Hot damn, I kind of wish I snorkeled more. I did it once and haven’t done it since. I gotta get back into it! Why? Because a company called Liquid Image is releasing a diving mask rigged up with an HD video camera, lights, and a microphone.

The mask will retail for around $215 when it’s released in the spring and will come with 64MB of memory on board, expandable via MicroSD to 32GB. The camera will capture video up to 1280×720 at 30 fps and still images up to 5 megapixels. There are two little crosshairs on the goggles to let you know what you’re shooting and LED lights inside the mask illuminate to let you know that you’re recording. The thing works down to a depth of 115 feet, too.

More info at CES later this week.

[CES-Show.com via The Raw Feed]

Environmental magazine Plenty got a doozie of a pickle of a question concerning the upcoming switch to digital TV. The gist of the question is: Which would use less energy: an old, analogue tube TV plus a converter, or a brand new digital set?

Plenty correctly identified that adding a digital converter to an analog set would result in a negligible increase in energy consumption, so it’d be okay to pick up a converter and run the old tube TV into the ground.

Me, I like to use any excuse to buy new technology, so I’d say “Gee, as long as you’re spending money on a converter box, you might as well just put that money towards a new TV.” I’d, of course, neglect to mention the $40 coupon program.

As far as new TVs go, Plasmas use far more energy that tube sets, according to Plenty, than do LCD TVs. So it’d be okay to buy a similarly-sized LCD TV to replace your tube TV. Buying a digital tube TV to replace an analog tube TV wouldn’t do much, though, because they’d use about the same amounts of energy. Also, I’d like to add that buying a big, heavy digital tube TV makes about as much sense as drinking coffee while waterskiing.

Ultimately, Plenty suggests considering a converter for now and waiting a year or two until energy consumption levels of LCD TVs plummet even further. Our official stance here at CrunchGear is: When in doubt, buy a new TV. That’s not as environmentally responsible, especially since you’d have to dump the old TV somewhere but, hey, flat panel TVs look better and there’s nothing quite like only having to use one remote.

Oooh, a collector’s edition! Today only, Amazon.com is selling the Xbox 360 Fallout 3 Collector’s Edition for $49.98 with free shipping. What do you get for being such an adamant collector, besides the game itself? Things!

• Enjoy your very own Vault Boy collectors item direct from Vault-Tec
• Includes The Art of Fallout 3 hardcover book of exclusive concept art and commentary
• Special DVD The Making of Fallout 3 included for a behind the scenes look at the creative team
• Includes fully customized metal Vault-Tec lunch box
• Receive these collector edition items with the game Fallout 3

All this for a penny less than the standard version of the game. Nee-haw!

Fallout 3 [Amazon.com]

Yum. According to Crave Taiwan, MSI has outed the 13.4-inch X320 netbook. Sure, at 13.4 inches it’s likely out of netbook range, but let’s keep our eyes on the prize here: a razor-thin notebook with a big screen and keyboard for under $1,000.

The X320 weighs in at 2.9 pounds and is less than an inch thick. It’s got a 13.4-inch 16:9 screen, features an Intel Atom processor, three USB ports, VGA out, an Ethernet port, and a card reader.

An MSI official said that the price would fall between $799 and $999 dollars. So yes, it’s a netbook in the sense that it uses an Atom chip and doesn’t have an optical drive, but just about everything else makes it an affordably priced ultraportable notebook.

No word on when it’ll be available, but we’ll hopefully be able to find that out at CES later this week.

[via JKK Mobile]

VIXIA High Definition Lineup

VIXIA HF S10

Features:

• Dual Flash Memory: 32GB internal, plus SDHC expansion slot
• 10x HD video lens
• 1/2.6-inch 8.59 Megapixel Full HD CMOS image sensor
• DIGIC DV III image processor
• 1920×1080 full HD recording at 24Mbps
• 2.7-inch LCD
• 24p cinema mode, 30p progressive mode
• HDMI out
• Available in February, price not yet set

VIXIA HF S100

Features:

• No onboard memory, just SDHC expansion slot
• 10x HD video lens
• 1/2.6-inch 8.59 Megapixel Full HD CMOS image sensor
• DIGIC DV III image processor
• 1920×1080 full HD recording at 24Mbps
• 2.7-inch LCD
• 24p cinema mode, 30p progressive mode
• HDMI out
• Available in February, price not yet set

VIXIA HF20

Features:

• Dual Flash Memory: 32GB internal, plus SDHC expansion slot
• 15x HD video lens
• 3.89 Megapixel Full HD CMOS image sensor
• DIGIC DV III image processor
• 1920×1080 full HD recording at 24Mbps
• 2.7-inch LCD
• 24p cinema mode, 30p progressive mode
• HDMI out
• Available in February, price not yet set

VIXIA HF200

Features:

• No onboard memory, just SDHC expansion slot
• 15x HD video lens
• 3.89 Megapixel Full HD CMOS image sensor
• DIGIC DV III image processor
• 1920×1080 full HD recording at 24Mbps
• 2.7-inch LCD
• 24p cinema mode, 30p progressive mode
• HDMI out
• Available in February, price not yet set

VIXIA HV40

Features:

• MiniDV format
• 10x HD video lens
• 2.96 Megapixel Full HD CMOS image sensor
• DIGIC DV II image processor
• 2.7-inch LCD
• 24p cinema mode, 30p progressive mode
• HDMI out
• Available in March, price not yet set

Standard Definition Flash Memory Lineup

FS22

Features:

• Dual Flash Memory: 32GB internal, plus SDHC expansion slot
• 48x “advanced” zoom
• 1.07 Megapixel CMOS sensor
• DIGIC DV II image processor
• 2.7-inch LCD
• Available this month, price not yet set

FS21

Features:

• Dual Flash Memory: 16GB internal, plus SDHC expansion slot
• 48x “advanced” zoom
• 1.07 Megapixel CMOS sensor
• DIGIC DV II image processor
• 2.7-inch LCD
• Available this month, price not yet set

FS200

Features:

• No internal memory, just SDHC expansion slot
• 41x “advanced” zoom
• 680,000 Pixel CMOS sensor
• DIGIC DV II image processor
• 2.7-inch LCD
• Available this month in three colors, price not yet set

Standard Definition DVD Lineup

DC420

Features:

• DVD-R/-RW/-R DL Format
• 48x “advanced” zoom
• 1.07 megapixel CCD image sensor
• DIGIC DV II chip
• 2.7-inch LCD
• Available this month, price not yet set

DC410

Features:

• DVD-R/-RW/-R DL Format
• 41x “advanced” zoom
• 680,000 pixel CCD image sensor
• DIGIC DV II chip
• 2.7-inch LCD
• Available this month, price not yet set

Standard Definition miniDV

ZR960

Features:

• MiniDV format
• 41x “advanced” zoom
• 680,000 pixel CCD image sensor
• DIGIC DV image processor
• 2.7-inch LCD
• Available in March, price not yet set

[via Canon]

It’d be cool to see the web browser in action, but you’ll recall from the earlier Android-on-a-netbook story that the networking and sound drivers proved to be a bit troublesome at first, so it’s possible that the guys who put this video together hadn’t gotten that stuff cobbled together yet.

YouTube [via UMPC Portal]

Lenovo opened the floodgates today, announcing a new All-in-One desktop — the IdeaCentre A600 — and three new laptops: the Y650 (a 16-inch thin-and-light), the Y550, and the Y450. The company also announced updated social networking software, plus a few other extras for the already-available IdeaPad S10 netbook.

The IdeaCentre A600 features a 21.5-inch frameless screen with a 16:9 ratio at 1920×1080, optional Blu-ray drive, TV tuner, optional 4-in-1 remote control that doubles as a VOIP handset, and VeriFace facial recognition security software.

It’ll be available in April starting at $999, depending on the configuration.

The new Y Series laptops feature thinner and lighter designs — the 16-inch Y650 weighs in at just over five and a half pounds — and fancy copper-accented, "soft black" designs. They’ll also feature glossy displays, NVIDIA graphics, DDR3 memory, and multi-touch touchpads.

They’ll be available in March; the 16-inch Y650 starting at $1,199 and the 15.6-inch Y550 and 14-inch Y450 starting at $899.

And then there’s the IdeaPad S10 netbook. Already available starting at around $349, the S10 will get additional software in March called LenovoSocial. Very original, huh? It’s "a resource portal that will help [mainstream consumers] navigate the vast options for participating in social networking." Other additions include Lenovo Quick Start — basically a quick-launch app — and Veriface facial recognition technology for easy log-in.

Here’s the full press release.

Sometimes you can’t wait to get home to play Xbox 360. If that’s you, might I suggest that you use the interior of this Suzuki as a jumping-off point for the design of your very own in-car video game system?

Don’t worry about having to wait your turn, either, as the design calls for one controller to snap into the steering wheel, while another sits near the center console. And what about monitors? There are two of them. Yes, two of them.

This photo is actually from a while ago – April 2007, to be exact, but it’s just surfaced recently. I’m guessing that the car’s been totaled by now, possibly the result of inattentive driving.

Flickr [via Engadget]

Think about it: if you slapped a 7-10 inch screen and an almost full-sized keyboard on your smartphone, you’d basically have yourself a pretty serviceable netbook, no? In that spirit, Freescale Semiconductor will be showing off a prototype netbook design at CES running on the ARM platform that’s commonly found in mobile devices.

Perhaps the greatest feature would be theoretically low price points. The reference design that’ll be shown will carry an MSRP of just $199. Add to that much longer battery life (around eight hours or so) plus a thinner and lighter form factor, and things could get mighty interesting.

The platform is known as Cortex and the aforementioned design will come from Pegatron, which is an ODM (original design manufacturer) for Asus. Although Asus hasn’t said whether it would produce ARM-based netbooks for sure, a company rep told PC Magazine that "all the ODMs and all of the OEMs are evaluating netbooks in this category."

While Intel’s response has been that its X86 platform is preferable for use with web browsers and software that are specifically designed to take advantage of its architecture, the Cortex platform will run Ubuntu, using Firefox as the web browser, and is not aimed at replacing a PC.

The Cortex i.MX51 platform itself will consist of a 1GHz ARM chip, a dedicated DSP chip for MP3 playback, and two separate video chips — OpenGL for 3D and Open VG for 2D. It’ll be able to handle 720p video and can turn off all unneeded hardware while doing so, cutting the processor down to 50MHz, which should work wonders as far as battery life is concerned.

We’ll try to get a look at this thing up close at CES this week.

[via PCMag]

Announced a few months ago, the replica Star Trek Captain’s chair is now selling for $2717.01 plus $400 for shipping and handling from SkyMall.

If you’ve got the coin and the love for one of the greatest Sci-Fi series of all time, you’ll likely not be disappointed as the “officially licensed replica” chair itself is a spitting image of the real thing and features “a working swivel design, light-up controls and sound effects from the legendary Star Trek series.”

Star Trek Captain’s Chair [SkyMall]