The eFace 2050AF supports 720p HD video chat at a paltry 9 frames per second (some competing Webcams managed frame rates of 30 fps in high definition). Unfortunately, the limited frame rate translated into choppy video.

The unit can capture 8-megapixel still images, has a built-in microphone and an AF glass lens, and incorporates a 360-degree swivel and a 125-degree up-and-down tilt. It works in accordance with Genius’s CrazyTalk software, so be sure to load the program before plugging in your Webcam.

The eFace 2050AF is compact and circular, with a dual-hinged pop-up frame. The bottom portion anchors the Webcam to your laptop or monitor, the middle section rests on top of your screen, and the top portion holds the lens. The design is clever and sets it apart from other HD Webcams, but because the device is so lightweight, I had trouble getting it to stay in place-it felt as though it were lightly resting on the monitor instead of firmly locking to it. It’s much better suited to desktop PCs than to laptops.

Another flaw in the design involves the unit’s 360-degree rotation: What should be a positive feature of the eFace 2050 is actually a hindrance. The USB cable attaches to the back of the camera, so if you do swivel it around the full 360 degrees, the cord wraps around the device and eventually covers the lens. Also, turning the lens causes the base to detach from your monitor, forcing you to reclip, readjust, and then try to spin it again. And unlike the Microsoft LifeCam HD-6000, the eFace 2050 does not rotate fluidly; instead, it has several stopping points that produce a jarring effect that all of my conferencers commented on.

The eFace 2050’s software is stored on a CD-ROM, but setting up the Crazy Cam features can take a while. I recommend giving yourself a good 20 minutes to get the software up and running. The basic system requirements for using this Webcam are a 2,4-GHz Pentium 4 CPU, Windows XP or higher, and DirectX 9,0 or above.

The default settings on the eFace 2050 are extremely bright, and altering them to make the displayed image seem more natural results in color distortion. Despite tweaking the manual settings several times and playing around with different rooms and light settings, I never found the magic combination to eliminate both these problems. Lowering the contrast and raising the saturation a bit was the best I could do, but even then brightness and color remained problematic.

Though I noticed a delay and drag in movement, the autofocus worked accurately and subtly, free of the distracting flicker that I’ve encountered with other HD Webcams I’ve tested recently. However, the eFace 2050’s slow movement capture largely overshadows the smoothness of its autofocus.

The CrazyTalk Cam software’s special features are extensive and permit you to record and share videos and simple screenshot captures easily. The softwares avatar creation feature lets you turn any photo into an animated cartoon. You can make the image talk and add motion or sound effects (such as animal sounds or voice warping). These features are fun,but it takes effort to make the animation look crisp.

Overall, the Genius eFace 2050AF is no match for some similarly priced cameras-in particular, the Microsoft LifeCam HD-6000, which also features a 360-degree rotational swivel. The eFace 2050AF’s mediocre HD video quality, poor design, and lackluster color features keep it from being a star.

Now the device must be inching closer to be officially released as a much clearer picture of the device has surfaced, giving us a much better idea of what to expect. Based on the picture, the device looks very much like the Galaxy S, though it apparently lacks a front-facing camera and proximity sensor. Aside from that, it’s been said that the YP-MB2 sports a lower resolution camera, listed at 3,2-megapixels. The YP-MB2 is expected to be announced on August 11th, and it should be offered in capacities ranging from 8GB to 32GB.

And the electronics giant also seems to be embracing the 3D revolution as well, we also told you about the all-in-one 3D TVs that it was showing off in Japan.

So it will come as no surprise to know that Panasonic is looking to combine the two areas, with a move into the 3D camera market, or more specifically the 3D camcorder market.

Reports suggests that a consumer-based 3D video camera will be unveiled to the world at a Tokyo launch event on 28 July.

Panasonic already has a 3D camera for the professional market, but this will be the first time a major manufacturer has offered up 3D shooting to Joe Public.

There are no specific details about the camera at the moment, but be sure to check Pocket-lint next week, where we’ll be telling you exactly what Panasonic reveals.

It’s a fairly compact set-up. You get one weighty wooden subwoofer and two satellites, along with the necessary cables to get up and running. It’s clear enough how you rig the speakers up (and you can always refer to the simple diagram), and there’s a wired remote built in to control volume and for you to plug in headphones as required. What’s more, if you need a bit of silence at a given point, then you just touch the main volume knob to activate mute. A quick peek at the back of the subwoofer also reveals that there’s a bass control for you to adjust to your preference.

he system itself is finished in glossy black on the satellites, and the whole package gives every impression of being a sleeky, snazzy setup.

Inevitably, then, down to business. We tested the M3300SF system with a mix of uncompressed music, videogaming and movies. And the results were good. At mid-volume, and with the bass set somewhere near the middle too, the output of the M3300SF setup was impressive. It goes without saying that you can tell the difference instantly over the output you get from any device’s in-built speakers, but what may surprise you is just how much of an improvement this set is.

The sound was consistent and solid at high and low volumes, no matter what material we tested. Furthermore, the subwoofer has real throat to it, quite surprising given how far down the price scale the M3300SF setup sits for standalone speakers.

On the downside? Clearly the more you spend, the better the output you can get, and there’s only so much that a 2,1 setup can do. Furthermore, if you’ve become used to built in speakers — and it’s not an unfair assumption that Edifier is targeting its system at those who have — then there’s a degree of bulk and wiring that you need to take into account.

Yet with solid response range and an ability to deliver on a broad range of material, Edifier has delivered a tempting, fuss-free yet effective speaker set-up here, and one that’s competitive with others in the same price bracket.

Edifier — M3300SF 2,1 Speakers features — Verdict

A fuss-free yet meaty 2,1 speaker setup, offering solid value for money and a substantial upgrade to pretty much any built-in speaker system.

Or fast forward to the 22nd century, will this piano float on air thanks to a built-in hovering mechanism? Well, it is neither of the above, although seeing the Airpiano being played in the hands of the master is truly a sight to behold as it gives you the feeling as though you were watching a graceful martial artist, musical conductor or mysterious magician at work here. Why is it called the Airpiano? The answer is simple, really, as it features an innovative interface that is activated and controlled by moving a hand in mid-air above the flat display surface — as long as you remain within range of a sensor array matrix. This is only made possible thanks to custom software, enabling one to have a huge library of tones and sounds at a one’s disposal.

There is a total of eight Infrared proximity sensors together, all of them spread horizontally across the surface of the Airpiano in order to let you play three notes depending on your vertical hand position. These sensors have the option to be specially programmed to provide up to eight control faders for altering volume, pitch, and filters among others. Custom software paves the way for MIDI mapping while Open Sound Control message assignment ensures you will be able to project a vast soundscape at your spatial command. Should there arise the need for confirmation of user action, LED lights located at the surface of the instrument comes in handy.

While it might resemble the Theremin, the Airpiano’s inventor has this to say about his pet project. «What makes it so different from a Theremin, besides the technology, is the concept of interaction. Playing a Theremin is hard to learn since every slight movement of the hand changes the pitch/volume of the generated sound. It also lacks visual feedback. The idea of the Airpiano is to keep things as simple as possible in order to achieve full control over the instrument.”

Expect a limited run of production devices to hit the market sometime in September or October for a yet undisclosed price.

Though this model doesn’t produce the best images we’ve seen on a Blu-ray player, it outperformed the Sony PlayStation 3. In our lab testing, we especially noted the sharp, well-saturated colors in Phantom of the Opera (chapter 3), and the well-modulated handling of whites in the black-and-white Good Night and Good Luck (chapter 1).

Unfortunately, the BR200W had some problems, too. We saw some digital artifacting in our Mission: Impossible III clip-a scene with a lot of fast camera movements over complex architecture (chapter 7). And a dusk scene from The Searchers (chapter 20) looked a bit too bright. Even so, those scenes looked better on the Vizio player than on the PS3.

Where the VBR200W fell seriously short was in upscaling DVDs-an inherently more challenging task than playing Blu-ray discs. Admittedly, no player can make an upscaled 480p image look like native 1080p, but the VBR200W did a particularly bad job of upscaling. A night scene from Return of the King (chapter 22) looked flat and suffered from noticeable video noise. The same Phantom of the Opera scene that impressed us with its vibrant colors on Blu-ray looked undersaturated and soft on DVD, relative to video from an identical DVD playing on the PS3).

If you buy a VBR200W, consider playing DVDs at 480p and letting your HDTV do the upscaling. Depending on how well your TV upscales standard-definition video, the image may look better that way.

Like many other recent Blu-ray players, the VBR200W doubles as a device for delivering Internet video. Hook it up to your network via ethernet or Wi-Fi, and you can watch streaming video via Netflix or Vudu. With a good ethernet connection, 1080p Vudu streams made for high-quality viewing. Though I occasionally spotted compression artifacts in the displayed content, the image approached Blu-ray quality most of the time. Netflix image quality doesn’t come close to that, but it’s acceptable.

Usually, Netflix’s image quality and its user interface are identical from one player to another. The VBR200W uses the latest implementation of Netflix, however, which lets you pick movies to watch via the player, rather than first having to use your PC to put the desired program into your queue.

Besides working with these commercial streaming sites, the VBR200W lets you listen to music via Pandora. It also supports Internet feeds from Facebook, Flickr, the New York Times, Picasa, Twitter, and Wikipedia. But one major player isn’t here: YouTube.

Like most Blu-ray players today, the VBR200W also lets you plug a flash drive into its USB port to listen to music (.wma and .mp3 files), view photos, and watch videos. The music will continue to play as you view photos, which makes creating adding background music to a slideshow a snap.

But plugging in the flash drive is a pain. The player’s single USB port is on the back-an acceptable location if its only function is BD Live memory, but a nuisance for multimedia.

Another physical design problem: The front-panel buttons are pressure-sensitive spots that provide no tactile feedback. As a result, you can’t find the Power and Open buttons by touch. The unit responds quickly to commands, but its physical design makes it unnecessarily difficult to use.

Once you’ve settled down on the couch, out of reach of the player, its ease of use improves markedly. The icon-centric menu system is well labeled, though Vizio does not provide onscreen explanations. Fortunately, the excellent manual compensates for that shortcoming. Setting up Wi-Fi with a remote control is always a challenge because of the difficulty of entering a password, but the VBR200W makes this task about as simple as it can get with an ordinary remote as your input device.

A huge, silver Play/Pause button-the button you’re most likely to want to hit in the dark-dominates the remote control. Other commonly used buttons, such as Skip and Stop, are conveniently arranged around Play/Pause. But the arrow buttons needed for menu navigation are a bit high and hard to press. Other buttons, which you’re not likely to use often, are small and difficult to tell apart by feel. The remote is neither backlit nor programmable.

The VBR200W is reasonably quick at clearing discs to play. It started playing the Independence Day Blu-ray disc in 50 seconds-significantly less than the 61-second median time or the 68-second average, but almost twice as long as the record of 26 seconds held by the Sony BDP-S570. While playing a movie, the unit paused and unpaused almost immediately. The lag when it skipped chapters was noticeable, but not annoyingly so.

If you have a large DVD collection that you plan to watch via your Blu-ray player, look for a player that offers stronger DVD upscaling than the VBR200W does. Beyond that, this model has a lot to offer for both Blu-ray playback and Internet streaming-and it does so at a reasonable price.