Gadgetory

this week on the cnet tech review mini tablets or mega eerie ders we review the galaxy tab and the nook color plus counting down the top five home theater essentials what's new in Apple's ilife 11 and zombies invade your iPhone it's all coming up right now hi everyone I'm Hollywood and welcome to the Cena 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 and offer some unique tech wisdom in the form of the bottom left let's start with the good any new tablet computer that comes on the market has to face comparisons to apples ubiquitous iPad so how does the new Samsung Galaxy Tab stack up Donald Bell has the answer hey I'm Donald Bell and today we're taking a first look at the samsung galaxy tab this is an android-based tablet computer running android 2.2 the 7-inch capacitive touchscreen it's available on all major carriers starting mid November with various pricing plans this version is in from sprint which has the tab for 399 dollars for the two-year contract plus a monthly data plan that's a minimum of twenty nine dollars as a competitor to the apple ipad the tab isn't cheap but the samsung's credit they didn't skimp on the product we've already seen cheap 7-inch android tablets like the ark 07 and they're not great as the name implies the galaxy tab offers Samsung's Galaxy smartphone experience in a larger tablet form on the front you've got a screen which is covered with a scratch-resistant gorilla glass the LCD underneath is a crisp 1024 x 600 resolution which is on par with the ipad but since the screen is about half the size the pixel density is much tighter above the screen you have a front facing 1.3 megapixel camera which is perfect for video chat and across the bottom you have the typical android style buttons for menu home back and search there's a standard headphone jack on the top and volume and power buttons on the side along with a microSD card slot for this model from spent a 16 gigabyte card was included on the bottom you've got Samsung's dock connector and a pair of built-in speakers flip it over and you'll see a white plastic back and a larger three megapixel camera with an integrated flash overall the field is very solid it's about a half-inch thick same as the iPad but not as tapered at the edges it's lighter than the iPad easier to hold in one hand and has the huge benefit of actually being able to fit in an average pocket that's compared to the five inch dell streak is large enough to deliver an experience that's closer to the iPad 9.7 inch screen the on-screen keyboard is ample and the screen size is large enough that it can share the same page as an email or web page the keyboard itself isn't quite as accommodating as the iPad but on the upside smartphone style thumb typing feels natural and the keyboard responds with haptic feedback samsung also includes swiped capabilities out of the box allowing you to run your finger over groups of letters to trigger an auto suggestion the tabs paperback size is also a natural fit for e-books and the Amazon Kindle app comes pre-installed another big deal here is that the official google app market is included front and center giving access to all the popular apps pandora tweetdeck yelp Angry Birds they're all here and they all look great on the big screen samsung also throws in a few of their own unique apps such as the media hub store for downloading movies and TV shows absa light contacts calendars and memo have all been optimized for the larger screen and because the tab includes GPS along with 3g and Wi-Fi the included navigation app does an excellent job as an in-car navigation device offering turn-by-turn directions points of interest and voice search another little advantage to the tab has over the ipad is adobe flash 10.1 compatibility allowing all of the web's flash video content to play natively in the browser the results are a little choppy in some cases but it's nice to have the option so is the galaxy tab better than the ipad it may be for some people who really want the portability the camera the flash support or the extra carrier options but i don't think the ipad is too much to worry about honestly with the tab about half the size of the ipad the kind of different products the ipad is more of a netbook alternative while the tab fits into more of the smartphone and e-reader camp it's a solid device though and if the price and the carrier contracts don't scare you off you should definitely check it out so that's the samsung galaxy tab pristina calm i'm donald though so okay the galaxy tab isn't quite an iPad killer but with the kindle app built in it does look like a pretty nice color e-reader that does a lot of other cool stuff too but maybe you don't want your e-reader to do lots of other stuff maybe you just want to read books magazines and newspapers in color well then let me direct your attention to the new nook color from barnes & noble i'm david carr noah executive editor with cnet com and i'm here at the nook color launch and i'm here with Theresa Horner who is the vice president of visual contact with Barnes & Noble and she's going to give us a quick demo of the new nook color so this is a book and basically what i want to show is how quick the screen changes we've got some social features on here so i can tap and hold and i can share and i can do some immediate sharing with my friends of either i can recommend or i could share a quote or anything like that so it really brings social to the book so in the my shelf area I've got my magazines all queued up here so I'm going to pull up the National Geographic which is absolutely gorgeous when you see the color so this is a single page spread if I turn it like this I'll get a two-page spread and I can page through the magazine just like this I can also pull up a slider bar here and so I can go back and forth and browse through the magazine as though I'm doing it in paper which is kind of a nice feature and you can see that the the color is just gorgeous on this screen we know you like this new hard button so what's nice about it is it's actually very tactile you can push it and it brings you right back to the home page and this home screen basically you can put all your most current reading books right here so they're already right at your access so i can go right into this kids books is another nice feature of nook there's these beautiful color books that we've got going and right here we have this again a nice page turning experience you can page through the book just like this so the web browser is kind of a nice view we've got a sort of a quick access feature here I can go to bnn review and it will pull up to being in review page so the extra page is really great because it shows the the beginnings of our app marketplace so we've got pandora we've got contacts we've got crosswords and the gallery actually shows you we've got some video loaded up in here and it shows video they're really nice features are the social aspects bringing social to reading to easily share books with your friends and quotes with your friends so the home screen is great because I could even do things like I can expand it I can drop them off and then I can launch products right from there like I showed you so it's very nice handy little feature and there's multiple screen so you if you've got a lot going on you can do it across three or four springs okay great thank you i'm david carr noi and that is a first look at the new barnes & noble nook color e-reader so wait the nook has books and video and music and web browsing how is that not a tablet I guess I better call Donald maybe he can help explain the difference now you may have a 30 40 50 even a 60 inch HDTV at home but without access to the right programming that giant screen won't mean diddly so that's where your TV accessories come in and Brian coolies back to count down his five favorite home theater essentials maybe you waited through my recent top five TVs which actually was nine of the damn things lots of ties well to reward you for that I've got the perfect side dish top 5 home video gear devices to go with that new TV and yes it's actually five this time let's go warming things up at number five the brand new roku XDS streaming player you want to join the whole screw you cable company movement this is about the best way to do it for a little bit of money under a hundred bucks you'll get Netflix Amazon Pandora MLB TV Hulu Plus for a fee no iTunes or YouTube support though hmmm this will not raise the vein on your forehead when you're setting it up either we like the simplicity and go for this XDS version because it has a USB port for playing your own movies off a thumb drive rounds out the package nicely number four is the slingbox solo our favorite place shifting device now I think slingbox is something of a niche device personally you either don't need one or you absolutely love it it takes whatever is on on your home media system and streams it to just about any computer smartphone or other device that can run the sling software it's great if you have one of those pricey live sports packages and you'll waste a bunch of it because you're away from the house all the time you can get one of these guys for as little as one hundred and sixty dollars coming in at number three the samsung BD c 6500 blu-ray deck it's our favorite straight up blu-ray player but even if you're just lukewarm on blu-ray itself like yours truly.this box also gets you streaming services like netflix vudu and youtube it has seven dot once-around outputs and a gigabyte of storage on board plus built-in Wi-Fi oh and Samsung is pushing their own apps platform now so down the road aways you'll be able to load this thing up with what you want and make it a personalized home media terminal at number two we have the harmony one do it all and make it easy unified remote these guys kind of own this space and the model one is the sweet spot of their line in our opinion you program tasks like let's say play DVD five dot one audio via HDMI input to you put all that into a little macro and that's programmed via a web service could not be easier okay before we hit the number one present you should give your TV look at how many TVs we own good grief the latest Nielsen numbers show just seventeen percent of households are scraping by with one television twenty-eight percent of us have two and fifty five percent of our households have three or more in fact the average now is three TV sets in the home okay let's reveal the number one best piece of home video gear to hook up to at least one of those TVs it's the sony ps3 slim just about the priciest thing at 350 but still the best value games blu-ray online streaming from their service as well as others like Netflix and Sony just gave it a 3d update so now you've got some future proofing there with a compatible 3d TV full details on all these products are over at Matt Mackowiak slist on cnet and keep an eye on it if you're in the market because this is a very hot sector and new products are popping up all the time just go to cnet click the home video category then best home video products or just go to our page its top 5 cnet com I'm Brian Cooley thanks for watching I do have to say my ps3 really does help tie the whole living room together but it's still nothing like the rooms in our next piece turning our attention to the world of corporate synergy for the past several years our sister companies Showtime has put together an annual showcase for its original programming they call it the Showtime house and then all the shows like dexter and nurse jackie are the design inspiration for each of the rooms so this year CNET's editors got to help put some good tech into those rooms well here's dan ackerman with a tour of the finished product i'm dan ackerman from cnet com we're here in New York at the casa hotel residences home of the 2010 show time show house we're going to take a look at some of the really cool technology inside everything from 3d TVs to blame those fans so let's go take a look I'm going in we're here in the weeds office and we've got an HP TouchSmart PC touchscreen technology is really probably one of the hottest trends this year and you can actually use this to help design your own wallpaper a series they call it HP wall skins and with that you design your own wallpaper HP print it out and send it to you then you can put it up on your wall just with water and then later take it off with water so you can change your wallpaper every year great idea now keeping things cool we've got a Dyson air multiplier it's really one of the coolest industrial designs in technology this year it is a bladeless fan what it is a bladeless fan so you can keep the air flowing and actually just stick your hand right through it like that don't worry about hit your fingers on the blades because there aren't any much simpler let's destruct we're here in Pope pours a study and if you're saying to yourself hey I feel like I knew a lot about Renaissance 15th century Italy that's probably because you've been playing assassin's creed two from Ubisoft the game actually takes place in the same era and has a lot of the same characters including the Borgias we're watching it right now through this one-way mirror playing on a big samsung flat screen TV let's do this thing we're here in the Big C lounge and I'm immersing myself in this relaxing 3d nature image and the best part is I don't need the big bulky 3d glasses or to view it that's because this magnetic 3d display uses lenticular technology and then let you see the image with the naked eye take it from me the future 3d is eyeglass free there you go so we're here in Dexter's refuge and one of the coolest things in here literally is the LG art cool what is this is it 12,000 BTU air conditioner him behind this picture frame you hit the secret button then the vents open up and keep the room clue without the need for an ugly wall you take you to the head turn now we're in my favorite room Dexter's gaming room back here I've got a JVC ultra thin LED backlit TV it's the thinnest TV you can buy and playing on it you've got Mark echoes of dexter game available for the iPhone and iPad we're at the other end of Dexter's game room and behind me since aureum ad has taken this gigantic wall of mirrors attached transducers to the back and turned into one gigantic vibrating speaker I'd like to know more i'm dan ackerman from cnet.com to find out more about the 2010 show time show house you can go to sa Joe com thanks Dan for sparing us a visit to the californication bedroom and although we didn't see it I'm going to have to assume there's a mini-fridge somewhere in that weeds inspired locked speaking of which here is your chance to go grab some munchies we'll be right back with more Cena tech review after this and welcome back to the Cena tech review our weekly video digest of all things good and bad we've seen here at cnet TV continuing on in the good beyond the new macbook air in a preview of Apple OS 10 lion Steve Jobs and friends spent a lot of their stage time during the back to the mac event talking about all the new features in the 2011 version of ilife well Josh Lowensohn has a lot to say about it too but he can do it in a lot less time hi i'm josh lowensohn with cnet com and i'm going to walk you through some of the new features bundled into ilife 11 Apple's latest update to its consumer media editing and sharing sweet ilife 11 comes free with every new mac but if you've got an older version it's a fifty dollar upgrade this year's edition comes nearly two years after the release of ilife 09 and the time since Apple has updated just three of the five applications that make up the suite iphoto imovie and garageband leaving I DVD and I web untouched since the last version to put I life on your machine you'll need a mac with an Intel processor one gigabyte of RAM and Mac OS 10.6 point 3 or higher you also need about five gigabytes of storage free on your hard drive for us the upgrade took just a little under 20 minutes and required no restart one of the biggest changes in this week can be found in iMovie as Apple has added the option to edit the audio in your clips hitting a new button that appears just underneath your project timeline you can see a waveform of the clips audio and make edits to how loud or quiet it is but it's not just about making Audio more even Apple has also added some fun special effects tools that let you tweak the audio these range from the rather mundane of making people sound like they're on a telephone or a shortwave radio to giving them a robot or alien voice you can also adjust the pitch up or down which lends itself well to some video hijinks along with audio editing a new feature in iMovie 11 is movie trailers which lets you create short movie trailers using footage of your friends each trailer is set up as a template and you're given a list of characters that you can drag and drop footage into to make this process easier I movie will scan your footage for people to figure out how many people are in a shot and how close they are to the camera we found trailer making to be easy to use quite a bit of fun and highly customizable it's also very fast process if you've already planned out your shots ahead of time besides the additions to imovie apple's photo editing and library management tool I photo has been given some nice tweaks first and foremost you can now do everything in full-screen mode which is especially handy on notebook computers where you're trying to squeeze every bit of usefulness out of a smaller display Apple has also made sharing a better experience with the option to send an email of your photos from within iPhoto previously you'd have to fire up Apple's mail program Apple has also enhanced how I photo talks to Facebook so you can post photos not just to facebook albums but to your wall and profile picture too for analog sharing I photos books are still there and joining them in this year's edition our cards you can now print flat and folded cards along with letterpress cards all of which can be customized with your own photos and text then purchase from within the app Apple has given the book and card making experience a complete overhaul since last year's version with a new carousel view which lets you preview what each style looks like before you dig into customizing it notably missing from this process our calendars something apple says is coming in a future software update in the meantime you are limited to making books and cards rounding out the list the last application to get an update is GarageBand Apple's music training and editing software this year's version improves on the lessons program with the new system that will actually listen while you play a song with the practice track and highlight all of your mistakes you can then go back to those parts and replay and retry until you get it right along the way GarageBand keeps track of your progress and can give you a virtual report card of how you've improved since you first started besides lessons Apple has added two new ways to adjust instrumental tracks you've recorded the first is called flex time which lets you tweak the timing of a recorded note if something is in the wrong place or slightly off you can drag it in garage bands timeline this is incredibly easy to use and can make a track with just a few mistakes into something that sounds like you've nailed it on the first take but if a lot of things are wrong apples included something called groove matching which lets you pick a single recorded track is the one you want the other tracks to sync up to this is a one click affair and we'll make flex time adjustments to all the rest of the tracks automatically these are just a few of the new features you'll find in ilife 11 it may be a little bit late compared to previous versions of the software suite but at twenty dollars less than the last version and with some significant improvements to three of its core apps we think it's a pretty good deal for more be sure to check out our full review i'm josh lowensohn and this has been a first look at Apple's ilife 11 yeah that new first like theme music is really catchy also Josh you put a tractor on your Christmas cards I don't know about that dude but let's not dwell on that too much because it's time to move on to the bad now don't get me wrong I am all about a bargain so on paper this new AV receiver from onkyo with its six HDMI port should be a good deal but that's on paper in person it's a whole other story hi I'm Matthew miskovic senior associate editor at cnet com and we're here with the onkyo HT RC 260 this is a mid-range AV receiver from onkyo and is currently selling for about three hundred and twenty dollars online which is much less than many competing receivers we've seen this year now the receiver has a typical onkyo look with the big bulky design and an all black finish there's some additional connectivity on the front panel including an HDMI input in the lower left and an a/v input in the lower right if you turn the unit on the oculus graphical user interface also has a utilitarian feel it's a step up from the text only interfaces available on competing marantz and Denon receivers but it doesn't look quite as nice as what's offered on Yamaha and pioneers models still you'll probably only see these menus during the setup so it's not a huge loss around back you'll find the real strength of the alkyl which is connectivity there are five hdmi inputs on the back plus the front panel input which is six hdmi inputs total that's an outstanding value considering it's selling for about three hundred and twenty dollars those hdmi inputs are also all 3d compatible and support Audio Return Channel functionality what they don't support standby pass through which is something that's offered on some competitors there are also plenty of analog video connections on the back and the onkyo is capable of upscaling them to 1080p over its hdmi output one thing you may notice is that there's no iPod connectivity out of the box so you'll have to purchase onkyo is proprietary iPod dock if you're looking to connect an ipod now while we're generally big fans of the sound of onkyo AV receivers we were underwhelmed by the sound quality of the HTR c260 we're guessing onkyo had to make some compromises to hit the lower price point and we felt that the sound lacked detail and it was a full step behind competitors like the pioneer vsx 1020 k and the denon AVR 1911 so altogether the onkyo HTC RC 260 offers an extraordinary value for a receiver with six hdmi inputs but it wouldn't be our first choice for audio files on a budget I'm Matthew miskovic from cnet and this is the onkyo HT RC 260 so if you don't have a ton of money to spend you could probably do worse than the onkyo but it sounds like you could probably do better too and with that let's turn our attention to the bottom line zombies they're everywhere not the real ones of course or at least I hope not but the undead are all over pop culture lately from TV shows to movies to historical fiction you name it the zombies just keep coming back for more so in honor of Halloween this week's tap that app is all about zombie games welcome to tap that app i'm jason parker and this is the show where we cover the hottest apps in the mobile space halloween just around the corner this week we're showing off our favorite zombie games for the iphone since just about everyone already knows about the popular plants vs zombies we're going to look at three other undead gaming hits to get started duel stick shooter alive forever has been around for a long time and it's great on its own but its sequel alive forever returns takes undead shoot them up action to a whole new level start by picking from four different characters each with different stats and then set up your weapon loadout once you are dropped into the action fight your way through rescue quests boss fights and an endless shambling horde of zombies as you play you'll unlock new weapons skills and attribute points to make each of your characters stronger once you've mastered blowing away zombies alone you can work together in local co-op multiplayer with three other players for Team survival action both alive forever and a live forever returns are each 299 at the iTunes App Store we think both are worth every penny if dual-stick shooters aren't your cup of tea check out zombie highway this unique and deadly driving game challenges you to drive as far as you can alone a long lonesome highway while ferocious zombies try their best to make you crash the drive for the longest distance you'll need to tilt your iPhone to steer around wrecked cars sideswiping them to knock the zombies to the asphalt a stronger zombies appear touch the red arrows on screen to control your unseen gun-wielding passenger another source of damage against the relentless zombie horde once you pass certain milestones in the game like driving a specific distance for example you'll unlock weapons for your backseat passenger that you can set up before each run with your passenger properly equipped and a little luck you'll stay alive on the zombie highway well for at least a little while zombie highway is a one-of-a-kind driving game in the app store and goes for just 99 cents well our first two zombie game picks will help prepare you for the coming undead apocalypse the last game might be required playing for lasting on a zombie infested world call of duty world at war zombies gives you a graphically intense first-person shooter perspective as you try to defend against an onslaught of slowly approaching undead as you blow away zombies you'll earn money you can use to buy more powerful weapons you'll find in various locations around each map you'll also be able to lift barricades to open up other areas of the map granting access to more weapons and more areas to defend call of duty world at war zombies has been out for a while but recent updates have added challenging new maps more weapons and more undead killing man if the solo game isn't enough action for you you can also play multiplayer survival games locally or online in online play after a quick sign up an effective matchmaking system puts you together with other players so you can cooperate to fight against the Horde as a team call of duty world at war zombies plays like a console or desktop game will only run you 499 at the iTunes App Store to sum it up let's face it we all know the zombie apocalypse is coming it's just a matter of time to stay prepared tap any of these zombie killing apps especially with Halloween fast approaching that's it for this week's show if you have any suggestions send them to tap that app at cnet com i'm jason parker and we'll see you next week the bottom line this week hahaha zombies are scary can you imagine those games on an iPad nightmare central but if you want even more frightening fun on your iPhone or your iPad there are special halloween-themed versions of Angry Birds doodle jump and more on Josh's latest episode of tap that up alright folks it is time for me to go join us next week when we'll have our test drive of the 2011 Chevy Corvette until then there are tons of great videos available every day at cnet TV com I'll see you next time and thank you for watching