Digital Photography Review has posted what is probably the best and certainly most thorough review of the Canon EOS 30D digital SLR camera. 

Pros:

• Excellent output
• Excellent sensitivity
• Great battery life
• Large 2.3 inch LCD display

Cons:

• Poor white balance under incandescent light
• The compact flash door issues still remain
• ISO value not displayed all the time

DPreview.com

[tag]Canon[/tag] have released firmware updates for the following digital cameras:

• [tag]EOS 5D[/tag] – Fixes a Picture Style issue and solves compatibility with EF 85mm f1/.2L and Speedlite 580EX.  Here.
• [tag]EOS-1D Mark II N[/tag] – Fixes a Picture Style issue and fixes an over-exposure issue when using the Focusing Screen Ex-S.  Here.
• [tag]EOS 30D[/tag] – Fixes a Chinese language display issue.  Here.

Region encoding for [tag]PlayStation[/tag] will be a thing of the past when the [tag]PlayStation 3[/tag] hits the shelves as Sony have decided to make it [tag]region-free[/tag].

IGN is reporting that piracy is one reason for this – many owners add a “mod” chip to their player to allow it to play games from different regions, now with the [tag]PS3[/tag], there will be no need for this.

However, as the article explains, there are still technical reasons why games from one region might still not work in other regions, but this is technical rather than an imposed restriction.

The [tag]Gigabyte GN-BT06T[/tag] [tag]Bluetooth Media Adapter[/tag] (this is a link to the FCC – no info on it from Gigabyte yet) looks like a real winning device – This is a two-way Bluetooth media hub that can take music from your audio player and output it to Bluetooth speakers or take music from your Bluetooth-enabled computer and output it to a stereo.

Sweet!

Sony have confirmed that the [tag]PlayStation 3[/tag] will ship with a 60GB hard drive which will be upgradable.  The ends speculation that the drive would be optional.  All [tag]PS3[/tag] games will be designed to take advantage of this internal drive.

PS3 News

Yep, you read that right – 65–inch!  Today Sharp have announced that the largest professional LCD monitor will be available this June.

The [tag]PN-655[/tag] features 1920 x 1080, two megapixel high-definition resolution.  The PN-655 contains a four-wavelength spectrum, cold-cathode fluorescent backlight that provides an enhanced color spectrum. It also features Bright Pixel Elimination culls “stuck-on” white pixels, to make a failed pixel “invisible” to the viewer.  Response time is listed as less than 6ms.

The price has not yet been fixed (if you have to ask the price, this isn’t for you!).

E-Ten have announced a GPS, DMB and DAB radio PMP.

Specification include:

• Windows CE 5.0
• 3.5-inch, 320 x 240 LCD touchscreen
• 400MHz Samsung 2440 processor
• Bluetooth 2.0
• 64MB RAM
• 128MB flash
• Lithium polymer 1300 mAh battery
• MiniSD expansion
• miniUSB connector
• MP3 player
• Video player
• DMB television
• DAB radio

No pricing or availability information yet.

Here’s a translated rundown of the device from Gadgetzone.nl.

Sony has announced that the launch of the much awaited [tag]PlayStation 3[/tag] ([tag]PS3[/tag]) games console has been delayed until November.

This delay has been caused by technical issues to do with the device’s [tag]Blu-ray[/tag] drive – according to Sony’s games chief Ken [tag]Kutaragi[/tag] [tag]Sony[/tag] are still finalizing agreements on the disc copy protection technology that the console will use.

This was bad news for Sony and their stock prices dropped 1.8% on the news – an indication that investors were just as eager as the gaming fans to see the console launched.

More details are emerging about [tag]Microsoft[/tag] [tag]Origami[/tag].

So, what is Origami?  It’s an [tag]ultra-mobile PC[/tag] (get used to a new abbreviation [tag]UMPC[/tag]). 

Here’s what else we know:

• It will run Windows applications
• Specialized version of applications will appear (this makes sense)
• Touch screen
• CPU power in the 1GHz range initially
• Drives range from 30GB to 120GB
• All will be Tablet Edition and come with a stylus
• USB/VGA ports
• The device runs cool and quiet
• Native resolution of 800×480
• Expect WiFi, Bluetooth, Ethernet, media reader
• No GPS
• Will support Vista
• No word on price

Sapphire Technology has just issued a press release confirming that they will be the first company to offer [tag]HDMI[/tag] compatible graphics card.

The card, [tag]RADEON X1600Pro[/tag], is the first [tag]HDMI-HDCP[/tag] graphics card. The new card, from Sapphire, is an RADEON X1600Pro.

Here are some preliminary details:

• Clock – 500MHz
• Shader units – 12
• Memory clock – 800MHz GDDR3
• Memory interface – 128-bit
• Memory support – 128MB
• Interface – PCI Express
• Outputs – VGA/HDMI
• Max 3D res (HDMI) – 1920×1080
• Max 3D (VGA) – 2048×1536

The RADEON X1600Pro is expected out in April.

For more details read the Sapphire Technology press release.