Sony Limited Edition PSP Daxter Entertainment Pack

After months of speculations, Sony has yet to release official statements that their PlayStation Portable is going to be upgraded this year. Even at the end of the 2006, more speculative news were released regarding the already much talked about upgrades of the portable game console.

The very first PlayStation Portable was released in 2004 in Japan and was unveiled on March 2005 in the United States and Canada followed by the Europe and Australia launch on September of the same year. The PSP offered more than just games. The game player was able to play videos and music, as well as allows the viewing of images. The PSP has also Internet browsing functionality.

The game unit also supports audio in AAC, MP3, and WMA formats. Also playable are MPEG-4 and AVC video formats. The PSP has very reasonable video and audio bit-rate settings which makes it ok to watch feature length films. A number of movie files have already been encoded for the PlayStation Portable and are readily available on the Internet for download. This makes the PSP more than just a gaming device.

Because the PSP has already been out in the market for almost two years, people are already expecting that Sony will be releasing a newer version soon. However, most feel that the upgrades are only minimal probably taking on the issues of storage capacities, RAM and graphics chips. At 170 mm (6.7 inches) in length, 74 mm (2.9 inches) in width, and 23 mm (0.9 inches) in depth, the PSP has already a total weight of 280 grams or 0.62 lbs, already light if you ask me. The TFT LCD screen is 110 mm (4.3 in) diagonal with a ratio of 16:9 and a pixel resolution of 480×272. The present LCD screen is capable of displaying 16.77 million colors. Definitely, the newer PSP will be slimmer than the old one. One can also look at the possibility of increasing the size of the LCD screen or at the very least an increased in pixel resolution.

Some news pegged the release of the PSP2 in 2007 with changes or upgrades being integrated by Sony gradually. Some say that the company will definitely upgrade first the built-in memory, changing it from the present 32MB to 8GB. This is based on the development of the memory chip industry. Some say the newer PSP will also have a built-in camera. Also speculated to be part of the upgraded PSP is the recreation of the UMD drive making it into a slot-loading drive.

Also, some industry analysts floated the idea that the newer PSP will be having a 60 GB internal memory. This assumption came wholly from the recent introduction of a new N-series line of 1.8 inch hard drives from Samsung. Samsung announced their new hard drives late December 2006 which jump started a whole new speculation line for the development and release of Sony's PSP2.

Regardless, these are all speculations at this point. As long as Sony remains mum on the situation, the industry will try to read all the signs the electronics giant is showing and guess on the next moves of the company that could again change the gaming world.

Joytech PSP Tech Pack with Memory

Dance Dance Revolution: Hottest Party (with DDR Controller): Nintendo Wii

The thing that I remember the most when it comes to Nintendo Wii is two particular episodes of the popular Southpark series where Eric Cartman, the fat or rather "big boned" obnoxious kid in the series, impatiently waits for the official release of Nintendo Wii. His impatience and stubbornness resulted to a series of funny and rather unbelievable events which includes waking up in the future and going back in time. Anyways, this is a whole other article we are here to talk about Nintentdo's Wii. 

Actually, the Wii is the fifth video game console released by Nintendo. It was intended to be the successor of Nintendo's GameCube and was originally called Revolution. According to official press releases from Nintendo, the Wii was supposed to cater a broader market than other leading competitors like Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Sony's PlayStation 3. One of the most prominent upgrades or features of Wii is the wireless controller. This piece of remote can detect motion and rotation in three dimensions and with the WiiConnect24, the game console is able to receive messages and updates over the Internet.

There was a lot of hype on Nintendo's Wii. By September 2006, the company had already announced the information regarding its game console in Japan, North and South America, Australasia (Oceania), Asia, and Europe. Nintendo announced the dates, prices, and distribution. A lot of preorders came in. By December 2006, there were reports that Europe experienced a lot of shortages of game console units because of earlier moves of Nintendo to allot more units to the Americas. As of early December 2006, it was reported that over a million Nintendo Wii units have already been sold worldwide.

The Wii is quite small from Nintendo's previous game units. Without the standard stand, a Wii unit measures only 44 mm (1.73 in.) wide, 157 mm (6.18 in.) tall, and 215.4 mm (8.48 in.) deep. It's light too, with only a mere 1.2 kg (2.7 lbs) weight the Wii makes it the lightest among the other three seventh generation consoles out in the market today. You can either place the unit horizontally or vertically.

The new Nintendo game unit is powered by a PowerPC based "Broadway" processor which is made with a 90 nm SOI CMOS process. The reported clock speed of the processor is 729 MHz. Aside from the CPU, the Wii is also equipped with a GPU that is made of a 90 nm CMOS process that reportedly runs at a speed of 243 MHz. The unit has a 88 MB main memory which is divided into a 24 MB "internal" 1T-SRAM integrated graphics and a 64 MB "external" GDDR3 SDRAM. When it comes with storage, the Wii has a built-in 512 MB NAND flash memory. Total memory can be expanded through the used of SD card memories. However, a 2 GB maximum supported capacity is the limit the game unit can take.

Nintendo's Wii was also designed to be capable of connecting through the internet by the use of a built-in 802.11b Wi-Fi system or through a USB-to-Ethernet adaptor. Either way, the users of the Wii will be able to access the established Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection service online. One can also update the Wii firmware via the WiiConnect24 service. 

Also remember that the Wii console has backward compatibility. This means that all Nintendo GameCube software and most GameCube peripherals are recognized and accepted in the newer Wii. What Nintendo did was equipped the Wii with slot-loading drives which allows the unit to accept GameCube discs. Also present is a set of four GameCube controller ports and two Memory Card slots. However, a GameCube controller is needed to play GameCube games since the Wii Remote nor the Classic Controller can be used. Also a GameCube memory card is needed to save GameCube games.

The Wii's internal flash memory will not save any information from games played in GameCube. Also, the GameCube modem adapter, broadband adapter, Game Boy Player, AV cable, or AC adaptor cannot be used on Nintendo's Wii.

Video conferencing is a telecommunication technology that allows more than two parties to interact with other parties using both audio and video transmission simultaneous. This technology is also referred as video teleconference (VTC Since video transmission is added to ordinary teleconference).

Videoconferencing was first demonstrated in 1968, with twisted pairs. But it was very expensive to setup links between two or more conferencing locations and the rate and quality of communication was worse. Then by 1980s transmission networks like ISDN was setup enabling a transfer rate of about 128Kb/sec.  Then by 1990s the IP based internet teleconferencing came into existence. After that the firms NetMeeting, MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, and Skype, so on had introduced their own software plugins for this purpose.

The basic technology used for video conferencing is the digital compression used to reduce the size of data transferred. The hardware or software that performs this function is called as codec (abbreviation for coder, decoder).

For VTC two kinds of systems can be used:

1. One dedicated hardware system and other a desktop software system. Dedicated hardware system usually consists of high quality camera, microphone and the hardware to process before transferring it.
2. Other one is desktop system that uses hardware boards (add-ons) to capture audio and video and softwares to process, and performs compression before transmission. These types of conference carried out are known as e-meetings.
   

Further, simultaneous videoconferencing among three or more remote parties could be established using Multipoint Control Unit (MCU). This control unit acts as a bridge that interconnects calls from different parties. MCU can also be a software , the software MCU provides many features like multiple parties displayed at a time onscreen, and the voice separation  etc...

There are many standards available for VTC. ITU H.320 (standard for public switched telephone networks), ITU H.323 (standard for video over Internet Protocol (IP)), ITU H (standard for transmission over audio telephony networks) are some standards for VTC. IP based Video conferencing is the present emerging VTC technology, that requires fairly high bandwidths.