Cool Tech Reviews

I see that I haven’t mentioned solid state drives in nearly two years, but it is one area where technical advances are coming hot and heavy as indicated by yesterday’s announcement by Samsung of a 256GB SSD which could be shipping in products by the end of 2008:

Samsung late on Sunday promised what it says is a breakthrough in solid-state drives with the launch of its first 256GB SSD. The drive offers twice the capacity of the Korean firm’s previous 128GB SSD but is also much faster. The 256GB edition reads sequential data at 200MB per second, twice the rate of the original model, while also seeing an even greater increase in write speeds: where the earlier drive writes at 70MB per second, the new SSD writes at 160MB per second.

The big question of course is the cost and while Samsung isn’t quoting prices yet, there is some good news:

Rather than use costly single-level cell (SLC) technology, the company has managed to develop a multi-level cell (MLC) storage drive that transfers as quickly as the best SLC storage while costing much less to produce than past SSDs. Improvements to the storage controller have also extended the longevity to as long as SLC drives, giving the 256GB drive longevity as good or better than some rotating hard disks.

SLC and MLC refer to how much information can be stored in one flash memory cell. A multi-level cell stores more than the single bit in a single-level cell providing a greater areal density and lower cost per bit.

Samsung expects its new drive to be sampling for computer manufacturers by September and shipping to those clients by the end of the year; this applies to both a 2.5-inch drive for more traditional notebooks and a 1.8-inch drive for ultraportables and other much smaller devices.

No customers have been announced, but it will be interesting to see who jumps on board and how inexpensive these beauties really are.

This is the kind of thing that early adopters who forked over big bucks to get in early just love to hear - New Blu-ray Features Freeze Older Players; Updates Coming:

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Lost in the din of last week’s Apple iPhone launch was the announcement of an interesting service in the USA from T-Mobile called HotSpot @Home that combines the best of cellular phones and low cost Wi-Fi VoIP (technically, it’s GSM over IP).

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I’ve mentioned some high definition DVD players here (e.g. [1],[2]), but whatever the virtues, the biggest impediment remains the format battle between the Blu-ray and HD DVD camps. Earlier this month at the Consumer Electronics Show, some vendors tried to bridge the gap: Warner Brothers with a new format disk that had both Blu-ray and HD DVD versions of a movie on it and LG Electronics with a dual format “Super Multi Blue” Player that can handle both Blu-ray and HD DVD disks.

There’s nothing technically wrong with the Warner Brothers solution, but it requires the studios to agree to publishing the special disks which seems unlikely except for Warner Brothers themselves. More promising is is LG’s dual format player solution:

Following the commercial launch of the universal player that can tap both Blu-ray and HD DVD markets there are many more similar devices incoming according to technology research firm ABI research, which believes that such hybrid players will essentially end the war of formats. However, due to high pricing of blue-laser players their mass adoption is still far ahead.

ABI Research believes that by creating a player that accommodates both Blu-ray and  HD-DVD discs, the Korean manufacturer LG Electronics may have created a precedent that the rest of the industry will have to follow.

“We believe that universal players will come to dominate the high-definition DVD player market,” said Steve Wilson, the firm’s principal analyst of consumer electronics.

The research firm also speculates that Samsung is expected to release its own universal player “soon”, and others, including large consumer electronics vendors, may follow suit “before long”. ABI Research forecasts sales of 2.4 million players in 2007, rising to 55 million in 2011.

Many observers expect that the demands of supporting both formats would significantly increase the price of universal players. While there is some additional cost in the optical pickup and the LG player’s initial price is quite steep at $1200, Mr. Wilson expects these prices to drop dramatically as new manufacturers come to market with universal players.

“That $1200 price would seem to be more about matching Blu-ray player prices than about reflecting the cost of producing a universal player. There’s no reason universal players should cost significantly more than HD or Blu-ray players,” the analyst explained.

The LG players are available now in the USA:

The major consumer electronics maker LG Electronics has reportedly started to sell its “Super Multi Blue” BH100 player that is capable of Blu-ray disc and HD DVD playback ahead of the officially proclaimed commercial launch date in the U.S.

Apparently, BestBuy.com online store is currently taking orders on LG BH100 universal disc player, whereas at least some Circuit City stores have them on shelves. Officially, the LG “Super Multi Blue” player, the world’s first and yet the only device that can playback both Blu-ray and HD DVD formats, should be on sale starting the 1^st of February, 2007.

Here’s the press release for the BH100, but Gizmodo’s review points out some problems:

We got the LG BH100 in the mail yesterday. It does what claims to do — be the very first high definition disc player that is compatible with both Blu-ray and HD-DVD. But don’t waive the white flag in the format war quite yet. Our first grope reveals a few flaws that keep me from recommending this player as the ultimate peace keeper in the HD format war.

Right off the bat, I’ll tell you that the rumors that the HD-DVD compatibility is half-assed are absolutely true. One of HD-DVD’s strongest points is its interactive menus and video features, like the ones we wrote about in our Fast and the Furious HD-DVD review. This player didn’t support the menus on this movie, and some of the special features, like being able to repaint a race car in the movie, were only found when I manually skipped to the chapter. Even then, the only thing you can depend on is that the movie will play. Which may be enough for many, but not enough for those who want the most from both formats.

Secondly, I could not get the player to engage its 1080p mode via HDMI with the Sony XBR3 I’m testing. 1080i was all she would do.

But beyond that, she did play both discs. And the boot times were in the 30-40 second range for both HD formats. That’s a step in the right direction compared to many of the 1st gen disc players that took about a minute.

The HD DVD glitches are why the BH100 does not have the official HD DVD logo.

Bottom Line: The LG player just doesn’t seem ready for prime time yet, but once they work the bugs out the dual format player looks like it will take over the high definition DVD player market. Yeah, it’s more expensive than Toshiba’s moderately priced HD DVD-only players, but it plays everything.

Eric A. Taub reports that Samsung is going for thin on a new line of rear projection TVs:

Samsung, the world’s largest seller of televisions, will introduce at next week’s Consumer Electronics Show a new line of rear-projection D.L.P. televisions that will not be much thicker than flat-panel TVs but will cost about 30 percent less.

The new sets, aimed at those who want a bigger set but cannot afford a plasma TV, will come in 50- to 60-inch sizes. At 10 inches deep, they can be hung on a wall.

10 inches is not exactly thin, but I’ll be interested to see the full specs.

As Apple’s iPod continues to dominate the personal media player market, competitors are trying just about everything to get some market share from new form factors to new features like the odd Wi-Fi sharing in Microsoft’s Zune. One new entrant is Samsung’s YP-K5 personal audio player with built-in speakers!

David Pogue at the NY Times:

The K5 costs $210 for a model with 2 gigabytes of memory (about 500 songs’ worth) or $260 for a 4-gig model. That’s roughly $50 more each than the corresponding iPod Nano models. Is Samsung out of its mind?

No, because the K5 has a very big ace up its sleeve: built-in speakers.

Held in your hand, the K5 looks like a black triple-thick iPod Nano (3.8 by 1.8 by 0.7 inches). It turns out, though, that it’s that thick for a reason: what looks like a shiny black slab is actually two slabs, ingeniously connected by a sliding hinge. When you push against the edge, the halves slip apart; the previously concealed bottom half reveals a silver speaker grille. At this moment, the K5’s screen image rotates 90 degrees, so that the display is upright when you set the whole thing down on a desk or table.

In that position, it looks like a cross between a teeny tiny laptop and an itty bitty boom box.

Because that’s what it is right now: a boom box.

And the surprising thing is that the speakers apparently aren’t bad at all, although you aren’t going to rock the house with them.

Even so, these are the best one-inch speakers you’ve ever heard — much better than, say, the music-playing cellphones that pass for audio equipment these days. There’s enough power to fill a room with background music, for example.

Other features include an FM tuner, spiffy display and controls, and a built-in alarm clock. Yes, you can have the K5 wake you up with your preferred tunes. One thing to note is that while battery life is rated at 30 hours with the ear phones, it is reduced to 6 hours with the speakers on which I still don’t think is too shabby.

Pogue ends up a little bit ambivalent about the K5, but Gizmodo and CNET have quite favorable reviews and everyone gives Samsung credit for thinking outside the box.  I tend to think of the K5 as achieving music sharing the old fashioned way without the disappointing Wi-Fi rigmarole implemented in the Zune.