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Wednesday, December 15, 2010

The iPhone's Graphics are Set to Get Even Better [IPhone]

Before your eyes glaze over with boredom at the news that Imagination Technologies has acquired Caustic Graphics, listen to this first: Imagination, as you know, makes the iPhone's GPU. Caustic is famed for brilliant 3D graphics. See the connection?

The acquisition was announced yesterday, as part of a $27 million deal for Imagination Technologies, which should see even more innovative work come out of the UK-based company, of which Apple owns a 9.5 per cent stake. Their PR Director David Harold told TechRadar that "this acquisition opens up the potential for highly photorealistic imagery to reach new real-time applications and markets, including consumer, not possible previously, via its integration with POWERVR, which is the de facto standard for mobile and embedded graphics."

Going on, he mentioned that "ray tracing is a key additional technology that traditionally has been regarded as the exclusive domain of specialised markets and non real-time applications. We will change that." Ray tracing is a technique used by Caustic in creating highly-realistic images using reflection, refraction and scattering effects.

"We would not have acquired this [Caustic] technology if we did not believe we could get it into handsets".

Imagination will also be using Caustic's graphics in the TV and game console areas, but it's definitely the cellphone potential which has got most people excited. [Reuters and TechRadar]

Pioneer ships $200 BDR-206MBK BDXL writer, dares you to afford related media

Two months from introduction to shipping? Not bad, Pioneer... not bad at all. The world's first BDXL PC writer is now on sale at your local Fry's Electronics, bringing support for toasting 128GB quad-layer discs (if you can find / afford 'em) as well as speedy writing on typical BD-R, DVD-R and CD-R discs. Pioneer's also throwing in a CyberLink software suite, and if you buy in early, you'll get a single piece of 100GB BR-R XL media for free. Makes that $199 asking price seem entirely more attractive, doesn't it? In other news, the first Blu-ray format still isn't supported by Apple, not even on a $10,000 Mac Pro. Spectacular.

Continue reading Pioneer ships $200 BDR-206MBK BDXL writer, dares you to afford related media

Pioneer ships $200 BDR-206MBK BDXL writer, dares you to afford related media originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 14 Dec 2010 22:32:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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AMD Radeon HD 6970 and HD 6950 launch assault on enthusiast gaming market

It's taken AMD a long time to refresh the top end of its graphics hardware, but today's culmination to that wait has to be described as somewhat bittersweet. Sweet, because we're finally getting a successor to the venerable HD 5870, one that offers improved power management and tessellation performance at a lower $369 price point, but also bitter because in terms of sheer firepower, the Radeon series doesn't seem to have made quite the leap many of us had hoped for. The new top of AMD's single-GPU pile, the HD 6970, offers 1,536 stream processors, an 880MHz core clock speed, and 2GB of GDDR5 RAM running at 5.5GHz for a total of 176GBps of memory bandwidth. Its partner in crime, the HD 6950, is expected to list at $299, for which saving you'll have to sacrifice some clock speed (down to 800MHz) and processing units (1,408 in total). There's a neat little addition to both new boards: a Dual-BIOS switch that will act like Google's hardware jailbreak toggle on the Cr-48, allowing tweakers to unlock the extra (unprotected by warranty!) performance headroom in their cards.

Early reviews all seem to agree that both the Radeon HD 6970 and HD 6950 have struck a very fine price-to-performance ratio. The 6970 manages to spar with the much pricier GTX 580, but given that it's priced similarly to NVIDIA's GTX 570, it scores plaudits for being a more than viable alternative. The HD 6950 is seen as the real value item here, however, particularly since it occupies a relatively unique spot in the price range, and most reviewers tipped it as their new bang-for-the-buck leader.

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Continue reading AMD Radeon HD 6970 and HD 6950 launch assault on enthusiast gaming market

AMD Radeon HD 6970 and HD 6950 launch assault on enthusiast gaming market originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 15 Dec 2010 00:14:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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iTunes 10 now offering social playlists with Ping

After Twitter integration and iPad migration, looks like the next stop for Ping is social playlists. That's right -- the next time you make a mix in iTunes 10, clicking on the playlist arrow will give you two options: you can either purchase the playlist as a gift to your friend or loved one, or publish the playlist to Ping itself. Once your playlist is published, you can even give your friends on the network the option to edit it, making it a community playlist of sorts. Of course, this last option only works if you really trust your friends' taste. After all, it just wouldn't do to have Philip Glass invade your "Core Workout Playlist" featuring such beloved anthems Move This by Technotronic and Whoomp! There It Is by Tag Team.

iTunes 10 now offering social playlists with Ping originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 15 Dec 2010 05:49:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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IR-embedded Surc case converts iPhone into a universal learning remote

Whoa, Nelly! ThinkFlood won't like this... not one bit. If you'll recall, the RedEye universal remote dongle was well received, as a simple 3.5mm adapter added IR beaming to Apple's slate of iDevices. But now, Mashed Pixel has taken the integration one step further, seamlessly embedding an Infrared emitter into a case. Simply pop the Surc around your iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS or iPhone 4, download the (free) accompanying app and start programming. Before long, you'll be dictating your home entertainment setup sans any external accessories, and heck, you may even improve your phone's reception all the while. The only downside to this approach compared to ThinkFlood's is that the iPad is obviously not supported, and once you upgrade to the iPhone 5, your trusty IR case becomes a glorified paperweight. If you're kosher with that, though, you can get your pre-order in now for $69.95, with initial shipments expected to make their way out in Q1 2011.

Gallery: Mashed Pixel Surc iPhone IR case