Monday, November 15, 2004

New DVR package for Macs from Plextor and Elgato. In a marriage even mom would approve, Plextor and Elgato have come together to create a digital video recorder package for Macs that combines Plextor’s DVR capture device with Elgato’s EyeTV software.  The capture unit uses RCA or S-Video connections to grab video from broadcast, cable, or satellite and compresses the video using a hardware-based MPEG-2 processor, and connects to your Mac via USB2.0.  The EyeTV software sports all the DVR controls you would expect, like time shifting and instant replays.  Total retail price is $229 for the package, less than you would pay for both items separately. [Engadget] 1:30:24 PM   comments[]   Atomic Time on a Grain of Rice. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have created an atomic clock which measures a mere 1.5mm by 5mm. This is just slightly larger than a grain of rice. Compared to the current crop of commercially available atomic clocks, most of which are about the size of a large filing cabinet, this leap in miniaturization is expected to impact everything from navigation to faster cell phone and data networks. Atomic clocks are prized for their precision. Unlike their piezoelectric crystal counterparts, they use the vibrations of atoms to time events, and are much more accurate because atomic vibrations aren't wildly influenced by environmental factors. An atomic clock might lose a second every three hundred years - a quartz crystal clock loses a second a day. The leap was made possible not by a mere decrease in size, since the technology has existed to do that for years, but by a decrease in power consumption. Current atomic clicks use a couple of watts, but the NIST atomic clock only use 30-50 milliwatts (thousandths of a watt). [kuro5hin.org] 1:04:41 PM   comments[]

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