CES 2006 - Day 3: Playstation 3, Quarter-size Hard Drives, SED and lots of TVs
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Manveer Wasson on January 9, 2006 1:25 AM EST- Posted in
- Trade Shows
WLAN Enabled Nokia N80 Phone
One feature we've been waiting to hit more smartphones is WiFi. With the high price of data plans in the US and the increasing number of 802.11 hotspots popping up, the inclusion of WiFi in cell phones makes perfect sense. Nokia's N80 is catering to the power user looking to stay connected anywhere in the world. This phone offers a plethora of network support including quad-band GSM, dual-band WCDMA (3G), EDGE, GPRS, 802.11g, Bluetooth 2.0 and IrDA. The N80 also supports UPnP to allow streaming media between the phone and compatible devices. Along with the third generation of the S60 interface on top of the Symbian operating system, third-party application support is already a given.
The N80 also includes several multimedia features including a 3MP camera, MPEG-4 decoding support, an FM radio, A2DP support for stereo headsets, and miniSD memory card expansion.
Although the phone may seem bulky from the pictures, it actually fits quite nicely in the palm of your hand. Nokia expects this phone to appear in US retailers by mid-2006. Cingular was rumored to carry this phone however the representatives at CES have told us that deal did not go through. Expect this phone to retail for around $600.
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JarredWalton - Monday, January 9, 2006 - link
Looks fine for me with Firefox 1.07, but Internet Explorer is all messed up. The odd thing is that it's only *this* article that's having problems.Oop... found the issue. The article description had a double-quote in it, and changing that to " fixed the problem. Thanks for pointing this out!
tuteja1986 - Monday, January 9, 2006 - link
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=28840">http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=28840world largest is panasonic not samsung :)
Samsung 102"
Panasonic 103"
So as you can see Panasonic wins by 1" ...lol
Cygni - Monday, January 9, 2006 - link
I just cant see how anybody really expected HD-DVD or Blu-Ray to be a success, to be quite honest. They seem to be expecting everyone to dump all their "old school" DVD's to pick up the SAME titles in the new formats, like most people eventually did with the VHS->DVD move... but i think its quite obvious that there just isnt any motivation to DO that this time.Can you say Laserdisc anybody? I just dont see Blu-Ray or HD-DVD taking off like they think it will. Will they stick around in the long run, unlike Laserdisc? Probably, simply because the added storage will be useful in the long long run and the discs/drives should eventually be dirt cheap... but they ARENT going to be a run away, must upgrade success. Thats for sure.
And when can i get a 103" OLED display? :p
Chadder007 - Monday, January 9, 2006 - link
:werd:I thought this was hillarious
Blu-Ray AND HD-DVD will be a failure.
sprockkets - Monday, January 9, 2006 - link
It just confirms what I have been saying, recording HDTV to DVD on 720x480 doesn't look that much worse than it coming on 1920x1080 live.Sure the original was smoother and clearer, but, it wasn't mind blowing, and if I didn't tell you, you probably wouldn't notice the difference either.
gsellis - Monday, January 9, 2006 - link
First, thanks to the AT crew for going out of their way on such a horrible journey to cover this event. We all know you had to suffer to do it, but anything for the AT user's, right? ;)On the DVD to HD-DVD/Blu-Ray compare, their content did not show much difference because of the source. The played content was probably film of Pro-HD and compressed to MPEG or HD codec with a high-end encoder (the reds in that closest did not appear to be crushed as much as a standard encoder would do with something like DV content.) It looks like the source was at least 4:2:2 and maybe 4:4:4.
If the sources had been DV vs HDV, their would have been a little more dramatic. And as noted, if it had been compared to NTSC 480i, it would have also been more dramatic.
But, you are very correct in that this is not VHS-DVD where the quality jump is higher and the feature set is bigger. DVD is non-linear in how you can view content compared to tape and the big bonus was adding the bonus material. The bonus material is already there, so what can they add to really make it worth it? Especially when the players can do upconverts? And 720p movies fit on DL DVD-ROM already.
OK, (maybe coining a new twist on an old term or it probably has be done) having a Blue disc player and replacing your DVD library makes your v-penis(tm) bigger :p
MrSmurf - Monday, January 9, 2006 - link
You can play your current DVDs in the newer standards. I think both will have moderate success on the PC once the price goes down due to their size but it'll be some time both stand alone players even put a dent in the market.Xenoterranos - Monday, January 9, 2006 - link
Hellz yeah. I wouldn't mind that 82 in LED lit LCD either, probably the closest you can get to a big screen OLED screen right now.OddTSi - Monday, January 9, 2006 - link
Someone please fix the page formatting. Everything is all over the place.JarredWalton - Monday, January 9, 2006 - link
Should be fixed now.