The US Department of Defense values its wireless spectrum more than many government agencies, and it has been reluctant to lose those airwaves to private providers through government auctions. It just had a change of heart, however: the Pentagon tells the NTIA that it's now willing to free up spectrum in the 1,755MHz to 1,780MHz range. The proposal would have the military shift much of its wireless use into nearby 1,780MHz to 1,850 MHz bands, while moving other tasks into frequencies between 2,025MHz and 2,110MHz. Problem solved? Not quite, unfortunately -- NAB members use the 2GHz range for TV, and they're more than a little worried about interference. The military's suggestion should kickstart negotiations, though, and carriers are optimistic that there will eventually be a deal that gives them the bandwidth they crave.
Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless, HD, Mobile
Source: Wall Street Journal
You might say the week is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workweek, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Weekly Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past seven days -- all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
The National Association of Broadcasters' annual event in Vegas may not offer the same blitz of high-profile gadgets as CES, but this show is hardly a quiet one. In fact, the excitement kicked off before the floor even opened, with Sony announcing pricing for its 55- and 65-inch 4K TVs. When 25 grand is the norm for these high-end sets, MSRPs of $5,000 and $7,000 seem downright budget-friendly. Blackmagic's $995 Pocket Cinema Camera also made headlines for its value proposition, with a Super-16 Cinema sensor, 13 stops of dynamic range and a Micro Four Thirds lens mount rounding out a very solid spec list.
Our favorite booth, however, belonged to Red. The company was performing its Dragon upgrade on-site, giving showgoers a fascinating look at the process of boosting the sensor to 6K -- we were even able to snag an exclusive look inside the sacred space. Finally, Intel announced the next generation of its Thunderbolt interface, promising double the throughput and expanded 4K support. But those are just the highlights; check out our complete coverage after the break for the full rehash.
Filed under: Announcements, Cameras
You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours -- all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
If you're pining for a Dragon Sensor but don't have an Epic-M or Epic-X in your collection, you might be in luck: Red just detailed an upgrade and trade-in path for owners of its entry-level Scarlet camera. By plunking down $9,500 and trading-in your Scarlet, you'll nab a Full Epic-X with its new black body, and have the option upgrade it to a Full Epic Dragon through the standard update process, to boot. If that doesn't strike your fancy, you could send in $9,500 instead and have your grey-bodied cam turned into a Scarlet Dragon, netting you the dynamic range and revamped color of the new sensor, replete with a maximum frame rate of 60 fps at 5k. Ready to move on up to gear that packs a bigger punch? Pre-orders kick off this Thursday, while upgrades are slated to commence in July.
Filed under: Cameras
Source: RED
You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours -- all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
Red announced its new Motion lens mount prior to opening its booth at NAB, and now we've had a chance to see this guy in action. The mount, which is compatible with the company's Epic and Scarlet cameras, is meant to fix the CMOS rolling shutter problem. The Motion includes a liquid crystal shutter that's placed in front of the main sensor and is timed to engage when the sensor is fully open. It also adds up to 8x neutral density, which can be enabled electronically through the camera UI with 1/100-stop precision. In a demo at Red's NAB booth, the camera captured every flash of a strobe -- without the new mount, some flashes would likely slip through the cracks. It's set to ship for $4,500 in the fall (or possibly this summer), and will be available with Canon EF or PL mounts. You can see it in action today in the hands-on demo after the break.
Filed under: Cameras
It seems like we were in Sin City for CES just yesterday, but we're already back scouring the halls at the LVCC. This time, though, it's all about cameras; NAB 2013 promises to have plenty of fancy new equipment from big names such as Canon, RED and Sony. In fact, we already have some major news from the latter: Sony announced pricing for its 55- and 65-inch 4K TVs, and the MSRPs are well below $10,000. Meanwhile, Blackmagic outed its sub-$1,000 Pocket Cinema Camera along with the the Production Camera 4K. Can we expect other brands to announce competitively priced A/V goodies in addition to the usual mega-expensive professional gear? We're not even through day one, so we'll have to wait and see. Keep up with our coverage by visiting our NAB 2013 hub.
Filed under: Cameras, Home Entertainment
We have a feeling 4K is going to be a major theme at this year's NAB, which also means we'll be seeing a good deal of hardware that can actually handle such high-res content. Mostly, we're talking pro cameras and the like, but at least one company will be showing off some professional-grade hard drives -- after all, you're gonna need a solid storage solution to process those supersize files, right? G-Technology just introduced the "Evolution" family of products, the centerpiece of which is the G-Dock ev, a mini-tower with two hard drive modules and dual Thunderbolt connections. What you put in those hard drive slots is up to you: the company is offering both a 9.5mm 7,200RPM drive (rated for 136 MB/s transfers) and a beefier 15mm cartridge promising 250 MB/s. Once you choose your drives, you can arrange them in a RAID 1 configuration if redundancy is important, or RAID 0 for maximum speed.
What's more, each of the drives has a USB 3.0 socket on board, so if you needed to you could hand it to someone else in your office and let them grab whatever data they needed off the HDD. In any case, the dock will come standard with two 1TB, 9.5mm drives -- look for it next month, priced at $750 for the bundle. If you later need some additional cartridges, the 9.3mm G-Drive ev will cost either $150 or $200, depending on whether you want 500 gigs or a full terabyte. The bigger 15mm G-Drive ev Plus will go for $350 (it'll be sold with 1TB only). Lastly, G-Technology also announced the G-Drive Pro with a Thunderbolt port and claimed transfer speeds of 480 MB/s. That'll ship this summer for either $700 or $850, depending on whether you want 2TB or 4GB of storage. All that's in the PR after the break, along with an endorsement from Vincent Laforet himself. Must be good, right?
Filed under: Storage
