Hasta La Gadget!

Someone must have declared it Google TV Update Week without telling us: just days after a Vizio Co-Star upgrade, Sony’s NSZ-GS7 Internet Player is getting its own tune-up. The Sony update parallels its Vizio counterpart in focusing mostly on the features from the fall 2012 Google TV revamp, including PrimeTime and the updated YouTube app. Viewers pining for Amazon VOD access can also grab its app through Google Play. Sony mostly claims an edge over Vizio through its support for the equally new voice search feature: owners just have to chat with Sony’s remote to get things done, instead of leaning on phone or tablet control. However GS7 owners plan to steer their TVs, they’ll just need to check for a software update in the days ahead to rejuvenate their set-top boxes.

Filed under: Home Entertainment, HD, Sony

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Source: Sony

Dish Network’s new Hopper set-top boxes gained a new feature where users can watch live television through their smartphone or tablet, but it seems not everyone is into such a thing. Fox has ended up asking for an injunction against Dish to ban the new mobile feature, citing that the new service breaches its licensing agreement with Dish and infringes on the network’s copyrights.

In the filing, Fox mentions that “paying Dish for a satellite television subscription does not buy anyone the right to receive Fox’s live broadcast signal over the internet or to make copies of Fox programs to watch [on mobile devices] because Dish does not have the right to offer these services to its subscribers in the first place.”

The new features in the second-generation Hopper box allow users to watch television on their mobile devices by sending live broadcast signals over the internet to users’ devices, and the service also allows subscribers to transfer recorded television shows from the DVR to users’ iPads. A hearing on this issue is set for March 22.

Last year, Fox actually tried to sue Dish over the Hopper on the set-top box’s ability to skip commercials. However, the case was thrown out and an appeal by Fox hasn’t been ruled yet. In the end, Fox says Dish Hopper opens up a world of illegal and unethical practices, including piracy, devaluation, and unfair competition.

[via Bloomberg]

Fox wants to ban Dish’s mobile live TV feature is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

If you live outside the UK or haven’t got access to the Britain-based Blue Peter television program for whatever reason, you’ll be glad to see that the full chat they’ve had this past week with Jony Ive is now available in full. The Blue Peter program hosts a variety of engineers, inventors, and famous people of all kinds and has done so over its record-holding span of years actively broadcast on television. Apple’s own Jony Ive’s appearance included chats about three different designs created by children who rose to the challenge provided the week before, and showed Ive receiving a special badge in his honor.

The Blue Peter gold badge is a pin, or a button, if you like, that’s given by the program to people of particular influence on the design community. As it was given to Ive, so too did he reciprocate with a custom-made large version of the token back to the program. This extra-large Blue Peter badge was made of pure Aluminum – or Aluminium if you’re from that side of the sea.

Apple’s Chief Designer spoke up about how influential the Blue Peter program was on him as a child as well. He made it clear that he was particularly struck by the way the program took everyday objects and turned them into new, more useful inventions each time they appeared. Re-using objects otherwise seen as throwaway was also mentioned as being especially memorable by Ive.

You’ll also notice in the video that the host and Ive are using two iPad minis to work through the segment. It’s with these that they watch video presentations of the designs the children have made and make a point to tap through throughout the program. The whole Ive segment, too, takes place inside Apple’s own campus in Cupertino – fun stuff!

BONUS – extended edition!

Jony Ive Blue Peter video up now: chatting on gold and aluminium is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

HBO brought some of the content walls down when it opened up AirPlay support in the HBO Go app for iOS users, proving that it wasn’t going to protect TV viewing at all cost. It just removed some more barriers: the premium channel has quietly rolled out an update to its Android app that enables HDMI video output. Provided a phone or tablet supports the connection (sorry, Nexus 7 owners), it too can pipe video to the big screen. The solution still doesn’t let us watch HBO without a pricey TV subscription, but it will give us fewer qualms about catching up on Girls when we’re at a friend’s place.

[Thanks, Carl]

Filed under: Cellphones, Home Entertainment, Tablets, HD

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Source: Google Play

Another innovative application of technology reported by Don Kennedy and Ryo Osuga of DigInfo.TV.
Visual SyncAR, under development by NTT, uses digital watermarking technology to display companion content on a second screen, in sync with the content being viewed on the TV.
“For example, you can show a CG character dancing in sync with an artist like this. Or a CG character can jump into the picture, and things in the picture can jump out. In this way, the system enables new forms of …