Packard Bell announced its Ion based nettop iMax. It has similar to Acer Asparevo design and spec – Intel Atom N230 processor, 2GB RAM, 250GB HDD, 6x USB, HDMI and VGA. Except that the iMax sports the gaming pad to be a competitor of Nintendo Wii.
The Packard Bell iMax nettop will be available soon with price started from £249.
[via Ubergizmo]
Yesterday the list of features which will be incorporate into upcoming HDMI 1.4 specification, was announced. The major ones are two-way data and two-way audio support. The two-way data transferring will allow to use HDMI cable to send or receive data in the local network with speeds of up to 100 Mbps. This means that the only one device from the A/V stack should be connected via Cat5. The rest will get their IP connectivity over HDMI.
If TV has a built-in tuner the S/PDIF cable should be used to get sound on the audio receiver. With HDMI 1.4 it won’t be needed thanks to supporting of upstream audio. As result only one HDMI cable will be used instead of three.
The rest features are following:
* HD resolutions up to 4096×2160
* 3D up to 1080p definition
* “Real-Time Content Recognition†(adjusting video settings automatically based on connected device)
* Additional color spaces, especially for digital still cameras
* Micro connectors
* Automotive connectors
Many of your know about Philips Ambilight – technology to extend video action beyond the TV. Here is a Russian DIY analog of it. That project was started on 2006. Since that time the author made a few changes in the used hardware and software. Sure that DIY Ambilight cannot be a competitor of the Philips product. But as a concept it’s good and useful for understanding how Philips Ambilight works.
Here is also a ready-made device from site Ambilight 4 PC. It offers Ambilight effect for your PC.
It’s hard to believe that the compact nettop Fit-PC 2 has enough horsepower to playback Full HD video with resolution 1920 x 1080! It’s based on Intel Atom (Z530 or Z510) processor and equiped with 1GB RAM, your choice of 2.5″ HDD, built-in WiFi adapter, six USB ports, Ethernet and HDMI out. As OS WinXP or Ubuntu can be used. The price of Fit-PC 2 is between $245 and $400 depending on the configuration.
As I see the Fit-PC 2 is good choice for media extender of MythTV, XBMC, Boxee or VDR. Also it can be used as LinuxMCE media director. But be sure that it supports netboot via PXE.
I already wrote about plans of TechnoTrend to stop producing of its famous DVB cards which supported very well by Linux. But today I found information about buying of TechnoTrend by the Gorler Telekom. That’s really good because the Gorler Telekom is going to continue developing and producing DVB cards. So, Linux users will have a well-supported DVB cards again.
The new site of Gorler Telekom & TechnoTrend can be found here.
