the "EEPROM contained all the constants like Bluetooth ID, firmware revision, etc.," while the Wiimote "functionality was burned into the Broadcom" chip itself. So if cramming a SIXAXIS controller into a model airplane is too amateur for you, crack open that Wiimote (before it does the same to you) and get to hacking.[Thanks, Kevin]
Samsung BD-P1000 Blu-ray player hands-on, cracked open, pored over
While it may be delayed (only in Europe, Blu-ray fans don't jump off the ledge just yet!), a few guys at Greek home theater site AVSite.gr got a demo of Samsung's BD-P1000 Blu-ray player and said it looked beautiful. Actually we're not totally sure what they said because we can't read any of it but the pictures look great. A few guys from the site came over and posted a few details on AVS Forum. During their demo they weren't able to switch into 1080p mode to get a look at that, but in 1080i connected to a high-end projector everything looked great. They didn't note any playback glitches and said the discs did not seem to take a long time to load.That's all well and good but HDTVPolska did them one better and cracked the unit open for a look at its insides. That's what we like, pre-early HDTV adopters who take risks.
