Filed under: Digital Cameras

Aiptek is making a habit of bringing portable HD recording to some seriously affordable levels. The HDV21X Action HD 1080p High Definition Camcorder w/ Optical Zoom (known as the AHD Z500 Plus in Europe) records H.264 HD video (1,440 x 1080, 16 x 9) on a 5 megapixel sensor at 30 frames per second and 720P at 60 frames all for a paltry $199.99 at your local Wal-Mart. Expect to get up to 8 hours of 1080p video on a 32GB SDHC card. As for still images, the Z500 shoots at 8 megapixels and even sports a macro mode for both video and still. Also on board is a 3x optical zoom, CIF mode for easy YouTube uploads, a 2.4-inch swivel-mount TFT LCD, and component outputs for all the HD goodness. To top it all of, its diminutive size is worth mentioning: 4.4 x 2.75 x 1.3-inches.

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Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment

Given that $100 at Wal-mart is essentially as good as cash, we can only imagine how titillating this offer may seem for Blu-ray holdouts. Announced today, the mega-retailer will be offering a $100 gift card with the purchase of any Blu-ray player from June 8th through 14th — and yes, Sony’s PlayStation 3 is included. In case this wasn’t enough to maybe-possibly get the general public to actually pay attention to the format, Wally World will also sell “select” BD titles for $15 starting on the 8th. Since the format war ended earlier this year, we’ve seen report after report proclaiming that Blu-ray adoption just wasn’t taking off here in America, but with a theoretical net price now close to $200 (albeit for a few days only), we can certainly see the masses taking notice at long last.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

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Filed under: Home Entertainment, Portable Video

var digg_url = ‘http://digg.com/apple/iTunes_to_compete_day_and_date_with_DVD_releases’; Hollywood Reporter says that Apple is expected to announce today an across-the-board deal to sell new release films at its iTunes Store. The deal is said to allow Apple to offer a “broad slate of top-shelf films” day-and-date with home video releases — a long time sticking point with brick-and-mortar interests who want to keep their early-release edge on digital downloads. The deal includes Fox, Walt Disney Studios, Warner Bros., Paramount, Universal, Sony Pictures, Lionsgate, New Line and more — all of which are currently inked to deliver rentals through iTunes. MGM is not part of the deal. That puts Apple in direct competition with Wal-Mart’s DVD empire after having pushed Wal-Mart from the top spot in music sales for the first two months of the year.

Update: It’s official.

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Filed under: Home Entertainment, Portable Video

var digg_url = ‘http://digg.com/apple/iTunes_to_compete_day_and_date_with_DVD_releases’; Hollywood Reporter says that Apple is expected to announce today an across-the-board deal to sell new release films at its iTunes Store. The deal is said to allow Apple to offer a “broad slate of top-shelf films” day-and-date with home video releases — a long time sticking point with brick-and-mortar interests who want to keep their early edge on digital downloads. The deal includes Fox, Walt Disney Studios, Warner Bros., Paramount, Universal, Sony Pictures, Lionsgate, New Line and more — all of which are currently inked to deliver rentals through iTunes. MGM is not part of the deal. That puts Apple in direct competition with Wal-Mart’s DVD empire after having pushed Wal-Mart from the top spot in music sales in the first two months of the year.

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Filed under: Displays, HDTV

As seen previously, the FCC isn’t scared to put the financial smackdown on anyone it finds not playing up to the rules of the digital transition, and has dropped about $6 million in fines on 11 companies. Several of the companies fined were retailers it says did not properly mark TVs that had only analog tuners and won’t get OTA TV after it’s shut off next year. Wal-Mart got dinged for $992k, $1.1 million went against Sears, $712k for Circuit City, $296k against Target and $280k against Best Buy. Syntax-Brillian was one of two companies that caught a charge for importing TVs without a digital tuner after the deadline, while two more were fined for V-chip violations, while Panasonic and Philips were among seven others that settles to avoid fines. That probably won’t cover all those $40 coupons, but it can’t hurt.

[Via Zatz Not Funny & Cable Digital News]

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Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video

Based on today’s earlier leak of some weekly NPD marketshare data, we had our doubts that Apple had actually overtaken Wal-Mart as the number one music retailer in the US, but it looks like that January surge of iTunes gift cards and new iPod owners pushed it over the top for good — and now we’ve got the PR to prove it. Apple’s giving out the same “4 billion songs to 50 million customers” numbers as it has for a while now, but it says iTunes was the biggest game in town in January and February. Of course, there’s a lot of 2008 left to go, so Wally might make a comeback — it was the overall champ last year — but Apple’s achievement is still a major milestone for digitally distributed content, and we hope to see a lot more iTunes-like services on that list soon.

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Filed under: Gaming

Last we checked we actually weren’t in the Twilight Zone, but quite frankly, the bigwigs at Gibson just might be. Seemingly out of nowhere, the famed guitar manufacturer sparked up a lawsuit against Activision claiming that Guitar Hero titles violate one of its patents. Now the company appears to be on the warpath, suing Wal-Mart, Target, GameStop, Amazon, Toys ‘R’ Us and Kmart in an attempt to get the game off of store shelves. Reportedly, Gibson took “this action reluctantly, but is required to protect its intellectual property.” For the retailers that did comment, they chimed in only to say “we aren’t commenting,” and judging by the looks of things, the games are still widely available — for now.

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Filed under: Desktops

It’s hard to know the real story here — we’d hate to think of a bunch of Mr. and Mrs. Nice Persons taking home a gPC just to find it can’t run that copy of Office or Half-Life 2 they were hoping to install — but for whatever reason Wal-Mart is dropping its Linux “experiment” from store shelves and going back to selling the systems solely online. Apparently Wal-Mart did manage to sell out its entire stock of gPCs in the 600 stores that got them before pulling the plug, but the $199 computer just “wasn’t what our customers were looking for,” said Wal-Mart spokeswoman Melissa O’Brien. Everex spokesman Paul Kim says that online gPC sales were “significantly more effective,” so apparently there aren’t any hard feelings here.

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Filed under: Laptops

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Filed under: Laptops

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Filed under: HDTV

digg_url = ‘http://digg.com/tech_news/Wal_Mart_to_officially_discontinue_HD_DVD_sales_by_June’; With HD DVD, things are just going from bad, to really bad, to worse, to car-crash-you-can’t-stop-looking-at. You can file this one under that latter category, as Wal-Mart has officially announced its intentions to stop stocking HD DVD players and movies by June. According to reports, the retailer came to the decision after Netflix and Best Buy made announcements concerning their position in the HD format war. Susan Chronister of Wal-Mart wrote on the company’s blog, “By June Wal-Mart will only be carrying Blu-ray movies and hardware machines, and of course standard-def movies, DVD players, and up-convert players.” Susan went on to deliver what we consider a total burn by adding, “if you bought the HD [DVD] player like me, I’d retire it to the bedroom, kid’s playroom, or give it to your parents to play their John Wayne standard-def movies, and make space for a BD player.” Look, we’re not gonna say that this is it for HD DVD, but… uh, it doesn’t look real great.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

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Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

Sad news brewing in Round Rock this morning. After slashing “dozens” of call center employees in Ottawa yesterday (and scrapping plans for 1,200 more), it looks like Dell is taking its cost cutting initiatives retail. Unfortunately, we’re not talking lower prices here. We have word from a number of sources that Dell’s 150+ Dell Direct Stores are about to meet the business end of the corporate axe. Whether that be in full or a partial reduction we don’t know. Nevertheless, with Dell now firmly entrenched in Wal-mart, Staples, and Best Buy, the mall kiosks sure seem redundant. Expect more on this later in the AM after Michael Dell’s had a chance to address the troops.

Read — Dell Ottawa closures

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Filed under: Laptops

Remember how we told you Everex’s little gOS-sporting Cloudbook was headed to Wal-Mart this month (today, to be specific)? Well hold your check book, friend-o — they ain’t done with it. According to the company’s director of marketing, Paul Kim, the system requires, “A couple of last minute software tweaks,” before it’s ready for prime-time. There’s no word on when it will make an appearance, though we’re inclined to think this won’t be a major delay… but you never know. Should shipments alight, we’ll be the first to share the good news.

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Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

According to rumblings on the internet, the new Cloudbook from Everex that’s worming its way into Wal-Marts across the US this weekend will be getting a big brother soon. If you believe what they say (they being Paul Kim, director of marketing at Everex), we can expect a 9-inch version of the Eee-competitor to make an appearance in June, boasting a larger keyboard, more memory, and possibly new “skins” (but please, no tattoos). The Linux-equipped computer will clock in around $500, and will be part of the Ubuntu-based gOS family. The company also has plans to introduce a variant of the smaller CloudBook called the DevBook, a $400-500 laptop aimed at developers with a touchscreen and swappable side-panel accessories, plus a $399 standard size 15.4-inch laptop, and a “mini” desktop with a dual-layer DVD drive, as well as DVI and S-Video outputs for $499.

[Via Eee Site]

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Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video

As the unfortunate trend continues, yet another kiddo has found their Christmas PMP replaced with something that’s, well, not a PMP. In today’s episode, we find a Washington, D.C. girl that unwrapped an iPod earlier this week and discovered that the only Apple product tucked within was the inner packaging. Instead, a clever note was stashed inside (presumably with a paperweight of some sort) that read: “Reclaim your mind from the media shackles. Read a book and resurrect yourself. To claim your capitalistic garbage go to your nearest Apple store.” Oh, and just in case you really needed more than one guess as to where this thing came from, here’s a hint: it was sold by the same retailer who passed on Wii demo units due to “safety” concerns.

[Via TUAW]

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Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video

We’ve seen returned / resold DAPs (among other things) ruin celebrations before, but we’re inclined to say that this episode is a tad more disheartening than receiving a couple of rock-filled iPod boxes. Reportedly, an unspecified MP3 player purchased in a Tennessee Wal-Mart was wrapped and given as a Christmas present to a 10-year old daughter, but upon connecting said player to a computer, heaps of pornographic material and explicit songs were discovered. According to a Wally World spokesperson, stores aren’t supposed to “return opened packages to the sales floor,” but given that it already happened, the matter will purportedly be “investigated.”

[Via TGDaily]

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Filed under: Portable Video

Sounds like the video download game isn’t as easy as the biggies make it out to be. Wal-Mart, whose download store has been open all of a year an a couple of weeks is already shutting down, apparently abandoning the effort after its tech partner HP discontinued whatever technology it was running the thing. Bonus for (former) Wal-Mart Video Downloads though: according to the FAQ, all downloaded videos are users’ to keep, and no one’s bound to keep the Wal-Mart Video Download Manager on their machine anymore. Of course, it’s still DRMed to hell, so short of stripping the copy protection, you’ll only be able to play “your” purchased videos with the machine on which you bought it — and nothing else.

[Via Reuters]

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Filed under: Portable Video

Sounds like the video download game isn’t as easy as the biggies make it out to be. Wal-Mart, whose download store has been open all of a year and a couple of weeks is already shutting down, apparently abandoning the effort after its tech partner HP discontinued whatever technology it was running the thing. Bonus for (former) Wal-Mart Video Downloads though: according to the FAQ, all downloaded videos are users’ to keep, and no one’s bound to keep the Wal-Mart Video Download Manager on their machine anymore. Of course, it’s still DRMed to hell, so short of stripping the copy protection, you’ll only be able to play “your” purchased videos with the machine on which you bought it — and nothing else.

[Via Reuters]

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Filed under: Home Entertainment

Yeah, we pretty much expected every big box retailer known to man to carry these things, but just in case you were worried about locating a TV converter box in preparation for the upcoming cutover, here’s some comforting news. Wal-Mart, Best Buy, Circuit City, Kmart, RadioShack, Target, Sears and Sam’s Club are all on the list to carry equipment necessary for analog TV owners to receive OTA programming after February 2009, and just in case one of the aforementioned giants aren’t anywhere near you, around 100 more smaller retailers have been certified to stock ‘em. Also of note, you can start the new year off right by reminding your great grandparents (or other family members, too) that they can go on and apply for up to two coupons — which should arrive around six weeks later — worth $40 apiece to purchase the required boxes. Or, of course, you could just pick them up a new television this holiday season and be done with it.

[Via BroadcastingCable]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!