Twelve Black Code Monkeys

eHomeUpgrade has this great piece on how to build your own 6-tuner “Medusa PVR.” In other words a home-made “Tivo” that can store 6 programs simultaneously. It will set you back $1,200 which is a bargain compared to the $4,000 Sony Vaio X. However, as listed, the unit only has a 40GB hard drive, which will store only abour 40 hours max of standard definition TV. The Vaio X has 1.3 Terrabytes of data, or 1,300 or so hours. So in order to get up to that, you might need to add another $800 or so, making it closer to $2K – but that’s still half the price, even if it may be more work to set up and not quite as pretty. Ok, who wants to contract me out to build one for them?

Via Gizmodo

The rumors for the past few weeks have been indicating an official release of the Treo 650 for October 25th, but Treonauts has just provided a link to this InternetNews.com interview with Greg Shirai, PalmOne’s director of product marketing. All about the 650, it sounds a lot like an official announcement, although there is still no mention of it on PalmOne’s site! Very odd indeed. Most of what’s previously been rumored for the 650 turns out to be the case in this article. Here is the new information that hasn’t been confirmed, or even mentioned, previously:

• The camera will include a 2X digital zoom. There were rumors of a digital zoom, but this confirms the exact spec. That being said, digital zoom is pretty useless.
• A new PalmOne “messaging application” will be included allowing users to include audio, video, and images into their messages. Again, so what? This is kind of like MMS, (a supposed new and improved version of SMS) a messaging system that lets you send pictures and sounds within a message. The thing is that all this can be done by email and its much more likely someone will read (or have) an email address than an SMS address…
• It’s confirmed that the 650 will synch with an exchange server (given it’s set up for this), much like a Blackberry. A new mail application will serve the email part of this equation, an updated version of “Versamail.” Speaking of Blackberry, Shirai mentioned the upcoming release of RIM’s Blackberry services for the 650, which will add yet more choices. Excellent! Although I currently sync my email perfectly well using a current application, Chatter, for the Treo 600, these applications will bring Appointment and Task synching to the Treo. Maybe then I will actually use these things regularly and maybe even get a little organized!
• PalmOne is still mute about whether certain carriers may see the 650 before others, however it was confirmed it will be out for both CDMA and GSM-compatible cariers, which basically runs the gamut of everyone. However, it does not say whether 650’s with one of these protocols will be out before the other. Finally, it mentions that the GSM models will come “with Edge.” Edge is the next generation of GSM, which has yet to be widely implemented but should become much more so in the coming year. It provides faster speeds, which will greatly enhance the internet-related capabilities of the phone for people who use it on edge networks.
• Carriers themselves will announce the availability of the 650 “in the next few weeks” however actual availability was only quoted as being “before the holidays.” So that could mean anywhere between tomorrow (pretty doubtful!), and December 24^th! Oh well, I guess extra time means more time to save up some extra funds (or beg and plead long enough for my wife to buy one for me just to shut me up!).

So, as has been the case with all the other rumors, this article seems yet another example of PalmOne’s odd marketing or PR for the Treo 650. Intentionally or unintentionally, these leaks and rumors have caused lots of speculation and buzz in on the internet and one could make a case for it possibly causing a potentially much greater interest in the 650 than might have been the case otherwise. It would be interesting to get a comment from PalmOne about this, but I’m guessing that an honest and open admission of anything “devious” is probably unlikely!

Vosonic, a British company that’s been making portable hard drive solutions for digital photographers for a while now, recently introduced a couple of devices that are seeking, like the Epson P-2000, to converge the photography-oriented device with a more general-consumer Portable Media Player (PMP) device.

The MMV VP6300 comes with a 20GB hard drive, lets you play MP3’s, WMA’s, Mpeg-1, and Motion Jpeg on its 2-inch color LCD. It looks a whole lot like an iPod to me, and I think the only reason why this device is still being displayed on Vosonic’s page is that it’s not yet sold officially in the U.S., and so Apple probably can’t bully them legally over the pond quite as quickly and effectively. The device also takes most memory formats, you can plug it to your TV to watch/listen to its content, and even has a remote control. Sadly, it seems not to have any U.S. distributors, so if you live in the U.S. you will have to buy it either directly from Vosonic (if that’s even possible), or more likely through third unofficial parties through eBay.

The XS-DRIVE Super VP6210 comes in various sizes ranging from 20GB up to a whopping 80GB, but is a bit larger than the MMV VP6300. Its LCD, while it looks smaller, is only smaller in comparison to the larger size of the unit as a whole – it is the same 2 inches as the VP6300. In addition to the formats of the VP6300, the XS-Drive also plays AVI, and “MOD” which I think may be a typo meaning “MOV” or QuickTime. Everything else looks to be about the same as the VP6300.

The one problem I see for both of these is that they apparently can only show Jpeg images. This will be fine for the vast majority of folks, but for the serious photographer who takes images in RAW format, at least part of the time, it’s a serious limitation. The other issue I see is that for those who want to buy albums on Apple’s iTunes music store, these devices don’t support the AAC format like the Epson P-200. Then again, they do support WMA, which is Microsoft’s format that has DRM (copy protection scheme), so when MS’s music store gets off the ground, there will be an alternative. While these are pretty nice-looking devices, the much larger screen of the P-2000 and its support for RAW format files so far for me still give it the edge. And of course the fact that it comes from a large, well-respected company like Epson and is being officially sold in the U.S. through the normal distribution channels. These devices could be spectacular, but I, and I’m sure a lot of other people, would feel nervous about buying something from a relatively small, little-known company. What kind of support is going to be available if a unit I buy stops working? Will I have to send it overseas and wait weeks before I get a replacement or the unit fixed?