Griffin Evolve Wireless iPod Speaker Dock

Only the best-sounding speakers ever earn our highest praise. Griffin’s Evolve wireless iPod quite speakers don’t reach that height, but their wireless capabilities are almost remarkable enough to overcome their middle-of-the-road sound.

In fact, we hesitated to call the Evolve “iPod speakers” because any analog stereo source can drive them; but Griffin clearly envisions its customers docking their iPods to the device so they can stream their music nearly anywhere in the house—and we do mean anywhere.

We were skeptical of Griffin’s range claim—150 feet? Riiight. So the first thing we did after charging the speakers’ batteries (more on that shortly) was take them into the double-walled media room at Maximum PC Lab North. The room has caused problems for many a 802.11n router, but it didn’t phase the Evolve in the least. In fact, the speakers didn’t as much as hiccup in any room we took them.

When we took them outside the house, we stared slack-jawed as they continued to play until we were 145 feet from the source. The stereo signal passed through an interior firewall and a fiber-cement exterior wall as if they weren’t event there. We didn’t get as much range on the other side of the house, because the signal had to penetrate multiple interior and one exterior wall, but our experience was only slightly less impressive.

The system sends and receives on the 900MHz band, which could cause problems with cordless phones that operate at that same frequency. We didn’t test this configuration because the cordless phones in use at our test location are based on the DECT standard and operate on the 1900MHz band. (But if you’re still relying on an old 900MHz cordless phone, it’s time to upgrade anyway.)

The two speaker cabinets are 5.5-inch sealed plastic cubes with magnetic shielding, a glossy black finish, and protective rubber trim. Wire grills protect the 3.5-inch drivers. A deeply recessed handle in the back of each makes them easy to pick up and tote around, one in each hand. There are power buttons on each, so you can shut them down to conserve the lithium-ion batteries when you’re finished listening. To recharge the batteries, you simply set them on their base—there’s no need for cables unless you want to use a source other than your iPod.

Toshiba Gigabeat T400 Media Player

It’s taken many a year, but Microsoft is finally figuring out how to build operating systems for handheld devices. Windows Mobile Portable Media Center 2.0, embedded in Toshiba’s Gigabeat T400 4GB digital media player, is better than anything Apple has to offer.

We’ve grown so accustomed to the iPod’s touch wheel that we didn’t think any other type of design could be as effective for browsing. But the Gigabeat’s crossbar (Toshiba calls it a PlusPad) and four-square button configuration are remarkably effective for navigating menus on the T400’s large 2.4-inch LCD. The device is also extremely easy to use with either hand.

Media Center Mobile looks and feels just like the big-screen version of the OS. Pressing the button with the familiar Windows icon brings up the main menu from which you can choose listings for TV, music, pictures, or video. Use the crossbar to move the selector to My Music, press OK, and you get a listing of your music sorted by artist, genre, album, song, or playlist. Toshiba recommends using Windows Media Player 10 or 11 to copy music to the player and create playlists, but you can also create a “quicklist” using nothing more than the player.

Although Microsoft’s PlaysForSure program has pulled a disappearing act, we had no problem syncing the player to our Rhapsody account and copying protected subscription tracks to the player. But what’s really exciting is that the device supports Microsoft’s WMA Lossless format—a rarity among portable media players of all stripes. The T400 sounds great with tracks encoded with both lossy algorithms, but it’s utterly fantastic with losslessly encoded music.

As much as we hate accepting trade-offs, we’re going to let the T400 bump SanDisk’s Sansa Connect from our Best of the Best list. The T400 doesn’t offer Wi-Fi support, but it does provide a bigger screen, a better user interface, and support for WMA Lossless. Here’s hoping Toshiba decides to build a version with a hard disk (and adds support for FLAC while they’re at it!).

Toshiba's Gigabeat T400 is our new favorite flash-based media player.

Daily News Brief: MS Conspiracy Theory Exposed!

Microsoft Fueling HD Wars?

That's what Michael Bay believes, who directed the Transformers movie. Still peeved that Transformers only appears on HD-DVD and not Blu-ray, Micheal wrote that "Microsoft wants both formats to fail" in an attempt to move consumers toward digital downloads, and that MS is "handing out $100 million checks to studios" to push HD-DVD and confuse the market. Makes perfect sense too, because, well, if two formats manage to gain a foothold in the market, said formats will spontaneously combust, leaving digital downloads to rule over masses of confused movie watchers.

Nokia Offers Free Music for a Year

As part of their 'Comes With Music Program', Nokia announced they'll be giving away free music from "millions of artists[...], past, present, and future." To qualify, consumers need only purchase a Nokia device, making them eligible to download free music for a year, which they can keep forever. As of yet, it's unclear which record labels will participate, save for UMG, who is already on board.

iPhone Searches Dominate Google

Score one for technology and entertainment, which saw more Google searches in 2007 than any other category. And the fastest-rising search term? The iPhone, of course, which didn't exist a year prior. Also making the top 10 list are Webkinz, celebrity news site TMZ, and transformer toys, which held the 2, 3, and 4 spots respectively. See the rest here.

iPhone Dominates France

French mobile phone operator Orange reports they've sold 30,000 iPhones in the first five days since it's November 29 launch. Meanwhile, T-Mobile in Germany said it sold 10,000 units on the first day, who yesterday won a lawsuit allowing them to lock iPhone customers into a two year contract. Orange remains the only Apple network partner to sell unlocked phones, which does so to comply with French law.

$222,000 RIAA Verdict Constitutional

After losing a copyright infringement suit brought forth by the RIAA to the tune of $222,000, Jammie Thomas appealed the verdict claiming the damages were in excess of actual damages the music labels might have incurred. But the U.S. Department of Justice didn't agree, dismissing Thomas' claims and stating that the Copyright Act serves both a "compensatory and a deterrent purpose." File sharers take note...

Shrinky Dink Chips

While most of us can remember using Shrinky Dinks to downsize Smurfs and He-Man characters, Michelle Khine recently found another use for them. Armed with a laser printer, a toaster oven, and Shrinky Dinks, the University of California Merced professor managed to make microfluidic devices, which are computer chips with plumbing typically fabricated in multimillion dollar labs. Read all about the process here.

Microsoft Sidewinder Gaming Mouse

We like fancy gaming mice. We like them for their super-accurate sensors, their adjustable resolutions, and the veritable cornucopia of buttons that grace their frames. But above all, a gaming mouse has to remain comfortable during marathon wrist-crippling gaming sessions, which is where the new Sidewinder really falls apart.

You see, this mouse is just too big. It’s not as though we have tiny, inadequate hands. Really, we don’t. We all have large, extremely manly hands. However, even with our giant meathooks, this mouse is too wide.

What makes it difficult to give this mouse a poor verdict is that we quite like its shape and many of its features. Its sensor is remarkably accurate—and includes the now-standard shift-on-the-fly sensitivity that we’ve come to love. Its button placement is quite good, too, and we really dig the vertically arrayed thumb buttons. Unlike mice that have horizontally mounted thumb buttons, the Sidewinder’s buttons are easy to distinguish from each other and painless to press. And we love the built-in screen, which shows you exactly what mouse sensitivity you’ve set. We even appreciate the macro software, which lets you perform instant 180-degree turns and other custom maneuvers with a single button-press.

The mouse also comes with a weighted box, which keeps the mouse cord from flopping all over your desk. It’s a little gimmicky, but a nice gimmick nonetheless. Without a doubt, the Sidewinder’s interchangeable mouse feet are our favorite feature. The mouse ships with three sets of feet, each with a different level of smoothness. We love this and hope to see it on more mice. There’s nothing worse than wearing out the Teflon pads on an $80 mouse.

While the buttons feel just right, the wheel leaves something to be desired. Its action is too stiff, and it’s difficult to click the mouse wheel without accidentally scrolling the mouse.

Unfortunately, the wonky scroll wheel combined with the monstrously oversized frame means this mouse won’t be living in our house.

It looks good, but the Sidewinder's oversized design isn't good for people who have normal-sized hands.

Sonos Digital Music System

Technolust seldom penetrates the jaded, gadget-proof shells that calcify around all Maximum PC editors, but the Sonos Digital Music System shattered our composure with a massive kung-fu blow. You see, the Sonos system delivers something we’ve long craved: our entire music library at our fingertips, in every room of our house.

Even better, the Sonos pulls off this trick with minimal wiring and few sonic compromises. Two components work together to make the magic happen: a ZonePlayer module (one for each room you wish to music-ize) and at least one wireless, handheld Sonos Controller. Once you’ve set up the system, you use the controller to operate each ZonePlayer, either independently or in sync, from anywhere in the house.

The controller is really the star of the Sonos show. Its 3.5-inch color LCD screen tickles our fancy, and the custom interface is extremely easy to navigate. The iPod-style scroll wheel lets you quickly speed through massive music collections, and the backlit buttons make it easy to perform common tasks—like adjusting the volume or pausing tune—even in dark rooms (a light sensor automatically turns the backlight on and off).

The interface is intuitive and easy enough for even the most technophobic Luddite to use. Our only gripe with the controller is that its scroll wheel feels twitchier than the iPod’s. It can be frustrating to make line-by-line adjustments with the wheel, until you get a feel for it.

Setup is easy: Connect your first ZonePlayer to a router that’s hardwired to your PC, and then install the configuration utility on that PC. Using the config utility, point the ZonePlayer to the shared folder in which your music is stored. You can also use stand-alone NAS (network-attached storage), such as the Buffalo HD-H250LAN, either in addition to or instead of a PC. Connecting subsequent ZonePlayers is as easy as powering them up, stepping through the wizard on the remote, and pressing a button on the front of the box.

And this brings us to Sonos’ secret sauce. In addition to wired connections, the Sonos devices—including the remote control—communicate using a proprietary offshoot of the 802.11g wireless protocol. This closed custom protocol makes it possible to avoid many of the dropped packets and playback hitches associated with streaming media files over Wi-Fi. The upshot is that you only need to connect one ZonePlayer to your wired network or NAS box; the rest can be daisy-chained using the wireless network.

One of the advantages of having a PC connected to the Sonos system is that you can also stream Internet radio to any or all of the ZonePlayers in your home (provided your PC has a high-speed Internet connection, of course). Not only can you use one of the 70 preset stations, you can add your own MP3 streams. Sonos also promises support for Real’s Rhapsody network (which should be available by the time you read this). That promise doesn’t factor into today’s rating, but when Rhapsody support does arrive, subscribers will have access to more than 800,000 legal tracks.

Sonos designed this system for multi-room installations, which explains the integrated amplifier in each ZonePlayer. This is one facet of the system that almost cost them a Kick Ass rating. First, the amp is rated at just 50 watts per channel (RMS) into 8 ohms, with dynamic range of 20Hz to 20kHz and 0.02-percent THD. Paired with a set of Klipsch RF-35 loudspeakers, the amp is just adequate to fill a 450 square-foot living room with sound. Second, the amp is absolutely redundant if you intend to stream audio to your home stereo system (the unit provides stereo RCA variable-audio outputs). Sonos should give serious thought to offering a second and cheaper ZonePlayer model sans amp.

In addition to the variable-audio output, the ZonePlayer provides stereo line-level RCA inputs, which we put to good use streaming the output from a 400-disc CD jukebox to ZonePlayer modules all over the house (the device converts the incoming audio to your choice of WMA or WAV file formats in real time). We’re surprised, and even a little disappointed, that Sonos didn’t outfit the ZonePlayer with SPDIF input and output. The spring-loaded speaker-wire binding posts are also a little too Best Buy for our tastes; we’d much prefer proper knurled-nut binding posts that would accommodate banana plugs.

But enough about specs and design choices. How does this system sound? Color us impressed. Even though the amp is underpowered, it’s very clean—and we’ll always take a good low-powered amp over any crappy high-powered amp. Uncompressed WAV files sounded virtually indistinguishable from CD, and compressed sources sounded as good as or better than other players we’ve tested. We’re bummed, however, that Sonos doesn’t support any of the lossless-compression formats: FLAC would be ideal, but we’d accept AAC Lossless or WMA Lossless, too.

Good audio gear doesn’t come cheap, and neither does the Sonos. Each ZonePlayer costs $500 (we have to believe the amp contributes a good chunk to that price tag), and each controller costs $400. Those prices don’t include speakers or a stand-alone network storage box, which means you’ll spend at least $1,700 for a two-room setup—if you go cheap on speakers. By contrast, Slim Systems’ Squeezebox costs about $200 a room (plus speakers and storage), and delivers many of the same features (minus the amp, four-port Ethernet switch, and that luscious remote).

Panasonic Announces Line of 3D Blu-Ray Recorders and Players

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No, the whole 3D thing didn’t go away after CES. It’s still happening, and Panasonic plans to get in on the ground floor. The Japanese electronics maker will be releasing four 3D Blu-Ray recorders/players to compliment the 3D Viera plasmas they intend to sell. The new units will be available first in Japan this spring.

The DMP-BDT900 is just a player, unlike the rest of Panasonic’s new line up. It comes with 4 HDMI ports, an SD card slot, LAN, USB ports, Viera link, and BD-LIVE. It will be available for $1,500. The 3D Blu-Ray recorders come with hard drives in 2TB, 1TB and 750GB sizes. These devices will have two digital and one analog TV tuner, 2 HDMI ports, LAN, USB port, SD card slot, and Viera Link. The three models will go for $3,350 for the 2TB model, $2,200 for the 1TB unit and $1,800 for the 750GB one.

So if you’re the early adopter type, and you’ll be in Japan this Spring, start saving up now.

Dutch Touchy Remix Presents Snazzy Colored Multitouch Table

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A company from the Netherlands called Intactlab has created a multitouch table computer that might actually be usable. Whereas most of these contraptions have been shaped like big boxes, this unit Is actually shaped like a table you could pull a chair up to. While the UI looks eminently usable, the name is suspect. Intactlab is calling the product the Touchy Remix.

The fiberglass shell has a 40 inch projection display with a resolution of 1280x800. Multitouch is accomplished via IR sensors in the table. The underlying hardware is actually a Mac Mini. Intactlab has custom software running on OS X doing the multitouch. It appears that regular Mac apps will not be able to fully utilize this feature.

The Intactlab site doesn’t list a price, but instead asks you to submit contact information to receive a quote. That’s not a good sign.

Texas Instruments Introduces Chip with Wi-Fi, GPS, Bluetooth, and FM Radio

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Smaller, faster, cheaper is a mantra for today’s mobile communications hardware. Texas Instruments (TI) has taken this to heart, and tossed in multi-tasking and lower power consumer as well. TI is announcing a new chip, the WiLink 7.0, that rolls up Wi-Fi, GPS, Bluetooth, and FM radio onto a chip that takes up less room, uses less power, and costs less than current multi-chip solutions.

TI says the WiLink crams all of the above into a single 65-nanometer chip, that requires 30 percent less material to build, and takes up 50% less space than existing two-chip solutions. Furthermore, TI says the WiLink will extend talk time and battery life with “Sophisticated Enhanced Low Power (ELP) technology.”

TI claims the WiLink offers best-in-class 3GPP test performance; supports both Bluetooth low-energy and Bluetooth 3.0; will support WiFi Direct and Soft AP as well as 802.11 a/b/g/n; and has improved FM transmit and receive capabilities with internal antenna support.

And, by placing all of them on the same chip, TI says it is able to reduce RF interference to insignificant levels, allowing all four components to operate at the same time without messing with each other. According to TI, a “mobile-device users could determine their current position with GPS, download a related map over a WLAN connection, and listen to an FM radio station over a Bluetooth headset all at the same time.”

Undisclosed OEMs already have the chip, which leads Engadget to speculate that prototype phones may make an appearance at the upcoming Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. TI expects the chip to be in mass-produced devices by the end of 2010.

Image Credit: Texas Instruments

Panasonic Debuts VIERA VT2 Series, First 1080p 3D Plasma HDTVs

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It’s chicken-and-egg time again. Right now the question is playing out in 3D television. There’s no content because there’s no TVs; there’s no TVs because there’s no content. Someone has to go first, before the others will follow. Panasonic has decided to be one of those first-goers, announcing it will soon start shipping its first 3D plasma HDTVs.

The VIERA VT2 series was introduced at this year’s CES in Las Vegas. The series is expected to contain four sets ranging from 50-inches to 65-inches. The two available now are the 50-inch TH-P50VT2 and the 54-inch TH-P54VT2. Each has 1080p resolution, and a contrast ratio of 5 million to one. Both digital and analog tuners are built-in, as is a 20W 2.1-channel speaker system. Each set has four HDMI ports, a VGA output, a D4 (component) output, and an Ethernet port. They also feature Panasonic’s VIERA CAST IPTV functionality and are THX certified.

The 3D effect is realized through the use of active shutter glasses, which are included with the set. (No word on how many pairs with each set, or whether other pairs will be available as an option.)

The new sets are due for release in April in Japan. No mention of a release date for the United States. And they won’t come cheap: the 54-inch model is priced about $6,000 (¥530,000), and the 50-inch model about $4,900 (¥430,000).

Image Credit: Electronista