Posts Tagged ‘Media’
Syabas’ Popbox: Get Ready for the New Media Streamer Champ [Hdmediaplayers]
Posted by: Gadget Boy in Gadget News, Technology on January 4th, 2010
Take Syabas' Popcorn Hour C-200, the much-loved streamer of choice for AV nerds. Now make it smaller, add Netflix support and a far superior interface, and cut the price from $300 to $130. That's the Popbox.
The Popbox isn't a replacement of the Popcorn Hour, which remains on as a giant hackable tank of a machine, but it does look fully ready for mainstream adoption. Here's why: Syabas expects to slash the price down to a mere $130, yet it keeps the Popcorn's stellar codec support and a lot of the online channels the Popcorn was missing, like Netflix, Facebook, Twitter, MLB, and a whole bunch more. (It does lose some things, like the internal hard drive bay and Bittorrent support, but it's still all open-source so you can install games, apps, or whatever fun stuff the homebrew community can think up). Plus, Syabas's interface (which Wilson, in his streamer roundup, described as "lame") has been totally revamped, and actually looks, well, kind of awesome. It's got great little touches like animated weather and automatic IMDb and AllMusic lookup for movie, TV and music info.
The hardware's been significantly revamped, too—it's much smaller than the admitted beast that is the Popcorn Hour, and it's fanless (AKA silent), but it'll still pump out full 1080p video over HDMI. It's also got 2 USB ports and an SD slot for added storage, since you lose the hard drive bay the Popcorn Hour has. It remains to be seen whether Syabas has fixed the problems users found with the Popcorn Hour's remote control, but we'll find that out soon enough.
It's set to be unveiled on January 5th at CES, where we'll stop in and get some photos and impressions—but I'm really excited for it already. We'll find out release date there, but they seem locked in on the $130 price point, which is super reasonable—Roku, Asus and the rest should be very scared right now. [Syabas]
Update: Due to a typo in my notes, you may have seen an early version of this story as saying the projected price will be $100. Syabas actually expects the final price to be $130, and I need to practice my typing. Sorry for the confusion.
Studios Begin to Push TV Episodes’ Digital Release Before DVD [Media]
Posted by: Gadget Boy in Gadget News, Technology on December 29th, 2009
Showtime has begun selling episodes of Weeds online before the show's full-season DVD release, a first for the series. And Weeds isn't nearly the only one—is Hollywood finally embracing digital downloads as the successor to DVD?
Well, sort of. This is really more of a symbolic shift than a full-scale adoption. Thing is, even as DVD sales decline and Blu-ray fails to explode, they both still dwarf revenues from digital downloads—so you can't really blame the studios for moving slowly.
But pushing the digital release ahead of the physical, as in Weeds and a few other movies and TV shows, is a definite shift for the studios. Typically, they've tried to protect physical media with its larger profit margin, so this is a pretty big change for them—but it remains to be seen how widespread and how soon the digital adoption will be. [WSJ via Electronista]
Mag+ digital magazine concept makes e-readers cower with envy (video!)
Posted by: Gadget Boy in Gadget News, Technology on December 17th, 2009
Continue reading Mag+ digital magazine concept makes e-readers cower with envy (video!)
Mag+ digital magazine concept makes e-readers cower with envy (video!) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 17 Dec 2009 06:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink |
Berg | Email this | Comments Yahoo CEO Wishes More Celebrities Philandered [Blockquote]
Posted by: Gadget Boy in Gadget News, Technology on December 9th, 2009
That's Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz at the UBS Media Conference, celebrating the revenue generated by another human being's personal tragedy. Hang in there, Yahoo! You're just a few thousand celebrity scandals away from relevance.
Bartz couldn't resist a shout out to the beleaguered golfer when speaking to analysts in New York yesterday afternoon. Yahoo's traffic has been doing gangbusters since the Tiger story broke, which in some ways validates their strategy to be a "portal" rather than a search company. When something big and gossipy like this happens, Yahoo's multichannel setup allows them to cover it from a number of different angles. On the other hand, if your sprawling search and content company is set up so that a single tabloid story can "make" your quarter, well, what happens if that story doesn't break?
Oh, that's right. Google drinks your milkshake. [WSJ via Huffington Post]
Pingo the Robot Penguin is a Facebook Friend Who Doesn’t Mind Being Poked [Robots]
Posted by: Gadget Boy in Gadget News on December 8th, 2009
I want an army of MyDeskFriend Pingo robot penguins on my desk. They'll dance around alerting of Facebook updates, read news, sing songs, and give weather forecasts. We'll be bestest friends and play together until they decide to kill me.
While we've gotten a look at the MyDeskFriend gadgets before, Pingo is the first one to actually be released. He's bringing a lot of cuteness, an internal speaker, a microphone, some freaky LED eyes, two proximity sensors, three ground sensors, and a two-wheel drive.
Basically this penguin bot is a ridiculously interactive alert system for news, email, Facebook updates, and whatever else you set him to check for. I say "ridiculously interactive," because Pingo reacts to pokes, shakes, and voice commands and can be nurtured and played with as if a pet. I'm sure all of those things would turn more annoying than useful or entertaining quickly, but the damn thing is way to freakin' cute for me to care.
At $149, Pingo is definitely more expensive than the Furbies it acts and looks like, but—never mind the features—the minimal creepiness is worth the price difference.
A FACEBOOK FRIEND YOU'LL NEVER IGNORE: MYDESKFRIEND, A TINY ROBOTIC PENGUIN, PLAYS, READS, CONNECTS TO WEB AND FACEBOOK
New York, NY ( December 7, 2009) – Pingo is one Facebook friend you'll never ignore.
Tiny and irresistibly cute, Pingo is the first official mydeskfriend, a tiny robotic penguin launching today at www.mydeskfriend.com.
An ideal holiday gift for anyone passionate about the latest in gadgets, robotic toys, and consumer electronics, the interactive playmate can zoom around desktops, express moods, respond to voice commands, sing songs, and read aloud email messages, headlines, stock quotes, and weather.
The device integrates into its owners' Facebook account via a Facebook application that allows users to give their device its own name, profile, and personality, as well as nurture its moods and manage its daily life.
Owners can set mydeskfriend up to read RSS newsfeeds from their news sites and blogs, spoil it with food and vitamins from a Facebook gift page, and lull it to sleep by gently rocking it in their hands. Pingo can follow fingers around a desktop, while sensory devices ensure that it never falls off a desk when moving around on its own.
Friends who have their own devices can play and communicate via Facebook, including poking, sending messages, and giving Facebook gifts directly from one Pingo to another.
The device can fit in the palm of hand and displays its moods, like happy and angry, by changing the color of its LED-lit eyes.
mydeskfriend retails for $149.99 and is available for purchase at www.mydeskfriend.com. Orders must be placed before December 14th in order to arrive by December 23rd via priority delivery service. The device is compatible with the following systems: Mac OS (10.5 and 10.6), Windows XP, Vista, and Windows 7.
mydeskfriend is developed by Arimaz, a Switzerland-based company specializing in creating entertainment robotic devices and Internet-connected toys.
"mydeskfriend is the first of a new generation of Internet-connected robotic devices," said Pierre Bureau, the CEO of Arimaz. "It's fun, entertaining, and helpful, keeping you connected to the Internet and Facebook even when you're not online."
About Arimaz
Arimaz SA is a company active in the fields of entertainment robotics and interactive toys. Arimaz creates, develops and market products integrating the latest technologies in domains such as electronics, wireless communication and artificial intelligence. For information, contact www.arimaz.com.
[Arimaz]
Boxee Beta unveiled: refreshed UI, DirectX support, and new content partners
Posted by: Gadget Boy in Gadget News on December 8th, 2009
Boxee Beta unveiled: refreshed UI, DirectX support, and new content partners originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 07 Dec 2009 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink |Livestream (Boxee event) | Email this | Comments FlipShare TV Hands-On [Flip]
Posted by: Gadget Boy in Gadget News on December 2nd, 2009
Flip’s new companion hardware to their pocket camcorders is a logical extension of the Flip brand. It brings Flip-taken videos (and nothing else) to a TV, and while some may find its simplicity refreshing, others will find it limiting.
We knew about the FlipShare TV awhile ago, thanks to an FCC leak. It’s basically a companion piece to Flip’s camcorders, streaming video shot with the Mino HD, Ultra HD or what have you to a TV. But oddly enough, it’s dumbed-down enough that it somehow circles back around and becomes complicated again, starting with the seemingly-basic hardware.
The FlipShare TV is actually comprised of three necessary components: A cute, small, square white box about the size of a Roku that plugs into your TV (featuring RCA and HDMI ports); a fairly large USB dongle; and a super simple remote reminiscent of Apple’s remote. The USB dongle is actually required to be plugged in (and your computer turned on) if you want to use the FlipShare TV at all, forming kind of an point-to-point wireless network. Yeah, it’s supposed to eliminate the trouble of logging into a wireless home network, but it brings up problems of its own—what about multi-computer households? And while it may be a pre-release issue, my box dropped the connection with its dongle when the two were on opposite ends of my apartment, a problem my normal wireless router doesn’t have.
Also released today is the updated FlipShare 5.0 software, which is easy enough to use. Plug in a camcorder, drag its videos to your library, and your precious moments can then be watched on your computer or via the FlipShare TV, or alternately shared via Facebook or YouTube. Also supported are FlipChannels, a sort of private online video storage that lets you upload videos and “share” access with other people. Anyone with whom the FlipChannel is shared can watch your videos on a computer, mobile device (iPhone, Android, and BlackBerry are supported) or, again, through the FlipShare TV. So those are your two choices for streaming: Computer or FlipChannel.
Therein lies another problem: The FlipShare TV can only play back the very specific video format used by Flip camcorders, some kind of WMV at 30fps. Nothing else. This is not a media streamer, it’s a Flip streamer. Music? Forget it. Your ripped DVDs? No way. (JPEGs are also supported, but that’s it for non-Flip media). Playback quality is good, but these aren’t exactly super high-quality files we’re dealing with here.
The FlipShare TV is a thoroughly simple device, often to its detriment. It does only one thing, and does it fairly well, but it’s really designed for someone who finds the glut of excellent modern media streamers far too threatening. Given its limitations (no storage, only one compatible format, no extras), it’s pretty surprising that it also commands a pretty expensive price at $150 (available tomorrow). Theoretically, parents, grandparents and other less tech-savvy folks would appreciate the simplicity of the FlipShare TV—but if you’re reading this, you’ll definitely find its limitations to be a dealbreaker. [Flip]
The Future of Apple, According to Its Biggest Fans [Concepts]
Posted by: Gadget Boy in Gadget News on November 20th, 2009
Also known as the entire technology press amirite? Ha? In all seriousness though—Maclife asked various bloggers, journalists and tech personalities what their dream Apple products would be, and mocked them all up in detailed renders. Here's what happened:
Veronica Belmont, of Tekzilla/Mahalo/BOL fame/general video on the internet fame, sees Apple finally going ahead with that Courier concept Microsoft keeps dragging their feet on. Or, Apple subsumes Microsoft entirely. What do you know, Belmont?
BoingBoing's/MAKE's Mark Frauenfelder goes as DIY-y as is humanly possible, and projects a future in which Apple is just a bunch of dudes with Arduinos and a pair of pliers. You see, we'll just buy Apple's designs, and your iMake object printer will print them out.
Brian Lam, Man With Hat, just wants his iPhone to get reception in San Francisco, for once. Hence, bunny ears.
There are a couple more, and they're all in the same whimsical, not-quite-serious vein. Check them out at [Maclife]
Nick Bilton the Lead Blogger at NYT Bits [Media]
Posted by: Gadget Boy in Gadget News on November 10th, 2009
My good friend Nick Bilton is going to the NYTimes Bits blog as their lead writer. Nick was Design Integration Editor in the NYT newsroom and a UI specialist in their R&D labs for quite awhile before that, but took a break to work on his book, I Live in the Future: & Here's How It Works. [Nick Bilton]
Hahahaha! Blockbuster Renting Movies on SD Cards! Hahahahaha! From Kiosks! [Movies]
Posted by: Gadget Boy in Gadget News on November 10th, 2009
Oh, I hope whatever exec came up with this idea scores a huge bonus. Blockbuster is piloting a new program that will load a DRM'd movie rentals onto an SD card from a kiosk. The future!
So say you're at the airport. You want to rent, I dunno, some movie that wasn't good enough to see in the theater. You just format a spare SD card filled with vacation photos you'd forgotten to back up (it doesn't appear they give you a card, but I could be mistaken), pop it in the machine, select a movie, pay $4 or so, and then have the film loaded on your card, a la ticking time bomb, with DRM.
And what can't you do with an SD card? I mean, it plays in my iPhone...wait...I mean my Blackberry...wait...
Mini SD and Micro SD—those are the cards that most of our mobile devices will take (if they take any at all)! In case no one told you, Blockbuster, we can't play this shit back on our digital cameras.
(Granted, netbook owners and some laptop owners will be able to utilize the standard.)
Ah Blockbuster, you've arrived just in time to ignore the growing popularity of iTunes/Zune Marketplace syncing, 3G streaming and in-flight Wi-Fi all while offering your service on a medium less convenient than DVD. But don't worry, I'm not angry. You're just hurting yourself. [Fast Company]
