One day prior to the E3 Expo 2010, Microsoft announced the updated version of the Xbox 360 console. Simply called the Xbox 360 250GB, the new console features a number of changes, including smaller design, larger internal hard drive and Wi-Fi 802.11n support, among others.

For the new design, Microsoft has gone for a more angular look compared to the curvy design of the previous model. The new Xbox 360 250GB features a glossy all black design, which reminds us of the first generation PlayStation 3. It is now significantly smaller than the older version. Other aspects of the design are the presence of touch sensitive buttons instead of the mechanical buttons for the power and disc eject functions. Microsoft has also gone for a single larger fan design instead of the two smaller fans for lower noise during gameplay. Those who witnessed the console first hand noted that the new model is significantly quieter than the older one. For those who don’t know, the older Xbox 360 was criticized for its higher noise levels during operation.

The new Xbox 360 250GB features a lot more connectivity options than before. You get five USB 2.0 ports, two of which are up front under the sliding panel and three are on the back. There is an AUX port for connecting accessories such as the Xbox 360 Kinect. An HDMI port is standard and so are the optical audio out and the proprietary AV connector found on the older consoles. And finally there is Wi-Fi 802.11n (the PlayStation 3 has 802.11b/g) built right in.

The new Xbox 360 250GB comes with a much smaller power brick compared to the older model. It is also much lighter than before and uses a new connector to connect to the console. Still, we would have preferred an internal power supply unit as on the PlayStation 3.

The new Xbox 360 250GB has already gone on sale in U.S. and is available for $299. The older Xbox 360 is also on sale for $199 but may get an update. We hope the new console arrives in India soon.

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HD media players have sprung out of every rabbit hole in wonderland, the concept has proliferated faster than you can imagine. It’s a great concept no doubt, who needs those bulky old DVD players anyways now that we have HDD form factors that play even our high def 1080p video files? But all of them don’t play these files alike, and that’s where we come in to separate the quality out, and today we have Asus latest offering up for examination. It’s called the O! Play Unlimited, and going by the fact that its parent brand has impressed us in many ways previously, let’s not waste any more time in checking this one out.

Design
The device is typical in that it resembles uncannily a 1 TB Hard disk these days, but functionally it has no storage. You have to connect your own storage to it. The top and bottom edges are matte finished, with 3 of the 4 sides covered by a glossy black strip. The lone backside is again matte, and has the connections located therein. The features of this player are quite good, besides the regular connectors of USB 2.0 we also have eSATA, which is MUCH faster than the former. There is also Memory card reader support.

Beside playing off storage this unit has other capabilities, and those have to do with a certain something called the internet. Besides playing HD files off a remote storage with Wi-Fi (upto Wi-Fi ‘n’), this unit also connects to the world wide web and accesses the Youtube, NBC, Fox sports, PICASA, Flickrs of the world. Not only that it also syncs to Internet radio stations, loads of them (according to the specs).

One of the most important things in this category of products is file format compatibility. The more the merrier, for sure; Asus sure gets this, and have tried to incorporate lots of audio video formats dear to our hearts.

Specs
Input:
• DC Power In
•1xUSB 2.0 Port
•1xUSB 2.0 / eSATA Combo Port
•RJ-45 LAN Port
•Card readers CF, SD+MMC, MS+MS Duo
•802.11n Wireless Networking

Output:
•Composite Video
•Composite Audio L/R
•S/PDIF Out
•HDMI 1.3

Supported Formats
•Video: MPEG1/2/4,RM/RMVB,VC-1,H.264
•Video File: .trp,.mp4,.mov,.xvid,.avi,.divx,.asf,.wmv,.mkv,.rm,.rmvb,.flv,.ts,.m2ts,.dat,.mpg,.vob,.mts,
•Audio: MP3,WAV,AAC,OGG,FLAC,AIFF,Dolby Digital AC3,Dolby Digital Plus,DTS Digital Surround,Tag ID3
•Image: JPEG,BMP,PNG,GIF,TIFF
•Subtitle: SRT,SUB,SMI,SSA,TXT(SRT)

Performance
The first thing to talk about was the menu, which had large icons arranged in a circle, which rotates around to display the main one. I would prefer a list form of UI to this any day. The color schema dn font size are alritght, no problem in readability.

The video output was sharp and crisp detail wise, it was very impressive in terms of the absence of dirty edge distortion or blurry edges in motion. The motion was stutter free almost, except in a full bitrate VOB file, which took a little while to start and sync up. The colors again were nicely saturated, we could not gauge any blotchiness or color banding, again a very impressive feat. This was observed in even 1080p MKVs.

Setting up wireless connections is as easy as selecting it from the list of detected networks, and entering your password. HD files streamed almost flawlessly from a distance of 8 feet, with a wall in the middle. thast mpressive.

Rs. 10,500 excluding taxes is the rate one has to shell out, which we feel is a decent price to ask, considering the market has product similarly priced. This model has superior wireless performance, plus core playback of all formats was handled with confidence. The menu was alright; could have been less quirky, but then that’s the only complaint we have. It’s a solid player.

If you would like to know more, please call Mitul Bhavsar on +91-9825095314 or visit www.designwebgraphic.com for any ecommerce store development requirement.

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Wi-Fi and WiGi are teaming up to bring three spectrums to consumers, including 7 Gbps transfers.

Monday the Wi-Fi Alliance and the Wireless Gigabit Alliance (WiGig) jointly announced a cooperation agreement that will allow Wi-Fi equipment to access the 60 GHz frequency band, and to provide better speeds in the current 2.4 and 5 GHz bands. Devices that will support all three bandwidths will be able to achieve up to 7 Gbps although the range will most likely be limited to in-room transfers. Still, this is good news for consumers who want to stream Blu-ray movies to a living room HDTV.

“60 GHz device connectivity will be an exciting enhancement to the capabilities of today’s Wi-Fi technologies,” said Wi-Fi Alliance chief executive officer Edgar Figueroa. “It will expand the utility of Wi-Fi, used by hundreds of millions of people every day. From its inception, the WiGig specification was designed to work on a wide variety of devices, making it a compelling input as we begin to define our certification program for 60 GHz wireless.”

In a separate announcement, WiGig said that it published its unified wireless specification for the unlicensed 60 GHz spectrum. It also launched its royalty-free Adopter Program which allow members to develop products that use the spectrum “to deliver multi-gigabit-speed wireless communication.” Cisco, Hitachi, Panasonic, and Toshiba have already jumped on board, and may have tri-band products ready by the end of the year.

“With this announcement today, and with our new partnership with the Wi-Fi Alliance, we are one step closer to fulfilling our vision of a unified 60 GHz ecosystem,” said Dr. Ali Sadri, WiGig Alliance president and chairman. “We welcome all companies to join with us as we continue to drive the industry forward.”

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Samsung Electronics has officially launched the Monte (GT – S5620).

The Monte combines a smooth curvy design with the intuitive TouchWiz 2.0 Plus User interface and features a suite of social network applications including Facebook and MySpace, allowing users to access their profiles whenever and wherever they choose. The phone comes with a Multi Instant Chat Messenger a universal Instant Messenger. In addition Monte users can enjoy full internet browsing, with an accelerometer sensor allowing the onscreen image to automatically adjust as you rotate the phone.

Users of Samsung Monte can push their e-mail, calendar, and contacts from their Google accounts to their phone through Google Active Sync technology. The phone is also equipped with navigation features with GPS supported by Google Latitude with a built-in version of the most advanced Google Maps Version 3.0. With this GPS support users will always know where they are and can keep their friends updated on their location at all times. With a Geo-tagging capability, users can imprint their photos with geographic tags to share their experiences with friends.

The Samsung Monte is a future ready phone with hi speed connectivity features like 3G and  Wi-fi and comes with a 220MB internal memory which is expandable upto 16GB .

The phone offers a touch experience with a 3.0-inch WQVGA LCD screen and advanced imaging features like smile shot, panorama shot, photo slide show and image motion view with a 3.2-mega pixel camera. The phone also supports 3D sound effects. In addition, the handset features an embedded music search service, Find Music, which allows users to identify their favorite bands and download music direct to their phone – which they can listen to at any time using a host of enhanced multimedia features. For convenience, the phone also supports Smart Unlock and One finger zoom.

the Samsung Monte also offers users access to richer content through customized software applications developed by Samsung Electronics. The application store is hosted on Samsung Fun Club, and users can download a variety of content which range from Maps on Mobile, Mobile shopping experience, Cricket and to social network communities. Users can also read newspapers in 9 Indian languages through specialized software.

Samsung Monte is attractively priced at Rs 12,390.

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After the release of Asus O! Play Air the two months back, the company has come out with a brand new O Play HD2 player with USB 3.0 ports. This new device, which claims to be the first in the world to have USB 3.0 ports, was announced at the ongoing CeBIT 2010 in Hanover, Germany. Bearing the same glossy looks of Asus O Play family, HD2 has a number of connectivity options to offer. However, to our dismay, Asus hasn’t released any specifications of this media player.

The asus O Play Air HDP-R1 and HDP-R3, the new HD2 digital media player is capable of full 1080p HD playback. Apart from offering USB 3.0 for connectivity, this new media player is backward compatible so one can hooking old USB 2.0 flash, portable or external hard drives. To experience the blazing fast USB 3.0 speeds, you will need peripherals that have USB 3.0 ports. Other connectivity options include HDMI out, eSATA and three slots for multi-media memory cards.

Since the most recent model O! Play HDP-R3 had Wi-Fi (802.11n), we can expect HD2 to carry on the same legacy. We are expecting more details about this digital media player to be out soon and will update them here as soon as we receive them.

The Remote of O! Play Air is rather big. I mean for a device of its kind it really does not need a big remote and more so because there aren’t many buttons as well. Overall, I have to stretch my fingers to reach the playback buttons and so for people with smaller hands it will get a bit tougher. The sizes of the buttons could have been large. Since the remote is huge, large buttons could have made things easier. Apart from all the design faults, it is nice to see a few additional buttons in the functionality side. There is a button for subtitles and another for audio.

The Asus O! Play Air has a great option of File Copy. In this mode you can copy files from either one of the devices or the memory cards, or even the network to any of the devices connected to the player. Among other things, the one that caught my attention is the very quick Fast-Forward. You can scan through an entire 90min movie in no more than a minute with 32x FF.

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