Hasta La Gadget!

The battle for the connected living room is about to heat up in a big way: the Wall Street Journal reports that Cisco will announce a new series of connected cable boxes here at CES tomorrow, as part of a larger announcement that combines online video with recorded and live television. You scoff now, but keep in mind that Cisco owns Scientific Atlanta, which makes an absolutely huge number of cable boxes for providers like Time Warner and Comcast — and if Big Cable embraces connected TV by distributing integrated Cisco hardware, well, we’d say upstarts like Apple and Google might just go home with their tails between their legs. On the other hand, the WSJ says “cable operators will be able to customize the software interface and decide on pricing” for Cisco’s new boxes, so it’s possible America’s favorite corporations will completely bungle everything at the first opportunity. We’ll be there live tomorrow, so we’ll see what happens.

Cisco joining connected TV party with updated cable boxes at CES originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 04 Jan 2011 20:55:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  Wall Street Journal  | Email this | Comments

Ever have a really bad day? You know, when you try to do a simple task like reboot a server and suddenly your whole week is shot? That, apparently, is what happened at Cisco HQ, with the result being the disabling of thousands of Linksys Extenders for Media Center, as we reported last week. Our request for info was finally channeled through to the right people and we have a response as to what happened:

Yes we did have to take the server down for maintenance and during the reboot realized we had an issue with a certificate server. All is fixed now and we apologize for any inconvenience this has caused to our customers.

So, that missing IP should now be responding and hopefully your Extenders are working again. Also, it seems this was not part of a vast cable company conspiracy to keep you from watching downloaded versions of The Walking Dead and finding out how Rick got out of that tank. Now, as to why the thing needs to dial home in the first place, and when will that freshly certified server be put out to pasture for good, rest assured we’re looking for answers.

Update: The word is that the Extenders are actually dialing home to see if new firmware is available, not to send reports on how many obnoxious Geico commercials you’ve skipped in the past 24 hours. Why does a failed firmware update check cause the boxes to be freak out like this? That we don’t know, and we hope it’s an issue conveniently addressed via that very same firmware update process, but we’re also told that there are no plans to retire these boxes, so you just keep on streaming the good stream.

Cisco responds, fixes Linksys Extenders for Media Center, certificate issue to blame originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 10 Nov 2010 07:07:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments

I bet you didn’t know that next month is Movember. The made
up month (think of it as the autumn version of Smarch) is part of an annual
moustache growing event aimed at raising money for men’s health charities.
Cisco’s Flip camcorder is getting into the event this year, with a selection of
moustache-sporting camcorders.

The company is offering 10 mustachioed varieties, including
The Professor, The Auteur, The Sunshine Gander, and Chalet Cognac. You can get
the aforementioned mustaches on the UltraHD and MinoHD models. $10 from the
sale of each will go toward the Movember Foundation.

First things first: In this episode, Brian X. Chen and I show off the Star Trek Enterprise pizza cutter from ThinkGeek. If you know a Trek fan who enjoys eating pizza — and what Trek fan doesn’t? — this could be a fine gift. It’s weighty, shiny silver, and looks just like the starship piloted by Captain James T. Kirk. It’s not the most solidly built cutter, though, Brian points out — as he holds it dangerously close to my neck.

In more substantive tech news, we discuss the upcoming launch of Windows Phone 7, planned for Monday, Oct. 11. Microsoft will be taking the stage with AT&T at this press conference, which pretty much confirms that AT&T will be one of the carriers offering Microsoft’s next mobile operating system.

In other news, Cisco unveiled its Umi videophone, a $600 piece of kit that turns your HDTV into a videoconferencing system. You’ve also got to pay a monthly fee to support the Umi service. Are these guys crazy? Have they never heard of Google Chat?

Brian reviews Instagram, a hot new photo-editing and photo-sharing app for iPhones.

And we talk briefly about Sony’s risibly ugly Google TV remote, images of which popped up online earlier this week. If this is what the future of television looks like, I want to change the channel.

Like the show? You can also get the Gadget Lab video podcast on iTunes, or if you don’t want to be distracted by our unholy on-camera talent, check out the Gadget Lab audio podcast. Prefer RSS? You can subscribe to the Gadget Lab video or audio podcast feeds

Or listen to the audio here:

Gadget Lab audio podcast #91

http://downloads.wired.com/podcasts/assets/gadgetlabaudio/GadgetLabAudio0091.mp3

SAN FRANCISCO — Cisco on Wednesday morning launched an electronics kit that turns a high-definition television into an expensive videoconferencing phone.

Called Umi (pronounced “you-me”) Telepresence, the product includes a console, an HD camera and a remote control. The console containing the video-conferencing software hooks up to the television and a broadband connection. The Umi kit costs $600 and an additional $25 per month for the phone service.

Umi videoconferencing is not limited to Umi users. Cisco has partnered with Google so that people can use Google’s video chat service on their computers to chat with Umi users, Cisco said during a morning press conference in San Francisco.

“Video is the most powerful medium of all, and if the experience is right it changes behavior and it changes the way people live, play and learn,” said Marthin De Beer, Cisco’s senior vice president of emerging technologies. “Umi telepresence is about you and me connecting in new ways on your television.”

Video conferencing broke into the mainstream in the 2000s when the feature became available in instant-messaging clients such as iChat and Google Chat. In recent years, tech manufacturers have been pushing the technology beyond computers onto devices like smartphones and televisions. The iPhone 4, for example, includes a front-facing camera for “FaceTime” video chatting anywhere you have a Wi-Fi connection. TV-based videoconferencing is catered to group interactions: business meetings, for example, or connecting with family members.

Gina Clark, vice president of the Umi Telepresence product group, said that the Umi will be extremely easy for any type of user to set up.

“The natural behavior and sense of being able to roam around that living room and really enjoy each other is the difference with Umi Telepresence versus competing products,” Clark said.

The Umi is shipping November 14, available at Best Buy and Magnolia Home Theater retail stores. Pre-orders begin today.

Product page [Cisco]

See Also:

• Apple Unveils High-Resolution, Videoconferencing iPhone 4
• Nyoombl Uses the TV for Video Conferencing
• Asus Announces World’s First Skype Video Phone

Photo: Brian X. Chen/Wired.com