Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Award from DigitalCameraInfo: Samsung TL34HD


The DigitalCameraInfo selected Samsung TL34HD digital camcorder as one of the Select Awards 2008.

Here is the link for more information:
http://www.digitalcamerainfo.com/content/2008-Select-Awards-19457.htm


Review: Samsung Haptic YP-P3 MP3 Digital Player


Portable Digital MP3 Player Product Review: Samsung Haptic YP-P3

Samsung is ready to launch a new stylish MP3 player called YP-P3. The nickname of the YP-P3 player is “Haptic”. Haptic means “touching” in Greek. The concept of Haptic is that by touching the player, users can feel the vibration of the player. Actually, it did. I was quite surprised when I touched the LCD screen. I felt a little vibration and thought there was a gap between the top and bottom cases. The vibration feature must be an attraction point. As you can see by the name of the player, P3 is the next generation of P2. The design of P3 is pretty much similar to P2 but it is much more stylish and user friendly. Some features of P3 that I like are the built-in speaker and TTS (Text to Speech) feature in the Text and Datacast menu.

Now, let’s explore P3.


Package


The gift package is a well designed tiny box as for the previous products. It includes the YP-P3 player, USB data cable, earphones, Installation CD and a warrantee card.


Appearance and Design

P3 is slim and thin. The dimension is 102 x 52 x 9.9mm and 96 grams. The metal body, tempered glass and the hairline on the back make P3 dandy and valuable. The 3” TFT 16:9 wide QVGA touch screen is large enough to navigate all necessary information, and to display vivid images through 16M colors.

The top side is composed of the Power/Hold, Volume up, Volume down buttons, and built-in speaker. The speaker is very useful when using the player without earphones. There is no need to purchase additional speakers.

The bottom side has the Reset/Microphone hole, 24-pin port for USB data transfer and charging, and 3.5 pie earphone connection port. There is no button on the left and right sides.

Just below the touch screen LCD on the front panel, there is so called ‘mini-player touch area’ which displays the mini-player slide horizontally.



Attractive Main Menu

The desktop is composed of the main menu screens. The icons on the main menu are colorful, clean and well organized. The user interface is more intelligent and friendly than previous models.


The memo function works just like Post-It. Some important information like meeting schedules can be written in the Memo page. The brightness of the LCD can be also adjusted directly by touching the light bulb.

To change the screen, the ‘EmoTure’ feature does it all. EmoTure is a shortened word for emotional gesture. EmoTure offers various ways to communicate with the touch screen by tapping, flicking and dragging.



DNSe 3.0 Support

DNSe 3.0 stands for Digital Natural Sound Engine that Samsung developed recently. DNSe 3.0 tried to recover the original sound quality as much as possible. During the encoding process to make MP3 files from an audio CD, the sound quality is reduced. In order to restore the missing sound to as much as the original sound quality, Samsung developed DNSe 3.0 and adapted to the current MP3 players.


VibeWoofer Effect


One of the newest features is VibeWoofer. Some cellular phones have similar feature to VibeWoofer but P3 would be the first MP3 player implementing the VibeWoofer feature. Once it is enabled, P3 vibrates while music is being played, or when operating buttons.


Music Menu


Music can be found in the File Browser and Music menus. The lyric of music can be displayed on the screen once the lyric is added to the music file using the EmoDio software provided by Samsung.


Picture Menu


Just like recent ordinary MP3 players, P3 supports photo files in JPEG, PNG and BMP format. Since the LCD provides 16M colors, the images are much vivid and clear.


Video Support


The video CODECs that P3 can support are MPEG4 (AVI, SVI), H.264 (M4V), and WMV9 (WMV). I have tried some AVI and WMV files, but P3 could not play them. Those files must have unsupported CODECs. In such case, I used Samsung’s music management software called “EmoDio”. Using EmoDio, video files were automatically converted to SVI format which is the Samsung’s video file format to play from P3.


TTS and Text/Datacast Support


Text and Datacast are very useful features. Both of them display text information. Using the EmoDio software, the Datacast feature automatically receives interesting and recent news from the WEB, Blog, NEWS, and UCC sites without having visited the sites. I could enjoy reading the updated information through P3 instead of reading the actual newspapers. The texts can be displayed vertically or horizontally. Since multitasking is provided by P3, I could listen to the music while reading the text. In addition to reading the texts, the EmoDio provides TTS which stands for Text to Speech. Enabling TTS on, the text files or DataCast files are converted into voice files and transferred to P3. This means I could listen to the voice files instead of reading texts.


Flash and Subway Support


The Flash player supports SWF files. Metronome is a sample included in P3. The manual mentioned that some SWF files are not supported. But as far as I tested, P3 could successfully play all the SWF files I had. The worldwide subway maps should be helpful when taking subways.


FM Radio, Calculator, Dictionary and Voce Recording


FM radio is a must feature for MP3 players. The auto scanning and preset modes are convenient to get favorite channels. While listening to FM radio, the FM channel can be recorded as well. Other than FM radio,

Voice recording is another must feature. When having a conversation or lecture, the voice recording feature will provide us to memorize the past.

P3 provides a calculator. When calculating numbers, this is a useful one.

The dictionary provided in P3 is English-English, English-Korean and Korean-English. The dictionary feature might be helpful for learning English and Korean


Built-In Speaker


The 0.8Watt speaker is very useful. Although the speaker supports only mono sound, the sound quality was good and it provided me a freedom from bothersome wires.


Bluetooth 2.1


The Bluetooth 2.1 feature now supports various functions. P3 works great with the Bluetooth.

File Transfer: Using the Bluetooth feature, we can send photos, phone book, and music files without wires.

Wireless Music: We can listen to the music on Bluetooth supported audio systems like car stereo system, headphones or home theater systems.

Bluetooth Games: P3 can play wireless games with other P3s.

Hands Free: Without touching the mobile phones, P3 can receive and make calls.
The manual specified some mobile phones that work with P3. They are:

Samsung: SPH-C3250, SPH-W2700, SPH-V7400, SPH-V6900, SCh-W270, SPH-B5600, SPH-B3200, SGH-X828, SGH-1718, SGH-E908, SGH-U608
LG: LG-KH1000, LG-KV2400, LG-KG90, LG-KG77
SKY: IM-U130
NOKIA: N72
PHILIPS: S900
MOTOROLA: Z3


Games


There are several games that P3 provides. They are Bubble Bang, Bubble Smile, World Car Puzzle, Alggagi, Omok2, PowPow, Sudoku Champ. A number of games are included as new MP3 models are developed.


Leather Pouch (Optional)


The leather pouch above is an optional product. It is not included in the package and it has not been launched on the market yet. The pouch is quite solid and has a magnetic button. It should protect P3 from damage.


Menu Tree


Above is the screen shot of the menu structure from the manual. The menu tree simply shows the structure of P3.


Specification

Audio Format:
MPEG1/2/2.5 Layer 3 (8kbps~320kbps, 22KHz~48KHz)
WMA (8kbps~320kbps, 8KHz~48KHz)
OGG (Q0~Q10)
FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec)
AAC-LC (16kbps~256kbps, 8kHz~48kHz)
AAC-Plus (16kbps~256kbps, 16kHz~44.1kHz)
Enhanced-AAC-Plus (16kbps~56kbps, 32kHz~44.1kHz)

Video Format:
AVI/SVI: MPEG-4 Video (480x272) Simple Profile,
MP3 Audio ( 44.1KHz, 128kbps),
WMV: WMV9 Video (480x272, Max bitrate 860kbps)
MP4: H.264/AVC Video (480x272) Baseline Profile @ Level 1.3, AAC/AAC+ Audio

Image Format:
JPG (Baseline, Progressive), BMP (Max 32bit), PNG, GIF(89a/87a)

Flash: SWF (Flash Player 8.0 or lover, ActionScript 2.0 or lower)

Number of Files: Max. 10,000 (including 4,000 music files)
Number of Folders: Max. 10,000 (including files)


Memory: 4GB/8GB/16GB/32GB
Color: Black/Silver
Dimension (WxDxH): 52.7mm x 102mm x 9.9mm
Weight: 96gram
Case: Tempered Glass, Plastic, Aluminum
LCD: 3” TFT LCD QVGA

Earphone: 20mW/Ch. (at 16 ohm)
Frequency Range: 20Hz~20KHz
Noise to Ratio: 89dB with 20kHz LPF (based on 1kHz 0dB)

Playback Time: Audio: Max. 30Hrs (MP3 at 128kbps, volume at 15, LCD off, and normal sound effect)
Video: Max. 5Hrs (brightness at 5, volume at 15, and normal sound effect)

FM Frequency: 87.5~108.0MHz
FM T.H.D.: 0.8%
FM Signal to Noise Ratio: 45dB
FM Useable Sensitivity: 5dBu

Speaker Power Output: 0.8W Mono
Speaker Impedance: 8 ohm
Speaker Frequency Range: 400Hz~20kHz

Battery Type: 610mAh / DC 3.7V


Pros

Improved User Interface
VibWoofer: A little vibration makes P3 feel alive
Built-in Speaker
Large 3”: TFT LCD
Wonderful DNSe 3.0 sound quality
Advanced Multimedia Technology: Allow users to listen to music and FM radio, view the music lyric, pictures and text, play video files.
Stylish & modern design: very thin and compact, vivid color & nice finish
Long playback time
FM recording and Datacast features
Various games
Dictionary and subway
Bluetooth
Future firmware upgrades for improving functionality

Cons

Comparing to Apple’s iPod Touch, P3 is much smaller than iPod Touch. However, P3 itself seems to be a little longer compared to its width.


Conclusion
P3 is a good looking, smart and reliable product, and provides a lot of fun including various games. Samsung’s own technology DNSe 3.0 delivered rich sound. I enjoyed watching videos and Flash contents, listening to FM radio and TTS contents from Datacast and Text, reading the Datacast and Text contents, etc. P3 should be the improved next generation of P2 for sure.

Monday, December 22, 2008

Reviewed by CameraTown: Samsung TL34HD




The Cameratown.com reviewed Samsung TL34HD digital camera as follows:





Talk in Motion Podcast - Samsung TL34 HD Review from Ron Risman on Vimeo.

This Talk in Motion podcast was entirely shot with the Samsung TL34 HD digital camera, the same camera we're reviewing here. The camera shoots 14.7-megapixel stills and 720p video. Editing was done using Pinnacle Studio Plus Version 12 enhanced. The editing software was used to trim the length, add PIP overlays, and titles. The audio and video are as was recorded with the camera.

You may also click the following link for more information:

http://www.cameratown.com/reviews/samsung_tl34hd/index.cfm/hurl/id%7C4581

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Reviewed by Geek.com: Samsung TL34HD Digital Camera

The Geek.com reviewed Samsung TL34HD digital camera.
The review is as follows:


Before the release of Samsung’s NV series their digital cameras were notoriously bad. Being a company that is almost always a safe option to purchase from, regardless of the product, the NV series was a great release because finally Samsung had a few solid cameras that could compete with products from Nikon and Canon. Samsung’s TL34HD is a continuation of the NV series and uses the same basic design and philosophies, but brings along some serious upgrades.




You may get more information from http://www.geek.com/articles/gadgets/review-samsung-tl34hd-digital-camera-2008129/


Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Reviewed by IT Preview: Samsung NV100HD


The IT Preview reviewed Samsung NV100HD digital camera.
The summary follows.

When your local pub starts advertising 'Credit Crunch Lunches' (it's true!), you know times are hard. But maybe you're not quite ready to give up on life's little luxuries just yet? Maybe you still hanker after a state-of-the-art metal-bodied 14.7-megapixel touch-screen compact with an HD movie mode? Co-incidentally, that's just what Samsung's £170 NV100HD has to offer.


More information is at http://itpreview.blogspot.com/2008/11/samsung-nv100hd-review.html


Monday, December 15, 2008

Review: Samsung SC-MX20L


The ctv.ca in Canada listed some leading electronics in its site.
Samsung's SC-MX20l is listed as one of them and here is the story about it.


SAMSUNG SC-MX20L
$300


The SC-MX20L is a more traditionally designed camcorder, smaller and lighter than some other models we've seen, with a flip-out, pivoting display screen and an adjustable strap to help you hold the camera with one hand. It's not an HD camcorder - resolution is 640-by-480 - but it's sold as YouTube-friendly, with a USB cable and software to help with uploading videos. Its zoom capability, rated at 34x, considerably outdoes the pocket models, and it records video to an SD card.

Friday, December 12, 2008

Reviewed by MacWorld: Samsung NV11 Digital Camera


The Macworld.com reviewed Samsung's NV11 digital camera.

The review is as follows:

Our favorite point-and-shoot cameras
The Samsung NV11 () impresses with its ability to produce superior color quality that’s rarely seen in a point-and-shoot camera. Mix in superb battery life, a nice selection of shooting modes and manual controls, and an easy-to-use interface, and you have a great camera to take with you wherever you go. You will need to install the
DivX Player for Mac or the Perian QuickTime plug-in if you want to play the NV11's recorded video. Read our full review. [$350 (Get best current price); Samsung]


To continue, click http://www.macworld.com/article/137117/2008/11/buyingguide_cameras.html

Reviewed by Steve's DigiCams: Samsung TL34HD Digital Camera



The Steve's DigiCams reviewed Samsung's TL34HD digital camera.

Here is the Steve's Conclusion.

The Samsung TL34HD is the first model we have reviewed in this series, and is among many of the 14.7-megapixel digicams that are now readily available, like the Canon Powershot SD990 IS and Panasonic Lumix FX150. This stylish and compact camera includes some very high-end features, like the 14.7-megapixel imager, high resolution (460K pixels) 3.0-inch Touch screen LCD, Samsung's DRIM Engine image processor, Schneider-Kreuznach 3.6x optical zoom lens, automatic Pop-up flash, Dual Image stabilization (OIS + High ISO), and MPEG4 HD movies at 1280x720 (30fps) with stereo sound to name a few.


Here is more at
http://www.steves-digicams.com/2008_reviews/samsung_tl34_pg5.html


Thursday, December 11, 2008

Reviewed by TechWare: Samsung L210 Digital Camera


TechwareLabs reviewed Samsung's L210 digital camera.
Here is the information.

In today's high tech digital world, everyone has one of those new fangled digital cameras. The days of running into the dark room or using that nifty old polariod are few and far between. With that being said, it's important to understand the difference between joe schmoe's dinky camera and Samsung's new L210! Boasting the slogan "Style Slimmed to perfection," the L210 promises an image of sophistication. Although it may not look like much, don't let its business card size fool you. The L210 has some awesome user-friendly features that are sure to capture your attention. Let's take a closer look at what the L210 is packin'!



Awards by PCWorld: Samsung SC-MX20c


The PCWorld selected top HD camcorders in the world. Samsung's SC-MX20C received the 6th positon.

This is the screeshot.



Monday, December 8, 2008

Friday, December 5, 2008

Article: Samsung SC-MX20L


'The Globe and Mail' magazine covered Samsung's SC-MX20L digital camcorder in December issue.


Here is the story about MX20L.


The price is $300.


The SC-MX20L is a more traditionally designed camcorder, smaller and lighter than some other models we've seen, with a flip-out, pivoting display screen and an adjustable strap to help you hold the camera with one hand. It's not an HD camcorder - resolution is 640-by-480 - but it's sold as YouTube-friendly, with a USB cable and software to help with uploading videos. Its zoom capability, rated at 34x, considerably outdoes the pocket models, and it records video to an SD card.



Thursday, December 4, 2008

Review: Samsung Digital Camera VLUU-NV9

A review of the Samsung digital camera VLUU-NV9 has been translated in English. The original link is at http://xenix.egloos.com/1835175

Here is the digital camera adding analogue emotion, Samsung VLUU NV9 review.


A few years ago, there was prediction that compact digital camera market would be dead, because of cell phone cameras, so DSLR and cell phone camera would remain. However, looking at compact digital cameras, recently, it’s really surprising. With continuously improved quality and additional functions DSLR can have, it always changes.The VLUU NV9 Samsung has released is also one of them. It has not only 10.2M pixel, Dual IS, optical and 5x zoom, but also MP3 playback, video, and analogue emotion. Let’s take a look at the Samsung Vluu NV9 analogue emotion added.
Design


It’s the front of the NV9. I can see the flash and lens on the top. Lens is iris 3.7-4.9 and focus length f=6.8-3.4mm lens. As optical 5x zoom, considering the small body size, the zoom is quite good.




The most impressive thing at the back is the 2.7 inch QVGA screen. At the right side, I can see zoom switch, and at the bottom, control buttons.




At the side, there’s a strap ring, charger/sink, and earphone port.


At the bottom, there’s a place for battery and a hole for tripod. SD memory is used.



It’s the top which is the point of the NV9. From the left, power button, battery&memory status, shutter, and function dial are located.



Most of all, the battery & memory status reminds me of car gauge design, and was praised as an ‘analog in digital’. It’s very useful, because you can see battery and memory in a glance of an eye.




It’s common type function dial, but there are some icons not familiar. I’m going to mention again at the function, but Dual IS and beauty shot catch my eyes.
 

Packaging


It’s common paper box type packaging.



The NV9 body, manual, install CD, AV cable, earphone, neck line, and sink/charge cable are included.



Because the adapter is a built-in USB port type, it can be used for not only the NV9, but also MP3 players, cell phone, pmp, etc. which can be rechargeable with USB.



The sink/charge cable looks like a new TTA 20 pin connector for cell phones, and I put it in a cell phone, but it’s not.


It’s AV cable which can be connected to a TV. It’s peculiar that it has only voice cable. It looks like to be connected as a mono.



Because it supports multimedia functions such as MP3, video playback, earphone is included for back package. It’s a little unsatisfactory that earphone type is not a standard 3.5pi, but 20 pin connector type, so the bundle earphone can only be used.

Special function



In the NV9 dial, there are some icons I haven’t seen from other digital cameras. The first thing is the ‘Shooting guide’ as an book icon.


It’s a ‘help’ function which summarize tips beginners easily miss. As you can see on the screen, they are various difficulties which beginners can have, and sorted by situation such as ‘function when focus is wrong’, ‘function when a picture is shaken’, and ‘function for brightness adjustment’, so it’s easy to follow.


Shape of hand shaking written DUAL is ‘Dual IS’ function


As the NV9 has ‘OIS (Optical Image stabilizer)’, when pushing this button, you can use this function. But in the dark place and when taking a zoom shot, pictures are shaken a lot.


At that time, setting the dial on ‘Dual IS’, it minimize the shake with OIS and DIS at the same time.

IS is not applied on the left picture, while IS is applied on the right picture. (Centro Crop)



The biggest feature of the NV9 is a convergence digital camera which provides MP3, PMP, and text functions. As a compact size digital camera, it supports those functions, so I don’t have to carry separate MP3 player or something. It makes my pocket lighter.


It’s not as good as a real player, but most basic functions of MP3 and PMP are supported, I don’t think it’s inconvenient. Also, multi-tasking is also supported, so you can take a picture with listening to music. But, it’s a little inconvenient that we have to make ‘PMP’ folder for video, and ‘MP3’ folder for music in the SD card.



The 5 small holes next to the power button are built in speaker.


For video, it supports .sdc, and converting program is provided. (Integrated codec is have to be installed to convert, and .sdc video uses Xvid (MPEG-4) and MPEG 2Ch. * Converting speed is different by the CPU. Using Intel Core 2 Quad Q9300 CPU, it took 1/5 of playing time.)



The NV9 has various functions for ‘Human shot’ One of them is the beauty shot function. When taking a picture with this mode, it deletes the acne or something on the face. Not knowing the photoshot, having acne on your face doesn’t matter. Just taking a shot with the beauty shot, most people will be pretty and white.

Other functions


Optical 5x zoom is supported. Left side is a normal picture, and the right side was take by 5x optical zoom.


It can be regarded as a optimized camera for human shot, and it supports various functions about human shot. Other than the beauty shot, blink detection which prevent blink by taking continuous shot, smile shot, and face recognition focus function are supported.



For a self shot, Self guide function makes sound when your face gets into the screen exactly, and it helps your self shot.


Other than the self timer taking 10 sec after pushing a shutter, it supports ‘Motion timer’ function. It takes a picture, when all objects stop, so it’s useful, when taking a group shot.

General Review
I use DSLR much rather than a compact digital camera, and as a so-called ‘Canon-fan’, have some preference for a certain maker. Therefore, when I took this product, I got some prejudice ‘Samsung camera is not that good.’. But, after using the product for a few days, that prejudice was gone.
That’s because the performance of compact digital cameras has flattened not ‘Samsung camera technology is now world level’. This small sensor has 10M pixel. It’s meaningless to argue over the quality. Considering the purpose and major customers of compact digital cameras, it’s more.That’s why we focus on price, design, and additional function, and considering that, I think the NV9 is on the advantageous place.


Current price late 200 thousand won, and additional functions such as neat design with analog gauge, shooting guide, beauty shot, self guide, blink detection are attractive.
Besides, the convergence with MP3, PMP, and text viewer functions looking a little reckless seems useful when thinking of people using a cell phone as an MP3 player.
Of course, there are some inconvenience such some delay of 0.2-0.5 sec on image processing, and failure when focusing, but they are bearable to use.
I recommend this camera to those who want ‘interesting various functions’, ‘Human shot’, and ‘comfortably taking a picture in life without thinking too much’