Sunday, May 30, 2010

Enable Motion Interpolation for Movies on Your PC [Movies]

Source: http://lifehacker.com/5551295/enable-motion-interpolation-for-movies-on-your-pc

Enable Motion Interpolation for Movies on Your PCThe debate over frame interpolation is starting to heat up, and you may be wondering what all the fuss is about. Tech weblog Tested has a guide to enabling it on your PC and watching your movies with doubled frame rates.

While it is technically closer to what we see in real life, a lot of people are so used to watching video at 24 frames per second, that faster frame rates seem "fake" to them. Part of this is likely because the smoother motion is somewhat similar to what we see in soap operas (a lot of people describe it as the video looking like it's going 1.5 times faster, but actually moving at actual speed). If you haven't tried watching movies at a faster frame rate, or if you're already a fan but don't want to shell out for a 120Hz television, you can enable motion interpolation on your PC.

You'll need a fairly decent computer to pull this off; Tested recommends a good dual core processor for watching 720p video and probably a quad-core for 1080p. It also involves installing a few different programs and manually copying plugins into directories, as well as copying and pasting a bit of script, but it isn't too difficult—it just might take you a bit of time. Note that while the guide mentions re-installing ffdshow from scratch, it doesn't provide the link. You can get the installer package here.

I tested this myself and can confirm that it works on my 15" MacBook Pro in Windows 7 64-bit, and I did notice quite a difference. It's a bit distracting at first, but it definitely changes the way you watch certain types of fast-paced video, such as sports or some of today's cluttered, hard-to-follow action sequences (I'm talking to you, Transformers and The Bourne Ultimatum). It definitely takes a bit of getting used to, but if you're curious and want to see what it looks like before buying a new TV, it's definitely worth trying out. Hit the link for the full guide, and let us know your thoughts in the comments.

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Nokia N8's USB On-The-Go support demoed, lesser phones turned into slaves

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/30/nokia-n8s-usb-on-the-go-support-demoed-lesser-phones-turned-in/

Among the Nokia N8's neater tricks is its support for USB On-The-Go, which basically lets you connect USB peripherals (flash drives, for example) to the phone and have it act as a host -- a duty usually reserved for heavier-duty devices like PCs. Though the N8 is still a solid month or three away from release, we're getting a nice little video demo on YouTube today of an N8 being walked through the paces of connecting both a plain-vanilla USB drive and another Symbian-based Nokia candybar (brownie points for naming the model in comments, by the way). Basically, you can treat the connected hardware as mass storage and browse it just as you would the N8's internal space, which basically means you've got unlimited music capacity as long as you've got a pocket full of USB sticks and a micro USB-to-USB adapter cord. Follow the break for video.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Continue reading Nokia N8's USB On-The-Go support demoed, lesser phones turned into slaves

Nokia N8's USB On-The-Go support demoed, lesser phones turned into slaves originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 30 May 2010 15:31:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Leaked Intel roadmap reveals six new notebook CPUs for 2010, better battery life in 2011

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/30/leaked-intel-roadmap-reveals-six-new-notebook-cpus-for-2010-bet/

We love the smell of silicon in the morning -- especially when it emanates from one of Intel's legendary leaked roadmaps. Today, we've stumbled across one with specs for Chipzilla's entire fall collection of mobile chips, and a couple new details about that desiccated overpass the execs keep talking about. First up, it appears sources were spot-on about the Core i7s and Core i5s we heard about last week, but the 2.66GHz / 3.33 GHz Core i5-580M won't be the only dual-core CPU to look for in Q4; it will be sandwiched between the 2.8GHz Core i7-640M (which turbos to 3.46GHz) and the 2.66GHz / 3.2GHz Core i5-560M -- all of which peak at a conservative 35 watts.

True juice sippers will want a 15W CULV, however, and it seems more of those exist than Intel initially let on; Q4 will see a high-end Core i7-680UM that starts at 1.46GHz and turbos up to 2.53GHz and a 1.33GHz / 2.13GHz Core i5-560UM, plus a 25W 2.26GHz Core i7-660LM low-voltage chip will also join the fray. All these new dual-cores will have on-die Intel HD Graphics in one form or another, but all are also stopgaps until Intel's 32nm "Huron River" platform debuts in the first quarter of 2011. Then, we'll get WiMAX, WiDi and Intel Bluetooth alongside an intriguing new concept dubbed Zero Power ODD, which promises a power-saving sleep mode for our noisy optical disc drives (see more coverage link) and the promise of enough battery life to play two full Blu-rays on a single charge. Don't believe us? See the slides below for more.

Leaked Intel roadmap reveals six new notebook CPUs for 2010, better battery life in 2011 originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 30 May 2010 17:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Coming Soon: Printable Prescription Pills [Health]

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5549904/coming-soon-printable-prescription-pills

Coming Soon: Printable Prescription PillsOnly a small portion of the pill you swallowed earlier is actually an active ingredient, the rest is filler. That bit of information is what caused researchers to explore a way to start printing active ingredients onto blank filler tablets.

Aside from allowing medication dosages to be customized during the printing process, this method would also allow active ingredients to be affective more rapidly as they'd be on the outside of tablets rather than encased inside a pill.

Unfortunately the process could only be applied to about one percent of the pills on the market at this time, but researchers remain hopeful about figuring out a way to implement it more widely. [Discovery via Geekologie]

Picture by Dean812

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Fastest Integrated Circuit Doubles the Previous Record, Getting Close to One Terahertz [Circuits]

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5550277/fastest-integrated-circuit-doubles-the-previous-record-getting-close-to-one-terahertz

Fastest Integrated Circuit Doubles the Previous Record, Getting Close to One TerahertzFollowing up on a 2007 world record for the fastest transistor speed, Northrop Grumman announced today that it has shattered the world record for integrated circuit performance, nearing one terahertz.

The new circuit layout operates at 0.67 terahertz, or 0.67 trillion cycles per second, more than doubling the frequency of the fastest known IC in the world.

Northrop Grumman's Terahertz Monolithic Integrated Circuit (TMIC) was developed as part of DARPA's Terahertz Electronics program, which aims to introduce the next generation of high-performance electronics that push performance levels above the 1 terahertz center frequency range. Such electronics should lead to better communications technologies, sub-millimeter wave sensors, and terahertz imaging systems that blow current technologies out of the water.

Obviously, 0.67 terahertz doesn't quite reach DARPA's goals, which as always are quite ambitious. But TMIC amplifiers could still have an appreciable impact on technologies ranging from communications to radar to explosives detection. And naturally these advances should trickle down to benefit those of us who don't have security clearance as well.

If you're the type who really likes to dig into the nuts and bolts, the technical paper on the circuit is available in PDF here.

Fastest Integrated Circuit Doubles the Previous Record, Getting Close to One TerahertzPopular Science is your wormhole to the future. Reporting on what's new and what's next in science and technology, we deliver the future now.

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