Belkin

It's a common dilemma: you have the flat-screen TV perfectly placed in the living room or home theater, but the rest of your gear is located halfway across the room. You can snake a long HDMI cable around the perimeter--or you can consider something like the Belkin FlyWire. The transmitter/receiver combo lets you toggle as many as six AV sources and wirelessly transmit the audio and video--up to full 1080p--from one side of the room (your equipment rack) to the other (your big-screen TV or projector). The version Belkin was demoing at its booth had two HDMI inputs, two component inputs, a composite/S-Video AV set, and a SCART input--but the company hinted that that the North American version may drop the SCART jack (useless outside Europe) in favor of a third HDMI input. The generous connectivity means even the biggest home-theater geek will have the capacity for all of his gear--say, a PS3, an HD DVR, an Xbox 360, a DVD recorder, a Nintendo Wii, and a sixth device. Setup is said to be plug and play (the transmitter pairs with the receiver at the touch of a button), and because it's a closed system, it should be universally compatible with any standard video source and an HDMI TV.

Watch the Belkin FlyWire video on CNET TV.… Read more

Belkin has announced the successor to the n52 SpeedPad, the n52te. What does the "te" stand for, you ask? Tournament Edition. This professional-grade SpeedPad promises to improve your response time in PC games like first-person shooters, real-time strategy games, and MMORPGs.

Teaming up with elite gaming peripheral manufacturer Razer, the n52te carries with it a customizable software suite allowing players to completely modify their gaming experience. The device will support multiple player profiles in addition to Razer Synapse onboard memory, which allows for plug-and-play functionality without the need to install additional software wherever you take it. Also new … Read more

When I posted my review of Belkin's TuneTalk Stereo, a representative of APC commented on the story to suggest that I might want to use APC's Mobile Power Pack to extend the iPod's battery life when recording.

I started to reply to describe the gizmo I designed to power my iPod from a spare PowerBook battery-- a little clip that connects the battery terminals to an iPod dock cable. This is what I used to use to power up my old 4th-generation iPod while recording long conference sessions with the Belkin Voice Recorder for iPod.

But even as I was typing, I realized… Read more

I'd like to provide some additional information provided by Belkin as a followup to my review of the TuneTalk Stereo earlier in the week.

Belkin public relations coordinator Jacqueline Romulo wrote to me after the review appeared to confirm that the TuneTalk Stereo is not currently compatible with the iPod classic, and said it was listed as compatible on the Belkin Web site by mistake. (Indeed, it's no longer listed on Belkin's page for the iPod classic.)

In a subsequent e-mail, Romulo provided this… Read more

Despite the dream of an "ultimate handheld," it's really hard to get down to fewer than two portable devices. A Treo may do it all, but you still want an iPod; an iPhone is great, but you still need a BlackBerry for work; you like to listen to your iPod while playing your PSP or DS; and so on. Even those who do manage to get down to one super smart phone often have a Bluetooth headset to go along with it. And traveling with two devices means taking two power adapters along. Or at least it did--until the Belkin Dual USB Power Adapter came along. … Read more

On Monday evening, I posted my first impressions of my new iPod classic 160GB. The first accessory I needed for my new iPod was a microphone so I can record conferences, meetings, and voice memos.

Right after receiving the iPod, I looked around online and found a comparative review of three iPod microphones by Mark Nelson on the O'Reilly Digital Media site. The review helped me settle on the Belkin TuneTalk Stereo for iPod.

I checked the Belkin Web site to make sure this model is compatible with the iPod classic. There's a page on the Belkin site just for that model, and the TuneTalk Stereo is on there--Belkin part number F8Z082-BLK.

I then went to the local Apple Store (at the Valley Fair Mall in Santa Clara, Calif.) since I remembered seeing this gizmo for sale there a couple of months ago. Sure enough, they were still there. In fact, there were two different… Read more

As I said last week in my post about Apple's iPod announcements, I ordered a new 160GB iPod classic as soon as the Apple Store was back online.

It arrived today (Monday)--five days later, from Shanghai--with my custom engraving. I think that's pretty darn excellent.

The iPod packaging has gotten a lot smaller. A box the size of those that contained my first two iPods (a third-generation model, then a fourth-generation iPod when the third-gen model died) could probably hold about six of the new iPod classic packages. I saw the new iPod nano packaging at a local Apple Store this evening, and it's much smaller--and very cool, since it presents the iPod itself under… Read more

Belkin announced today the newest member of its N1 family of 802.11n-based networking products--the N1 Vision. Belkin broke the mold of usability with its original N1 router, but the N1 Vision takes it a step further: mounted on the front of the sleek, black router is an interactive network display. The graphical LCD displays information such as your upload/download speed, network bandwidth usage, the number of connected devices on your network, the guest access network key, and the date and time. A four-way rocker key lets you navigate through the available information.

The N1 Vision is compliant with … Read more

Now that fellow Craver Rich Demuro has shown that we can dry our hands properly at long last, it's time to revisit an idea whose time may finally have come: washable computer equipment.

Most of the submergible peripherals we've seen to date are keyboards, but now there's a mouse to go with them. Belkin's cleverly named "Washable Mouse" can take extended bubble baths because of a unique design that places uses a "scroll pad" instead of the usual wheel, according to Gizmodo.

This comes as good news to those of us in … Read more