AUDIOVOX INTRODUCES "Anyware ™"- MOBILE PC

Compact portable PC features navigation, Bluetooth and Windows Vista/A/XP

Las Vegas NV - October 2007 - Audiovox Corporation (NASDAQ: VOXX) president Tom Malone calls the Anyware™ , Audiovox's Ultra-Mobile PC, "the only Ultra Mobile PC product that gives the user GPS navigation, Bluetooth and Windows, in a package smaller than a conventional laptop.

The Anyware ™ features a 30 GB hard drive, 2 USB Ports, 2 GB SD card slots, A/V out ports, expansion IO port and a sync port cable for desktop and notebook. Additional components include a WiFi module, with mobile and home/office accessories such as vehicle mount, carrying case, AC power adapter, DC power adapter, remote control, audio/video out and I/P expansion port. MSRP $1,499.99.

Malone believes the Anyware™ will fit into the lifestyle of today's tech-oriented family. "The Anyware not only provides GPS and Bluetooth features for navigation and hands-free communications while driving without compromising the occupant's safety, it's a full featured portable PC that can be taken from the house to the car to the office. What's more it will seamlessly pick up whatever programs were started at home and need to be continued at the office."

All Audiovox mobile products are built for the road and as such are specification-laced road testing before being released to retail and Anyware passed those tests. "Anyware™ is built for mobile application, with shock-resistant features and a rugged road-ready design. In addition to Audiovox's normal QC and design testing, this product was road tested for 10,000 miles over 6 months to ensure the reliability and performance of all hardware and software functions. It is one tough product."

[Jensen]

• Jensen NVX225 - The low end of portable GPS navigators keeps getting lower. This little one with SiRFStar III chip and Navteq data lists for a pretty damn low $249. Wonder what its street price will be?

• Jensen NVX430BT navigator with, yep you guessed it, Bluetooth. Price is TBD, and the product ships this fall.

• Audiovox digital photo frames (DPF) in 7", 8" and 10.4" models ($99 to $199). Standard frames, just like most other China-based manufacturers, but these have clock and calendar software. I'm wondering how beneficial a clock will be in a picture frame, but it's a neat idea. I'd like to see the clock superimposed over my images, though. Not sure if that's possible. Yet.

• Two portable Audiovox 8" DVD players: $199 with iPod iPod dock for video out (no iPhones!), and $149 for DVDs only. These were my favorite pieces of the show (besides the cute remote-start keychain in the gallery). I like the matte black finish, and the 8" screen looked decent. The iPod dock does DivX and has a USB jack too.

• Model ARE05 noise-isolating earbuds for $79, about middle of the pack, price wise, and looked fairly decent. Of course, I didn't stick them in my ears.

• The priciest announcements were in the wireless headphone category, where the 2.1 AWD210 set lists for $199, and the AWD510 5.1 surround wireless headphones list for $349; both use 2.4GHz RF, rather than the previous Acoustic Research wireless headphones that used 900MHz technology.

With Jensen's new NVX230W, you get Tele Atlas' Western European maps preloaded along with its US, Canada and Puerto Rico set. Jump for fact sheet. (When I read it, I was relieved to to discover that this GPS device has "built-in GPS.") – Wilson Rothman

Jensen NVX230W Portable Navigation Features: •USA/Canada/Puerto Rico and Western Europe Mapping •3.6-inches x 4.9-inches x .9-inches; .68 lbs. •Anti-Glare Screen •Turn-by-Turn Voice Prompt •Automatic Re-routing when Car is Deviated from Route •Automatically Calculates: •Estimated Time Arrival, Distance to Go, Time to Destination and Miles per Hour •Four-Hour Battery Life •Built in GPS •Sharp Display Panel Maker, Model LQO35Q7DH05 •Display Type: TFT-LCD Touch Screen •Screen Size: 3.52-inch (diagonal) •Active Area: 53.64-mm x 71.52-mm •4:3 Aspect Ratio •Panel Resolution: 240 x 820 •Brightness: 110 Cd/mx2 •Contrast Ratio: 95 •Operating System: WinCE.NET 4.2 •Navigation Software: iGO •Map Software: Tele Atlas •Internal Memory: 64MB + 8MB NOR Flash •GPP Chipset: SiRF Star III •Internal GPS Antenna •Battery Maker: Samsung, Model PGF523759A •Battery mAh: 1280mAh •USB/SD Slot Connections •Day/Night Display Options •3D/2D View •Background Color Change •Points of Interest Icon Display •Multi-Language •Includes Two Gigabyte SD Card with USA/Canada/Puerto Rico and Western Europe Mapping •Includes: Cradle, CD12V Car Adapter, Quick Reference Guide and CD-ROM with Owner's Manual and Warranty Letter •Available: June •MSRP: $399.99

XM Capable Jensen GPS [Navigadget]

The Jet, designed for the active music lover, packs the biggest punch. Sporting the same 1.5-inch OLED as the Opal, the Jet is also splash-resistant and comes with a Body Mass Index calculator to help you visualize your obesity. It plays MP3, WMA and WMA/DRM files and includes an FM tuner. The 1GB Jet runs $69 while the 2GB version is $89. Also available is the Jet Stream, a 1GB wireless version of the Jet that touts "lossless" audio transmission to the headphones for $149.
Also from the RCA/Thomson family are Jensen's new JPM3005 SportFones. The SportFones also eliminate the tangle of wires by integrating a 512MB digital media player into the headphones themselves, including simple controls on the side of one earpiece. Also designed for the gym rat, the SportFones are wrapped in sweat-resistant silicone. Pick them up in a zippered carry bag in February for $69.99. – Karson Thompson

The "state-of-the-art" Jensen SMP-115 16MB MP3 Player would be fantastic for a mean gift exchange. Someone opens the gift, excited as they process the faux silver finish that usually equates to a semi-precious piece of technology. Maybe it's a Skype headset. Maybe it's the updated Flowbee. Oh, it's an MP3 player! At this size, it must store a lot of music. Then, bam, it hits them. 16MB.

I can't believe this stuff is still for sale...but at $69.99, the joke will be entirely on me. – Mark Wilson

Product Page [amazon marketplace]

Skin Deep

There's a classic moment early in John Carpenter's They Live in which the protagonist (ably played by "Rowdy" Roddy Piper) first obtains the Ray-Bans that reveal the aliens among us. He notices one such E.T., disguised as a dowdy fiftysomething women, applying lipstick to her lizard-like visage. "Lady," the Rowdster contemptuously snorts, "that's like putting perfume on a pig."

Little did everyone's favorite kilted wrestler know that he was neatly summarizing the decades-long design trend in low-end TV antennas, which have become ever-more impressive looking while still providing the same craptacular benefits. Come on, you know what I'm talking about—the humble rabbit ears of yore have given way to contraptions that resemble CIA listening posts from the 1960s. The skin-deep evolution of TV antennas provides an invaluable—nay, indispensable—object lesson on the psychology of low-end consumers. For those latter-day Icaruses who dare challenge the gods, that lesson is haphazardly described after the jump. PLUS: Disgruntled Brazilians sound off about the nimble-fingered Taxman!

I'm not exactly sure when set-top antennas started to take their design cues from the Hoth Planet energy cannons, but I vividly recall my own first experience with this particular segment of the low-end market. I was a freshman in college, Bill Clinton had just won the White House, and people were actually paying good money to see Home Alone 2 in the theater. Most importantly, my roommates and I couldn't get cable in our dorm room, and the factory antenna couldn't pick up much more than the local NBC affiliate. So a Radio Shack run is organized, and there we come across a set-top antenna featuring a knob-adjusted dish in lieu of a simple wire coil. It looked cool as all get out, and even worked a smidge—though you could hardly call the effects miraculous. If memory serves, we were able to get Fox and maybe one other VHF channel, but UHF was hopeless. So much for us watching Nova, like all good college students of the day.

Since then, I've had occasion to try at least half-a-dozen other futuristic-looking antennas. The vogue for radar dishes has since given way to sleeker designs, with the Jensen TV-631 being the best example. Another favorite, design-wise, is the RCA/Thompson ANT-145, which replaces the dish with a disc, one that closely resembles the naked woofer of a 1980s cabinet speaker. To the untrained eye, all of these antennas look as if they should perform a billion times better than a barebones loop-and-ears setup.

But that's really not the case, now, is it? In fact, I'd dare say that you're not going to find much better performance in a sub-$20 antenna than what's offered by the GE TV24731. Yes, there may be differences in durability, especially if you're the sort who likes to get all hopped up on Yukon Jack and throw bricks at your set. And I'll concede that I've been impressed by antenna hype sheets that make note of HDTV compatibility. But come on, if you went through the trouble of getting yourself an HDTV set, aren't you almost certainly the sort of bloke who will also spring for cable? Antennas are for those of us who are still stuck with 13-inch Apex boxes, and remain criminally deprived of access to the likes of Animal Planet.

Yet some pretty solid companies continue revamping their set-top antenna designs every few years, to make them seem increasingly fit for our Jetsons future—though they also manage the neat trick of keeping prices consistently under $20. (Good rule of thumb: If you can afford an over-$20 set-top antenna, get yourself frickin' cable, man.) So what does it all mean? Well, the obvious lesson is that, because the low-end market is largely devoid of reviews (an oversight I hope to be changing soon), us budget consumers can only judge a book by its cover. I hunted a looooooong time for an article that benchmarks rival sub-$20 TV antennas, but came up with nil. (Then again, benchmarking TV antennas is pretty hard to do, because the uncontrollable factors that affect reception—such as weather—change so suddenly, and without warning.)

But I also think the evolution of low-end TV antenna designs shows that low-end consumers are, in fact, a lot more status conscious than we're willing to admit. It may be a misguided consciousness, akin to that displayed by folks who brag about the really cool spoiler they just added to the rear of their 1989 Honda Civic. But even us cheap bastards don't enjoy being perceived as such—on some level, we're ashamed of our cheapness, whether because it indicates that we're losing in the game of life, or we're just hopeless misers. (In my case, a little from Column A, a little from Column B.) So if buying the $19 Jensen antenna will help cover up that shame a bit better than the $8 GE unit, then it's money well spent. We'll just save up the difference by eating unseasoned spaghetti for a few days.

Don't misunderstand me, though. Us low-enders remain a fiercely proud lot on oh-so-many levels. In fact, I can honestly say that I live by some of the Mr. Piper's other immortal words from They Live: "I've come here to chew bubblegum, and kick ass. And I'm all out of bubblegum."

THE TAXMAN COMETH: Big response from south of the Equator to last week's column on Brazilian low-end electronics. Turns out I was onto something, in terms of explaining why TV sets aren't suitably cheap in Salvador de Bahia. The nation's sales taxes, I've been informers, are totally out of control—one correspondent said that they can add up to 40 percent to the street price of a product. Super ouch.

Additionally, protectionist laws preclude the importation of TVs. The native brands are instead manufactured in the Amazonian city of Manaus, which is a special economic zone in the middle of frickin' nowhere. Meanwhile, boomboxes and other small pieces of audio equipment are cheaper because so many of them are smuggled across the border from Paraguay. Let's hear it for black-market competition, the truest friend the low-end consumer will ever know.

Brendan I. Koerner is a contributing editor at Wired and a columnist for both The New York Times and Slate. His Low End Theory column appears every Thursday on Gizmodo.

Read more Low End Theory

Gyration ultra-small remote control, this is about the size of a USB flash drive that do everything the Gyration mouse did and more. One click will launch the pre-stored presentation and allows up to 80 commands based on hand motions. This was actually pretty hot, if you're into the whole 'surfaceless mousing' thing.

HDV5000 HD DVD Player, expected to ship to retail 2nd quarter this year for $499. This is from the Thomson RCA line.

Jensen MPC400 Receiver, ATSC, NTSC, FM receiver for your laptop or PC for under $300 coming in 2006. This puppy will allow you to watch over-the-air television broadcasts on your laptop (or PC). Not especially new, conceptually—we're much more interested in streaming video over Wi-Fi, which is something Thomson also seems to be pushing with some of their Acoustic Research Products.