GADGET REVIEWS Just another GADGET NEWS

We might still say we’re “taping” a TV show, but unless you’re my parents, who still watch old Star Trek TNG on VHS then you will have thrown out your VCR years ago. But what if you want to record something, and you don’t have a TiVO?

Then you buy one of Panasonic’s Viera G3-series TVs, which lets you record direct to an SD-card. The first set is the 42-inch TH-L42G3, and it will rip hi-def TV-shows to SD, SDHC or SDXC cards at up to 19201080 resolution at 24Mbps. A 64GB card will hold five hours’ worth of video.

Should $200 for a 64GB card be a little steep, there’s also a USB-port so you can hook up a regular hard-drive – a less portable but probably more practical solution.

Otherwise, the TV sports all the usual modern niceties: two HDMI ports, Ethernet, an IPS, LED-backlit display for a wide viewing angle, and Panasonic’s own Viera-link, which lets you hook up compatible cameras to view slideshows and video directly.

The G3 TVs will ship to Japan February 18th 2011.

Oh, and if you are my parents, the Christmas parcel arrived, thanks. There had better be some chocolate in there, is all I’m saying.

Viera G3-series press release [Panasonic via Akihabara News]

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Apple’s iPad Camera Connection Kit is a wonderful thing, although overpriced at $30. Not only can you use it to inject photos from your camera direct into the tablet’s brain, you can also hook up all manner of USB peripherals, from keyboards to microphones to thumb-drives.

MIC Gadget’s 3-in-1 adapter does all this, and more. It combines Apple’s two small, easy-to-lose widgets into one slightly larger, slightly harder-to-lose package, putting an SD card reader and USB port into one plastic box. The extra is a micrSD slot, which is actually all but useless: the only way it would work is if your cellphone saves its photos into a standard folder named “DCIM”, which is what will trick the iPad into reading them.

There’s one thing that MIC Gadget’s version had in common with the official Apple version: it costs $30. I’d stick with Apple’s overpriced kit: it works, you only have to carry the part you need and it is built to last. It is also available now, unlike this 3-in-1 solution, which ship after Christmas.

3-In-1 iPad Camera Connection Kit [MIC Gadget]

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One of the better things to appear in computers of recent vintage is the SD-card reader, which lets us slot the memory-cards from our cameras directly into our notebooks and slurp off the photographs. But not all computers come equipped with this handy little slit, so we’re forced to use (and carry) an external card reader. Elecom has come to the rescue with the “MR-C25 Series”, a USB card-reader with – literally – a twist.

Elecom’s reader slots into a spare USB-port, but instead of sticking out perpendicular to the side of the machine it lays snug and flat along the side. What’s that, you say? It covers up all the other ports next to it? Sure, but look – it swivels, flipping up-and-over to get out of the way when needed. Thus plugged, it is thin enough to stay in place, even when you slip your computer into its travel-case.

The reader has another trick, too. It reads not only SD-cards (SDHC and SDXC formats are both supported) but also those tiny microSD cards that are smaller than your pinkie’s thumbnail and so popular with the cellphone kids these days.

The reader should start to show up in November, price unknown. Just keep your fingers crossed that the buyer for you local retail chain appreciates a nifty gadget as much as we do.

Elecom MR-C25 [Elecom via Akihabara News]

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IPADock. Its name may sound more like a place to keep your iRacehorses, but the curiously-capitalized accessory is probably the most useful desktop gadget ever. Plug it into a computer and you can charge and sync a pair of iPads, four iPhones, and various combinations thereof. A universal dock-port can be fitted with the adapter from any iPod, from Nano to Touch, and then things start to get even handier.

Stacked up around the back are slots for SD-cards, MemorySticks, CompactFlash cards and a three-port USB-hub. In short, pretty much anything you might want to dock on your desktop will be served by this surprisingly good-looking and compact device.

The price? $70, although you’ll be ordering it from Japan if you want one.

iPADock product page [Photofast via Cult of Mac's John Brownlee. Thanks, Pedro!]

Source:wired.com

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