Review LaCie was among the first hard disk manufacturers to produce high capacity, multimedia storage devices designed for media playback. These hard drives, equipped with A/V interfacing, enabled you to take your digital music and video files away from your computer and play them on a decent hi-fi and a full-size TV screen. With its new LaCinema Black range, LaCie has gone a step further and produced a full-scale set-top box.
Screen idol? LaCie’s LaCinema Black MAX
There are three models in the Black range, starting at around £280 for the Black PLAY, which is essentially a straightforward media server. However, we decided to test the top-of-the-range Black MAX, which costs a hefty £420 with 500GB hard disk or £505 with 1TB. That’s expensive, but the Black MAX does make an ambitious attempt to combine a network media server and a set-top DVR in a single unit.
The glossy black box measures around 9in wide and deep and a little under 2in high. It’s larger than an ordinary hard disk, but still only about half the size of our Sky+ box. A quick look around the back reveals a good selection of input and output options, including a digital TV tuner. However, at this price you might have expected two separate tuners, so that you could record one programme while watching another. Read the rest of this entry »
Review Apple rarely – if ever – praises the products of rival companies, but the recent launch of the new iPod range included an unexpected tribute to the merits of the compact and easy-to-use Flip camcorder.
“That’s a market we want to get into,” said Apple CEO Steve Jobs before confirming that Apple has added a videoCamera to the new fifth-generation iPod Nano.
Apple‘s iPod Nano 5G: now with Flip-style video recording
It’s a canny move that allows Apple to tap into a fast-growing market while at the same time shoring up an existing product line. The MP3 player market has had its heyday, so it makes sense to maintain demand for the iPod line by transition members into phones, handheld games consoles and, here, camcorders.
How long before iPod ads contain a sentence of small-print at the bottom that says, “also plays music”, we wonder? Read the rest of this entry »
Review Aimed at outdoor music lovers, the Outcast Junior comes from American manufacturer Soundcast Systems and, compared to the larger Outcast model, is the more compact and affordable version. It features four 3in drivers at the top of the unit and a 6.5in sub-woofer in the base, all powered by a 60W digital amplifier. Despite looking like a cross between a parking bollard and a pedal bin, its form is borne from its genuine ruggedness.
Soundcast’s Outcast Junior: the noisy neighbours’ weapon of choice
Appearing a little lacklustre in a shade of battleship grey, the Junior feels very solid with its hard plastic and rubberised body. Every input has a sealable cover for protection from water and grit. The whole shebang weighs in at 8.2kg and gives the product stability, while still being light enough to carry with its rubberised handle to a shady glade without breaking your back. The Junior also has protruding feet, which help to hold the product firmly in place on soft ground such as sand.
The unit includes several power options: an internal 12V rechargeable unit, a 12V car converter lead and a mains adapter. Initial charge on the internal cell took around seven hours and recharging takes roughly the same. All the connections and controls on the unit are easy to locate and operate. Read the rest of this entry »
Review Wyplay is a French company that’s aimed its Wyplayer directly at users of the Gallic equivalent of Freeview – TNT HD – but who also require media player functionality. It is, in essence, a high definition Personal video Recorder combined with a media streamer, in a single box. It may offer everything the average Frenchman needs, but how well will it fare in Blighty?
Wyplay’s Wyplayer media player
The Wyplayer is a slim unit, almost square, measuring 275 x 240 x 45mm. The front panel has three LEDs that show status information, an IR receiver, and a USB port for plugging in mass storage devices. A tiny hole allows a paperclip to access the reset button. On the rear you’ll find Ethernet, HDMI, composite video, S/PDIF digital audio output, left and right phono audio outputs, two more USB A connectors, a USB B and an input for the external power adaptor. There’s a single UHF aerial connector, which feeds both tuners internally, and a pass-through output for the TV.
With no SCART connectors, there’s no RGB output, and no component connectors; video output options of composite and HDMI are essentially at one extreme (composite) or the other (HDMI) The remote is very slender, just a little longer than a Mars bar, with just eleven buttons and a navigation wheel, but no channel numbers, coloured keys or any of the things we take for granted on a remote. Read the rest of this entry »
Review The usage is clear: you have a stack of old VHS tapes and you’d like to get the content they hold in a more convenient, digital form for viewing on an iPod or burning to DVD.
Elgato’s meant-for-Mac video Capture comes late to the party – people have been digitising VHS tapes for ages, either using a TV tuner or a standalone gadget like Ion’s VCR-2-PC. Does this new offering come too late – or does it have something special to offer?
Well, a bit of both, actually. video Capture’s accompanying software makes grabbing video, topping and tailing it for a clean start and end, and saving it to disk all a simple process involving just a handful of mouse clicks. But we’re not convinced many folk will get much out of this pricey item.
Physically, video Capture is like a large TV tuner, with a USB connector on a wire at one end and a quartet of inputs – s-video, composite-video and RCA Stereoaudio – at the other. The box comes with a set of red, white and yellow male-to-male cables, and a Scart adaptor, so you’ll be ready to hook up your video recorder, set-top box or whatever out of the box. Read the rest of this entry »
