technology on technabob...

Early adopters of Samsung’s Blu-Ray players are reporting that the picture quality on the Samsung BD-P1000 is better through component then through HDMI. It’s bad enough having to pay $1,000, but to have better quality from the analog output than the digital seems like a serious step backwards…

2K Games and 3D Realms announced today that the long-awaited FPS, Prey, has gone gold for the Xbox 360 on PC. This game has been in various forms of production for many years now, and was looking very good when it was shown at E3…

For those of you who really want to be sucked around their house in a giant Jetsons’ inspired vacuum tube elevator, your dream has come true.
The folks at Daytona Elevator have developed a pneumatic tube elevator that works on the same principal as the one in the famous 60’s cartoon. The elevator can travel at a rate of 30 feet per minute and haul up to 450 pounds of human cargo…

Take it for what it’s worth, but Best Buy has listed Halo 3 as being released on November 16, 2006 for the Xbox 360. I’ll believe it when I see it.
Read More [via Kotaku]

Now I’ve heard everything. In the interest of beefing up the legitimacy of the league, Major League Gaming (MLG) has signed a team of Halo 2 players to a $1 million dollar contract. The 4-player team “Final Boss” only lost one game during their torunament play last year. Hope I never run into these guys online.
Read More [via Xboxic]

Industrial designer Marc Newsome has created the uniquely-styled Signeo SN-A800 MP3 player. It’s just 6.5mm (0.26″) thick and available in three colors: Black, 1970s Blue, or 1970s Yellow. The device also has an onboard FM tuner and can record from FM to MP3. 512MB ($179) and 1GB ($249) versions are available from Dynamism.com.
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The Sharp ASV Premium LCD display panel has a size of 37 inch, 1920×1080 pixel resolution and a brightness of 500cd/m2. The highest contrast ratio reported prior to this was 100,000:1 reached by a SED TV developed by Canon and Toshiba.
I’ll be curious to see how well this works in a real-life application
Read More [via i4U News]

In celebration of the 15th anniversary of the spiky fella, Sega has announced the release of four Sonic the Hedgehog titles this year:

Sonic The Hedgehog
Sony PS3 and Microsoft Xbox 360 (Late ‘06)
A New Sonic Adventure (title TBD)
Nintendo Wii (Early ‘07)
Sonic Rivals
Sony PSP (Fall ‘06)
Special Edition of Sonic The Hedgehog Genesis
Gameboy Advance (Nov ‘06)

According to Sega:
“Fans will be treated throughout the year to special 15th anniversary events, culminating with the release of three original Sonic adventures shipping later this year, as well as the original Sonic The Hedgehog Genesis for the Game Boy Advance…

Microsoft’s annual European Xbox event (X06) was announced today, and will take place from September 27th to 28th in Barcelona, Spain (Microsoft, I’ll be happy to come and report from there if you invite me!) It’s pretty common for significant announcements to come out of these events as it’s the last major event prior to the busy holiday season…