Hasta La Gadget!

The TiVo: close, but no cigar.

(Credit: TiVo)

Roku announced this week that it signed on with Major League Baseball to deliver MLB.tv Premium to its set-top box. It’s the first live content that the device, which is best known for its Netflix streaming, will offer.

But like many other set-top boxes on the market, the services the Roku box offers aren’t unique to that device. Netflix streaming is available on a large and growing number of devices, including TiVo DVRs, the Xbox 360, and all newer LG and Samsung Blu-ray players and home theater systems. In addition to the Roku, MLB programming is available on the PC, through Boxee, and through various cable and satellite TV packages.

Indeed, many TVs, Blu-ray players, DVRs, and home theater systems now have a baseline configuration that makes it relatively easy to add streaming services via postpurchase firmware upgrades. At this point, adding content seems almost as simple as calling the content provider and having lawyers work up an agreement between the parties.

The problem is, those partners are not necessarily working together. The hardware providers want those streaming or download services to be exclusive to their boxes. The content providers want their entertainment to be made available on as many devices (STBs or otherwise) as possible. Those very different goals are causing set-top boxes to provide most, but not all, the services that consumers want.

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Originally posted at The Digital Home

Slowly but surely, the mega-corp who has historically clung tight to its own formats while the world opts for others is finally seeing the light. Just over a year after Sony pushed out an update that enabled its Reader to use purchased books in the open EPUB format, the outfit is now promising to sell digital books only in that format by the year’s end. Moreover, Sony is aiming to nix its “proprietary anti-copying software in favor of technology from the software maker Adobe that restricts how often e-books can be shared or copied.” Once the switchover takes place, books purchased in Sony’s online store will be readable on any device that supports EPUB, one of which will be Plastic Logic’s forthcoming e-reader. And to think — if only this change of heart would’ve happened prior to the introduction of ATRAC…

Filed under: Displays, Handhelds

Sony takes Reader openness one step further, will offer EPUB titles only originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 13 Aug 2009 07:18:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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These days, the whole “I shipped a million!” claim is becoming more and more common, but it’s still worth pointing out that HTC has managed to move a whole bundle of its Android-based myTouch 3G (or Magic, as it were) since debuting in April. Or, that’s the story, anyway. According to a dangerously brief blurb over at Digitimes, the outfit’s head honcho quipped that the Magic has “surpassed one million units,” and he also noted that it would begin to focus more on the mid-range market as opposed to always dealing devices at the high-end. So, raise your glass high for this one folks, and let the countdown to a million Hero handsets begin while you’re at it.

[Via InformationWeek]

Filed under: Cellphones

HTC reportedly moves a million Magic smartphones, boogies down at midnight originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 13 Aug 2009 06:07:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This article was written on June 18, 2007 by CyberNet.

Several of you expressed interest in FastAero the last time I wrote about it, so here is an update on the progress. A new version was just released today that has pretty much been rewritten, and boasts some performance updates which appears to help quite a bit!

XP users continue to get closer and closer to having a Vista-like transparent border around their windows that also supports blurring. FastAero still has a lot of bugs in it, especially with certain applications, but hopefully the developer will continue to squash those as future updates are released.

And I’m sure you’re probably also wondering about the FastAero window that you must keep open in order to run it…no, that hasn’t been removed yet. It would be nice if the developer just made a System Tray icon because I’m sure most users who really want the blurring effect would suffer through the bugs that FastAero has. Maybe you can use TrayDevil to put that window in the System Tray and out of the way?

Let us know in the comments how well it works for you.

Note: This software is only for Windows XP, and does not require any installation to try it out.

Fast Aero (Download Mirror for build 0600)

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In what’s hopefully indicative of future trends, the upcoming Guitar Hero 5 for Nintendo Wii has the ability to stream content — in this case, extra songs — directly from the SD card. Up until now, everything from the card had to be transferred to 512MB internal memory before use, meaning you’d be pretty limited if making that near-endless set list of premium downloaded tracks. With 32GB of space now at your disposal, it looks like the only limit is your bank account and your predilection to Eagles of Death Metal. So when are we gonna see this trick in other Wii titles, eh Nintendo?

Filed under: Gaming

Guitar Hero 5 for Wii can stream downloaded songs directly from SD card originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 13 Aug 2009 04:19:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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