Posted on: Tuesday, January 15, 2002
Tech Toys — New products to delight the techie
Compiled by Gannett News Service
Do-it-all DVD with extras
Samsung has created a portable DVD player with a built-in Memory Stick slot that extends its playback power. Besides playing movies and audio CDs, the player also can display digital images — including business presentations — saved as JPEG files and play MP3 tunes, both of which are stored on Memory Sticks. Even though the player is slightly less than an inch thick, it sports a roomy 10-inch TFT liquid-crystal display in a 16:9 wide-screen format. Better yet, the images on the screen can be viewed normally or upside down — a feature that allows the player to be mounted and viewed in a minivan, SUV or RV. It also can be hooked up to a TV. The DVD-L100 will ship with a vehicle mount and a remote control, and cost about $1,300. Look for it to start showing up in stores in April. Information: samsungusa.com
Take your tunes into the great outdoors
The calendar says January, but that shouldn't keep you from dreaming about all the cool gear coming out this summer. Consider the Wilson Freedom Insulated Cooler Bag with an AM/FM Radio and the Wilson Freedom Insulated Back Pack Radio. These clever products from Wilson Sporting Goods and Power Brands will let you pack up your essentials in a carrier that also plays music. Both products sport patriotic colors, run on four AA batteries, and feature an AM/FM radio with a splash-resistant speaker, a CD/cassette input and a headphone jack. The cooler bag/radio costs $36; the backpack radio is $48. Both are slated to arrive by summer.
Information: (800) 354-8785
Game time for tots
NewKidCo's "Sesame Street Sports" is designed for pint-sized gamers who want to play sports video games but don't yet have the skills required for complicated maneuvers. In the $19.99 PlayStation game and the $29.99 Game Boy Color title, children compete as their favorite Sesame Street characters in six different events, including in-line skating, snow sliding and unicycling. The designers have made it impossible for young players to go the wrong way, and the display even shows you which controls need to be pushed. Unfortunately, because this game is set up for just one player, siblings and friends won't be able to race against each other.
Information: www.newkidco.com
Ultimate remote coming to stores
Now that you have a home theater system, you need a pricey remote to control it. If you can wait a couple of months, KNG America and AT&T will be shipping a do-it-all remote for just under $100. The AT&T Touch Screen 12-in-1 Universal Remote will include a roomy touch screen with a liquid crystal display. The gadget also will come with a charging cradle, rechargeable batteries, a digital voice memo recorder, a scan button, a back-lit display, a sleep timer and shortcut keys. Plus, there's no need to argue about who put the remote where. When the remote disappears, push the Radio Frequency Finder button on the charger and it will set off the remote's melody pager.
Details: (800) 354-8785
Record those CDs with blazing speed
One easy — and speedy — way to save all those favorite vacation photos and MP3 tunes you've got piling up, is to record them on CDs with Yamaha's LightSpeed External CD-RW Recorder.
While its $300 price tag is a bit steep, the CRW3200UXZ earns its keep by delivering quality discs at super-fast speeds. The CD-rewritable device, which also can work as a CD recorder (CD-R) and as a CD-ROM drive, does its fastest work when hooked up to a PC or Mac with a Universal Serial Bus (USB) 2.0 port. With that connection, Yamaha estimates it can record on CD-R discs at a top speed of 24X, rewrite CD-RW discs at 10X and read CDs at 40X. That means you can record an entire CD in less than three minutes.
Information: www.yamaha.com
