Mohu AirWave Release Date, Price and Specs – CNET
John P. Falcone/CNET
Mohu pioneered the sort of bargain flat digital TV antenna you can buy on Amazon for as little as $20. Now, the company’s new AirWave antenna is looking to deliver over-the-air channels where cordcutters want them: Straight into the streaming video device they’re already using, where they live side-by-side with Netflix, Amazon, Hulu and the like. In other words, no more switching inputs to watch live over-the-air TV.
The Mohu AirWave (a mockup of which is pictured above) will cost $150 when it arrives in April. The AC-powered TV antenna can be located anywhere in your home that’s in range of your Wi-Fi network. It then streams the over-the-air channels to a companion app on your entertainment device of choice. The company is promising compatibility with Roku, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, iOS, Android and standard web browsers. Additional platforms could follow. And, of course, there are no pesky cable-like subscription fees.
The AirWave is also equipped with Mohu’s “ClearPix” technology, which is said to offer improved reception by adjusting the hardware based on the signal strength of given channels.
We’re hoping for more info on AirWare when we get a real-world demo later this week. It’ll also be interesting to see how it compares to rival devices like the HD Home Run (and its companion Channels app), as well as the just-announced Sling AirTV.
Mohu AirWave key specs
- Powered antenna that streams live TV to compatible devices
- Compatible apps coming to Roku, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, iOS, Android and standard web browsers
- $150, no subscription fees, US only
Nemonic Release Date, Price and Specs – CNET
The Mangoslab Nemonic is a petite printer for Post-It notes and it’s pretty damn cool. Technically it doesn’t use official Post-It paper, but the sticky notes it prints are very similar.
The Nemonic is a thermal printer that exclusively prints sticky notes.
Josh Miller/CNET
Using its app you can write down notes, use a pre-loaded template, or take a photo on your phone or smart device of choice, and then print it.
The Nemonic is a thermal printer — like the ones that print your receipts at the grocery store — except it only prints sticky notes. It prints really fast — around five seconds — and only in black and white.
The Nemonic comes in four colors.
Josh Miller/CNET
Mangoslab claims that the thermal paper, which costs $4 a roll for about two hundred sticky notes and comes in 5 colors, will last 2 to 5 years without fading away.
The Nemonic is scheduled to go on sale in May or June for around $100 to $120. It’ll be released in the US, Europe and Japan, and is scheduled to hit Australia and UK some time after.
PicoBrew Freestyle Release Date, Price and Specs – CNET
You can drag and drop any part of the recipe.
Josh Miller/CNET
PicoBrew’s PicoPaks just became fully customizable. On display at CES 2017, the PicoBrew Freestyle lets you make a beer exactly to your liking with a few clicks.
PicoPaks are the prepackaged ingredients that work with the push-button brewer — the $800 (converts to roughly $1,100, £650) PicoBrew Pico. Previously, you picked your PicoPak from a list of professionally crafted microbrews. If you think you can do better, now you can.
The PicoBrew Freestyle allows you to make full use of its online interface to select all of your beer’s ingredients — the hops, the malt, even the yeast — then the company will ship you your selection, complete with a customized name.
I spent some time with the system at CES, and Freestyle is delightfully intuitive to use.
The status bar at the top changes as you tinker.
Josh Miller/CNET
You start by picking a base type of beer, you have six options ranging from stout to hoppy IPA. Then, Pico will offer suggestions at each of the next phases, but you can drag and drop various grains and hops to your heart’s desire and completely change the character of your beer. Better yet, as you make changes, the stats of the beer listed at the top of the page change too. You’ll see the beer’s color, bitterness and alcohol level, and all of them alter actively as you tinker, as does the price of the Pak.
PicoBrew obviously limits you to the types of malt and hops they have in stock, but they have a decent selection. The site will also stop you if you try to push the recipe past what the Pico can handle, but you still have a wide range of wiggle room.
The only concern I have with the PicoBrew Freestyle is strangely the Pico itself. We’re putting it through its paces for a review, and it hasn’t impressed me yet. If the Pico ends up winning me over, the Freestyle will be an awesome feature that’s available now and free for PicoBrew’s customers.
2breathe Sleep Inducer Release Date, Price and Specs – CNET
Peaceful slumber could be only a wearable away.
Josh Miller
Insomnia is a cruel but common affliction. Now one company has, quite by chance, found a possible solution to it.
An idea occurred when, having developed the world’s only FDA-approved hypertension treatment wearable, its Israeli creators discovered that it was making users drowsy. And so the 2breathe Sleep Inducer was born.
The device itself is fairly simple. A tracking module sits on an elastic strap worn around the user’s mid-section. As their stomach rises and falls it feeds back the rhythm of their breath to a companion app in real time. The app then formulates a unique melody to synchronise with their breathing, and gradually encourages the user to prolong exhalation in time with the music. As the breaths slows, the wearer should drift into a peaceful slumber.
At least that’s the idea. A demo we received standing up in a noisy hall at CES did not, you might be surprised to hear, conclude with anyone reaching REM state. But thanks to detailed session reports that provide feedback on the process of nodding off, it’s easy to see whether the 2breathe Sleep Inducer is working for you.
If you’re struggling to get to sleep at night and looking for a solution, the good news is that the product is already available through the 2breathe website for $180 (converts to AU$250, £150). For peace of mind, it also comes with a 60-day money back guarantee.
The next step for the company is to introduce a pillow topper with built-in speakers later this year, designed for those who want to listen to lullabies without disturbing their partners.
Emotech Olly Release Date, Price and Specs – CNET
There are smart home hubs and there are smart home robots, but where does the dividing line fall?
The key is a combination of personality, movement and interaction, according to Hongbin Zhuang, the London-based founder of social robot Olly.
Pointing to two Olly robots sitting side by side in Emotech’s booth at CES Unveiled, Zhuang explains that where one Olly is whizzing around energetically responding to anyone and everyone who engages with it, its neighbour is more calm and reserved — it only speaks when spoken to.
This is the result of the robot’s deep-learning capabilities that mean as your Olly gets to know you and your daily routines over time, it will evolve to become more like you and respond to the patterns of your life.
When it comes to what the robot can actually do, it is similar to Amazon’s Echo or Google Home. It can respond to your questions by looking up information for you, and can control all of your smart devices and internet-connected products you may have around your home. Where it differs from its rivals is in its ability to be proactive. It could predict whether you might want to listen to music when you get home from work for example, as well as what you might like that music to be.
The original prototype of Emotech’s robot featured a single eye, but testing suggested that while some users loved this feature, others did not. Now, Olly is a black donut that rises to greet you when you wake it and swivels to face you when you address it. It responds not just with voice, but with mesmeric light patterns that help it express itself.
The Olly we encountered at CES was still in prototype format, but following further user testing this spring, it should be available to buy later this year.
Your next phone may switch to facial recognition when you’re wearing gloves
Fingerprint and iris scanning in one, thanks to Synaptics.
One of the most important companies you may not know about just made an important, and impressive, announcement at CES 2017.
Synaptics, purveyor of laptop trackpads and smartphone fingerprint sensors, announced that it is partnering with facial biometrics provider KeyLemon to allow for simultaneous multimodal smartphone security in future handsets. Says Synaptics:
The multi-factor fusion engine allows users to choose a modality based on preference, or one that is most convenient to environmental conditions such as when wearing gloves. Improved security is achieved by requiring multiple-modes of authentication for financial transactions or other sensitive applications.
In other words, your next phone may know that, when it’s cold out and you’re wearing gloves, facial recognition is the best method for unlocking your phone.
The Galaxy Note 7 used iris scanning when the phone was released in late 2016, but the integration was finicky and prone to failing. It’s unclear whether this turnkey solution will be any more robust, but given that we likely won’t see this multi-factor technology until the middle of this year, it’s possible that just by maturity alone it will be more reliable.
We’ll have to wait and see.
Samsung enters the era of QLED TV, amazing 2017 models revealed
Samsung has continued to develop its Quantum Dot technology for its 2017 TV range rather than compete in the OLED sector, highlighting the 100 per cent colour volume of its new picture tech – a first for the manufacturer’s televisions – and significantly higher brightness.
The viewing angle has also been improved upon, it claims, something OLED has been traditionally great at and LED less so.
It calls the new tech QLED.
As is the norm for Samsung these days, there will be flat and curved models in different screen sizes and at different price points – although release dates and pricing is yet to be revealed.
- CES 2017: All the announcements, TVs, laptops and more from the show
- Best TVs of CES 2017: What to expect
Full specifications are also still forthcoming, although it does have a peak brightness of between 1,500 to 2,000 nits. All sets are naturally 4K Ultra HD and have extended smart functionality and apps.
Samsung
Other major features include picture frame-like wall mounting and only one cable socket on the TV itself, with a separate media box being connected through a single optical cable.
Samsung has also linked the new TV range with its Smart View app for Android and iOS, which can be used as a separate smart remote control. It can even be used as a game controller.
The TV is being shown at CES 2017 and we’ll be getting a closer look very soon.
Orosound’s ‘noise-managing’ earphones hush unwanted sounds
Sometimes it’s nice to be able to hear clearly in a crowded and noisy environment. It can be extremely difficult to communicate with someone when you can’t pick up every word they’re saying. The chaos of a CES event is a prime example. Orosound is looking to lend a hand helping you hear better in noisy situations with its wireless Tilde earphones.
The company calls the headset a “nose management” system that uses active noise cancellation to hush background noise and focus in on the voice of the person you’re talking with. The level at which you’re able to turn down the sounds of the environment you’re in is easily adjusted with a slider up to 30 decibels. There’s also a directional mode that only allows you to hear the voice of the person standing directly in front of you. And yes, you can use the Tilde just like a regular set of wireless earbuds to play music and take calls. When doing so, that noise reduction can still help block out the world around you.
I tried the Tilde here at CES, a fitting place to test a product that claims to cut down unwanted noise. While the tech did do just that, it also noticeably muffled the voice of the person who was speaking. Right now it’s not perfect, but if the company can fine-tune the audio before it ships the final version, this could useful for people working in noisy offices or places where if can be difficult to hear a conversation. Orosound’s Tilde earphones debuted on Kickstarter in October and the company plans to ship units to backers in May. For people who didn’t contribute funds to the cause, the device will be available this summer for $349.
Mona Lalwani contributed to this report.
Click here to catch up on the latest news from CES 2017.
Mohu teases its wireless TV antenna
One thing about cord-cutting and switching to antenna-delivered TV is that for some people, they just can’t get good signal where their TV is. Mohu’s new AirWave antenna solves that by making it wireless. The $150 device just need to plug into power so that it can catch TV broadcasts, transcode them and stream the video via WiFi to its apps on platforms like Apple TV, Roku, Fire TV, iOS, Android or web browser.
We couldn’t get all of the details tonight at the CES Unveiled event, but it should hit shelves in the spring.
Click here to catch up on the latest news from CES 2017.
Source: Mohu
The whole point of this wearable is to put you to sleep
2breathe’s sleep inducer is a companion app, wearable and lovely panpipe melody maker. While the company comes from a background in blood pressure lowering devices, its new bedtime wearable is all about putting you to sleep — and keeping you snoozing. (That’s apparently pretty important.)
The wearable, which attaches around your waist, picks up on your breathing and transmits your respiration patterns to your smartphone — which is next to your bed, right? Your phone then gives out guidance in the form of smooth, lilting melodic tones to prolong exhalation and reduce brain activity and, thus, make you sleepy.
The app keeps a record of your nightly sleeping patterns, which are naturally tied to your breathing. The idea for the gadget came from the fact that the company’s blood pressure reducing device was inadvertently improving the sleep for around 90 percent of users — and putting users to sleep before they could benefit from the blood pressure-reducing part. The team decided to adopt these breathing algorithms and aim them precisely at improving sleep.
The app offers two functions: inducing sleep, like I described above, and maintaining sleep, which was apparently the biggest demand from testers when the company tried out the product in Japan. The company is also working on a Bluetooth pillow speaker to ensure your karmic tones for breathing guidance aren’t annoying your partner in bed.
The Sleep Inducer is on sale now on Amazon, priced at $180.
Click here to catch up on the latest news from CES 2017.
Source: 2Breathe
