Silicon Chip Online - Product Showcase

Jaycar’s Home Theatre Mini Multimedia Player

Placing your music collection on a PC hard disk makes a lot of sense. It’s convenient, your CDs will never be missing or damaged when you want to play them and you can program as much or as little as you want to play at one time.

It’s the same for photos and videos. But PCs were never known for their beauty – and a lot of people baulk at placing one in the hi fi cabinet.

Jaycar Electronics have a solution with their XC-4866, $199 (rrp) Multimedia Player.

Small enough to be inconspicuous but smart enough to look part of the A-V system, this 45 (w) x 21 (d) x 18mm (h) device will hold as much of your audio and video as you want it to – because you supply the hard disk drive that goes inside it (up to 500GB).

The idea is simple enough: fit the hard disk drive of your choice, connect the player to your PC via a mini USB cable (supplied) and copy what you want onto the disk.

Then you can disconnect it from your PC and use it as a stand-alone player, complete with remote control. It also has the now-familiar iPod-type 4-way jog controller on the front panel.

The rear panel contains the connections for your home theatre system or hifi – you get the choice of standard yellow/white/red video and audio via RCA sockets, coaxial audio; and YUV/CVBS and S-video outputs.

There’s also a slot for an SD (or MMC/MS) card which can also be used to hold or transfer data.

An 84 x 84 dot matrix blue LCD display is provided to display filenames and playing status, along with system messages.

Video formats supported include MPEG-1, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 Divx Xvid. Audio is MP3 and image format JPEG.

A slimline remote control is included which allows for full playback functions, zoom and slideshow control. Supplied cables include a 3-way RCA and mini USB, along with the 240V power supply and stand.

Contact:

Jaycar Electronics (all stores)

100 Silverwater Rd Silverwater 2128

Tel: (02) 9741 8555 Fax: (02) 9741 8500

Website: www.jaycar.com.au

Looking for content? Apple Launches iTunes Plus: 256kbps AAC encoding

Apple’s new iTunes Plus offers DRM-free music tracks featuring high quality 256kbps AAC encoding with audio quality virtually indistinguishable from the original recordings – for $2.19 (RRP inc GST) per song.

iTunes Plus is launching with EMI’s digital catalog of outstanding recordings

iTunes will continue to offer its entire catalog, currently over four million songs, in the same versions as today—128kbps AAC encoding with DRM—at the same price of $1.69 including GST per song, alongside the higher quality iTunes Plus versions when available.

In addition, iTunes customers can now easily upgrade their library of previously purchased EMI content to iTunes Plus tracks for just 50c a song and $5.10 for most albums.

With the release of iTunes Plus, customers can now download tracks from their favourite EMI artists without limitations on the type of music player or number of computers that purchased songs can be played on. iTunes is also offering customers a simple, one-click option to easily upgrade their library of previously purchased EMI content to the iTunes Plus versions. EMI music videos are now also available in iTunes Plus versions with no change in price. iTunes Plus songs purchased from the iTunes Store will play on all iPods, Mac or Windows computers, widescreen TVs with Apple TV, as well as many other digital music players.

The iTunes Store, which has sold over 2.5 billion songs making it the world’s most popular online music store, features the world’s largest catalog with over four million songs, 7000 music videos, 100,000 podcasts and 23,000 audiobooks.

Programmable Power Supply

The new Motech PPS 3210 programmable power supply is a high resolution (16-bit) system with three channels providing 0-30VDC (channels 1 and 2, with 90W rating) and 0-15VDC (channel 3) with a 30W rating, suitable for testing computer and other IT equipment. Voltage programming speed is unimpeded by rise time limitations, with a 1ms response at full load and a fall time of 2.5ms. An internal time-recorder can provide off-time adjustable over a wide range (1s to 100h) to accommodate various burn-in and accelerated life-time testing.

Contact:

Westek Electronics Pty Ltd

Unit 2, 6-10 Maria St, Laverton Nth 3026

Tel: (03) 9369 8802 Fax: (03) 9369 8006

Website: www.westek.com.au

Microzed has new GPS-to-Microcontroller chip

Micromega Corporation, represented in Australia by Microzed Computers, announces the release of the uM-FPU V3.1 Floating Point Coprocessor chip. The new chip extends the powerful feature set of the original uM-FPU V3 chip to include serial I/O support, NMEA sentence parsing, block transfers, additional matrix operations and string support, and many other enhancements.

The new serial I/O capabilities with NMEA sentence parsing makes it easy to add GPS data to embedded system designs. GPS data can be read and processed directly by the uM-FPU V3.1 chip, saving I/O pins, memory space and execution time on the microcontroller, which can then be used for the main application.

As an added benefit, GPS data is immediately available on the uM-FPU V3.1 chip for further navigational calculations using the powerful floating point instruction set. The uM-FPU V3.1 chip interfaces to virtually any microcontroller using an SPI interface or I²C interface, making it ideal for microcontroller applications requiring floating point math, including GPS, sensor readings, robotic control, data transformations and other embedded control applications.

Contact:

Microzed Computers Pty Ltd

PO Box 5103, Chittaway Bay NSW 2261

Tel: 1300 735 420 Fax: 1300 735 421

www.microzed.com.au

USB to PCMCIA Adapter for 3G Internet Cards

This USB adapter from Microgram allows the use of a wide number of high speed data-cards via a USB port, enabling these PC cards to be used with a desktop or laptop without a CardBus slot. Now you can take your 3G wireless internet access anywhere!

It is ideal for those who live in an area without high speed wired internet access, or whose laptop does not offer a PC/CardBus slot (most new laptops have ExpressCard slots). The adapter is compatible with desktops, notebooks or specialist systems (such as Point-of-Sale machines).