It is interesting to see SD cards catch up to their much larger brother the CF card. Sandisk have put down the hard facts on the upcoming Ultra II 32GB SD card. It will be available in the 3rd quarter of this year and will sell for $US350.
They will also release a 8GB and 16GB card in the new series, which will offer a 50-66% potential increase in performance over the last generation. The prices of the other cards will be $US100 for the 8GB and $US180 for the 16GB.
For more info, click over to DailyTech.
I’m a big fan of the way Creative have gone their new ZEN player. It is still one of the only 16GB players with a expandable slot, and a good one at that (SD, not those silly minimicronano cards). The guys over at Generation MP3 have done a lengthy review on the little guy and had some good things to say. They liked overall quality, ergonomics, usability and price, but disliked small hiss at low volumes, videos must be encoded and battery life not as long as advertised among other things. The review is in french but the guys over a epiZENter have got a nice translation linked up for us English speaking types.
For more info, click over to the epiZENter Website (for English translation), or GenerationMP3 for french.
Consumer Reports have made a big call in the whole TV arena. They have given the holy grail of television sets to Panasonic and their TH-50PZ700U. They didn’t skimp on the tests either, reviewing more then 150 televisions. They said “the the Panasonic TH-50PZ700U reproduced the finest detail, rich vibrant colors and deep blacks that lent an almost three-dimensional look to images” and gave it an “Excellent” for its HD, DVD, and standard-definition picture quality.
What do you get with the Panasonic TH-50PZ700U other then an “Excellent” television. Well to start it is a 50″ Plasma with Anti-Reflective Coating (whatever that means) that supports True HD (1920×1080 native resolution AKA 1080P), has a contrast ratio of up to 5000:1, 4 inbuilt speakers (2x left and 2x right), a SD slot and 2 HDMI ports. All this can be picked up for a big fat $US2999.
With a little research I have also noticed that there may be a updated model of the TH-50PZ700U, with the TH-50PZ750U. Maybe not a massive change but it does seem to have this feature called Pro-Setting and costs a hefty $US500 more. I think I’ll stick with my $US300 Panasonic CRT for now thank you.
For more info, click over to the Consumer Reports Website, or Engadget for a short taste.