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Samsung 70 Series LCD Displays Come with Built-In TV Tuner

Paul Lilly — Fri, 08 May 2009 15:16:45 -0500

Samsung today announces three new LCD displays as part of its 70 Series family, the P2070, P3270, and P2370HD. The first two rock a 30mm (1.18-inch) slim form factor, while the HD model checks in a little thicker at 65.5mm (2.58 inches.).

"The 70 Series offers our customers a sophisticated-looking LCD monitor with the performance capability of our televisions," said J.H. Kim, President of Samsung Electronics America's Information Technology Division. "The 70 Series is the new standard as more people upgrade their monitors for additional uses, like watching television programs and playing video games."

Power users will be most interested in the P2370HD, which boasts full 1080p HD (1920x1080) and comes with a built-in HDTV tuner, integrated speakers with SRS TruSurround, and a remote control. Other specs include a 5ms GTG response time, 50,000:1 contrast ration, and HDMI and component inputs.

No word yet on pricing or availability.

Image Credit: Samsung

Pinnacle PCTV HD Mini Stick

Gordon Mah Ung — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 06:00:00 -0600

It’s been almost a year since we tested Pinnacle’s original PCTV HD Pro Stick TV tuner. In that time, Pinnacle has fixed many of the original product’s shortcomings. The new PCTV HD Mini Stick is even smaller than the original HD Pro Stick, which was itself the size of a fat USB memory key. You could easily chuck the 1”x0.5” PCTV HD Mini Stick in your bag and never notice it. The remote is also slimmed down considerably and could slip into your back pocket comfortably.

One thing Pinnacle didn’t change is the small telescopic whip antenna, which features a magnetic base. When we first raised concerns about putting a magnet in our laptop bag, where we usually have a portable hard drive also rattling around, Pinnacle said there was no reason to be alarmed: No one had ever reported the magnet scrambling any data. With the PCTV Mini Stick, Pinnacle has changed its story. A sticker on the base of the antenna now reads: “Warning, magnet, please keep away from credit cards, magnetic media, hard drives, and other objects sensitive to magnetic fields.” Gee, thanks guys. Of course, the lousy thing is that you can’t use the antenna without the base. If the company had designed the antenna so you could separate it from the base and clip it to something, there wouldn’t be any problem. The current design means you have to choose between the possibility of nuking your notebook PC’s hard drive or not packing the antenna.

We successfully installed and configured the PCTV HD Mini Stick on an older Core Duo dual-core notebook running Windows XP and tuned into about a dozen local ATSC digital stations. Image quality was good but, obviously, very dependent on the broadcast signal. Overall, the tuner ran fine but was a bit laggy on the notebook. We’d recommend the more current Penryn-class Core 2 Duo to run the tuner.

Part of the size savings likely comes from Pinnacle jettisoning support for analog broadcasts. The HD Mini Stick can handle ATSC digital terrestrial transmissions and unencrypted cable transmissions in the ClearQAM format. We dinged the original HD Pro Stick for not having ClearQAM, but we think it’s a bit premature to zap NTSC. Sure, the feds will turn the lights out on over-the-air NTSC, but cable companies continue to broadcast NTSC and many people will still hook up their PCs to the cable at home.

Sadly, that makes the PCTV HD Mini Stick of limited value. Yes, you can use it to watch ClearQAM digital broadcasts on cable, but ClearQAM support by cable providers is spotty. Even if you can receive your local major broadcasters in ClearQAM on cable, what if you want to watch CNN or the Cartoon Network? With the PCTV HD Mini Stick, you’re out of luck.

The PCTV HD Mini Stick is useful only for those who really want to watch digital TV using rabbit ears. Forgive us, but we’d rather shell out for a tuner that also gives us NTSC capability.

Dell Shows Off Inspiron Mini 10 Netbook, Complete with TV Tuner

Paul Lilly — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 14:25:39 -0600

Falling in line between the Mini 9 and Mini 12, Dell has unveiled the aptly named Inspiron Mini 10 netbook with an "edge-to-edge" 720p 10-inch display. Taking space-saving design seriously, Dell's new Mini 10 also sports an "edge-to-edge" keyboard.

Internal components are largely what you'd expect to find in a modern netbook -- Intel Atom Z530 processor, for example -- but not everything is strictly cookie cutter. The Inspiron Mini 10 also packs a built-in TV tuner, adding another functionality to a market segment thriving on basic tasks. A built-in GPS also comes standard, as well as a gesture sensing touchpad and expanded design studio choices.

No word yet on pricing or availability.

Image Credit: Pocket-Link.co.uk

Netgear Digital Entertainer HD EVA8000

Michael Brown — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 13:44:32 -0500

We like Netgear’s EVA8000—a lot. Its industrial design fits in with the rest of our AV gear, its user interface is as elegant and polished as it is easy to use, it supports resolutions up to 1080p with an HDMI port, and that’s just the beginning. But if you buy one, make sure it has the latest firmware update before you do anything else. We couldn’t configure our review unit at all until we updated the software. With that housekeeping accomplished, we were on our way to streaming bliss. Although the EVA8000 has dual antennas, it’s still limited to 802.11g speeds and cannot reliably stream high-definition video content without a wire, but it delivered excellent image and audio quality.

Like MediaGate’s product, the EVA8000 can act as a USB host, but its port is conveniently located right up front. And unlike the MG-350HD, Netgear’s box can stream digital photos and digital music at the same time (it loaded images much faster, too). In addition to support for all the usual audio, photo, and video formats, the box can also stream and decode FLAC and even audio encrypted with Windows Media DRM (rendering it compatible with subscription music services such as Yahoo, Urge, and Napster). It won’t work with Rhapsody, however, because that service uses a DRM scheme all its own. It doesn’t support WMA Lossless either.

The EVA8000’s excellent user interface makes streaming content from the Internet stupid-simple, with direct links to (and great search tools for) movies and TV shows on BitTorrent’s retail site, digital photo collections on Flickr, and every video on YouTube. (But if you find low-res videos hard to watch on a computer monitor, wait until you see them scaled up to 1080p on a big-screen TV—not good.)