Amazon has announced that the Kindle 2 has now been given native PDF support, removing the annoying conversion process formerly necessary to convert PDFs to Kindle formats for playback.
The firmware update will be available “soon” and will install wirelessly when you connect to the Internet from your device. Users can email PDFs to their Kindle address or manually load them via USB transfer.
Just as importantly, Amazon says the firmware update will significantly update the Kindle 2’s battery life by up to 85 percent when connected to wireless. Previously, users had about 4 days of battery life with wireless enabled. That has been bumped up to a week.
The original Kindle should also be getting the PDF support.
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One month after announcing its release in Europe, Harman Kardon has announced it will release its first Blu-ray player, dubbed the BDP-1, in North America as well.
The BDP-1 will also have “advanced audio codec support and will play back 1080/24p videos without pulldown conversion.” A USB slot allows for JPEG and DivX playback from flash drives.
Harman Kardon is known mainly for its home theater A/V products but has been expanding of late. It will support MP3, WMA, LPCM, Dolby Digital, Dolby TrueHD, DTS, and DTS-HD Master Audio audio formats.
A view of the player shows that it has HDMI 1.3a connectors, as well as component and RCA video outputs, an Ethernet jack, coaxial and optical audio outputs and analog audio output.
The player will hit shelves during June with a price tag of $500 USD.
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LG has begun shipping its high end BD390 Blu-ray player this week, with a price tag of $400 USD.
The player is the first of its kind to playback DivX videos at full 1080p, whether it is burned to a DVD or being played from a flash drive.
Other nice specs the player has is Wi-Fi, 1GB internal storage and Blu-ray BD-Live compatibility. The BD390 also has built-in Netflix and YouTube video streaming features.
The player supports 7.1-channel Dolby TrueHD and DTS HD Master Audio surround, and includes native 24 fps video without pulldown conversion.
