Category: Top Video Lists

Top-24 videos I filmed at CES of products not covered by Engadget

Posted by Charbax – January 14, 2011

While Engadget has about 38 bloggers at CES and a huge dedicated trailer with dedicated fiber optics line just outside the Central Hall, it can be hard for a small independent blogger like me, fighting for bandwidth at cheap Las Vegas hotels (Internet access in my Sahara hotel room actually didn’t work at all during the whole CES) or staying on the floor outside the Las Vegas Convention Center press room untill 11PM every night (until they turned off the lights and security kicks me out), uploading and posting 106 HD quality videos during CES bringing you exclusive contents even as sites like Engadget and 100 other big blogs always post 500 things on the first day of CES, their coverage is great. But I notice I may have covered a bunch of things that the Engadget bloggers didn’t find interesting enough or couldn’t find (too busy partying with Lady Gaga?), let me give you an overview of some 24 products that I have filmed and that seem not to be covered on Engadget (I still have more than 20 CES videos to upload and to post later today and the next few days):

NEC Tegra2 Powered 7″ Laptop, Engadget only covered NEC’s cool dual-resistive-screen Android tablet which I also filmed, but they don’t seem to have found this 7″ Tegra 2 Laptop with Touch screen form factor.

Innodigital WebTube, Android ARM Cortex-A9 set-top-box, Korean Innodigital seems to be making the absolute best Samsung ARM Cortex-A8 $165 and Trident ARM Cortex-A9 $265 Android Set-top-boxes. Those I believe may be Google TV ready once that software for ARM is ready.

OLPC XO-1.75, ARM Marvell Armada 610 version of the XO Laptop!, Engadget did cover it but not with video.

Onyx Boox M90, cool 9.7″ connected e-ink e-reader with digitizer annotations input and cool embedded Linux software by Chinese Onyx International. Definitely a good alternative to the 9.7″ Kindle DX that has no touch screen input features.

Ramos ARM Cortex-A9 Tablets, except all the Tegra2 tablets and the OMAP4430 Blackberry Playbook, Ramos may have been one of the only ones showing alternative AmLogic 1.2Ghz ARM Cortex-A9 based tablets at CES.

Polaroid Android Tablet, Polaroid showed a 9.7″ Android Tablet to compete directly with the iPad.

Shenzhen ACT 4.8″ capacitive Marvel PXA935 clamshell Android, a really enjoyable 1Ghz Marvell powered Android 4.8″ capacitive clamshell form factor with dual-sim card. This design could be close to dream like for some productive Android fanboys.

Ocean Star 1024×600 7″ capacitive Rockchip RK2818 Android Tablet, at $140 in bulk, may be most affordable 1024×600 7″ capacitive Android tablet yet and can have 3G built-in for $50 more. Rockchip is ramping up!

Mary-Lou Jepsen gives an update on Pixel Qi at CES 2011, Engadget did talk about Pixel Qi news, but did not post an extensive interview with Mary-Lou Jepsen talking about status like mine.

Archos 101 Home Tablet, possibly cheapest 10″ capacitive ARM Cortex-A8 tablet, yet another in the Rockchip Home Tablet series for Archos, Rockchip says it could be sold for $199 retail, price is to be confirmed by Archos once Rockchip RK29xx is delivered in mass quantities for this product to ship.

Rockchip presents RK2818 and RK29xx series Processors at CES 2011, Engadget didn’t provide you with an extensive interview with top representative at Rockchip about their status. Rockchip was in over 50 Android tablets shown at CES, from RK2818 to RK29xx, that’s possibly a record.

GreatWall M7250, $125 Android Tablet, Marvell 166 ARM11 based 7 Android tablet, it costs $125 in bulk, offers a 3G built-in option for $45 extra

Zaidtek E7 and Zaidtek H7 Android Tablets, Qualcomm MSM7227 and Rockchip RK2818 capacitive 7″ tablets, $350 and $250 respectively, may be some of “most affordable” such capacitive tablets with 3G built-in. Seems to be same design in $450 at retail Aigo N700 which I also filmed.

Robo Builder dancing robot, humanoid Robot building and programming kit for around $860

Mastone 10.1″ OMAP3630 Android Tablet, one of the first designs after Archos to use OMAP3630 in a tablet as far as I know.

Jetbook mini LCD based $99 e-reader, uses interesting LCD based e-reading technology from Toshiba, and is affordable.

Match Tech 9.7″ Capacitive i.MX51 Android Tablet, another proof Apple has lost exclusivity on LG’s 9.7″ IPS capacitive touch screen panel, here powered by Freescale i.MX51 and with design to be upgraded to faster i.MX53 when available.

istation (previously Digital Cube) launched 7″ 3D Tablet and 5″, may not have fastest Telechips processor, still original designs.

Nufront ARM Powered Laptops, first time Nufront shows their ARM Cortex-A9 in 10″ and 14″ Laptops and 10″ Tablets.

Freescale i.MX508 next generation e-ink platform, in this video showing 8fps refresh rates and Android for e-ink e-readers which could enable awesome e-ink apps (rss readers, news readers, email, web browsing, etc..)

Freescale i.MX51 Powered Tablets at CES 2011, tour of about a dozen Freescale powered Android tablets.

Seco srl presents Pico Projector in a Lamp concept, check this out, one of the most original uses of Android and pico projector.

Honeycomb user interface demo, I actually grabbed some footage of me using the actual Android Honeycomb OS (considering it’s not final or simply secretive for now), did anyone else post Honeycomb UI videos other than the official ones that were playing in loop on any Xoom demonstrated at CES?

LG Smart TV to be ARM Powered, some interviewing with LG Smart TV product manager about how it’ll be ARM Powered.

Check back as I am uploading the remaining 20 or so videos that I filmed at CES today and the next few days.

My Top-12 videos filmed at the ARM Techcon 2010

Posted by Charbax – November 19, 2010

I had a lot of fun video-blogging 30 videos from the ARM Technology Conference in Santa Clara California from November 9th to November 11th. Because it can be a lot of work for you to navigate through all these videos, here is my list of top-12 videos that I filmed during this event. If you have other favorites, please post them in the comments.

1. Simon Segars, Executive VP and General Manager ARM Physical IP Division, interview with one of the board members of ARM, I try to ask some questions about how the company was founded and where the industry is going.

2. Marvell Armada XP Quad-core ARM Powered Servers, here’s an insight into how ARM Powered servers could power most of the cloud much more efficiently.

3. Gary Smith EDA on the future of Chip Design, an insight into software development, chip design, ARM, EDA and how the industry works.

4. ARM Mali-T604, the next generation GPU for ARM Powered devices, this is the big announcement from ARM during the conference. It’s the next generation GPU to go with the next-generation ARM Cortex-A15 processor, designs becoming available next year, and it takes at least a year or two for chip makers to implement those next-generation designs.

5. Linaro Graphics Group, an interview about how graphics acceleration is important in the open source Linux for ARM developments. I also interviewed George Grey the Linaro CEO.

6. John Bruggeman of Cadence on EDA360, some interesting talk about how the industry needs to collaborate on some points to better innovate on other points more efficiently.

7. Nufront ARM Cortex-A9 can run at 2Ghz for Desktop and Laptop usage, this Chinese chip maker is preparing upward 2Ghz ARM Cortex-A9 processor to power Desktops, Laptops, Thin Clients. They want the price to be below $200 to the end consumer, this is awesome.

8. PandaBoard, Texas Instruments ARM Cortex-A9, a first look at the next-generation Texas Instruments OMAP4 processor in the PandaBoard.org development kit. Will full speed web browsing be optimized using Neon acceleration and other hardware acceleration?

9. Nvidia Tegra2 ARM Cortex-A9 dual-core performance for web browsing, it’s interesting to see how the second core in ARM Cortex-A9 chips allow for faster web browsing in Android.

10. Samsung Orion ARM Cortex-A9 and Mali-400 shown for the first time, so far my most popular video from the conference. This chip will probably power the next generation Samsung Galaxy S/Tab devices, including also possibly Samsung’s Google TV and some of Samsung’s future laptop and netbook products. I also filmed some 3D games demonstrated running on this Orion processor.

11. ST Ericsson U8500 ARM Cortex-A9, they are also doing some interesting implementation of ARM Cortex-A9, presenting their demo with Meego developed in combination with the help from the Linaro project.

12. Freescale Kinetis Tower System now sampling, the Freescale Tower Systems look to be some fun development kits.

My top-15 videos filmed at IFA, Best of IFA 2010

Posted by Charbax – September 12, 2010

The IFA consumer electronics show was cool, from September 2nd to 8th in Berlin Germany, I video-blogged 65 videos of the best products that I could find at the show. Here, as my Best Of IFA post, I would like to list the top-10 videos of the top-10 products of IFA 2010 that I filmed:

1. Archos 101 Internet Tablet, first 10.1″ capacitive Android 2.2 Froyo ARM cortex A8 45nm Tablet to be sold below $299. It’s really thin, at 480gr it’s 30% lighter than the iPad yet offers 12% wider screen surface (better for movies and TV shows). HDMI output and USB host and full video and audio codecs support. All that for $200 cheaper than the iPad.

2. Archos 43 Internet Tablet, nicely priced below $199 alternative to HTC EVO and Droid X, with no expensive contracts needed for this 4.3″ Froyo Android 2.2 experience

3. Archos 28 Internet Tablet, first ARM Cortex A8 45nm Android 2.2 Froyo device to be priced below $99 with no contracts needed, that’s 2.3 times cheaper than the iPod Touch

(yup, I am an Archos fanboy.. but so is ARM and Texas Instruments too..)

4. Toshiba AC-100 ARM Tegra2 Powered Android Laptop, this is the first mass produced ARM Cortex A9 powered laptop to be brought to the market, it is a significant product. Toshiba has done a super good keyboard and mouse-pad design for it and it is really thin and light. Now of course, all that is needed, is better software for it. I don’t think it is enough for them to just take open source Android and port it to it and add few custom widgets on top. They need to port the full Chrome web browser to Android. They need to officially support a triple-boot configuration on this ARM Powered laptop with Chrome OS for ARM and with Ubuntu for ARM also being optional OS to boot into. Also, I do think the $299 price point is a bit high. The idea with the ARM powered laptops is that they are going to be much cheaper and better value than the Intel powered ones. I think the relatively high price is only due to Toshiba being the first to market and them wanting to enjoy larger profit margins while they wait for all the other manufacturers to join the party. Also, once they get the Pixel Qi screen in there, the battery runtime will be close to 40 hours on such a device.

5. PocketBook 903 Pro, I really like the idea of 3G/WiFi/Bluetooth and Wacom-style digitizer in an A4 sized e-ink e-reader. I would like Chrome-to-phone like features, to throw any article and ebooks from my web browser directly onto such more readable display, and then I would also like to see connected annotation collaboration and communication features added, all those things are just software things.

6. Sony Reader PRS-650 Touch Edition, I am impressed with Sony’s new touch screen technology for their new e-readers. Although I would say it is a bit sad that Sony never updates their e-reader firmwares, that this 229€ version does not include WiFi nor Bluetooth nor 3G for connectivity. Still, the finger and stylus laser based touch screen technology is great for UI navigation and for annotations. I also like the fact that Sony is marketing it to be supporting free library borrowing of all e-books, I much prefer borrowing all ebooks for free and legally than paying $10 per ebook or pirating them. The electronic ebook library concept will be fascinating way for people to access all ebooks for free.

7. Samsung Galaxy Tab, for sure one of the big highlights of this IFA is to see such a huge company as Samsung going all in with the 7″ capacitive Android tablet market, I can’t wait to see how successful their marketing will be with this against the iPad. The whole area of discussions around Google supporting of Android tablets, it is simply fascinating. Of course, obviously, the Samsung Galaxy Tab is highly overpriced at 799€ without contract and 1359€ with 2-year contract. But it sure is a nice product and the tablet market really makes me happy.

8. UMEC Freescale i.MX51 based 7″ Android tablets, I like the features and possibilities of this hardware. See my other Freescale tablet videos such as the one running Chromium OS on it, it should be totally possible.

9. iMuz 5″ Android tablet, this South Korean company seemed to me to have pretty good Telechips ARM11 based Android tablet devices on display.

10. Sharp’s Parallax Barrier 3D screen, it’s pretty amazing to experience it at the trade show on display. This is the 3.8″ WVGA 3D screen that the Nintendo 3DS is going to use. It really works, although probably best with 3D games once the Nintendo comes out than with low quality built-in 3D cameras. You have to hold the screen in the middle and around exactly 30 centimeters from your eyes, my guess though with the Nintendo, this might become easy to get used to hold it like that and I also like Nintendo will have a slider on the side that will enable to lower or to completely remove the 3D effect of the screen.

My follow-ups:

11. Interpad’s Tegra2 Powered Android 2.2 Tablet, a really nice Android tablet too, to be priced 399€. I think it is based on the Malata Android tablet design that I filmed at Computex.

12. Toshiba Folio 100 Tegra2 Android tablet, yet another Tegra2 10.1″ capacitive Android 2.2 Tablet to come out, also priced above 399€.

13. Philips GoGear Connect, one of the first non-3G Android devices based on the Freescale i.MX51 ARM Cortex A8 processor with official Google Marketplace support but price is likely going to be above 249€.

14. Samsung YP-G50, another lower cost Android media player device, also to compete with the iPod Touch, with official Google Marketplace support and a slower Samsung ARM11 processor, the price is also likely to be at least the same as the iPod Touch.

15. Mobile Tech 5″ Android Tablet, this company is also making some interesting Telechips ARM11 based Android tablets.

If you have any other preferences for Best of IFA, you are welcome to post those in the comments.