Apple is set to announce its next-gen iteration of the popular iPad in the first week of March, a new report from AllThingsD reveals.

Sources say Apple is likely to host the launch event for the device in San Francisco, almost exactly year after the company announced its current iPad model. There is no concrete data on when it will be available to buy, but if last years launch of iPad 2 is anything to go by, expect it to be available for purchase two weeks after the launch.

Specifications of the new device are said to be almost entirely what we’ve been led to expect from all the rumours. Experts expect a device similar in form factor to the iPad 2, but powered by a much faster chip (though most probably not a quad-core), with a much improved graphics processing unit, and a wonderful 2048 x 1536 Retina Display resolution to feast your eye on.

Along with the new device, expect a newer version of the OS bringing the necessary iPad 3 exclusive features.

No invites have been sent as yet to the major industry watchers, and Apple has said it wont comment on speculation or rumours.

Source: AllthingsD

With the Monster brand name, people have two things in mind: great quality and great (as in, not really) price. And the Clarity HD Model One speakers certainly live up to that legacy.

As the name suggests, the Clarity HD Model One were designed for clear sound reproduction across all spectrums, with the idea to make any genre sound good. Apart from great acoustics, though, Monster also designed the Clarity HD Model One to have easy connectivity with a myriad of personal and professional audio devices, as well as ease of use.

So let’s start things off with the packaging and see what we get inside the box. Apart from the two speakers, there are two power cables with different socket pins. The power brick is built inside the right speaker itself, so all you need is one thin wire plugged into an electrical outlet. The left speaker draws power and audio source from the right one, so there’s a thick DIN cable that’s roughly 15 feet long.

Then there are 5 iPod, iPod Touch and iPhone compatible brackets that allow you to connect your choice of iOS device easily on top of the right speaker. Finally we have the miniscule remote control which is mostly useful for just powering on/off the Model One, apart from volume control. The playback controls only come into effect when you have an iOS device connected to it, though.

The bookshelf sized Model One measures 16 x 9 inches, and weighs about 5 kgs each. However, the speakers actually felt lighter than that, thanks to the perfectly placed inlay handles on top. Apart from just requiring two cables, the handles make the Clarity HD Model One the most portable bookshelf speakers on the market.

Now as far as connectivity and controls go, the Model One have it all covered. As mentioned earlier, the top of the right speaker has the Apple connector dock, which is used to connect any iPod and iPhone for music playback. The power and main volume control are just in front of the Apple dock.

Behind the right speaker we find the majority of connection ports. There’s a standard 3.5mm input jack, a pair of stereo RCA inputs, and finally ¼” TRS connectors to directly plug in your musical instruments.

Move to the top and you’ll see the port for the optional Streamcast Bluetooth adapter, which has a built-in AAC decoder and is aptX compliant as well. While not available for sale right now, the Streamcast Bluetooth adapter will allow superior Bluetooth audio playback from devices up to 30ft away.

Just above the wireless adapter is the High Frequency dial which allows us to switch the 1-inch dome tweeters’ response from -2db to neutral to +2db. For the most part I was happy with just the neutral setup, but for movie watching I would recommend -2db as the high frequencies don’t interfere with vocal tracks.

The ASUS O!Play TV Pro upgrades living room TV viewing to a completely digital HD and live experience, enabling easy content consumption and distribution. Features open up playback and recording of digital programs, as well as almost any multimedia file currently available with over 50 formats supported, including 3D. Exclusive O!Easy technology adds specific one-click functions that cover file streaming, sharing, and replay, while an always-on design affords direct access to many major online entertainment and content services, all from a single user-friendly device.

Playback and recording of digital TV
The O!Play TV Pro comes with a built in DVB-T digital tuner for immediate access to free-to-air high quality digital TV programming. Consumers can readily plan ahead with the Electronic Program Guide (EPG), which offers location-sensitive scheduling for up to a week in advance. Plus, content can be recorded onto an internal 3.5” hard drive* using the included Personal Video Recorder (PVR). ASUS has integrated TimeShift into the device, which can pause and resume digital broadcasts in real time should consumers need to get away from the screen, but wish to avoid missing out on their favorite shows.

Support for over 50 formats – including 3D media
Compatibility remains critical for media players, and so the O!Play TV Pro offers seamless use of over 50 major multimedia standards for a worry-free user experience. These include ISO, MKV, RM/RMBV, MVA, AVI, MPEG1/2/4, and MP4. Adding 3D support, the set top box uses H.264 MV (TS, M2TS, and BD-ISO), extending compatibility to cover the most current 3D formatting on the market.

Exclusive ASUS O!Easy technology renders more enjoyable HD multimedia
Playing, streaming, and sharing HD content have been made much easier thanks to the inclusion of O!Easy technology, which connects the O!Play TV Pro to other devices and home networks intuitively. The suite includes multiple one-click functions:

- O!Capture: media and TV program sharing on Facebook
- O!Replay: replay a program’s most recent seven seconds
- O!Direct: streaming content from desktop or notebook PC to TV
- O!MediaShare: wireless streaming of content from mobile devices to TV
- AutoPlay: plug and play videos stored on USB drives or SD/MMC/MS/xD cards without additional setup or installation

Access diverse online entertainment
The O!Play TV Pro offers consumers a totally live product, with constant connectivity over Gigabit Ethernet and Wi-Fi to a wealth of online-based content and services. The device maximizes bandwidth availability to reduce lag and latency for faster downloads and buffer-free streaming. Acetrax, Facebook, YouTube Leanback, DailyMotion, Flickr, and Picasa all come pre-configured for instant access. ASUS offers regular device and service updates, so consumers can expect the range of online content to continue to grow.

*3.5” hard drive sold separately.

Price and Availability: TBA

What sets the Logitech apart, however, is that it can quickly ‘switch over’ from being a desktop headset using wireless connectivity, to a Bluetooth headset, which can then be paired with a smartphone or a tablet device. But is it a ‘one headset to rule them all’ then?

Design
Call me spoiled, but I find the Logitech h800 extremely bland and boring. In fact, its appearance is quite deceptive, and can be taken as one of the knock-off brands if not for the properly spelled ‘Logitech’ sticker on the sides.

That’s not to say it does not serve its purpose. The Logitech holds all of its controls on the right ear cup, with the volume rockers, play/pause and the microphone mute button embedded on the center. The inner right-edge has a switcher that changes the headset’s connectivity from wireless and Bluetooth, and a slider to change sound tracks if you are using a media player. The controls might seem crammed but they are quite evenly spaced out and are intuitive to use. If you have used similar headsets before, you shouldn’t have much problem adapting to the Logitech’s ways.

The Logitech h800 also have found a very innovative place to hide the microphone, which is straight under the right ear cup. While we still prefer the Steelseries’ hide-it-inside-the-earcup way of doing it, the Logitech design is functional and works quite well. Unfortunately, the microphone does not auto-mute when it’s shoved back up, the lack of which can be potentially dangerous if you happen to forget to do it yourself. So thread carefully, you must.

Comfort
I usually find the on-the-ear design to be painfully uncomfortable. The ear-cups lay flat on your ear, and the padding has to be just sturdy and soft enough to not hurt. The Roccat Kulo and the Asus HS-W1 failed in doing so and I had little hope from the Logitech h800 to be any more comfortable. It certainly didn’t look to be, at least.

The Logitech are comfortable, surprisingly. It doesn’t claim to have the softest, highest-quality premium padding. It just uses basic foam material on its cans and the headband, and I have to say, it fits in snugly. It does heat up after a while, but that’s normal given that headsets don’t float in the air. Yet.

Performance
The Logitech h800 switches between wireless and Bluetooth connectivity quite smoothly, allowing you to ping-pong between your PC and your music player easily. There is a bit of a delay between picking up connections, but that can be chalked up to a limitation of the technology than the headset itself.

The h800 is a general purpose headset and provides adequate power and performance for its purpose. For music, the headset is quite loud and clear, but lacks the fulfilling, wholesome punch that premium sound drivers provide. My test tacks consisted of various Hindi movie songs, ranging from mild-rock to full-on bhangra to what can be best described as ‘masala-pop’ music. The sound felt compressed and hollow, with the treble falling flat on most occasions. The bass was muddy and sometimes overly done, giving more hollowness to the soundscape.

For gaming, I tried it on two experts – Counter Strike 1.6 and Modern Warfare 3. Here, too, it felt weak, with many effects being ‘left out’ or ‘buried’ under the more prominent ones. It provided decent positioning feedback in Counter Strike, however. Not ‘surround’ by any means, but did the job just fine defining between left and right, which was good enough for my experienced fingers.

Conclusion
For appox. AED 380, the Logitech h800 are a decent buy, especially since it can negate the need to have multiple devices for your music player and your PC. It does lack power but is adequate enough to be a portable solution that is sturdy and can last a good number of hours before it needs a recharge.

Press Release: 

LG Electronics (LG) announced the launch of the new 72-inch Cinema 3D Smart TV, the first of its kind. At 59 inches wide and 40 inches tall, the 72-inch Cinema 3D Smart TV will let viewers see life-sized 3D action on a beautifully crisp picture with all the benefits of having a Smart TV.

“As time passes, customers are becoming more enthralled with the concept of owning a Cinema 3D Smart TV,” said Mr. D.Y. Kim, President of LG Electronics Gulf FZE. “What we have introduced here is a significantly advanced entertainment unit in the form of the 72-inch Cinema 3D Smart TV which will provide a fantastic 3D cinema experience at home. This is an innovative TV meant to push the limits of entertainment to new heights.”

But the 72-inch Cinema 3D Smart TV isn’t just about a clear, big screen. This state-of-the-art TV is also fitted with LG’s latest smart technologies. It uses eLife, Etisalat’s flagship range of fiber-based services and will have “OnWeb” services directly available for customers. As compared to the traditional consumption of content on TV, cus-tomers will be thrilled with the experience and ease of finding and watching unique web-based video services on their TV along with smart apps from LG Apps store which will enable users to engage with Social Media and other premium content.

The 72-inch Cinema 3D Smart TV is enabled with UGC (User Generated Contents), SNS (Social Networking Service), Photo Sharing Service, Weather forecasts and other useful applications from LG or Etisalat. Customers subscribed to Etisalat’s eLife services can also access its new ‘Video on Demand’ service that is available on request. In addition to the free-of-charge OnWeb service package, customers will enjoy the option of purchasing exclusive content that will be offered on demand.

LG’s Smart TV function provides customers with simple control to their home entertainment experience. The unique platform provides access to thousands of movies, customizable apps, videos and the ability to browse the Web through an easy navigating user interface and mouse-like point and click remote system, giving the user an expe-rience that is easy, fun and unlimited premium content.

Additional Features:
• Comfortable Cinema 3D Glasses
• Magic Motion remote control
• Flexible Positions for greater comfort
• Film Patterned Retarder

The product has been certified by TÜV and Intertek, two world-renowned technology testing agencies from Europe.

The LG Cinema 3D Smart TV’s special Smart Share function allows users to wirelessly access the content stored in their digital devices including digital camera’s mobile phones, tablets and PC’s and bring them to your TV with a simple click. This coupled with full web browsing is a perfect mix for convenient entertainment.

The LG Cinema 3D Smart TV also features a highly intuitive user environment featuring the LG Home Dashboard which allows users to navigate several functions from a single main menu.The unique combination of Smart functionality and the massive 72-inch screen makes the 72-inch Cinema 3D Smart TV a remarkable home entertainment unit.

Size does matter, especially in the world of gadgets. Bigger screens, smaller phones, larger capacity drives – it seems everything around me is either expanding or shrinking. So I was rather nonchalant when I received the Belkin Surf N150 USB Wireless Micro Adapter for review. The device is a little bigger than my thumbnail, so I was interested to see if this little gem could live up to the task of being my wireless interface for the day.

Installation is very simple and is just a matter of popping in the supplied CD and then plugging the Belkin adapter in. I disabled my laptop’s Wi-Fi and instantly the Belkin Wireless Adapter kicked in with a flashing blue light, and Windows prompted me to connect to my home network. The device is compatible with most forms of wireless security such as WPS, WPA and WEP. Once I was connected, performance was quite good with streaming videos off my network drive, and I found that I was able to continue surfing upstairs in the guest bedroom where I previously wasn’t able to pick up a Wi-Fi signal. But strangely enough when I walked out into the garden, the signal suddenly dropped to just one bar, even though my router was just a few feet away behind a wall. I never had any issues with using my onboard Wi-Fi outside, so this was a bit peculiar.

The true beauty of the N150 Wireless Adapter is surely its size. Measuring just 18mm x 15mm, you can plug it into your laptop or desktop and completely forget about it. It’s almost flush with the side of my laptop, so it doesn’t cause any problems at all when I slide my laptop back into its carrier case. If you do decide to take it out, I suggest putting it someplace safe as it nearly disappeared into the depths of my bag!

Speeds using the Belkin N150 were overall satisfactory. It took me 14 minutes to transfer a 1.67GB file from my laptop to my network drive and just over 12 minutes to copy the same file with my onboard Wi-Fi. Apart from the issues with wireless coverage outside, I was able to stream comfortably from my media centre as well as YouTube without any interruptions. The only downside is that this is a Windows-only device (Ubuntu was able to detect it as a Belkin wireless adapter) and will not work on a Mac.

If you’re looking for a quick wireless replacement for your Windows based laptop or want to add some Wi-Fi to your desktop PC, then this little gem is for you. Its easy installation and ridiculously small footprint will charm most users, though be wary of the device’s drop in performance if you wander into the great outdoors.

Celebrity branded headphones are nothing new, with Dr. Dre’s Beats Audio headphones being one of the most popular example.  Recently, the Marley Family announced a line of headphones inspired by the legendary artist’s vision of “One World, One Love”. As such, the headphones are designed with recyclable materials, and proceeds from the sale of all Marley’s products go to the 1Love.org charity. Of course, special attention is also paid to the sound quality as well.

Now let’s get down and dirty with the Positive Vibration on-ear headphones. The first thing you’ll notice about the Positive Vibration is how colorful it looks, a really standout design from the plethora of headphones out there.

You can see a lot of Reggae and Jamaican influence in the design aesthetics, with the colorful cloth headband and braided cable. There’s a lot of vibrancy (no pun intended) to the headphones; they feel special in that easy-going, focused on simple music kind of way.

Looking more closely, or at least when handling it, the Positive Vibration feels very stiff; as if all these materials were simply glued together without secondary thought to comfort. The only adjustments you can make are the earcups which can be extended up or down on metal clips. There are no indents, so you’ll always end up guessing the right length at which the headphones fit on your head. The earcups themselves are foldable, so that they can be easily transported in the supplied pouch.

Each of the earcups is connected using a visible springy coil in colorful orange, further adding to the unique appeal of the Positive Vibration. The braided cable itself is fairly thick and straight, making it one of the least tangle-able cables I have seen on headphones. The 3.5mm gold plated jack itself has a very low profile, making it excellent for connecting to smartphones that have their audio out jack at strange angles.

Portable hard drives have become the quint-essential accessory for a notebook user and with newer notebooks coming in with smaller but faster SSD drivers, the requirement for a large capacity drive to put your media and backups on is higher than ever. We take a look a quick look at one such product today- the WD My PassPort for Mac.

What makes this drive “for Mac” is the fact that it comes pre-formatted with HFS+ which is the native file system used by Macs. This means that you can pretty much plug this drive in any of the newer Macs and use it right away for reading and writing files as well as creating backups with Time Machine. Let me point out that any portable hard drive is capable of this but most of them come formatted with FAT32 or NTFS and need to be reformatted by your Mac to HFS+ which is just an extra step.

The other thing that makes this WD drive “for Mac” is, obviously, the design. It’s almost a pre-requisite for any Mac product to look good and My Passport does well but not necessarily great in this aspect. I like the minimal design but the plastic enclosure isn’t very Mac like. Also, I found the drive to be a tad bit chunky- especially when put next to the MacBook Air. However, this has more to do with the current level of technology than anything else. If you want something slimmer, you will have to settle for lower capacity for now.

My Passport for Mac has a pretty clean design with just one USB port and an LED next to it. WD bundles a USB cable with the drive along with warranty information. On the drive, WD bundles two applications that you can install on your Mac. WD Drive Utilities lets monitor the status of your hard drive using SMART as well as run diagnostics and quick tests along with erasing the drive. WD Security on the other hand password protects your hard drive. An update to both these utilities was available for download when I initially launched them which is good as it tells you that WD is keeping stuff up to date.

There’s not really much else that can be said about USB 2.0 portable drives. Their performance has been saturated by the speed of the USB 2.0 port and that holds true for My Passport for Mac as well which posted speeds of just under 40 MB/s in both read and write tests. While this is good enough for general reading and writing of files, expect to wait a while if you plan on moving high-definition movies to and from this drive. Initial Time Machine backup will also take a while but subsequent ones should be fast.

Priced at around AED 800, the WD My Passport for Mac is quite a bit on the pricey side- something Mac users are accustomed to. While it offers a decent design and plenty of storage, I see no reason why you cannot get one of the other, cheaper USB 2.0 alternatives even if it isn’t for the Mac and just format it in HFS+ and use it like this drive. The added utilities bundled with the drive don’t really add much value and can be found around the web for free.

Streaming boxes should be the norm in every modern household nowadays. There is just too much media online not to have one hub hooked directly to your TV. While there are many options available locally, Western Digital’s media boxes have always had a major presence in the market. Today I’ll be looking at the latest WD TV Live.

In the past we’ve had some forms of WD TV media boxes, most notably the WD TV Live Hub which comes with a 1TB hard drive built-in. The first thing you’ll notice about the WD TV Live differing from WD TV Live Hub, apart from the price difference, is the incredibly small footprint. Whereas WD TV Live Hub has a very low profile and sleek design, the new WD TV Live is very boxy. Even so, the matt black finish makes it very easy to blend with your existing setup.

Measuring just 125x100x30mm, the WD TV Live weighs a mere 200 grams. The front has a simple transparent plastic plate which just shows the white activity LED (which can be turned off) and a USB port. On the rear you have the power plug, Optical out, LAN input, HDMI out and another USB port, finished off with an old school AV out port.

Pretty much the entirety of the bottom panel has holes in it, with the bottom of the circuitry having a large metal plate. And unlike the WD TV Live Hub, there’s no fan in the WD TV Live, so the entire thing is passively cooled. You’ll only be thankful for this when the WD TV Live is in standby mode, because the WD TV Live Hub would have its fan running almost all the time.

Included in the box is the power cable, manual, the remote control plus batteries. The remote control itself is identical to the WD TV Live Hub, which means it has the same irritatingly long rubber buttons. The layout, however, is nice and simple to use.