Now was a brand of electronics by Hasbro through Tiger Electronics that specializes in multimedia. Its most popular brand was the VideoNow, which was a personal videodisc player for children who wanted to watch their favorite shows on the go. The device was introduced in 2003, and as it sold well, Tiger began to experiment with other Now brands. The Now brand was discontinued by late 2007, after the VideoNow Color FX and TVNow left store shelves.
The first, and most popular, line of "Now" products by Tiger Electronics was introduced in 2003, the VideoNow was a franchise of portable video players for children to watch their favorite shows on the go. The systems use discs called PVDs (which stands for Personal Video Disc), which can store about 30 minutes of video, [1] the length of an average TV show with commercials (a typical TV episode is about 20–23 minutes without them), so each PVD contains only one episode, with trailers at the end to use the leftover time on most PVDs, including Nickelodeon PVDs. Video data is stored on the left audio channel with audio on the right channel, thus making it impossible to achieve stereo sound on the system, which only plays in black and white. The video plays at 15fps. Most of the shows were from Nickelodeon, such as SpongeBob SquarePants and The Fairly OddParents , [2] and later they released shows from Cartoon Network, such as Ed, Edd n Eddy and Dexter's Laboratory , Disney only mostly released episodes of America’s Funniest Home Videos and one Hannah Montana music video. A small amount of movies were also released on the system, but due to the limited space on a PVD, said movies would have to be released on at least three discs, depending on the length of said film.
The first VideoNow was released in October 2003 as a black and white media player, and by 2004, the VideoNow Color was introduced as a more colorized version of the system. In 2005, two new VideoNow systems were introduced; one called the "VideoNow Jr.", made for preschoolers through Playskool that also contains discs that were more flexible and rubbery. [3] Another called the "VideoNow XP", that's designed to resemble the Nintendo Game Boy Advance SP, and included interactive features. [3]
By 2006, the fifth and final of the original VideoNow Players was introduced as the "VideoNow Color FX"; a more translucent version of the VideoNow Color.
Hasbro also produced editing software for creating custom VideoNow Color PVDs called the VideoNow Media Wizard in 2005, which came with blank PVD media. Also included was the VCamNow, a VideoNow-branded camcorder that came with a copy of the Media Wizard.
The PlayItNow was a Digital Music Recorder launched in 2004 that also functions as a game console. It included an auxiliary port that allows users to record audio, including music, and they'll listen to it wherever they go, semi-similar to the HitClips. The device also came with licensed games from Atari, as usually 5 games were included, such as Pong, Circus Atari, Adventure, Battlezone, and Lunar Lander. Although, some PlayItNow devices also included another Atari game called Wayniak.
The ChatNow is a mobile phone-like walkie-talkie developed by Hasbro's Tiger Electronics division for the preteen market, as part of the Now brand of consumer products. [4] It includes simple digital photography and text message functionality and transmits using the Family Radio Service UHF radio band. [5] It has limited compatibility with other FRS gear; in particular, it is not compatible with CTCSS or DCS signals commonly used on standard FRS gear.
ChatNow differs from standard walkie-talkies by having a 10-digit "Buddy number" (ex.0794020300), allowing users to communicate with specific other users in a telephone-like manner; to make text messaging easier, the ChatNow units provide limited buddy list capability. There is a limited digital camera built into the device as well, and the unit can store up to 30 black and white pictures.
The units were sold in pairs, [4] and came in both flip phone and slide-out configurations. Hasbro also manufactured add-ons and carrying cases for the line, including an antenna which allowed it to pick up FM radio.
Originally released in 2005 as the VuGo, the TVNow was a personal handheld DVR player from 2006 to 2007, published by Hasbro under Tiger Electronics, and was the last product Tiger released under the "Now" brand of personal devices for kids, following the VideoNow, the PlayItNow, the VCamNow, and the ChatNow. Advertised as a portable video recorder, the TVNow allows kids to connect to a DVD player, cable box, satellite receiver, VCR, or TV, so that they can record and play back their favorite shows on the go. It has a 128MB Built-in Memory, holds up to 1 hour of video, and store stuff on SD cards. It also has a built in MP3 player. The package dimensions up to 9.1 x 7 x 3 inches, weighs 1.35 pounds, and its ASIN is B000M6CIJI. [6]
The Atari Lynx is a 16-bit fourth-generation hand-held game console released by Atari Corporation in September 1989 in North America and 1990 in Europe and Japan. It was the first handheld game console with a color liquid-crystal display. Powered by a 4 MHz 65C02 8-bit CPU and a custom 16-bit blitter, the Lynx was more advanced than Nintendo's monochrome Game Boy, released two months earlier. It also competed with Sega's Game Gear and NEC's TurboExpress, released the following year.
Coleco Industries, Inc. was an American company founded in 1932 by Maurice Greenberg as The Connecticut Leather Company. The name "COLECO" is an abbreviation derived from the company's original name which combines the first two letters of "Connecticut," "Leather," and "Company." It was a successful toy company in the 1980s, mass-producing versions of Cabbage Patch Kids dolls and its video game consoles, the Coleco Telstar dedicated consoles and ColecoVision. While the company ceased operations in 1988 as a result of bankruptcy, the Coleco brand was revived in 2005, and remains active to this day.
A handheld game console, or simply handheld console, is a small, portable self-contained video game console with a built-in screen, game controls and speakers. Handheld game consoles are smaller than home video game consoles and contain the console, screen, speakers, and controls in one unit, allowing players to carry them and play them at any time or place.
The Intellivision is a home video game console released by Mattel Electronics in 1979. It distinguished itself from competitors with more realistic sports and strategic games. By 1981, Mattel Electronics had close to 20% of the domestic video game market, selling more than 3.75 million consoles and 20 million cartridges through 1983. At its peak Mattel Electronics had about 1800 employees in several countries, including 110 videogame developers. In 1984, Mattel sold its video game assets to a former Mattel Electronics executive and investors, eventually becoming INTV Corporation. Game development ran from 1978 to 1990, when the Intellivision was discontinued.
The Atari 8-bit computers, formally launched as the Atari Home Computer System, are a series of home computers introduced by Atari, Inc., in 1979 with the Atari 400 and Atari 800. The architecture is designed around the 8-bit MOS Technology 6502 CPU and three custom coprocessors which provide support for sprites, smooth multidirectional scrolling, four channels of audio, and other features. The graphics and sound are more advanced than most of its contemporaries, and video games are a key part of the software library. The 1980 first-person space combat simulator Star Raiders is considered the platform's killer app.
Tiger Electronics Ltd. is an American toy manufacturer best known for its handheld electronic games, the Furby, the Talkboy, Giga Pets, the 2-XL robot, and audio games such as Brain Warp and the Brain Shift. When it was an independent company, Tiger Electronics Inc., its headquarters were in Vernon Hills, Illinois. It has been a subsidiary of Hasbro since 1998.
The Family Radio Service (FRS) is an improved walkie-talkie radio system authorized in the United States since 1996. This personal radio service uses channelized frequencies around 462 and 467 MHz in the ultra high frequency (UHF) band. It does not suffer the interference effects found on citizens' band (CB) at 27 MHz, or the 49 MHz band also used by cordless telephones, toys, and baby monitors. FRS uses frequency modulation (FM) instead of amplitude modulation (AM). Since the UHF band has different radio propagation characteristics, short-range use of FRS may be more predictable than the more powerful license-free radios operating in the HF CB band.
A digital video recorder (DVR), also referred to as a personal video recorder (PVR) particularly in Canadian and British English, is an electronic device that records video in a digital format to a disk drive, USB flash drive, SD memory card, SSD or other local or networked mass storage device. The term includes set-top boxes (STB) with direct to disk recording, portable media players and TV gateways with recording capability, and digital camcorders. Personal computers can be connected to video capture devices and used as DVRs; in such cases the application software used to record video is an integral part of the DVR. Many DVRs are classified as consumer electronic devices. Similar small devices with built-in displays and SSD support may be used for professional film or video production, as these recorders often do not have the limitations that built-in recorders in cameras have, offering wider codec support, the removal of recording time limitations and higher bitrates.
A walkie-talkie, more formally known as a handheld transceiver, HT, or handheld radio, is a hand-held, portable, two-way radio transceiver. Its development during the Second World War has been variously credited to Donald Hings, radio engineer Alfred J. Gross, Henryk Magnuski and engineering teams at Motorola. First used for infantry, similar designs were created for field artillery and tank units, and after the war, walkie-talkies spread to public safety and eventually commercial and jobsite work.
Simon is an electronic game of short-term memory skill invented by Ralph H. Baer and Howard J. Morrison, working for toy design firm Marvin Glass and Associates, with software programming by Lenny Cope. The device creates a series of tones and lights and requires a user to repeat the sequence. If the user succeeds, the series becomes progressively longer and more complex. Once the user fails or the time limit runs out, the game is over. The original version was manufactured and distributed by Milton Bradley and later by Hasbro after it took over Milton Bradley. Much of the assembly language code was written by Charles Kapps, who taught computer science at Temple University and also wrote one of the first books on the theory of computer programming. Simon was launched in 1978 at Studio 54 in New York City and was an immediate success, becoming a pop culture symbol of the 1970s and 1980s.
A portable media player (PMP) or digital audio player (DAP) is a portable consumer electronics device capable of storing and playing digital media such as audio, images, and video files. The data is typically stored on a compact disc (CD), Digital Versatile Disc (DVD), Blu-ray Disc (BD), flash memory, microdrive, SD cards or hard disk drive; most earlier PMPs used physical media, but modern players mostly use flash memory. In contrast, analogue portable audio players play music from non-digital media that use analogue media, such as cassette tapes or vinyl records.
The VideoNow is a portable video player produced by Hasbro and released by their subsidiary Tiger Electronics in 2003 as part of Tiger's line of Now consumer products. The systems use discs called PVDs, which can store about 30 minutes of video, the length of an average TV show with commercials, so each PVD contains only one episode, with trailers at the end to use the leftover time on most PVDs, including Nickelodeon PVDs. Video data is stored on the left audio channel with audio on the right channel, thus making it impossible to achieve stereo sound on the system, which only plays in black and white. The video plays at 15fps. Most of the shows were from Nickelodeon, such as SpongeBob SquarePants and The Fairly OddParents, and later they released shows from Cartoon Network, such as Ed, Edd n Eddy and Dexter's Laboratory, Disney only mostly released episodes of America’s Funniest Home Videos and one PVD of each a Hannah Montana, The Cheetah Girls & High School Musical music video. A small number of movies were also released on the system, but due to the limited space on a PVD, said movies would have to be released on at least three discs, depending on the length of said film.
Electronic media are media that use electronics or electromechanical means for the audience to access the content. This is in contrast to static media, which today are most often created digitally, but do not require electronics to be accessed by the end user in the printed form. The primary electronic media sources familiar to the general public are video recordings, audio recordings, multimedia presentations, slide presentations, CD-ROM and online content. Most new media are in the form of digital media. However, electronic media may be in either analogue electronics data or digital electronic data format.
Atari Corporation was an American manufacturer of home computers and video game consoles. It was founded by Jack Tramiel on May 17, 1984, as Tramel Technology, Ltd., but then took on the Atari name less than two months later when Warner Communications sold the home gaming and computing assets of Atari, Inc. to Tramiel.
Net Jet is a Windows PC-based game system introduced by Hasbro in 2007. The game system is a controller that is somewhat similar in design to a PlayStation 2 gamepad. The Net Jet controller is plugged into the USB port in a computer and automatically started up. It downloaded games via a required Internet connection. A dozen featured games could be played on a trial basis, or unlocked via plug in "game keys". The Net Jet came in seven different color variations. Net Jet support officially ended December 31, 2009.
The Atari 2600 hardware was based on the MOS Technology 6507 chip, offering a maximum resolution of 160 x 192 pixels (NTSC), 128 colors, 128 bytes of RAM with 4 KB on cartridges. The design experienced many makeovers and revisions during its 14-year production history, from the original "heavy sixer" to the Atari 2600 Jr. at the end. The system also has many controllers and third-party peripherals.
Brain Warp is an electronic audio game which prototypes were invented by Big Monster Toys, and its final game production was manufactured and published by Tiger Electronics and released on June 16, 1996. In this game, players follow the spoken instructions from sound files spoken from the game unit. The player has to rotate the game in different directions so that the correct color is facing upwards. Its catchphrase which the voice says before a game begins is: "If you don't keep up with me, you're finished!". When you fail a game, the game unit will say "this game is finished" and then it will say "wanna warp again?". A Star Wars version titled Death Star Escape was released by Tiger Electronics in 1997 and the games are called Challenges.
The French consumer electronics company Archos manufactured a number of products which have since been discontinued.
ChatON was a global mobile communication service provided by Samsung Electronics from September 2011 to March 2015.
The Atari VCS is a home video game console produced by Atari VCS, LLC, an affiliate of Atari, Inc. part of the Atari SA group. While its exterior encasing design is intended to pay homage to the Atari 2600, the new Atari VCS plays modern games and streaming entertainment via a Linux-based operating system called AtariOS that allows users to download and install other compatible games, including those compatible with Windows 10. The system shares a name with the original Atari's 1977 Video Computer System, usually shortened to VCS, which was renamed to the Atari 2600 in late 1982.