Hasta La Gadget!

Alright, before you jump on your sofa Tom Cruise-style, these rights don’t relate to the NBA, NFL or anything else quite so exciting to the Western viewer. Google’s master plan for getting into the cutthroat sports broadcasting world is to start with… Indian Premier League cricket. Oh sure, you don’t know what that even is yet, but plenty of people in the Eastern hemisphere live and die by the stuff and YouTube’s slated to start broadcasting live matches from March of this year. What should be tantalizing for all of us is that Google seems to be taking this as a pilot venture which, if successful, could be the harbinger of plenty more live streaming content to come. Cricket at the vanguard of modern content distribution — who could’ve expected that?

YouTube nabs live sports streaming rights originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 20 Jan 2010 04:54:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Hey humans! So Hastings was telling us the truth after all — the Nintendo Wii will be joining the other two game consoles to stream Netflix starting some time in early Spring. Like the PS3, a special Netflix “instant-streaming” disc will be required for the Wii, and it goes without saying that HD’s out of the question since the Wii itself can’t push above 480p. There’ll be no additional fees beyond Netflix’s usual monthly subscription. Time for a game of Mario Kart to celebrate, no?

Update: the Netflix sign-up page is now live! [Via Joystiq]

Wii gets Netflix this Spring, disc required for streaming originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 13 Jan 2010 00:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Popcorn Hour lineup had (and still has) a huge following, but it remains one of the most under-appreciated media streamers on the market from a mainstream perspective. We get the feeling that all of that’s gearing up to change, with Syabas demonstrating its highly marketable Popbox here at CES. We were able to swing by and take a look at the product tonight, and we’ve got to confess — it’d be a pretty stellar add to any home entertainment setup. The box was small, light and stylish enough, and the actual user interface was drop-dead simple to navigate. It hooks up with any networked media (the demo was playing back content from a NAS drive), and it even pulls down metadata from IMDB for films. We briefly watched a couple of 720p clips, and playback started instantly and the video quality was nothing short of fantastic. We’ve got a video in the works, but for now, feel free to have a glance at the gallery below.

Update: Video is now live after the break!

Continue reading Syabas Popbox hands-on

Syabas Popbox hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 05 Jan 2010 19:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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CES just wouldn’t be CES without a few new introductions from LaCie, now would it? Nah. Up first from the sexiest name in storage is a fresh member of the LaCinema multimedia hard drive family, the Mini HD. Equipped with 802.11n WiFi and a penchant for serving up 1080p video, this DLNA media player boasts an HDMI output, internal hard drive, USB socket (for uploading media or playing files back from a USB drive) and an extensive list of supported codecs that includes MKV, AVC and DivX. This one should be filtering out now in the US and Europe for an undisclosed amount. Moving on, we’ve got the simply titled Network Server, which sports five drive bays, gigabit Ethernet and Windows Home Server running the show. LaCie also enables users to backup their backups via its own Wuala technology, though exact pricing and availability details won’t be revealed until later in Q1. Lastly, there’s a new trio of USB Keys, which look an awful lot like actual keys. Sadly, these aren’t ready to handle the beast that is SuperSpeed USB, but they do promise transfers as fast as 30MB/sec, and they’re also waterproof and available in sizes as large as 32GB. The company’s also throwing in 4GB of web-accessible Wuala storage for the first two years of ownership, with the CooKey and WhizKey available in 4GB, 8GB, 16GB, and 32GB capacities for $19.99 and up, up, up. The full releases are just past the break.

Continue reading LaCie serves up LaCinema Mini HD, Network Server and Wuala-infused USB keys

LaCie serves up LaCinema Mini HD, Network Server and Wuala-infused USB keys originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 05 Jan 2010 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The world needs another wireless HD system like it needs another thousand gallons of goop spinning in the middle of the Pacific, but regardless of the facts, ProVision is set to introduce one such system at CES this week. According to details scrounged up by Pocket-lint, the AXAR technology will function much like WHDI does currently. The difference? Increased range and a knack for distributing to more than just an HDTV. It’s expected that AXAR will find its way into TVs, set-top boxes and a range of network devices in time for Christmas 2010, where it will allow any AXAR-enabled device (a laptop, phone, PMP, HDTV, PC, etc.) to receive 1080p content from a media player, Blu-ray player or similar. Better still, it can also distribute those signals to WiFi-enabled products if your network can handle it. Currently, the tech can support two separate HD streams at the same time, and it can broadcast ’em to a living space that’s three times that of the Buckingham Palace. We’ll be sure to poke our nose around for more at CES, but in the meanwhile, feel free to catch a few first impressions down in the source link.

ProVision’s AXAR to wirelessly stream HD content to just about anything originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 03 Jan 2010 17:04:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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