By Glenn Hefley
Three great gadgets were unveiled in Las Vegas this year for the Consumer
Electronics Show. While many more were also unveiled, these three seemed to
stand out, and demonstrate the ideals of things to come.
The first is called the EyeBud, which can turn video being played on an iPod
into big-screen TV.
The Bellevue WA based eMagin Corp developed a headset system which plugs into
the Apple iPod and displays video from a screen that sits in front of your
eye (very Mission Impossible looking). eMagin's main products deal with military
applications, so these aren't little toys. The optical technology used by the
EyeBud is designed to give the picture a higher resolution. Using the EyeBud
headset is akin to watching a 105-inch display from 12 feet away.
Apple's portable music player has spawned numerous accessories and complementary
products, but this one is a bit more pricy than a cool carrying case or Dolby
headsets. The EyeBud is expected to come onto the sales floor with a $600.00
price tag, which is roughly $200.00 more than a 60-gigabyte iPod costs.
The EyeBud headsets run off their own re-chargeable power supply which is
inside a separate control module. The module is about the size of the iPod.
The EyeBud uses the same underlying technology as eMagin's more advanced Z800
3DVisor, an existing system that retails for $899. That system puts a display
in front of each eye and uses head-tracking technology to let people look around
virtual worlds, such as video games.
Both devices can also be used as an alternative way of viewing regular computer
screens. (http://www.emagin.com/)
On the same wave length of getting more into the frame with less, Kodak unveils
the first dual-lens digital camera (which really is a big deal). The elegant
V570 camera wraps an ultra-wide angle lens (23 mm) and an optical zoom lens
(39 – 117 mm) into a small, sleek package less than an inch in thickness.
This lens is capable of 5x optical zoom, rendering 5-megapixel images. The
V570 also includes in-camera panorama stitching, which automatically combines
three pictures into a panorama photograph. Using the ultra-wide view in panorama
scene mode, people can take in a 180-degree vista with just three shots.
On top of this amazing still-shot performance, the V570 camera records TV-quality
video, up to 30 frames per second (fps) using advanced MPEG-4 compression.
Built-in image stabilization technology reduces on-screen shaking from unintentional
hand and camera movement. The camera also offers an optical zoom feature for
video including auto focus.
Other notable features of the V570 camera include:
- A big, brilliant 2.5-inch, high-resolution LCD screen;
- The exclusive KODAK Color Science image processing chip for phenomenal image
quality with rich color, accurate skin tones, low noise and precise exposure;
- Automatic red-eye reduction, on-camera cropping, picture blur alert and auto
picture rotation;?
- In-camera distortion correction to compensate for ultra-wide angle fish-eye
effects, which can be turned on or off;
- Twenty-two scene modes plus three color modes, helping snap shooters capture
the best possible shot with the least possible effort;
- The Photo Frame Dock 2, which provides one-touch picture transfer to a connected
computer while keeping the cameras’ high-capacity lithium-ion battery
charged and ready to go, and which can play video and photo ‘slideshows’ on
the camera’s high-resolution LCD screen;
- And 32 megabytes (MB) of internal memory, plus a SD card slot for additional
storage.
The KODAK EASYSHARE V570 zoom digital camera with Photo Frame Dock 2 will
be available worldwide beginning later this month for about $399.00.
Now we skip over to the world of cell phones, where South Korea's Samsung
Electronics Co. has developed what it claims is the world's fastest multimedia-downloading
mobile handset.
.
The phone, equipped with an MSM6280 chip from the Qualcomm of the United States,
enables users to download music or other multimedia content at a speed of 3.6
megabits per second, or approximately 10 MP3 music files a minute.
I'm not sure what size these MP3 files are, and could not find a real reference,
but even one 5 meg file a minute would be nice. What does impress me is the
download speed on a cell phone connection.
Looking at these three products, one has to wonder what video conferencing
and file sharing will be like two years from now.
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