-This week on the CNET Tech Review: feast your eyes on Sony's long-anticipated next generation portable, whatever it's called; a new radio app for the mixtape set; we'll count down the top technologies destined for the garbage heap; and go behind the scenes of the most popular Apple-centric show in the history of CNET.
It's all coming up right now.
Hi everyone.
I'm Molly Wood and welcome to the CNET Tech Review where we collect our hottest videos of the week and tell you what's good and what's bad in the world of tech, plus offer our unique tech wisdom in the form of the Bottom Line.
Let's get started with the good.
This week in Tokyo, Sony announced the long-rumored and finally confirmed PlayStation Portable or PSP2.
Although for some reason, they're calling it the Sony Next Generation Portable
or NGP.
I don't know.
Anyway, your friends from GameSpot were on hand for the big event and here's what they were able to find out.
-Feature.
-Hey everybody, this is Ricardo Torres from GameSpot.com here with the first look at the NGP, which most people understand is the PlayStation Portable 2, or the successor to the PlayStation Portable.
We have it next to a PSPgo, which is the latest version of the hardware that's been on the market for a while.
For those of you that are wondering, the NGP is considerably beefier than the original PSP.
You're looking at a 5-inch OLED touchscreen.
In fact, the device has also a touch pad on the pack in addition to 2 analog sticks, as you can see there on the back.
It is a return to the kind of the brick form factor of the original PSP.
What you also see is the buttons that everyone knows and loves from the original PSP, but now, you have 2 analog sticks.
In addition, the device is going to not use the UMD media format.
They are using a new cartridge-based media format for games.
In addition, the device, much like we've seen on the original PSP, is going to support digital downloads.
The device has internet connectivity.
In addition, it now has-- in addition to Wi-Fi, it now has 3G, which will allow a variety of new features that are being implemented on the device that are very social.
-Breathe in.
It's time to live your life.
It's yours to play the way you like 'cause nothing's stopping you tonight.
It's yours to play the way you like 'cause nothing's stop.
[unk].
This world is yours to play way you like
'cause nothing's stopping you tonight.
Breathe in.
It's time to live your life.
It's yours to play the way you like 'cause nothing's stopping you tonight.
-No word yet on pricing or when we can expect to see the NGP in the US beyond in time for the holidays.
And on a side note, Google searches for Prince's backing band, the
New Power Generation, have been going through the roof since Sony's announcement.
Now to date myself even more, remember listening to the radio and trying to record your favorite songs?
But then you'd always miss the beginning or the DJ would talk over the end and mess it all up.
Well, this new app called TuneIn Radio will let your relive that frustration as you record tunes from radio stations all over the world.
-Welcome to Tap That App.
I'm Jason Parker and this is the show where we cover the hottest apps in the mobile space.
This week, we're showing off a streaming radio app for the iOS that just might be the best in its category.
It's called TuneIn Radio and it works on both your iPhone and iPad with an easy to navigate interface that makes it a snap to find stations you like.
Powered by the RadioTime website, TuneIn Radio offers more than 40,000 stations to choose from around the globe, and you can even use your iPhone's
GPS to find your favorite local stations.
With all this audio content, it's fortunate that the interface offers a number of ways to drill down to exactly what you wanna listen to right from the launch page.
You can browse local stations, choose categories like sports or talk radio, and you can browse by language just to name a few.
Like other radio streaming apps, browsing the music category gives you an enormous list of genres to choose from, each with a long list of options around the world with your local choices at the top.
Once you find a few stations you like,
you can easily bookmark them from the station page so they show up in your bookmarks list for later listening.
The station page also gives you album art for the current song, the ability to play the last FM radio station for the band, and numerous options to view more information about the current station.
While listening to a station, if you like a particular song, you can pause and rewind live radio like a DVR, then record the song from the beginning.
TuneIn Radio keeps all your recordings in a special section so you can listen to recorded favorites later.
One of the best things about TuneIn Radio is that it works in tandem with RadioTime.com.
This means that once you sign up for a free account, you can save favorite station streams on your home computer then access them from your iOS device.
You can even schedule RadioTime to record a morning show, for example, that you later have access to on your iPhone.
TuneIn Radio costs $1.99 at the iTunes App Store.
But with 40,000 streaming radio stations, the ability to record music, and handy tools that work with the RadioTime website, it's pretty easy to recommend you tap this app.
That's it for this week's
show.
If you have any suggestion, send them to tapthatapp@cnet.com.
I'm Jason Parker and we'll see you next week.
-I may have to get that and then I'll be able to hear all those calls to the dedication lines that I've been missing.
They still do that, right?
Rick Dees, The Weekly Top 40?
Okay, this next section is for all you computer gear heads out there.
First up, Rich Brown shows us a new luxury gaming rig that'll set you back almost 5,000 bones, and then Dong bestows his
Editor's Choice Award for a mammoth NAS enclosure.
Take a look.
-Hi, I'm Rich Brown, Senior Editor for CNET.com.
Today, we're gonna take a look at the brand new Falcon Northwest Mach V.
This giant tower system is a high-end gaming desktop that costs about 4800 bucks and it's one of the fastest gaming systems we've seen.
It comes with Intel's brand new Core i7-2600K CPU as well as a couple of graphics
cards and all the bells and whistles we expect for this price.
It also comes with a brand new case from Falcon Northwest Mach V line, so, we'll go over some of the details of that, too.
So as you can see, this is a very tall system.
It comes in at about 2 feet tall and it weighs almost 75 pounds.
Rip off the front door here and you can see it's got pretty much a basic layout.
There's Blu-ray drive here, a couple of USB ports down here, as well at the top, you get a few more USB and audio connections.
There is no media card reader in this build but you do have the option and you can configure that on Falcon's website.
So going right inside the system, you'll see this is definitely not your standard PC build.
By rotating the motherboard 90 degrees inside of the case, you get an up-venting airflow situation.
That means it's a lot cooler inside for the hot graphics cards as well as the over-clocked liquid-cooled CPU you see here.
That orients the ports on the top of the case and you could run the cables through a slot here, plug them in, and there's a cap you put on, and it kinda makes a really tighty cable situation, as well as giving you thermal benefit.
Now, Falcon Northwest is not the first vendor that we've seen with a system like this.
Maingear Shift had this pretty much same outline in a very similar case.
Regardless, this is out there, we think it's a cool design and it probably makes a lot of sense for higher-end gaming PCs.
So, going to the components, we mentioned this system has an Intel Core i7-2600K chip.
That's one of Intel's brand new Sandy Bridge processors and it's over-clockable.
Falcon has gone to 4.6 gigs in this system, but we've heard that vendors can get up to 5 gigahertz or higher.
Considering this is one of the first Core i7s and supporting motherboards to hit the market,
we sort of understand that Falcon wasn't able to go quite as high as possible with this system.
That said we hope that future systems in this price range from Falcon, or any other vendor, really push hard on the over-clocking in order to justify the cost.
The reason is the Core i7 is so affordable.
You get $2500-systems that have the same application performance.
If you're gonna pay this much for a PC, you're gonna wanna see that extra performance to justify the cost.
Now, it's not to say that Falcon didn't push hard to make this system worth the price.
You get 2 high-end GeForce GTX580 graphics cards here, as well as 2 solid-state boot drives, as well as a separate 1 terabyte storage
hard drive.
Here, Falcon has put 16 gigs of memory.
That's some of the highest we've seen in a desktop.
Then here, you've got a 1000-watt power supply and that actually should let you add a third graphics card to this PC if you wanna add one after purchase.
Now, we mentioned that Maingear has a similar design to this.
Falcon's primary innovation is this separator between the CPU and the graphics card compartment.
According to Falcon, the separator gives you better thermal management by isolating the graphics cards.
Now, our only real issue with the design of the system comes with tool-free hard drive bays.
Each of these slots pops out and you get a cage here where you can install a hard drive.
Now, the design is supposed to be tool-free, but the problem is Falcon didn't mount the power or data cables behind each bay.
That means, not only do you have to run the cables yourself but if you wanna pop in that drive, it's gonna involve sort of a messy cable operation, and you may even have to take the far end of the case off in order to really get things connected.
Finally, as I mentioned earlier, because of the rotated motherboard, all the ports are on top of the case.
You get USB 3.0, FireWire, eSATA, 2 kinds of digital
audio, DVI, plus HDMI, along with standard 7.1 audio outs.
So overall, the Mach V is one of the fastest PCs we've seen in our lab and the new case makes it also one of the most innovative.
We encourage you to shop around if you're looking for a new PC in this price range featuring Intel's new CPU.
Mostly though, this system lives up to our performance and value expectations for a PC close to 5,000 bucks.
So, I'm Rich Brown.
This is the Falcon Northwest Mach V.
-If you're looking for the best network storage server for your home or small office, you're watching the right video.
Hello, my name is Dong Ngo, and this is the DiskStation 1511+ NAS Server from Synology--the first NAS server of 2011 that earns our Editor's Choice Award.
This is a 5-bay server, meaning, it can host up to 5 SATA hard drives.
The server supports virtually any 3.5-inch SATA hard drive on the market.
In fact, it's one of the few that can handle the new
3-terabyte drive.
With all these bays, it can offer up to 15 terabytes of storage space.
Now, the front-facing hard drive bays are very easily accessible.
You can just unlock the latch and pull the tray out to quickly service the hard drive.
You can even do this without turning the server off as long as you want to replace only one hard drive at a time.
The server supports many RAID configurations such as RAID 5, RAID 0, and so on.
The best RAID that you want to use, however, is the Synology Hybrid RAID,
which is similar to RAID 5 but also allows for dynamically increasing the RAID capacity without having to build it from scratch.
Now, if 15 terabytes is not enough for you, the server comes with plenty of peripheral ports on the back.
Here, you're gonna find 2 eSATA ports and 4 USB 2.0 ports to add even more storage space.
The USB ports can also be used to host other devices such as printers.
On the back, you can see two big ventilation fans that are quiet for how big they are, and not one, but 2 gigabit Ethernet ports.
These 2 ports can work together either for fail-safe purpose or to increase the throughput speed.
The best things about the DiskStation 1511+ are those that cannot be seen from the appearance.
The server runs a very robust firmware that can be managed over the web interface.
The interface is very organized and advanced, much like that of an operating system.
This makes managing the server's vast amount of features an easy job for advanced users.
The server has many unique features such as the ability to host up to 20 IP cameras with its comprehensive surveillance station, which is better than most surveillance DVRs on the market.
On top of that, its performance is the best we've seen.
The server is available now for around $900 without storage.
For more information on whether or not it's worth the investment, check out the full review at CNET.com.
Once again, my name is Dong Ngo and this has been the first look
at the DiskStation 1511+ NAS Server from Synology.
-So, even though Rich knocked the Mach V for its hard drive cage design, you can probably avoid having to deal with it if you just get the Synology DiskStation.
15 terabytes?
That is just plain hot.
And while you figure out how you're gonna fill up all that space besides ripping your entire DVD collection of course, let's take a quick break.
But we'll be right back with more
Tech Review right after this.
Welcome back to the CNET Tech Review, our weekly video digest of all things good and bad we've seen here at CNET TV.
Now, with any further ado, let's see what's happening in the bad.
By show of hands, how many of you got a stack of Blu-ray movies or even a Blu-ray player for Christmas this year?
Well, according to Brian Cooley, you might as well just throw them in the trash.
Let's check out his top 5 list of doomed
technologies to find out why.
-Techies sit around picking winning technologies like drinkers pick horses--just their thing.
I'm Brian Cooley with my top 5 picks of doomed technologies.
I don't feel good about these.
If you do your gambling with the grocery money, don't bet on them.
Number 5, Blu-ray.
Oh, I hear you.
Blu-ray is already a good-sized hit.
But as it tries to equal the impact of its parent DVD, it's getting taken out at the knees by online streaming to the television even faster than many of us would've guessed a year ago.
I think Blu-ray falls somewhere north of laser disc but around paragraph 9 of the history of home video.
Number 4, e-book readers.
And Amazon won't stop telling us the Kindle is their number 1 best-selling,
most wished for, most gifted product.
What they don't tell us is how many have they sold?
Estimates are between 1.5 and 3 million since November of 2007 and that's, by the way, the most popular e-reader out there.
Well, Apple sells that many iPads in a couple of months and it hasn't been on the market nearly that long.
A tablet is not a perfect reader but we're also not a nation of bookworms of either.
For most of us, the tablet's gonna be good enough especially since our real love is video and the web.
Readers, they're a niche
for life.
Number 3, 3D TV.
Yeah, it's the newest thing on the list but I'm still nervous about it.
Early word from retailers is that it's proving to be a tough sell.
Blame it on those glasses and the fact that they are proprietary to your brand of TV.
Also, the mess of standards and most of the stuff we watch not being made better by 3D all give this one the stink of a carnival trick.
In 2011, I need to see glasses get standardized,
display standardization as well, either frame sequencing or polarization, and tons of content that is meaningfully presented in 3D.
Then maybe I'll be convinced.
Number 2, wireless HDMI.
This one's bubbled up here and there with various manufacturers and mostly in proprietary form.
It's never taken root.
I'm just not sure consumers care.
Yes, cabling your home system the first time is a pain, but then you're done for years.
And yes, that wire
crawling up the wall to your TV is ugly, but so is your living room, and you're gonna need a power cord anyway.
We're not a nation of interior design buffs.
So, a technology to eliminate a snarly mess of cables isn't gonna find much love.
Now, before I take you to my number 1 doomed technology, here are 5 that have emerged as sure bets over the course of 2010 and well into the years ahead.
These guys, you can take to the bank.
Okay, my number 1 technology that just
feels like it's dead is Wi-Fi in cars.
Wow!
Seem like such a great idea a year or so ago.
But now, we have so many 3G smartphones, 3G tablets, 3G notebooks, and 3G Mi-Fis and USB dongles, that the idea of a 3G-powered Wi-Fi translator hotspot bolted into the car to connect devices that already have 3G just doesn't get out of the garage.
Thanks for watching folks and we'll check in late 2011 and see how I fared on these predictions.
I'm Brian Cooley.
-Well, come on.
Let's not be too hasty.
I mean, if you haven't been able to part with the box of VHS tapes in your attic yet, your Blu-ray movies should probably come in handy for a while.
I'm sure.
Alright, moving along, it's time to check out this week's Bottom Line.
Now that the Verizon iPhone announcement and Steve Jobs' medical leave are behind us, there hasn't been a lot of other news in the Apple world lately,
so, what better time to go behind the scenes of the AppleByte to find out how Brian Tong and the gang put the show together each week.
-So, you wanna know what we do here, you know how we make the sausage of CNET TV?
Well, I'll tell you what.
The first ingredient is dedication.
I'm the first one here at work everyday.
I can't remember the last time someone was here before me, and all I do is I wake up, I check out the news, check out all the latest information because it's really up to me to provide you guys with the stories that you care about.
Hey, did you guys hear Ricky Martin's gonna adopt?
-So, we have this meeting.
It's a mandatory meeting that Brian says we can brainstorm our ideas.
-That was awesome guys.
That was awesome, yeah.
-He doesn't have any good ideas.
They're all lame and the T-Pain one was totally my idea.
He stole it.
But if you ask him, he'll deny it.
-Paper toss?
That was my idea.
-iFu, you think he could've come up with that idea?
-iFu.
-Oh yeah, Love Link, that was all mine.
-What the what-
-I love that thing, well, wait a minute.
No.
The last scene?
That was Brian.
-I just really like to create a safe place where every idea is a good idea.
No!
No!
Stupid!
There is no "I" in team.
You've heard that.
But if you switch the letters around, it spells meat, and meat's the number 1 ingredient in sausage.
-Our son Brian is very special to me because when he was a baby, I dropped him on his head.
-Yeah, special.
-Very special.
-I'm a professional.
I've been doing this kind of work for years.
The lights, the
backdrop, everything has to be perfect.
-There you go.
Heads up.
Nice.
-Yeah.
-Give me 2.
-I'm so excited to be part of the CNET team.
It's-- it's been like a dream, like, come true.
That's-- I've been watching CNET since I was a kid and, like, I'm such a big fan of the AppleByte.
I can't even put it into words sometime.
-You know, once you cleared that last spot and I'll put on my brown ones next.
I'm working with professionals here and I won't expect anything less.
I have the utmost confidence in my
team.
-Focusing the light.
I think I got it.
How does that look?
-That's pretty good.
-In a lot of ways, Brian Tong is great to work with because of his addiction to the teleprompter.
As long as you put the words in there, he will be able to regurgitate them.
-That's gonna do it for this week's show.
I'm Brian Tong and we'll catch you guys next time for another
byte of the...
Alright, let's go guys.
That's a wrap.
-Yeah, doesn't really make sense.
Brian's been doing this for a long time.
And he just hasn't really gotten better.
-Welcome to the AppleByte for all the good and bad inside the world of Apple.
Guess what's coming in the next few months.
I guess it starts with deny.
-I don't think you understand.
I see Brian, when I walk in, in the morning.
Every shoot,
I have to stare at him while I edit.
Every time I turn a corner, he's just there.
-Hey!
Dude, dude, I almost missed you.
You wanna go get something to eat?
It's the end of the day.
Let's go.
-Production wise, I'm kinda like a-- I'm kind of a one man band.
Yeah.
I-- I shoot at it.
That's one thing I'm really proud of, you know?
I just-- I just get the job done.
-How are we doing over there, Benito?
-On track, Mr.
Nu�±ez.
I'm part of such an amazing team here and, like,
they have respect for me.
They appreciate my work and I feel like I can contribute so much.
-62-53.
Mr.
Tong's up.
-Well, thank you, Connelly.
Sometimes, you get this feeling like, yeah, I was made to do this.
I was born to do this.
And I just feel like our entire team pours their heart and soul in this project and we all take a lot of pride in what we do.
-[unk].
Touche.
-Yeah, I feel really lucky to have to work here on the AppleByte.
All my life, you know, I've had a dream of being an action photographer and using that camera to capture sports, and athletics, and moving objects, and exciting adventurous things.
And now, look at me taking pictures of Brian Tong pointing at an iPhone week after week, month after month.
Uh!
What have I become?
-I just gotta say, I'm-- I'm really proud.
We did a lot this year.
I'm-- I'm happy to represent for my team.
-For the last 20 years, I've worked as a professional television news photographer.
I have been around the world.
I've been around the country.
I've seen people in so much pain, so much misery, and I can't even begin to tell you how hard it is to work with Brian Tong.
-At the end of the day, it's just great to
watch a final product that all of us can be proud of and just say to ourselves as a team, as one group, yeah, I did something special.
What's happening?
I'm Brian Tong and welcome to a little show we call the AppleByte for all the good and bad inside the world of Apple.
-The Bottom Line this week, I'm speechless.
All I can say is poor Benito.
That is not right.
We should really call HR about that.
Alright, that's gonna do it
for us this week everybody.
But come back next time for some exciting smartphone news on our brand new CNET Tech Review.
I wonder what smartphone that could be.
Until then, there are tons of great videos available everyday at cnettv.com.
I'll see you next time and thank you for watching.
