Gadgetory

this week on the cnet tech review I movie lets you edit videos right on your iPhone for real director lets you do it even better the acura TL gets a tech makeover and we count down the hottest cell phones that are slowly cooking your brain it's all coming up right now hey everyone in Hollywood and welcome to the cnet tech review the show where we round up the hottest videos of the week tell you which ones are good which are bad and offer some tech wisdom in the form of the bottom line let's start with the good when Steve Jobs unveiled the iphone 4 last month he got a huge reaction when he announced that I movie would be available for use right on the phone so what's it like making movies on your iPhone here's Arielle nunez to show you how it works it's a new age my friends TVs on the internet music is on your iPod and now you can make mini movies using this I Mario nuñez for cnet.com and I'm going to show you how to produce mini masterpieces on your new iPhone 4 now first you want to go into the itunes store and purchase imovie for iphone it's 499 but worth buying if you ever wanted to dabble with video editing but not quite ready to drop the big bucks on a desktop video editing program now when you first open the app it'll ask you to choose a theme there are five generic themes you'll have to choose from now after choosing a theme you can start dragging photos and movies that are recorded on your phone or you can record them directly from the app you could trim down clips to your desired length by tapping on the clip in the timeline and dragging the yellow lines by default imovie places dissolves between each clip that you drop into the timeline if you want to alter these tap on the transition icon now you don't get too many choices here you're pretty much limited to using the standard cross dissolves or the transitions that come with the team you chose and finally we're ready to add music now our movie lets you choose tracks from your music library stored on your iPhone by tapping on the Audio tab you can sort through your music and drop them right into the timeline and it'll show up underneath your video clips as a green bar now note that you can only choose one song per project so choose your song wisely and now that we're done we can export our masterpiece I movie gives you three options to export your movie medium large and H II choose a setting in your movie will be exported directly to your iPhone's camera roll now I movie gives you the option to upload directly to YouTube or to mobileme but the quality will be less than 720p if you want to upload the full resolution you'll have to transfer your video to computer first and is a masterpiece is born now there are other options for making movies on your iPhone but if you want a simple bare-bones Atlas easy to use and easy to learn you might want to start with this one first I Mario nuñez for cnet com with your how-to for making masterpieces on your iPhone so yeah I movie looks pretty fun for editing quick clips while you're on the go but unless they come up with some more themes everyone's iPhone movies are going to end up looking pretty much the same luckily I movie isn't the only phone based editing program in the App Store here's Brian Tong with his look at real director let's do the twist welcome to tap that app guys i am brian Tong and this is the show what we cover the hottest apps in the mobile space now we've all heard about the iphone 4s imovie app for editing movies but i've got one for you that takes it up a notch with its feature set it's called real director it's 499 the same prices I movie and it runs best on the iphone four and 3gs but you can also use it on the ipad ipod touch and iphone 3g but its features are a little more limited there the learning curve on this app is higher than I movie but for most people willing to try this out it's definitely worth it now you have your standard timeline and the ability to add videos or still pictures one thing that really stands out right away is that trimming your clips in this app is a lot smoother and more specific compared to iMovie and you can also split a clip into two separate parts in real director as well now your eye candy options blow I movie out of the water you're getting 28 different transitions to use between clips and there are eight different title styles that can be positioned in nine different locations you can also create still images from a frame in your video and you won't find that in iMovie and anyone who wants to do some real sound editing real director allows you to control the volume levels for specific clips in iMovie it's either on or off now obviously there are a few drawbacks the interface is a lot more complicated if you want to see your whole movie in its entirety you'll have to wait and render out the whole project where I movie lets you watch your project at any time and the biggest Bugaboo you do not have access to your ipod music files so you can either use the phones Mike to record audio or you have to add music wirelessly by connecting to your computer over Wi-Fi and importing them and that might be a deal-breaker for you now overall if you want the most extensive video editing app on a mobile phone real director is the app that you'll want to tap now it's 499 we love all of its eye candy and editing features but it really needs to resolve its clunky music import feature that's gonna do it for this week's show if you have any suggestions send them to tap that app at cnet com I'm right talk and we'll see you next week come on sure real director has a lot of features but if you can't directly access your itunes music I still think I'm movie has the advantage either way it'll probably be a while before any of our producers give up on Final Cut Pro on their max now if you're more interested in sitting back and watching movies than in creating them that's okay too after months of speculation paid subscriptions have come to Hulu and now Hulu Plus has come to your hand helds ever since Hulu first started streaming TV shows on the web mobile phone owners have been wanting a version of their own well here it is I'm Tessa kadhal court with cnet and here's your first look at hulu plus 1 point 0 for iphone ipad and ipod touch hulu plus organizes hulu's vast content catalogue into several categories because of its larger screen size Hulu Plus on the iPad is pretty easy to navigate around among TV shows movies and your queue you can also search for specific titles or browse by what's featured popular or recently added we're less enamored of the iphone apps more cluttered layout although the small screen size doesn't help getting around the app could be easier you can still search and sort by popular and featured content plus TV ships but other content is harder to get to movies in your queue for example are hidden in the more screen and from there you can search movies by title or genre as far as video quality goes it was excellent when streaming over strong Wi-Fi and 3G signal but weak signal caused all sorts of pixilation hiccups and occasional crashing luckily videos resumed in almost the same place each time they cut out though the app really could benefit from the ability to download shows well signal is strong for later viewing when signal is weak particularly for monthly subscribers the Hulu Plus app itself is free and there is a corpus of new TV shows you can also watch without charge the same as you would do from your desktop or laptop computer however most of the content does require a Hulu Plus subscription which costs ten dollars a month while it's reasonable to charge customers for premium content like movies the fact that hulu is also streaming ads for monthly subscribers leaves many users feeling cold including us come on hulu ads or monthly charges pick one or the other the brand new app has ways to go before it can win over the majority of Hulu Watchers but we're glad to finally see Hulu acknowledge its mobile fans I'm jessica's all cord and this has been Hulu Plus for the iPhone and I all I can say is thank goodness for hulu plus I came for the glee but I stayed for the Buffy all seven seasons okay this next video has absolutely nothing to do with movies now they're making them or watching them I mean I guess if there were still any drive-in theaters around you could drive the new acura TL there but parking it seems like such a waste acura TL is a nice enough car but loaded up with all the electronic and performance options and it becomes something entirely different a really desirable car let's drive the TL super handling all-wheel drive with the tech package and check that text the TL is acuras best-selling car if not its prettiest it's burdened with just about the most extreme execution of Acuras ungainly corporate face but luckily you don't see that in from the driver's seat instead the tack and the tech portray this car is true nature this by the way is the fourth generation of the TL and its current styling is an interesting combination of the rate knife light edges of a Cadillac combined with subtle curves that look like they could have been lifted from infinity RTL is loaded to the gills let's get started go to the screen that's where things begin this is a car that's got a very bright hi res display makes it really easy to get to things because finally acura honda recently revised their menu system which was getting really long in the tooth the geography is about the same but they finessed it in a lot of different ways and of course they've done wonders for the resolution and the rendering of the graphics they use a controller like most car makers so on this one you've got this rubbery ring you turn that also has a kick function on the crown above it and an enter function on the middle of it things move pretty briskly because like most cars that aren't cheap today it's hard drive based you've got multiple ways to view the map of course bird's-eye and top-down and directional stuff that's all pretty standard you also have traffic on this car provided by XM navtraffic which also brings in weather stock quotes sports scores now the audio system is upgraded as part of this tech package a lot of things are in this mix including the ELS surround sound system that's a Panasonic unit done in conjunction with Elliot shiner a legendary recording studio guy you've got audio disc ability on this guy but one disc at a time they compensate for that by giving you the hard drive the output on this guy is pretty robust 440 wats 7 dot ones surround capable as you see DTS Dolby PL to all decoders are built into this guy am FM of course no HD radio on this guy XM is your satellite radio and your traffic stock sports and weather acura still drunk on buttons as you can see they create lots of them in here to kind of make up for that in my mind what balances it is that they do use this dual display technology so you can have your map up on the top there and be enjoying your navigation scenery and at the same time have a full crisp display of things like time your media setting your climate settings I like when cars do this now as I mentioned rather a treat in this car is a manual transmission in a vehicle that has a lot of performance we almost always see automatics or dual-clutch gearbox is a lot here's our six-speed manual it's a pic on this car by the way same price as the automatic now I don't know of a car company that does as much of a showcase presentation of their engine look at this thing at this big plastic skirt all the way around the engine that's how important it is in this car because we have a super handling all-wheel drive TL that's more than just a drivetrain change on this car you get bumped up from a 3.5 v6 to a 3.7 liter v6 up from 280 horsepower to 305 horsepower 273 foot-pounds of torque your MPG comes down a notch from 1826 on the garden variety TL to 1725 on this guy not bad and 0 to 60 is about a five and a half second affair if you watch a lot of our scenic car tech videos you know I'm not one to gush over most cars I'll leave that to every other bloggers but I'll tell you what this car needs some gushing this is one of the great driving sedans we've ever had in our scenic garage in the last handful of years the power comes on like that it never gets breathless super smooth and silky just a great motor and of course the super handling all-wheel drive does its thing now I'm not on the track so I'm really not taxing it but the car just maintains its bias perfectly it's pulling and pushing all the right directions evenly through turns just a nice driving experience and thank you so much honda for this 6-speed manual and a great clutch to go with it real linear and the gearbox while not the best I've driven is real good there's one word I had to apply to this car its balance the power the suspension the comfort the overall usability of the car the tractability of all the control inputs everything is balanced and seems to fit as a whole this guy nails it ok let's price a 2010 TL 36 grand out the door base but that's for a standard TL that's not what I'm driving this is a super handling all-wheel drive TL with tech so the super handling all-wheel drive part which is both the drivetrain and the 3.7 motor above the 3.5 that's going to add thirty five hundred dollars another 3700 is required for the tech package hard drive nav hard drive media playback the ELS audio system so add eight grand but you get a sweet package did he just say es el audio system that's pretty sweet oh he didn't say that okay well nevermind then and with that it's time for a break we'll be back with more tech review in anywhere from two to thirty Seconds feeling lucky welcome back to the cnet tech review your weekly digest of all things good and bad from cnet TV where were we oh yes it's time for the bad touch screens are all the rage smartphones tablets media players but somehow it doesn't always translate to pcs quite as well as it should in some cases that's because the touchscreen doesn't respond to the touching sorry gateway hi I'm Rick brown senior editor for CNN com today we're going to take a look at the gateway one ZX 6900 01 e this is a 999 dollar touchscreen all-in-one it's available at retail to fix configurations so what which sees what you get here pretty much now it is actually a touchscreen desktop there's a little kind of corner up here you can peel back and you can get the gateways touch application interface it's not really that exciting though there's some basic apps there's a little paint app there's a map application there's some media browsing tools most of them feel a little bit slow though and the touch response in general is not that great with this pc but we can show you how unresponsive it is so here's the corner where you peel it back to get to the main window screen and you can see we've got our finger on it dragging across nothing is happening it's either the software the hardware but somewhere along the way gateway needs to do some more work here that said that we really like this system both because of its price and the other features that come with it so this is a large 23 inch screen that's pretty big for a sub one-thousand-dollar all-in-one it's 1920 x 1080 so that means 1080p resolution and it also comes the blu-ray drive that makes this a perfect home entertainment system if you want to stick in an office then there's a 2.93 gigahertz core i3 cpu inside you get 4 gigs of ram and an integrated intel graphics chip so for 3d it's not that great otherwise this is a fairly standard all-in-one you've got a webcam up here a few connectivity ports around the sides there's a USB here on the left side on the right side you also get an SD card reader a couple audio jacks and you can see the blu-ray slot here you also get a few more USB ports on back as well as an Ethernet input couple audio jacks you also get an east side Jack which lets you connect faster external hard drives and there's an HDMI output despite a few complaints this very well may be the best all-in-one under a thousand bucks the giant screen the blu-ray drive and the fast cpu really make this a very capable desktop so I'm rich brown this is the gateway one ZX 6900 01 e it's true it does look like a pretty good little kitchen computer other than the touchscreen factor maybe they should just stop telling people it does that and then when it works it'll be like a bonus now I think the best thing about the gateway is actually the built-in blu-ray player that lets you watch HD movies on that nice big screen and if that's important to you you might just want to buy one because hooking up your laptop to your regular TV is not as easy as it sounds take a look hi I'm Scott sign senior associate editor cnet com and you probably already have a laptop and in fact you may already have some TV shows streaming videos that you want to share and other great entertainment stuff built into that package but how'd you get it onto your TV well it's pretty easy in fact with most laptops nowadays and we'll show you how first wouldn't be great to connect your laptop wirelessly and I'd have to connect it at all to the TV and still have a play audio and video well sure that sounds fantastic in fact there are some laptops that already have the technology built-in it's called intel wireless display there's $99 you have to pay for a little box that plugs into your TV that facilitates the wireless connection sometimes it's bundled in with the laptop and in addition while it works and shows audio and video it operates at a bit of a delay and it will not play DVD or blu-ray content it will only play streaming video content now one thing that all these laptops do have increasingly is hdmi and it's really simple to use hdtvs have hdmi and when you plug it in it's generally as simple as plugging the hdmi cable here plugging into the TV turning both on and the image gets carried over onto this TV now certain laptops are not automatically set up to activate that connection to the TV you have to turn off mirroring which is your control panel settings and once you do that you select the display which is your HDTV it'll be labeled by your manufacturer name like Samsung so you'll know that that's the display and then you'll be able to pull down the settings and select 1920 x 1080 your full resolution provided it is 1080p what's great is that audio gets seamlessly transferred over to the TV another way to connect to a TV that every single laptop has is vga now not every single television as a VGA port but there are a lot of hdtvs that do if you connect vga to vga you'll get the video signal but you won't get the audio so what you're going to have to do is connect through your headphone jack which will transmit the audio out you can connect it through a splitter which you can pick up a radio shack or you can actually hook it up to speakers if you don't want to hook it up directly to the TV for macbooks macbooks and all Apple laptops do not have hdmi and that's often complained about for Apple users the good news is that mini DisplayPort while it is not a direct connection can work exactly like HDMI with the purchase of one little accessory they Griffin mini displayport to hdmi connector this cost about 30 to 40 bucks when you plug it into the mini DisplayPort on all current macbook and macbook pro models it will not only transmit the video but audio and we tested it out here it works great it even works in a 5.1 surround of course there are a lot of other solutions to including how do you get real audio files surround sound hooked up to your true receiver how do you take advantage of certain refresh rates that's more complicated stuff maybe we'll cover in the future edition but for now that's how you hook up your laptop to your TV depending on which one you have hopefully it's simple and easy enough to understand I'm Scott's time to cnet.com so I guess if you want to connect your macbook to your TV there's an adapter for that haha I'll be here all week alright let's just move on to this week's bottom line San Francisco just passed this new law requiring cell phone retailers to display how much radiation each phone gives up well the five phones in this week's top 5 will probably be flagged with flashing lights and a siren so you want to buy a really hot smartphone these will fit the description both ways they're desirable and they spew radiation I'm Brian Cooley with a scene at top 5 this time we're ranking smartphones based on their SAR for specific absorption rate which tells you the watts of power absorbed per kilogram of tissue now there's never been a clear connection made between a phones SAR rating and dying but for me I'm gonna play it safe and look for a loan number until they figure this out anyway here are the high numbers number five is the tmobile dash 3g with a Tsar of 1.47 not too far from the US government limit of 1.6 nice keyboard slick design GPS 2 megapixel camera and it's not on AT&T so it's got that going for it number four is the palm pixi plus also at a toasty 1.47 SAR one of the sleekest smartphone designs ever and it runs the much-loved Palm webOS but HP just bought palm and their CEO mark hurd recently made it clear they didn't do it to be in the phone business so this might not be a great pick unless you like buying your phones on eBay number three is the motorola droid at a SAR rating of 1.49 no phone has done so much to propel the android operating system as this squared off little bacon fryer great touchscreen power to really run android well and it has access to the only collection of apps that ever causes apple to lose at least a little bit of sleep just bring a foil hat number two is the blackberry bold 9000 with a SAR rating of 1.51 this guy revolutionized blackberry display and interface quality supports fast hsdpa data connections just not for me and was the first BlackBerry that could at least pronounce multimedia the latest version the 9700 loses the annoying little pearl ball that always seems to get food stuck in it which is kind of handy because you can cook it by just making a call before we get to the number one dirty smart phone what about the iphone well the SAR on that model varies by which iphone you have the 3g is the dirtiest at 1.38 the very first iphone the original much cleaner at point nine seven and the 3gs is the best at point seven eight steve wants you around buy more apps at number one is another blackberry the ubiquitous curve 8330 with a SAR rating of 1.5 for hard up against the limit guys don't lay this one in your lap if you like getting father's day cards curves are everywhere because they're on multiple carriers there's always a pricing promotion that pretty much makes them free this little pocket Chernobyl is arguably the most successful smartphone ever because it has so many variants everyone loves the keyboard and let's face it your company will probably make you carry one at some point but it's a crappy web device and not a good choice unless you like your bacon crisp that's it for this edition of seen that top five use a headset i'm brian cooley see you next time the bottom line this week Brian just said it use a headset or maybe speaker phone because dorky all right the good news is that all you iphone users still have a pretty good shot at procreation thus ensuring future generations of Apple fanboys and that's our show for this week everyone tune in next week for an all-new look at the tech week that was until then you can always find more great seen that video at cnet TV com see you next time and thank you for watching