CrunchGear

Monster Cable setup a mobile test lab at CEDIA this year, challenging any cable manufacturer to a head-to-head battle. Only one attempted to enter, but didn’t see disclaimer that Monster wanted 4m cables or longer in the match up, and that particular maker didn’t have HDMI cables that long.

I know what gets yelled whenever a Monster Cable HDMI story comes up: Monoprice-4-evah playa! I hear ya, but take a look at what the test equipment that Monster Cable employs to prove their cables are the best. It impressed me.

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The Speakercarft booth took a different approach than most others at CEDIA ‘08. The focus seemed to be the company and building relationships, rather than products. The booth did feature a few of the speaker companies wares out front, but inside was a bass-pounding good time thanks to Lucent Dossier performers. I don’t think there was another booth at this show that drew the same amount of curious onlookers. 

Check out what I mean after the jump.

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Oppo has always been a driving force in the upscalling DVD scene. The company was one of the first, and the AV crowd still looks upon with respect, so when the BDP-83 dropped at the DVDO booth, they took notice. Rightfully so too as the BDP-83 is sporting the same killer video processor as the DVDO EDGE. No word on price or availability, but you can assume that the player supports BD Live, thanks to the rear-panel Ethernet jack along with 7.1 analog out for legacy audio. Plus, the front logo markings revel that it also supports SACDs with HDCD support. Hopefully, more info will drop soon — like the price — as the BDP-83 might just be the first must-have Blu-ray player.

Pics of remote and back panel after the jump.

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This thing really freaks me out, but I can’t stop watching it.

Microsoft has a new scheme designed to get people excited about watching movies on Xbox Live, which isn’t half-bad as it is now. They’re launching something called the Xbox Film Club, which gives a handful of lucky people (you have to enter and win) the chance to see new, hit movies before their theatrical release.

It does seem to be UK-centric at this point, what with one of the movies being touted, Tropic Thunder, having come out in the U.S. a few weeks ago.

Now how ’bout a U.S. version?

via Xbox-Scene

Yesterday we posted about the possibility of Magnetosphere being the visualizer that Rose mentioned a week back and last night via Twitter, Rose confirmed this.

I just wanted to remind my fellow Mac users that they really aught to be using Plex to play back all their movies. (And I do mean movies—a quick clip here and there, you’re best served by VLC or mplayer.) A new version, 0.5.15, was released two days ago, and includes all the usual bug fixes that you’d expect. What’s unexpected, though, is the complete revamp of the application’s branding: new logo, splash screen, default skin, etc. (Again, I recommend the skin Aeon, though it’s a bit of a pain to set up.)

In conclusion, Plex is neat. Use it.

The Dell Mini 9 appears to not completely suck, which is good news for the netbook crowd, I suppose. But—and I’m sure you’ve all been wondering about this—what does it look like on the inside? How does Dell manage to fit so much into such a tiny space?

As luck would have it, Dell actually has provided photos and illustrations of the Mini 9’s interior. Unless you’re one of those folks who hang out at Radio Shack for fun, they’re probably only worth a “oh, cool, that’s what it looks like,†which is exactly what I said.

Flower children,

It looks like Volkswagen is considering bringing back the Microbus, a symbol of your generation I think I read once. The company wants more of a presence in the North American market; suggestions that it re-make the Microbus (or Kombi, depending on where you’re from) quickly followed.

And here’s the business, straight from a senior VW official:

So there you have it, VW wants to bring her back, maybe.

Now, does this news appeal to anyone not a product of the 1960s?

via squob

Get ready for the latest Internet scandal: fake e-mails from Steve Jobs. Well, real e-mails that weren’t sent by Steve Jobs, if that makes any sense.

Wired looked at three e-mails purportedly sent by Steve Jobs in recent weeks: one posted by a MacRumors user, which addresses iPhone 3G connectivity issues; one sent to Gizmodo addressing possible iPhone tethering options; and one addressing the iPod touch.

In Wired’s estimation, these e-mails were not sent by Steve Jobs. We’ve all been had.

Working with the head of the UC Davis linguistics department, along with copy staff, Wired compared these e-mails to those known to have been sent by Jobs himself, including that “MobileMe stinks, we’re sorry†e-mail sent not too long ago. Noting irregularities in the examined e-mails’ grammar and syntax, Wired now believes that the three aforementioned are fake as can be. Incorrect usage of “which†versus “that,†unusual parting words (Jobs doesn’t say “best†or “sincerely†when he concludes e-mails), and the like all point to those e-mails being false. That, in turn, casts doubt on the veracity of the e-mails’ claims, obviously.

What should we call this scandal, JobsGate, EmailGate, LeaveSteveAloneGate?

Hot damn, how did we miss this? Activision released the source code of the Raven-developed Heretic and Hexen two days ago. The source is GPL’d, and is therefore totally free (as in beer and freedom) for you to mess around with.

Weekend project?

Well, it seems Facebook is wildly insecure and none of those third-party applications should ever be trusted. Who would have guessed it?

Specifically, there’s an app out there called Photo of the Day that ostensibly displays photos of the day ::cough:: from National Geographic. It does more than that, though, and sends unwanted traffic to a chosen Web site. Then that chosen Web site is dealing with a denial of service attack.

Photo of the Day is merely a proof of concept and doesn’t actually target any Web sites. Developed by a team of researchers (“hackers!†in CNN talk), its main purpose is to demonstrate how easy it easy to wreak havoc by using Facebook.

As I’ve said time and time again, Internet security is largely a myth, and pretty much the only way to keep your data safe is to never interact with anyone ever. Failing that, be alert.

Some speakers sound divine, other speakers sound pleasent, then there are these five speakers, that given the chance, will instantly violate local noise ordinances and your grandmother, all at the same time.

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Here we are, friends: a semi-possibly-real picture of the iPod Nano 4G. As we see, it’s fairly blurry and it’s similar to the leaks we’ve seen so far so this either means we’ve got a good Photoshop on our hands or we’re going to be like kids on Christmas on Tuesday.

via Nowhereelse

DVDO has been around a while, pimping AV scalers to the affulent around us. Previously, those scalers, or upconverters, used third-party processing to accieve the amazingly, upgraded picture. Those models cost up to $3,499 though. So when the $799 Edge dropped last week, the first thing that came to mind is what the hell did they exclude. It turns out that besides component and RS-232 outputs, not much was left out thanks to an in-house made processor. What used to cost a great deal of money per chip tp buy, can now be made by the company at low cost. The booth guys said that the processing is the same and we shouldn’t notice any difference at. The Edge is aiming at the Best Buy / Circuit City crowd and the company is even hoping to drop the price if the accountants allow later on.

Wait; they’re industrial vacuums…at the same trade show as 150k projectors….alright.