Jan 22
Intel built what could conceivably be the best set-top on the market coupled with a new way to deliver television content that doesn’t force you to buy into whatever cable TV monopoly is in your region. Then it handed everything …
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Dec 10
NimbleTV’s “TV everywhere” service launches today in the New York metropolitan area. It streams the Pay TV channels you subscribe to directly to your iPhone, computer browser, Roku, Apple TV, or other smart TVs.
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Aug 20
2016 is shaping up to be huge for Netflix. That’s when the streaming juggernaut’s Disney deal starts bearing fruit and it also marks the start of a multi-year pay-TV exclusivity agreement with The Weinstein Company (TWC). This means the first stop for TWC’s flicks after home video will no longer be Showtime, but (almost) everybody’s favorite place to watch movies instantly instead. While the studio has a pretty impressive back catalog — Django Unchained, Silver Linings Playbook, The Road and … Scary Movie 5 — it isn’t in the class of, say, Universal or Fox in terms of sheer blockbusters. With the rate ‘flix is signing contracts though, who knows what could happen within the next three years.
Filed under: Home Entertainment, HD
Aug 16
The Syfy for iPhone app is relaunching as SyFy Now, while the old Syfy app for iPad is reborn as Syfy Sync, dedicated solely to the network’s second screen ambitions. Why the changes? Now is all about TV Everywhere with streaming of full episodes of Syfy’s original series the day after they air and bookmarks that sync across devices with iCloud. This app can’t put Alphas back on the air, but it can bring Defiance, Robot Combat League and Being Human to wherever you are, assuming you have a compatible TV provider. At launch, customers with Armstrong, AT&T U-Verse, Cablevision’s Optimum TV service, Charter, Comcast’s Xfinity TV, DISH, Mediacom, Suddenlink, Verizon FiOS, and Wide Open West (WOW) are ready to go, and others are coming soon.
Don’t have authentication? The show clips and behind the scenes video previously featured in the app are still available. Syfy’s app for Android isn’t updated yet (and still isn’t ready for the new Nexus 7) but the press release promises Now will launch there in September — hopefully the network can figure out how to include TV movies like Sharknado 2 in the package by then.
Filed under: Home Entertainment, HD, Mobile
Aug 15
WSJ: Sony looking to launch online cable competitor, in talks with Viacom, Disney
Posted in: Today's Chili
Sony’s reportedly made some headway on a solution that may well convince a number of subscribers to cut their cable cords once and for all. According to The Wall Street Journal‘s usual gang of anonymous sources, the electronics giant is in talks with several high profile media organizations to help populate an internet-based service that will stream channels and offer up on-demand content. The offering, which Sony is apparently looking to launch by the end of the year, would be the realization of some long time aspirations. Viacom is apparently at top of the list of potential partners, as the home of channels like MTV, Comedy Central and Nickelodeon. That deal is said to be in the preliminary agreement stage, news that comes a few weeks after Viacom inked a deal with Twitter. According to the WSJ, Sony’s also been holding meetings with a number of other content providers like Disney, Time Warner and CBS. All parties involved have, naturally, refused to comment.
Filed under: Home Entertainment, HD, Sony
Source: The Wall Street Journal
May 23
TiVo has become the Kleenex of the TV world — a once dominant brand that’s become a generic commodity. Yes, we still call recording a TV show “TiVoing.” But as cable and satellite companies started offering their own DVRs and …
May 21
Today Microsoft revealed the Xbox One, and confirmed rumors that its new game console is ready to take over as the heart of your home theater. The new box features HDMI in and out for passthrough with your cable or satellite box. It’s even able to control connected devices with Kinect 2.0-detected voice and gesture commands thanks to IR blasters and HDMI-CEC. On stage, executives showed off the Xbox OneGuide, demonstrating a way to pull up information including trending programming or fantasy sports stats while watching live TV. There’s also a live TV show for Halo in the works, and Microsoft brought NFL commissioner Roger Goodell on stage to talk about integration with the number one pro sports league. There’s no word on exactly which cable, telco or satellite TV systems this will integrate with, but Microsoft’s PR states it “is committed to bringing live TV through various solutions to all the markets where Xbox One will be available” and mentions HDMI is required for the feature to work. It’s supposed to be available at launch in the US, with “global scale” anticipated over time. Check after the break for a few pics of the guide and the back of the Xbox One showing its IR output.
Filed under: Gaming, Home Entertainment, HD, Microsoft
Dec 31
With CES 2013 just days away, TechCrunch has posted a juicy rumor that chipmaker Intel will announce a major plunge into TV, choosing to go it alone after several failed partnerships in an effort to “do it right” this time. Claiming an unnamed source in the video distribution industry, the rumor suggests a plan to deliver a set-top box with DVR, rolled out on a city-by-city basis as it negotiates channel agreements. Despite a number of demos through the years, the Intel-powered TV boxes that have landed in our living rooms so far have been the first gen Google TV and Boxee Box units. Both struggled to make a significant impact and switched to ARM CPUs for the second generation of their products.
Based on some of the tech demos we’ve seen and earlier rumors, Intel’s plans could include using facial recognition to personalize the experience for (and target advertising towards) different viewers, and offering smaller, cheaper bundles of channels than traditional providers. Another element from the TechCrunch post indicates a plan to provide a Catch Up TV-style service that lets users view anything that has aired in the last month on the channels they’re subscribed to, although there’s no word on what will power this technology.
Intel’s participation in Comcast’s Reference Design Kit program is also referenced, although given Big Cable’s traditional reluctance regarding alternative delivery models, any sort of tie-in here seems like a long shot to us. A combo package of pay-TV channels and internet VOD has been tried before, although Sezmi’s antenna-connected solution failed to catch on and fizzled late last year. Like recently rekindled Apple HDTV rumors, the potential of Intel’s service may rely just as much on its success negotiating with content providers as any technology it’s cooked up. Check out the rest of the rumor at the source link and a video from Intel’s 2009 IDF demo after the break, we’ll have any official announcements as they happen from the press conference January 7th.
Continue reading Intel rumored to launch set-top box, ‘virtual cable TV service’ at CES
Filed under: Home Entertainment, HD, Intel
Source: TechCrunch
Sep 26
Cable, IPTV providers reportedly testing cloud-based HD gaming for launch next year
Posted in: Today's Chili 
The next generation of consoles from Sony and Microsoft haven’t even been announced yet but their best competition may be from your cable TV / internet provider, according to a report from Bloomberg. The only-too-eager-to-talk people familiar with the matter named AT&T U-Verse, Verizon FiOS and Time Warner Cable as services preparing tests before the end of the year with general availability planned for 2013. Comcast and Cox were also name dropped as potential candidates to bring console-quality HD games directly to customers, based on tech from startups like Playcast, CiiNOW and Agawi. Of course, while we’ve seen this sort of setup before (as seen above, check out an awesomely 90s Sega Channel ad after the break) and recently from OnLive and Gaikai, cloud gaming has yet to catch on in a major way. Whether this potential approach is all smoke or will actually turn into reality has yet to be seen, but after TV Everywhere we wouldn’t be surprised to see providers toss in gaming as another incentive for subscribers not to cut the cord.
[Image credit: Sega Retro]
Continue reading Cable, IPTV providers reportedly testing cloud-based HD gaming for launch next year
Filed under: Gaming, Home Entertainment, HD
Cable, IPTV providers reportedly testing cloud-based HD gaming for launch next year originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 26 Sep 2012 07:45:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Sep 22
DirecTV HR34 DVR ‘Genie’ recommendations and autorecording get previewed ahead of fall launch
Posted in: Today's Chili 
DirecTV paired its HD interface with the five tuner, RVU ready HR34 Home Media Center DVR back in March, so what will it do next to take advantage of the multiroom boxes with five tuners and massive hard drives? The answer is Genie, a new feature / rebranding that should be very familiar to TiVo users, since its aim is to find other shows you might be interested in and store them on the DVR without being prompted. The folks at Solid Signal and DBSTalk have had an early preview of the fall software update that will enable it, and have both posted hands-on impressions.
Once the user enables the feature, after a few hours it begins episodes of shows similar to the ones they already watch and recording them automatically. The feature uses hard drive space that’s already reserved for DirecTV’s video on-demand (so user accessible recording space is not impacted) and works in selections available from VOD. Watching a program at your leisure VOD-style, setting up a series recording for a new favorite or blasting it from your drive is just a click of the remote away on the DVR or one of its multiroom extenders. Helping viewers discover new content is a field suddenly filled with competition, from the social networking based to Dish Network’s Hopper that records everything on primetime network TV and even filters out commercials. That Genie can let you watch already recorded episodes right away and pull from any broadcasts its finds may give it a leg up, but so far we haven’t seen recommendation systems good enough to promote switching from one service to another. Hit the source links for more details on how it all works, along with a video preview, also embedded after the break.
Filed under: Home Entertainment, HD
DirecTV HR34 DVR ‘Genie’ recommendations and autorecording get previewed ahead of fall launch originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 22 Sep 2012 19:04:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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