dmedia G400 WiMAX MID to Show Off at CES 2009

(PhysOrg.com) -- The dmedia G400 offers a choice of 3.8 or 4.3-inch touchscreen with an 800 x 480 resolution. The device features integrated WiMAX, Bluetooth, HSPDA/WCDMA, GPS, and a microSD card slot. Robust feature-sets enable bandwidth-intensive mobile multimedia applications that include NextWave's MXtv, mobile broadcast service, streaming video, video conferencing and VoIP.

There's also an option for DVB-T/H, ISDB-T or T-DMB mobile TV tuners. Some of the other specs are still a mystery but it looks like the G400 uses a SiRFprima SoC with an ARM11 core, 3D graphics acceleration and video decoding; internal memory is unknown at this time.

Current information reveals that the G400 measures 5.4" x 2.8" x 0.5" and weighs 7.1 ounces and comes with a 1400mAh battery.

The G400 is expected to launch in the first half of next year, though in what markets is anyone´s guess. The good news is that availability won´t remain a question mark for much longer, as dmedia is expected to show off the WiMAX MID at CES 2009.

Developers flock to Hero Engine after Star Wars The Old Republic success

Idea Fabrik, the company behind the Hero Engine, has revealed a massive surge in developers expressing interest in using its platform after the success of Star Wars: The Old Republic and other massively multiplayer online (MMO) games that use the engine.

Since the beginning of this year Idea Fabrik has seen a sharp increase in developer subscriptions to its HeroCloud managed service, which lets game studios build 3D online games in a variety of genres.There are now over 5,000 developers using the Hero Engine, “fuelled by the excitement about successful launches last year of MMO games from EA and from Trion Worlds,” according to Idea Fabriks COO, Neil Harris.The Trion Worlds title is Rift, which released in early 2011, and the EA title is, of course, Star Wars: The Old Republic, BioWares first foray into the world of online games. This has paid off big time, as The Old Republic is now the fastest growing MMO in history, with over two million copies sold so far. Not bad for a game thats just over two months old.“We’ve been watching Hero Engine’s evolution over the last several years,” said Wanda Meloni, analyst at M2 Research. “The technology has really become quite mature. My guess is, you’re going to see Hero Engine not only continue to be a dominant platform for MMOs, but that the reference products the company is developing will illustrate that it is viable for other genres of games as well.”

Elgato announces the Game Capture HD

Slowly but surely more and more high definition video capture devices have started to appear, although most of them haven’t exactly been priced at a consumer price point if you wanted something besides a PCI Express card. Elgato’s new Game Capture HD is set to change things at least for those interesting in capturing HD gaming videos from a console.

The Game Capture HD connects to a PC or Mac over USB 2.0 and features a built in hardware video encoder that records the video in 1080i30, 720p60, 576p60 or 480p/i60 depending on the source/settings. It accepts HDMI - without HDCP copy protection - input as well as composite video plus audio and is as such compatible with both Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and Sony’s Playstation 3. And HDMI throughput connector is also part of the package which allows you to play the game on your TV or display at the same time as you’re recording it. One neat trick is that it’s bus powered and as such doesn’t require an additional power adapter.

Elgato also supplies the Game Capture HD with some basic capture and editing software. This has a rather unusual feature which Elgato calls "Flashback Recording" which offers what most people would refer to as time shift record or pre-recording. However, in this case it’s only up to an hour worth of video, but at least it can come in handy for those times when you forget to hit record. The software also include direct uploading to YouTube, Facebook and Twitter for easy sharing of your videos.

The Game Capture HD will be available next month for US$199.99 (S$255) which might still be a bit too expensive for most of us, but it’s far cheaper than most professional grade video capture hardware and it doesn’t require a high-end computer to do the video encoding in real time. The only limitation is that Elgato only supplies drivers for Windows 7 and Mac OS X 10.7 or later.

Source: Elgato

Fan drivers missing on the Mac port of Windows XP

For those of you who aspire to run Windows XP on your spanking new Intel based Mac, please take sometime and read this piece of news. Apparently, the people who managed to modify Mac's boot sequence to accept Windows, had some inherent bugs with the installation. One of the major (perhaps the most critical one), is the lack of any fan drivers on the XP installation. This would possibly cause permanent damage to the CPU if used over a prolonged period. However, a later update shows that fans would spin regardless of OS. The drawback would probably be the lack of any form of speed throttling on the fans, causing it to spin at max speed. Such would cause quite a bit of noise pollution nevertheless.

DFI LP JR X58-T3H6 MicroATX Board Details

DFI is preparing a microATX board based on Intel X58 chipset slated for release in January 2009. The PCB is black in colour and has6 layers measuring at 245x245mm size. With 6 phase digital PWM design, it supports the LGA1366 processors from 4.8 to 6.4GT/s QPI. There are 6 DIMM slots on the board to allow up to 24GB DDR3-800/1066/1333 memories and two PCIe x16 slots for 2-way SLI and Quad Crossfire.

Other features include 1 x PCIe x4, 1 PCI slot, 6 SATA ports configurable with RAID 0/1/0+1/5, one IDE port, 12 USB ports, Realtek ALC889 HD Audio, Marvell 8053 GbE LAN. There are 7 fan connectors onboard with EZ-On (Power) and EZ-Touch (Reset) switches and a Software Debug LED. The BIOS features CMOS Reloaded, Voltage Tuning for Vdimm, Vnb, Vcore, Vsb, VHT, 1MHz FSB frequency tuning and adjustable CPU multiplier, ABS technology system.

Update #1 : Should be 6 layers PCBinstead of 4

ASUS 6800LE To 6800GT

It seems like the current batch of ASUS V9999LE cards based on 6800LE can besoft modded to 6800GT. Using Rivatuner, 8 hidden pixel pipelines on V9999LE cardcan be unlocked unveiling a total of 16 pixel pipelines like the 6800GT/Ultra.The 2 hidden vertex pipelines can also be unlocked to unveil the full 6 vertexpipelines. The 3DMark2005 score jump from 6707 to 9063 as a result.

Arctic Announces First Products with Next-Gen AMD Trinity A8 and A10 APUs

New HTPC is the first one that is solely tailored for the role of a living room device. MC101 carries the tag line "Entertainment Always" and the company is following suit with a very sleek design. The interesting bit is that this compact HTPC is powered by the upcoming AMD Fusion "Trinity" processors carrying a familiar name "A8", and not so familiar "A10". Both processor lineups will be powered by the Trinity silicon, i.e. next-generation CPU core codenamed "Piledriver" with the GPU core codenamed "Northern Islands".

According to the associated slide, AMD "Trinity A8" comes with Radeon HD 7640G, while "Trinity A10" comes with Radeon HD 7660G, implying this will be a higher performance part (current Fusion APUs top out with X500 series). According to Arctic, the products will be released when AMD decides to launch Trinity-based Fusion APUs, which could be CeBIT 2012 in March, or Computex Taipei 2012. Given the timing when Llano was introduced to market, we would assume the second option is a more realistic one.

Do note that Arctic is deliberately not mentioning AMDs "Fusion" brand in any part of the press release. This comes from an interesting legal case taking place: few days ago, a report came out that Arctic actually plans to sue AMD over the Fusion brand, claiming it has filed for a trademark before AMD. The problem with that could be that AMD was saying Fusion for their future products before that power supply trademark was filed - both came out in 2006. However, that is a legal matter and knowing Arctics previous love for threatening individuals or companies with litigation, it might be that MC101 line of products is a way of making a peace offer.

Then again, the calling of not growing, but exploding market of advanced set-top boxes. For example, Intel is currently shipping over 30,000 set-top-boxes per day... in EMEA region alone alone! Yes, thats 900,000 devices per month, all powered by a variant of a 45nm Core processor, named Pentium for the sake of argument.