WATCH DVD – WITHOUT THE DISCS
A pocket-sized video player that will allow people to watch movies on the move without the need to carry a portable DVD player is being launched by consumer electronics firm Goodmans this month. The GPDR1 will cost around £200, and uses MPEG-4 compression to record around two hours of material onto a 256-megabyte memory card.
The best bit is that the device can record not only from a TV but also from VCRs or DVD players. This is because Goodmans has decided not to incorporate the copy-protection circuitry that is normally built into video recording devices to stop them recording material from each other.
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Goodmans believes that because the GPDR1 only makes a temporary recording in flash memory, which has to be flushed to allow you to watch something else later, it does not infringe copyright. The movie studios may disagree, though, as the card can be removed and used in another player.
HAPPY SCANNING
Undergoing a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan involves lying inside a large cylinder-shaped magnet, and for some patients it can be an intolerably claustrophobic experience. As a result, up to 7 per cent of scans worldwide have to be abandoned.
But Lucy Porter, a design engineering student from the Royal College of Art in London, might have the answer. She has developed a virtual-reality headset that displays images of the great outdoors to help patients feel less confined.
The scanner’s powerful magnetic field rules out most standard headsets as they contain metal components, so Porter’s device is made entirely of plastic. A projector in the scanner’s control room beams video or stills to an angled mirror, from where they are focused onto a screen on the headset. Porter conducted a trial showing images of open fields and meadows to nine claustrophobic people, and says the technology did indeed succeed in putting them much more at ease.
POD GOES THE LANGUAGE BARRIER
People who take an Apple iPod music player with them when they travel abroad need never be tongue-tied, even if they don’t know the local language. For $10 per language, they can download Talking Panda, a translation package that provides a database of more than 300 popular phrases in French, Spanish or Japanese.
After using the iPod’s jog wheel to scroll to the required phrase, users hear a recording of a native speaker saying the phrase in the chosen language. They can either do their best to repeat the phrase they have heard or, if all else fails, offer their headphones to a local to listen to.
