battery tech Breakthrough battery technology

[Ice_Blue]

CNN's Jim Clancy talks with a U.S. scientist who invented a battery that can be charged with physical motion. Unable to embed video. Sorry.

Video

[Raa]

"Hold on guys, my laptop's low on battery..." <shakes it vigorously for a few minutes> "Okay, we're good!"

[srbeen]

Its not a battery, its a power pack!

His demo was lackluster however, but this holds a LOT of promise. He claims 30kW from 1 cubic meter. I'm hopeful this is sustainable design.

"Hold on guys, my laptop's low on battery..." <shakes it vigorously for a few minutes> "Okay, we're good!"

[Xerxes]

EDIT: Watched the video, it has promise but wait and see. Been down this road before and it didn't pan out so well, see if the technology has matured enough to deliver on it's promises this time....

This could work extremely well in mobile phones, having your phone recharge as it's in your pocket as you walk around is very compelling.

[HawkMan]

Revolutionary new battery tech is reported at LEAST once a year.

[I am Reid]

Revolutionary new battery tech is reported at LEAST once a year.

yep, and nothing ever happens from it. Then they are forced every year to try to slim down the size of phones, but the battery tech never changes, so instead we just get skinny phones at the expense of having smaller batteries. Thanks phone designers!!!

[LUTZIFER]

Lower bitrate with lossy audio != "as good."

And you know this how? Have you watched many of them at that size? I doubt it.

Pretty sure I'd know, as I have an awesome Blu-ray player, awesome TV, and many actual Blu-ray movies I've bought, so I'm damn sure I'd know any differences.

Just because your internet connection means you can easily download that sort of data, doesn't mean the rest of the world is even close to giving up on optical.

I'm probably on one of the crappiest high speed packages there is, 20Mbps, and the same company I deal with has pachages up to 250Mbps, and even that isn't any where remotely close to what service people in the USA can get. And those big files still take between 1 and 3 hours for me.

[spacer]

I'm probably on one of the crappiest high speed packages there is, 20Mbps, and the same company I deal with has pachages up to 250Mbps, and even that isn't any where remotely close to what service people in the USA can get. And those big files still take between 1 and 3 hours for me.

20mbps is actually pretty high. I live in CT, a state (which I hope) is pretty high on the high-end internet market. A 20mbps connection costs and arm an a leg around here. Most affordable (read: normal) internet plans are somewhere between 10-12mbps.

[neufuse Veteran]

There's already Digital Downloads that are as good as Blu-ray. I download 3D movies that are 10 to 15 gig downloads and the quality is phenomenal.

I'm sure that 10Mbit stream is just as good as my 36Mbit Blu-ray hard copy..... losing that much bit rate has to have some degration on quality....

20mbps is actually pretty high. I live in CT, a state (which I hope) is pretty high on the high-end internet market. A 20mbps connection costs and arm an a leg around here. Most affordable (read: normal) internet plans are somewhere between 10-12mbps.

normal internet connections on cable now are 16Mbit+ Comcast's base package in the USA is 16Mbit now with burst rate up to 25Mbit... many other cable providers are following suit... so 16-20Mbit is pretty much the norm now days in the USA unless you live in the middle of no where with a slow as heck VRAD'ed DSL line or WISP

[DocM]

I'm sure that 10Mbit stream is just as good as my 36Mbit Blu-ray hard copy..... losing that much bit rate has to have some degration on quality....

Depends on the MPEG-4 profile, the various encoder settings, and the viewer. Given the proper settings (multi-pass, noise reduction etc.) the average viewer may well not notice the difference, just as some (not half blind) folks still think their old SD TV's look better than HD panels. Drove me nuts when seeking input on image quality during the video HW / SW beta tests I got roped into participating in.

normal internet connections on cable now are 16Mbit+ Comcast's base package in the USA is 16Mbit now with burst rate up to 25Mbit... many other cable providers are following suit... so 16-20Mbit is pretty much the norm now days in the USA unless you live in the middle of no where with a slow as heck VRAD'ed DSL line or WISP

Only real advantages I see to those speeds is long downloads of big beta software builds like Premiere Pro, video editing HW hardware drivers or more than 2 people on the home network streaming Netflix, Hulu+ or Amazon movies simultaneously.

[Detection]

Only real advantages I see to those speeds is long downloads of big beta software builds like Premiere Pro, video editing HW hardware drivers or more than 2 people on the home network streaming Netflix, Hulu+ or Amazon movies simultaneously.

I have 76/18 and I thought the same, big downloads or sharing the connection with a few people, but in reality there are only about 20-30% of servers that can reach those speeds anyway

And even when they do, after the first month or so of having those speeds you still find yourself tapping you foot and thinking "hurry up"

[Raa]

Revolutionary new battery tech is reported at LEAST once a year.

Agreed, and we're still using Li-Ion or Li-Poly batteries. How old is that tech!

Where are the refillable batteries that were promised a few years ago? :(

I can see this new technology becoming the primary cause of broken phone screens... :p