TiVo asks court for a billion dollars in EchoStar case

Remember when we thought that those $90 million and $190 million judgments in the endless TiVo / EchoStar case were big noise? Yeah, they were apparently pocket change: according to documents recently filed with the court, TiVo’s asking for nearly a billion dollars in contempt sanctions against EchoStar. Unfortunately, the original document in which TiVo made the request was filed under seal because it contains confidential information, but it appears that TiVo’s none too pleased that EchoStar violated the permanent injunction that ordered it to disable some 193,000 DVRs in the wild, and it’s looking for some payback. For its part, EchoStar says that it doesn’t have to comply with the court’s order because the injunction was put on hold pending appeal — an argument that appears on the surface to make perfect sense, but since we can’t read TiVo’s motion we can’t say for sure what’s going on, and there’s always a chance the company’s just playing hardball in order to force a late settlement. Given the rocky history of this endless case, we doubt that’s likely, but one thing’s for certain: all these lawyers are eating well tonight.

Filed under:

TiVo asks court for a billion dollars in EchoStar case originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 13 Jul 2009 22:41:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

TechSaver Test: Staples Tech Clearance Event

ViewSonic PJ258D Projector

The store with the easy red button is convenient for buying office supplies, office furniture, and computer equipment, but Staples is not always a store one would consider with the cheapest prices.

From now until July 18, Staples is running a Tech Clearance Event with 32 products marked down in price. Since this is a clearance event and not a sales event, there better be some greatly reduced prices! That’s just what I’m going to find out in today’s TechSaver Test.

My picks from the Staples Tech Clearance Event are the HP Officejet Pro L7590 All-in-One Printer, the Uniden (DECT2060-2) DECT 6.0 Single-line Cordless Phone 2 Pack, and the ViewSonic PJ258D Micro-portable DLP Projector.

Check out the results, after the jump.

Modern Warfare 2’s Prestige Edition includes fully functioning night vision goggles

Now this is how you do a special edition. Activision and Infinity Ward look to be going all out for its Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 “Prestige Edition,” with not only the usual accoutrements like a special casing and an art book, but also what is described by Community Manager Robert “fourzerotwo” Bowling as a “fully functioning NVGs — night vision goggles.” No idea how well they work, but it’s got alternating modes and MW2 branding. That’s pretty awesome, but we gotta imagine it’s gonna demand a pretty penny — this is definitely more than that $80 “collector’s edition” for $80 GameStop is currently listing. You won’t be able to get your actual hands on the game until November at the earliest, so in the meantime, hit up the read link to get a glimpse of the “official” unboxing.

[Thanks, Joey]

Continue reading Modern Warfare 2’s Prestige Edition includes fully functioning night vision goggles

Filed under:

Modern Warfare 2’s Prestige Edition includes fully functioning night vision goggles originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 13 Jul 2009 21:34:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Turn a USB Drive into a NAS with Hitachis SimpleNet

Hitachi SimpleNet.JPGOn Monday, Hitachi announced several new external storage products, capitalizing on the company’s acquisition of Fabrik in February.

By far the most interesting product is the SimpleNet, a USB adapter that transforms a traditional USB drive into a NAS product. At $79, the SimpleNet is designed for consumers who own a USB drive and an existing router, and want to share the drive over the network. Several routers already include USB connections for doing this, but it also requires the purchase of this new, more expensive router.

According to Ken Higgins, Hitachi’s vice president of worldwide branded sales, the SimpleNet also has another advantage: it doesn’t require a consumer to reformat his or her hard drive. The SimpleNet is compatible with FAT32 and NTFS formatted drives, as well as the HFS+ used by Mac OS X. Apple’s Time Machine is also compatible with the SimpleNet device.

Hitachi also unveiled a series of rugged SimpleTough drives, each containing a 2.5-inch drive from 250-Gbytes to 320-Gbytes to 500-Gbytes in capacity. The SimpleTough line ranges in price from $99.99 to $149.99. A less rugged SimpleDrive Mini is roughly identical, minus the tough exterior: prices in that family range from $89.99 to $139.99, Hitachi said. Both drives are bus-powered.

Verizon to its smartphones: thou shalt have no other app store before mine

Verizon’s getting very keen on entering the app store industry, but not without some rough decrees to its smartphone partners. According to GigaOm, VP Partner Management Ryan Hughes said in an interview Friday that its VZW-branded shop will house content from all the major platforms under one roof, with purchases being billed through the customer’s Verizon account and not requiring a separate signup / credit card entry. Convenient for consumers, and devs are also being promised a more streamlined approval process and a “competitive” revenue-sharing program, but here’s where things take a turn for the worse: according to Hughes, non-VZW app stores like BlackBerry App World or Windows Mobile Marketplace won’t be bundled with the smartphones out of the box, meaning consumers will have to take the initiative to download those portals for themselves. An incredibly jerk move, and an extra burden on developers who’ll be having to submit two approval applications if they want inclusion on Verizon’s own store. Of course, that large subscriber base is the reason it can get away with it, but let’s hope we hear some better justifications other than “because we can” when the full details are rolled out at the Verizon Developer Community Conference on July 28th.

Filed under:

Verizon to its smartphones: thou shalt have no other app store before mine originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 13 Jul 2009 20:23:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Windows 95 on iPhone: the worst Parallels installation you’ve ever seen

Give a guy an iPhone, a jailbreak, and an open-source, cross-platform x86 emulator, and it’s just a matter of time before hilarity ensues. In this case, said hilarity involves getting Windows 95 to boot on an iPhone 3G, a process that takes 5-10 minutes worth of pure boot time only to yield an environment useless for… well, actual use. In the video, we see the hack demonstrated both on an actual iPhone and within the Mac-based emulator, which we reckon is just about the most terrifying Parallels / VMware replacement we’ve ever encountered. Apparently, XP emulation and 3GS tests are up next — the 3GS should perform marginally better on account of its faster core and more capacious RAM — but that still won’t cure the sting of being handily beaten to the milestone by the N95, will it? Follow the break for video of the mind-twisting Microsoft-on-Apple-on-Apple emulation in action.

[Via Gizmodo and Good iPhone]

Continue reading Windows 95 on iPhone: the worst Parallels installation you’ve ever seen

Filed under: ,

Windows 95 on iPhone: the worst Parallels installation you’ve ever seen originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 13 Jul 2009 19:12:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

HBO, Cinemax coming to Comcast’s On Demand Online

Following Starz, HBO has announced plans to provide programming on Comcast’s On Demand Online trial. Of course, this move shouldn’t surprise anyone given previous hints HBO was looking for ways to brings its video online or previous trials it has participated in. Just like Starz, users can expect a mix of television shows and movies, basically reflecting the current on demand lineup, including series like True Blood and Entourage, further detailed in the press release after the break. Also like Starz, following the launch, HD streaming is expected — clearly premium channel subscribers have the most reasons to be interested in being included in the 5,000 customer nationwide trial Comcast is launching in the coming weeks, but what about the basic cable only folks?

Continue reading HBO, Cinemax coming to Comcast’s On Demand Online

Filed under: ,

HBO, Cinemax coming to Comcast’s On Demand Online originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 13 Jul 2009 18:21:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Opera 9.5 is Almost Done

This article was written on June 10, 2008 by CyberNet.

opera 95 mac.jpg
(Click to Enlarge)

arrow Windows Win; Mac Mac; Linux Linux arrow
Hot on the heels of Firefox 3, the Opera team announced today that they are preparing for the launch of Opera 9.5, and they are doing so by shooting out the first (and possibly last) Release Candidate to the public. This comes just about one week after they added a new default theme to the browser. The Mac version of the theme is depicted in the screenshot above, and the Windows version can be seen here.

Here’s what the Opera team had to say about the big news today:

You might have noticed we’ve focused on stabilizing the Opera 9.5 snapshots lately, waxing the new look and feel of Opera, improving performance, security and most of all fixing a lot of bugs. Almost two years after the release of Opera 9.0, Opera 9.5 is now (almost) ready to be released.

This will be a pretty big release for Opera since this is the first version of their desktop browser to include the new Opera Link technology. With it users can synchronize their bookmarks between both Opera 9.5 desktop and Opera Mini, which is a killer combo.

There’s no mention of a release date for Opera 9.5, but they make it sound like it’s coming very soon. Maybe we can expect to see it out in June?

P.S. If you decide to install the Release Candidate in Windows it’s important to know that it will overwrite your existing (stable) Opera installation.

Get Opera 9.5 RC
Thanks for the tip Cody!

Copyright © 2009 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

Related Posts:


Tweetlog: Toshiba mini NB205

toshibamini.jpgToshiba may be late to the netbook party, but its mini NB205 (http://tinyurl.com/mu58va) shows up with a bang.

Hands On With the Nokia Surge

Nokia_Surge_2.jpg

BOSTON–I spent some time today checking out the Nokia Surge, the company’s new smartphone for AT&T Wireless. In a twist, Nokia designed the Surge specifically for the U.S. That means there’s no unlocked version with a different model number (such as with the E71 and the E71x, for example).

In fact, it’s actually Nokia’s third smartphone for AT&T in the past 12 months; the first two were the Nokia 6650 and the E71x. That’s significant because it signals a change in Nokia’s strategy; up until recently, Nokia’s diverse lineup of unlocked smartphones have barely made a dent in the U.S. marketplace due to their high upfront cost.

That said, Nokia is aiming the Surge at a younger demographic than the E71x. The big news is the Surge’s thin, squat form factor, as if it endured a few passes of a rolling pin. It’s made almost entirely of black gloss plastic and accumulates fingerprints like crazy. The handset measures 3.8 by 2.3 by 0.6 inches and weighs 4.4 ounces. But it felt lighter in the hand than I had expected.