One such developer is Notion Ink, who have revealed a prototype tablet featuring Google’s Android operating system running on top of an NVIDIA Tegra2 chip.

The big draw of the Tegra2 is that it supports full 1080p HD, so all you need to do is to hook up an HD source and a screen, and you have an instant HD-capable device. This is pretty much what Notion Ink have done in order to show off their Pixel Qi screen’s capabilities.

The ease with which they were able to do it, though, really demonstrates the power of these devices and gives a tasty glimpse into the new tech that’s just around the corner.

Because of the Tegra2′s 1080p performance, NVIDIA are expecting many new devices that will make existing HDTVs Internet capable.

Just like the Boxee Box, a new set top box can be developed easily with Tegra2 inside that will bring the Web to your TV.

But not just the TV. With Tegra2, 1080p HD can come to any device with a screen. That means photo frames, smartphones, Internet tablets, even in-car entertainment systems (obviously for the passenger only!)

It seems that HD content and the Web are finally coming together and NVIDIA want to be right in the middle powering it all. If what we’ve seen at CES 2010 is anything to go by, they’ve most probably will!

You can see a video of Notion Ink’s tablet over at JKOnTheRun.

Android, I’m sure you know, is Google’s open source operating system that’s been installed on dozens of smartphones, tablets and laptops.

Never, though, has it found its way on the humble Microwave oven!

To be fair, Touch Revolution aren’t actually selling the machines – they’re showing what can be done with Android and their own teccie skills.

But it’s an interesting concept, and one that I’m sure will see the light of day before too long.

Just picture it. Rather than watching the seconds count down as you microwave your baked potato to death, you can view your friends’ tweets instead.

As it’s a complete Android OS running the show, you can also keep track of what you’ve cooked, how many calories it contains, how may calories you’ve eaten over the past few weeks, and the nutritional content (or distinct lack of it!) of the meals you’ve been eating.

Actually, this could go even further. Equip the microwave with WiFi, and you can share the contents of your meal with your friends. Or the microwave could tweet to your friends what you’re about to eat, which, if it’s laden with calories, could cause them to tweet furiously back at you telling you not to do it!

Or you could crowd-source the perfect baked potato. Put the spud in the microwave, cook it for a set amount of time, eath the thing, and then give it a rating.

The microwave could send the rating to an online app, which would aggregate thousands of other users’ ratings. Averaging the ratings, the microwave could then tell you what the perfect cooking time is for any weight of potato.

Hmmm – I started this post off humourously, but the more I think think about it, the more a social microwave seems to make sense!

What other uses can you think of for an Android-equipped social microwave? Answer in the comments below, or let me know via Twitter.

Now what can you do with a social washing machine…?!

[Source: Pocket-Lint]

The gorgeous looking sound system you see here could have come straight from the pages of an old 1970s B&O catalogue on how the music systems of the future (i.e. 1995!) might look. It’s called the TRIA, and it’s an oddly shaped wireless sound system designed to stream your tunes from your PC over Wi-Fi, but with one curious twist – it’s actually a wireless record player!


The large slot in the front of the TRIA is designed to take your 12″ and albums. The TRIA will then play them, as you’d expect, or rip them onto its internal 500GB hard drive, or an external drive via USB.

It looks fantastic, blending old ’70s style techno looks with modern contemporary styling. Alas, though, looks is all the TRIA is about, as it’s nothing more than a concept. The closest thing you’ll get to the TRIA in real life is one of the USB turntables that are designed to rip your old records onto MP3 via a USB port and your PC.

The TRIA probably won’t go on sale, simply because there it’s designed solely to play or rip your vinyl tunes. You can’t DJ with it, so its target market is people who refuse to go digital, and let’s face it, if you’re as resistant to change as that, you’re unlikely to want a sound system as unconventional looking as the TRIA!

Still, designer Ricardo Baiao at Mola Ativism must be congratulated both for the looks of the TRIA and the highly novel concept.

[Source: Yanko Design]

All very nice and twee, you might think, but there’s a good reason boys don’t listen to James Blunt – he’s crap! Try and remove him from the ‘shared’ playlist, though, and I guarantee you’ll get an earful for the rest of eternity!

You’ll therefore be left with a choice: listen to your partner’s playlist until deafness ends your millennial misery, or split up now!

Nice romantic idea, I’m sure, but somehow I think the Twinned Mp3 player will actually break up more couples!

Fortunately, it’s just a concept at the moment. For the sake of humanity (or at least, future couples!), let’s hope it stays that way!

SlashGear]

The benefits of this technology are that the 3D images can be seen from a variety of different angles, and not just from looking directly at the screen, which is a limitation inherent in many current 3D TV technologies. It also offers much higer resolution than other technologies – indeed, this is the only full-HD 3D TV technology in existence.

Unfortunately, it’s only at the prototype stage at the moment, and they’re not expecting it to go into commercialization until 2011, but at least that gives you time enough to save up your pennies (and for the world to regain some rich bankers again!), as with three separate full-HD projectors, this baby ain’t exactly gonig to be cheap!

[Source: Techon]

The Wooo also supports the increasingly-popular DLNA, which is used to transmit pre-recorded video to your DLNA-equipped TV (the Wooo incorporates a DLNA server), and also to browse the contents of the Wooo’s videos through the TV via the TV’s standard remote.

The Wooo supports H.264 for its HD pictures, and incorporates an IPTV server to stream live HD video over to your TV in real time.

The new Wooo won’t be cheap. Not only do you have to buy the camcorder itself, but you’ll also need a TV capable of supporting DLNA, IPTV and WiFi (although you can buy STBs and other boxes of tricks that’ll support the last two).

However, it shouldn’t be long before this technology finds its way into most HDTVs, and so WiFi camcorders should start to become more and more popular.

Effectively, this turns the Wooo into a sort of reverse SlingBox, which currently streams “live” TV programmes from your TV to any client device with an Internet connection, anywhere in the world.

With the Wooo you’ll be able to stream genuinely live video that you shoot in real time not just to your TV, but to any TV (or screen, for that matter) that has an Internet connection, again, anywhere in the world.

An intriguing development indeed.

It’ll be interesting to see the applications that emerge for this new way of recording and broadcasting video.

Security is an obvious application, as it turns your camcorder into an instant CCTV camera.

You can also picture people streaming events such as conferences live over the Internet.

All this won’t take place for a while, but a new era in amateur video broadcasting looks like it’s about to dawn.

[Source: TechOn, via SlashGear]

Another example is distributed memory – if your XBox is running out of storage space, it’ll simply borrow whatever’s available from the other connected handheld devices. Even more intriguing, different handheld devices can swap what Microsoft calls “Doppler sound effects” for objects in motion, making the user think that an in-game object is really moving just by its sound.

From the patent:

“Non-gaming applications on a gaming component can be controlled by another gaming component in combination. For example, the handheld gaming device can be used to control music playback on the console gaming device.”

“Any device coupled to a gaming component via its input/output ports is available to other gaming components in combination. Examples of coupled devices include monitors, speakers, audio processing equipment, video processing equipment, or a combination thereof.

For example, one of the input/output ports of the console gaming device can be coupled to a large screen display and another of the console gaming device’s input/output ports can be coupled to a home theater audio system. Accordingly, the video and audio of a game being played on the handheld gaming device can be rendered on the large screen display and the home theater system, respectively, via the console gaming device 42.”

Of these devices, Microsoft currently only makes one: the Microsoft Zune MP3 player (although Windows Mobile is used in a variety of smartphones and PDAs). There’s no Microsoft handheld gaming device, and the Windows-Mobile based devices are all built by other companies. If Microsoft really does have plans to develop the MCGS, it’ll have to either build new devices itself, or (more likely) develop a reference specification and let other device manufacturers build the devices that are then compatible with the MCGS.

Microsoft have been making in-roads into the home for some time now, with the release of the original XBox and the much more impressive XBox 360 with its superb connectivity and media streaming options, and the seriously unimpressive Zune. Given that the business software market is saturated, the home entertainment market was the next logical step for the company, but it needs a way to beat the incumbent home entertainment maestro that is Sony.

Sony’s new PS3 also has similar device- and network-connectivity to the XBox 360, and so providing a super-home entertainment network in the form of the MCGS would be one way for Microsoft to differentiate its products from Sony, and to lock them out from the home (as a Sony device will never interoperate with a Microsoft device!)

If the MCGS is actually built by Microsoft, it’ll be the most sophisticated home entertainment network the world has ever seen, and its ability to share resources such as CPU, graphics processing and memory between devices will rival that of grid computing, which is currently only used in high-end super-computing scenarios.

It’ll also mean the development of dozens of new devices that will be compliant with the MCGS, all of which should be able to share media seamlessly with one another (providing Microsoft don’t hobble the system with painful DRM, like they did with the Zune).

How likely is it that this sort of system will actually be produced? Well, in an interview with TVG, European XBox big-wig Chris Lewis said “at the moment, we are focused on creating connected experiences around music for Zune. You can already plug your Zune device into your Xbox 360 to stream music, pictures and video content. Looking ahead, the vision for connected entertainment provides a number of consumer scenarios and with our heritage in Xbox and Games for Windows, gaming is certainly something we’re considering for the device.”

In other words, it’s going to happen. My guess is Zune 2.0 will combine gaming with video and MP3 playback, all of which can be streamed back and forth between your XBox 360, Zune, HDTV and hi-fi in a limited implementation of the MCGS. This configuration will only require the development of the Zune 2.0, and won’t come with the distributed resource-sharing envisaged for the MCGS (largely because the XBox 360 doesn’t support this). For the full MCGS, you’ll have to wait for the successor to the XBox 360, which should be ready in four years’ time or so.

And if all this doesn’t have you salivating, you can bet that Sony are thinking up something equally ingenious as Microsoft plots. The PS3′s hardware is insanely powerful, and Sony will already have thought of ways of integrating it tightly with its huge range of existing home entertainment devices. In addition, let’s not forget that Sony already has a large range of Walkmans, mobile phones, HDTV, hi-fis and portable gaming devices, giving it a huge advantage over Microsoft should it choose to develop a similar system.

The future of home entertainment suddenly got a whole lot more exciting!

[Source: US Patent Office, via Unwired View]