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Video games go hi-fi
This review probably is premature because the maker, Ameriwave Technology, is scrambling to meet demand and complete its own e-commerce site. But Game EZ can be had at the QVC shopping channel, and soon this winner should be everywhere.
It does just one thing: It wirelessly broadcasts audio and video signals from any device you plug into the Game EZ transmitter to a television set equipped with the companion Game EZ receiver.
Whether the source is your Nintendo video game console, your new Macintosh iPod music player or a PC laptop equipped with video out (as many now are), you can broadcast whatever the device does to the TV screen and any high-fidelity speakers connected to it.
It’s not perfect. The $60 device uses the same 2.4-gigahertz radio waves as newer mobile telephones and some microwave ovens, and there is an occasional crackle of static, but such crackles are rare.
What you get otherwise will put you in a mood to forgive a hiss or two.
3G mobile phones deliver little but thrill of possession
It is a dazzle of a gadget, a third-generation cell phone that streams live images of a caller’s face onto a postage stamp-sized screen.
But it’s unreliable. It’s blurry. And the videophone service is expensive.
The P2101V handset from Matsushita Communication Industrial Co., on sale now in Japan, is a fun $375 toy.
But the 3G service from mobile carrier NTT DoCoMo  though it zaps information at up to 25 times the speed of most current cell phones  is still raw. There’s little to savor other than the initial joy of possession.
The face on the other end of the line is washed out and dark, sometimes even jagged in places. The overwhelming feeling is that the caller is speaking from outer space, not across town.
So much for the intimacy a videophone should offer.
The connections aren’t always reliable, so it takes a dial or two at times to hook up.
Videophone chatting doesn’t come cheap either. At 11 cents a minute, someone would have to be madly in love to want to see a face so badly. Or at least be a doting parent.
And do we really want 3G on a bad-hair day?