Samsung
Samsung is transforming the humble MP3 player into a multi-media player. The £450 handheld Yepp Plus (right) sports a 1.8inch colour screen which can display both MPEG4 video, and JPEG files. Still images can be shot and transferred to the unit from its accompanying external 850k pixel digital camera. The Yepp Plus is also compatible with the major digital audio formats, with files saved on the unit's accompanying 64MB SmartMedia card. It will go on sale in August. Samsung has also come up with the first ever VCR/DVD combi player, the SV-DVD1. The £400 unit's trump card is that it will let you watch a DVD movie while simultaneously recording programmes from your TV. The DVD player is Dolby Digital sur round sound compatible, will spin CD-Roms with MP3 files as well as standard audio CDs, and sports a pair of Scart sockets. The VCR side has a long play option and a basic tape library system, although strangely does not feature the VideoPlus+ easy programming system. The SV-DVD1 is on sale now. www.samsungelectronics.co.uk
DVD records
The champions of DVD+RW, the re-writable DVD format, have lined up an autumn/winter blitz on the UK and US markets. Philips has confirmed that its first DVD+RW video recorder for the home will go on sale in August with a DVD+RW PC drive following in October. The home deck, the DVDR1000, offers four different recording quality levels, which enable the unit to archive up to four hours of video on to a 4.7GB disk. According to Philips, disks created by the DVD+RW recorder will play back in all existing DVD players and DVD-Rom drives. The DVDR1000 is expected to retail for around £1,300. French manufacturer Thomson has also slated autumn for a launch of its DVD+RW home deck. Hewlett-Packard will almost certainly be first to market with a DVD+RW PC drive. It has plans to launch an $800 unit in late summer in the US with a UK version available by the end of 2001. HP Pavilion PCs with DVD+RW drives will be on sale by the end of the year. US PC giant Dell is also promising that its first PCs with integrated DVD+RW drives will be in the stores by the end of 2001. The DVD+RW camp faces fierce competition from two other DVD rewritable formats - DVD-RAM and DVD-RW. Panasonic will launch a DVD-RAM home video recorder in the last quarter of 2001, while Pioneer is expected to bring a DVD-RW home deck to the UK in the autumn.
Digital snaps
Fancy taking a tiny digital camera with you on your travels this summer? The INC35i from Hitachi is small enough to fit in the palm of your hand, yet thanks to its 8 megabytes of memory it can store up to 107 low resolution 318,000 pixel images. It comes with a case and a USB connector. It retails for around £115 from www.unbeatable.co.uk British company Kiiro is offering the £160 CJ-100, another pocket-sized digital image snapper. In addition to its camera facilities, it stores up to 127 35,000 pixel resolution images on its internal flash memory. The CJ-100 can also be used as a webcam. www.kiiro.co.uk
Flat key
Logitech's new keyboards are set to fly in the face of fashion - they are flat. The first Internet and Multimedia Navigation keyboard will be out at the end of this month for £24.95. More expensive ultra-flat cordless models will follow in August. The keyboards are just part of a huge raft of PC peripherals that the Swiss company will roll out this summer. They include mice, trackballs, game controllers, QuickCam webcams, headsets and loudspeakers. Logitech is also moving into the console market, and its GT Force force-feedback steering wheel is being bundled in a special edition with Gran Turismo 3 on the PlayStation 2, out at the end of the summer.
Open for .Net
The free software movement plans to clone some of Microsoft's .Net software. Richard Stallman's Free Software Foundation has announced support for two projects: Mono and DotGNU. Mono will develop a GNU/ Linux-based version of the .Net platform, including a C# compiler. (C# or C Sharp is a new object oriented language intended to replace Sun's Java.) DotGNU will develop software to support decentralised services and authentication, where Microsoft's main offering is the Passport service used for Hotmail. The websites for these community developments are www.go-mono.net and http://savannah.gnu.org. Microsoft is already helping Corel to produce a version of .Net for the FreeBSD version of Unix. It is also taking the underpinnings of .Net, including C#, to open standards bodies to encourage other people to produce implementations for different operating systems. However, the GNU development will test whether .Net is really as open as Microsoft claims.
