I always thought it was pretty ridiculous to offer a digital service such as Netflix movie streaming, but shackling it to an antiquated piece of technology — the DVD. But that’s exactly what happened for the big 3 gaming consoles from the onset. The Wii is already making strides to rid itself of the Netflix disc requirement. And now thankfully, the PS3 is too! Starting this coming monday, PS3 owners can kick back, relax, and fire up Netflix on their PS3 via a new Netflix app in the video section.
But that’s not all. Also debuting this Monday will be 1080i content, Dolby 5.1 surround sound support, as well as a revamped UI that Sony claims is “sleeker and faster”. We’ll see about that, Sony. Any PS3 owning, Netflix streaming users jumping for joy?
**Bonus: Send us pictures of your new uses for that decrepit Netflix DVD.
Have 50GB+ of digital junk sitting around needing to be archived? Usually I’d say get a couple of external hard drives and be done with it. Cheap and easy. But I can see the need for high-capacity physical media as well. For the time being anyway, Blu-ray is pretty much your best bet at cramming the most 1′s and 0′s onto a portable and easily sharable disc. Putting said data on the disc is another thing entirely however.
Since Blu-ray burners and such are still rather expensive, the lower-end range of hardware is still rather slow. 1-2x is what you can expect in the cheap seats. And as you can imagine, 50GB at 1-2x will take a small eternity. But Buffalo has a solution in their new 12x USB 3.0 external Blu-ray burner — the MediaStation BR3D-12U3. While not exactly “cheap” at $349, the fact that it is 12x speed and USB 3.0 compatible in a time period where USB 3.0 accessories are still rather rare is a big plus. Adding to the pluses of this drive include 1080p upscaling, giving even “normal” video content an extra polish that will at least make it look a tad closer to true HD.
Look for the MediaStation BR3D-12U3 to hit store shelves later this month.
Digital distribution may be the way of the future, but that won’t stop disc creating companies such as Storex Technologies from touting their Hyper CD technology. Hyper CD’s claim to fame is the lofty 1 petabyte (1,000,000 GB) storage capacity. Indeed, 1 PB is a ton of data and could prove rather useful in certain situations. But then you have the whole issue of it being another proprietary physical format.
Blu-ray is the current physical format champ. At 25GB — 100GB if you take into account those quad-layer specimens we’ve heard about — Blu-ray technology is the go-to standard for people that have an almost insatiable hunger for physically transported data. Many of us nerds would handedly prefer a large flash drive, as over the course of the drives’ life, a considerable amount of money will be saved. Plus, it’s just so much easier to copy something to a flash drive instead of a Blu-ray.
But a new technology out of Japan could have us “physical is dead” fanboys contemplating where our loyalty lies with promises of 25TB — yes, that’s a terabyte — discs…
Were you finding it difficult to cram all that you wanted onto those tiny 50GB Blu-ray discs? I mean, 50GB isn’t sh*t anymore. The Blu-ray Disc Association apparently cares for you and I and has come forward with a new solution for those with an almost limitless amount of 1′s and 0′s to store. The added increase in storage size comes compliments of their new, freshly announced BDXL format which adds third and fourth layers to Blu-ray discs, pushing the total capacity up to 128GB! That much on a single disc is pretty insane really. The only bad news — it’ll cost you hundreds of dollars. It’ll cost you simply because those extra layers aren’t readable by current one and two-layer loving players meaning all new hardware will be required. (I’m sure Sony is bummed…)
A second new format unveiled (that will also require all new hardware) is the Intra-Hybrid Blu-ray Disc (IH-BD) that from what I gather, is an odd concoction of sorts. The deal here is that part of the disc is permanent, read-only material while the second half/layer is read/write capable. So essentially you have a disc that you can always go back and customize part of while having a “safe” permanent section.
The second format just highlighted sounds more like a cash grab honestly. I can fathom a few limited instances when such a feature would be worth it. Otherwise, Sony is waging a losing battle. For the price 128GB Blu-rays and read//read/write discs are going to cost, I’d much rather splurge on some cloud storage/huge flash drive for portable storage/safe backup/whatever it may be.
Anyone seeing themselves dropping a truckload of cash on all new Blu-ray hardware for the goods mentioned above?
I’m not exactly a “pack rat” per say. But if you stopped by my house and took a peek inside my desk drawers, you’d final all kinds of miscellaneous computer parts, cords, and adapters. I’ve amassed quite the collection. Naturally, upgrading a computer here and there will result in a few extra hard drives. In the case of upgrading laptop hard drives more than is usual, I have a couple collecting dust. Why not put them to good use?
Normally when I want something off of a hard drive that’s not hooked up, I just swap drives in and out of my external enclosure as needed. But the new USB 3.0 compatible 2.5″ external hard drive enclosure by Century has me thinking it’s about time to pick up another enclosure. Instantly taking any 2.5″ drive you may have and turning it into a USB 3.0 “Super Speed” drive sure is tempting. Not to mention, the case itself is only $48 USD, so it’s relatively cheap too. Kind of like a “freebie” if you’re having trouble justifying dropping nearly 50 bones on the enclosure.
The enclosure isn’t shipping until April 12th, but online outlets will gladly take your money now. And just in case you were concerned, USB 2.0 is supported as a safe fall back option. Readying the wallet?
Who doesn’t want a faster computer? When I help people out with computer issues, the thing I hear most often is “how can you make my computer faster?” A hard alone isn’t going to do much, unfortunately. But it is one area that in the near future that will make at least a small noticeable difference, especially with 6Gbps SATA 3.0 on board. Whipping around at 7200RPM’s, Seagate bills their new 2TB Constellation ES monster drives as “enterprise class”, signaling that those who loathe ever turning off their machines should be happy as a clam with these new drives.
A few added bonuses by Seagate include: PowerChoice technology in order to make the drives as energy sipping as possible, yet still speedy as ever; government-grade encryption, and improved cooling.
Judging by past announcements and rollouts being a tad further apart than we like, I doubt we’ll see this new 2TB behemoth in particular before mid-summer. I’m always optimistic though. Who’s looking for a mass storage upgrade?
Even though Windows 7 is the current go-to option for Windows OS’s, may people for many reasons still rely on XP day in and day out to get their work done. Being the fact that XP itself is inching towards a decade old, at some point compatibility issues will arise. And speak of the devil, a new issue is in fact cropping up. It all has to do with hard drives and hard drive formats. It’s really a pretty simple thing — new hard drives have 4k sectors, old drives (pre-Windows XP era) have 512B.
The reason for the huge jump is that back in the day, 512B sectors was perfect for 10-100GB hard drives, but now that low end drives are even pushing 500GB and top-o-the line drives are soaring up to 2TB means we need something more efficient. I say efficient because with all of those little 512b sectors required a considerable amount of extra storage space for error codes. (Even wonder why so much of your hard drive capacity magically disappears after formatting?)
That new expanded 4k sector size means more space for actual storage on new drives and overall more efficient and speedy performance. For XP users, the “fun” begins. In order for XP to use drives formatted with the new 4k size, the drive will have to emulate the old 512B sectors. For reads, their won’t be any real noticeable difference. It’s only when you get all write happy that you could see up to a 10% decrease in drive performance as the emulation mode more or less makes it so that each 1 and 0 has to be written twice. All in all, only those building custom computers with more performance oriented goals will probably notice the speed decrease.
The simple solution is again, upgrade to Windows Vista or 7. But not everyone can do that. Be warned though, whether you’re ready or not, this new format will become standard by 2011. Get ready.
I’m one for unique, creative, and downright “your jaw hit’s the floor it’s so cool” gadgets. When someone takes the time to blend various objects or modify gadgets into new things that are completely off the wall, it’s a testament to how much of a nerd they really are. Say someone were to take your normal spinning hard drive, place a few LED’s behind the spinning platter, cut out some numbers, and time it all so the LED’s lit up at precisely the right moment as to show the current time — the result would be nothing short of amazing, no? For one modder, “Svofsk”, that very thing has been accomplished. Let me tell you, it may not seem like much — timing some LED’s and all — but when you stop and think about how fast hard drives spin and how fast (and precise) such LED on/off transitions have to be, well, it becomes pretty mind boggling. But don’t let my senseless babbling be the only source you have for this. Check out the vid below…
Learn how to make it yourself, compliments of Svofski’s website with very, very detailed schematics.
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I always thought it was pretty ridiculous to offer a digital service such as Netflix movie streaming, but shackling it to an antiquated piece of technology — the DVD. But that’s exactly what happened for the big 3 gaming consoles from the onset. The Wii is already making strides to rid itself of the Netflix disc requirement. And now thankfully, the PS3 is too! Starting this coming monday, PS3 owners can kick back, relax, and fire up Netflix on their PS3 via a new Netflix app in the video section.
