Hasta La Gadget!

We haven’t heard a lot about Inlet Technologies over the years, a company that works mostly behind the scenes on advanced encoding technology, but it was right there on the cutting-edge of the Blu-ray bandwagon back in 2008. Now it’s looking set to become the latest addition to Cisco, with that company announcing intent to drop $95 million and see the acquisition through. It’s not entirely clear what Cisco will do if it picks up this toy, but it certainly sounds like mobility is on the mind of Enrique Rodriguez, Cisco’s Service Provider Video Technology Group General Manager:

Cisco’s Videoscape platform will play a key role in reinventing the TV experience, and the acquisition of Inlet will enable our customers to leverage the network as a platform to deliver innovative video experiences to consumers on any device.

If that name sounds familiar, until recently Enrique worked at Microsoft on, among other things, the Zune and Media Center. That might also give another clue to where Cisco is going.

Continue reading Cisco looking to acquire Inlet Technologies, get even hipper with streaming

Cisco looking to acquire Inlet Technologies, get even hipper with streaming originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 07 Feb 2011 09:24:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Cisco has continued its push to make home entertainment wire-free with its latest E-Series wireless router, the Linksys E4200. Cisco’s new dual-band 802.11n rig enters a high-end market segment currently occupied by the TRENDnet TEW-692GR. Both routers utilize a 3×3 Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) configuration for a max throughput of 450Mbps on the 5GHz band, and while the E4200 only reaches speeds of 300Mbps at 2.4 GHz (as compared to the TEW-692GRs 450Mbps) it should still be quite the video streaming powerhouse. As we’ve seen in previous Cisco offerings, the company’s latest has USB connectivity and UPnP media server capabilities to add network storage and share all of your movies and music. Additionally, the E4200 packs technology similar to that seen in other routers, which allows users to prioritize bandwidth for movies, voice, or music. To keep everyone connected, it has 4 Gigabit Ethernet ports, six antennas, and several internal and external signal amplifiers to provide coverage for even the most palatial of estates. For those itching to pair a performance router with their new internet capable TV, the E4200 is priced at $179.99 and is currently available at Best Buy.

Continue reading Cisco unveils Linksys E4200 dual-band router capable of speeds up to 450Mbps

Cisco unveils Linksys E4200 dual-band router capable of speeds up to 450Mbps originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 20 Jan 2011 06:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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As expected, Cisco held a quick CES presser today to launch its connected TV initiative, which it’s calling Videoscape. It’s pretty ambitious stuff — Cisco’s goal isn’t to kick out a single consumer-focused set-top box, but rather to build out an entire video network architecture in conjunction with service providers that allows customers to view any authorized content on any device on any network. That means that in addition to the actual Videoscape set-top box for your TV, there will also be apps for everything from Android and iOS to game consoles and Macs and PCs — in the end, Cisco thinks your standard premium cable subscription will serve content everywhere, negating the need for supplemental services like Hulu and Netflix. There’s also a Videoscape Media Gateway that can serve up local content across all your devices — the company demoed sharing a quick Flip video with family members just by plugging the camera into the Gateway.

Obviously rebuilding entire cable systems around pervasive content delivery won’t be easy — Cisco says “video is the new voice” when it comes to disruptive industry shifts — and the only partner announced today is Telstra. To really gain momentum the company will have to sell its vision to huge companies like Comcast and Time Warner, who are already working on their own projects. We’ll see what happens — it makes sense for a networking provider like Cisco to take this sort of end-to-end approach, but there’s a lot of action in this space right now, and we don’t think anyone has the luxury of time.

Cisco announces Videoscape IPTV platform and products originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 05 Jan 2011 18:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We don’t blame you if you fail to recognize this good looking fella. Just a quick recap: this is Mark Papermaster, the ex-IBM chip designer who stirred up a storm while transitioning to Apple, only to quietly depart the company 16 months later for reasons that we’ll never truly know. Fear not though, folks, as word has it that the boy is back in town: Papermaster is now hanging out with Cisco’s Silicon Switching Technology Group as its new vice president. Ironically, our man here will be responsible for making chips that power Cisco’s switches, so it’ll probably be more or less like his good old days back at IBM. Oh, and without Steve Jobs breathing over his shoulders.

Mark Papermaster returns to chip business courtesy of Cisco, Apple silently watches originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 13 Nov 2010 20:37:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It was the halcyon summer of 2009. The Hubble Space Telescope was fixed, Helio Castroneves won the Indy 500, Somali pirates were really doing their thing, and Linksys decided it was time to pull the plug on its DMA2100 and DMA2200 Media Center Extenders. Production was ceased and that was that… or so we thought. Now we’re hearing dozens of reports that those extenders mysteriously stopped working over the past few days, and indeed a thread over at The Green Button is full of hundreds rightfully disgruntled users. Thanks to a lot of investigations by members it’s been determined that the boxes are trying to dial home to an address that no longer exists. Naturally this is causing wild speculation about DRM checks and the boxes being remotely disabled, but for now there are some manual work-arounds, including configuring your router to explicitly block any traffic from the Extender or simply assign an invalid gateway. This seems to work for many, but not for all. We’ve reached out to get an official word from Cisco on what’s up here, but until we hear back feel free to post your most alluring conspiracy theories in comments below.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Linksys Media Extenders suddenly stop working, did Cisco pull the plug? originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 06 Nov 2010 09:46:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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