Technabob » H.264

Onda Vx560 Flat-Screen Media Player Looks Like a Mini-Tablet Swallowed an E-Book Reader

Technabob — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 03:30:23 +0000

The handheld media player market is so crowded at this point, you really need to do something special to stand out. This PMP from China strives to differentiate itself with a large high-resolution screen and a form-factor reminiscent of a small tablet PC or e-reader.

The Onda VX560 features a nice big 7-inch screen with a sharp 800×480 display resolution. But one of the really cool things about the VX560 is that it can play full 1080p HD content via an HDMI connection, so you can use it as a high-def media player for your big-screen TV too.

While HD content is supported in H.264 (MKV) format, the player can also handle RM / RMVB (including RealVideo8/9/10 coding), AVI, MOV, FLV, MPG, VOB, and DAT formats. It’ll also work as a full e-Book reader with support for CHM, PDF, HTM, UMD, and PDB formats and text-to-speech book reading too.

Although it looks like a mini-tablet, it doesn’t appear that the VX560 will have a touchscreen, but that’s not for sure. While it’s doubtful Onda will ever officially release the VX560 stateside, you’ll probably be able to find it from online importers in the not-too-distant future.

[via IMP3 via Cloned in China via Ubergizmo ]

Vholdr Contourhd: the Helmet Cam Goes High-Def

Technabob — Tue, 05 May 2009 12:37:38 +0000

If you spend an inordinate amount of time off-road biking, downhill skiing, skydiving or something equally adventurous, here’s a great way to capture those thrilling moments of your life.

The new VholdR ContourHD is a wearable HD camcorder that can shoot full 16:9 widescreen video to capture your daredevil moments in glorious high definition. The camera shoots at 1280×720 (720p) resolution at 30 frames per second, or can also shoot SD video at up to 60 FPS if you don’t mind sacrificing resolution for greater framerate. Video can be captured on MicroSD cards, each of which can hold as much as 16GB – about 8 hours of HD video. Not too shabby.

Just strap the weather- and shock-resistant ContourHD to your helmet, and flip the record switch to get started. Not only does it capture video from your point-of-view, but the ContourHD grabs decent audio thanks to a special built-in microphone designed to minimize wind noise as you careen down that hill or out of that airplane. The camera features a special 135-degree wide-angle lens to capture all the action, and even has built in laser guides to ensure you capture a straight shot. And if you’re really defying death and don’t wear a helmet at all, VholdR offers a variety of mounting accessories for your bike, car, ski goggles or other locations.

While the videos below give you a pretty good idea of the type of action you can capture with the ContourHD, you’ll really want to head over the the VholdR site to see some clips in their full HD glory.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

You can find the VholdR ContourHD camera over at Amazon for $299.99 (USD).

[via Helmet Camera Central via EngadgetHD]

Speed Up iPod and Psp Video Encoding

Technabob — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 04:02:05 +0000

If you’re frustrated with how long it takes to convert your videos into a format that can be played back on your portable device, this new device promises to significantly reduce the time required to encode videos into the popular H.264/.mp4 encoding format used by both the iPod and PSP among others.

The ADS InstantVideo To-Go is a portable USB encoding accelerator which claims to encode at the rate of about 5 minutes of video every 1 minute. Typical software accelerators only can encode H.264 about 1 minute of video every 3 to 5 minutes, meaning that the ADS dongle should speed up encoding by as much as 15x to 25x over software solutions. Priced at $80, it’s not inexpensive for such a narrow purpose, but if your video card doesn’t have some sort of encoding acceleration (such as AMD/ATI’s Avivo-capable cards,) it might be worth it.

[via Reg Hardware]