So, you’d love to get the movies, music, and photos from your laptop to your living room, but you don’t want to buy another box, right? Well, If you have a game console, you’re in luck. ZOMG IT’S SOOOO EASY. More »
The Wii joins its Xbox and Playstation 3 game console rivals in ditching the disc. Users can now download a Netflix Watch Instantly channel through the Wii Shop, meaning you don’t have to fumble around to find the disc when you want to watch a movie on the biggest screen in your house.
“Wii is a consummate home entertainment platform and has quickly become one of the best and most popular ways to enjoy movies streamed from Netflix,” said Reed Hastings, co-founder and CEO of Netflix. “The availability of Netflix right on the Wii Menu adds significantly to the ease and convenience that attracts our members to the Netflix streaming experience and is an important step in our efforts to continuously improve the service.”
It’s hard to believe that the Netflix has only been available on the Wii since April 12, 2010. Since then, discless streaming video from Netflix has come to the iPad, iPhone, Apple TV, Google TV, PS3 and other devices, joining Xbox, the Roku Player and TiVo. But the Wii doesn’t have the HD video output many of those other devices have — for Netflix or anything else.
Netflix Now Available As A Download From The Wii Shop Channel [Nintendo Press Room]
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It’s not just the PS3 that will be doing its Netflix streaming disc-free from today: the Wii is joining in the fun as well! Americans and Canadians alike will be able to download and install Netflix from the Wii Shop Channel, provided they’ve signed up for a subscription of $8.99 (C$7.99 in Canada) or above. Notably, over three million Wii consoles are said to have been hooked up with Netflix since the service launched back in April, and this step should make that number grow even larger. Only question is what we’re all going to do with those three million redundant discs now. We can’t turn them all into coasters, any ideas?
Continue reading Netflix on Wii drops the clunky disc requirement, starts streaming through Wii Menu
Netflix on Wii drops the clunky disc requirement, starts streaming through Wii Menu originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 18 Oct 2010 08:19:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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We’ve already lost count of all the internet TV platforms that launched this fall, but that hasn’t stopped DivX (even after the company was recently purchased) from throwing its hat into the ring by officially launching as a streaming internet video front end on several LG Blu-ray players. Available in the latest BD.8.31.317.C firmware update for the BD550/BD570/BD590 line, DivX TV lets users browse internet shows (including The Engadget Show, Revision3 and others — full list and a quick introduction video follow after the break) and create customized channels of the content they want to watch. We’ll wait and see if DivX TV pops up on any other hardware, but at least LG owners can check off yet another source of videos after Netflix, VUDU, CinemaNow, YouTube and of course, Blu-ray discs.
[Thanks, Nigel]
Continue reading DivX TV launched on LG Blu-ray players, mixes up the internet-to-TV wars a bit more
DivX TV launched on LG Blu-ray players, mixes up the internet-to-TV wars a bit more originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 17 Oct 2010 03:33:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Western Digital’s got a few different media streamers to its name, but the only one with sizable internal storage was the pared-down Elements Play. No more, because the AVS Forums have stumbled upon a feature-packed alternative — the WD TV Live Hub. Purchased at a Best Buy before the blue shirts realized their mistake, the slim new set-top comes with 1TB of storage, 1080p playback over HDMI 1.4, component and composite video out, optical S/PDIF, and all the internet connectivity you’d expect (including Netflix, Blockbuster, Pandora, YouTube and Facebook) over speedy gigabit ethernet. We don’t know how robust the network-attached-storage functionality is, but the lucky owner of this box says it serves up iTunes and DLNA and can function as a network share, just like the My Book Live. Not too shabby for $229, eh? Find plenty more pics and a list of supported formats at our source link.
[Thanks, Arjun]
WD Live TV Hub media streamer / NAS leaks out of Best Buy with gigabit ethernet, 1TB hard drive originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 16 Oct 2010 20:58:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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PlayStation 3 just leapfrogged Xbox 360 and snagged the best Netflix experience on a videogame console yet.
The new Netflix application for PS3, rolling out for download Monday, will enable Netflix subscribers with PS3s to watch movies and TV without a disc. Some titles will even stream in 1080i HD and 5.1 digital surround sound.
Netflix’s “Watch Instantly” streaming-video feature has been available for PS3 since late last year, but it required a Blu-ray disc in order to access the service. Now, by running Watch Instantly as a native PS3 app on the console, users can ditch the disc altogether. Netflix also has a new user interface, optimized for the PS3 controller’s analog joysticks.
In the new UI, search especially seems smartly designed for the PS3 controller, using an alphabetical grid and intelligent auto-complete to minimize the pain of text entry, as seen in this still:
Still from Sony PS3 promotional video.
I even like the way the controller buttons control common text-entry commands in context — like Space, Delete and Enter. There are keyboards available for PS3, but being able to use the controller well is a real asset.
Netflix has not only continued to bring its streaming service to seemingly every device with a screen, but to make that service better. Still, among consoles, the announced PS3 app stands out: Xbox users don’t have 1080i or surround sound, and Wii users have only now added search to their service, which still requires an “Instant Streaming” disc.
Adding media services has become part of the continued rivalry between Xbox and PS3, along with new motion-capture interaction devices like PlayStation’s Move controller and Xbox’s Kinect.
Besides videogame consoles, Netflix can now stream to personal computers on Windows and Mac; TiVo, HD, Roku, Logitech and Apple TV boxes; Windows Phone 7 and all iOS devices; and a wide array of net-connected TVs and Blu-Ray players, including those using Google TV.
Roku’s players, which began as Netflix-only boxes, will soon be available in retail stores through a partnership with Netgear.
Netflix on PS3: Disc-free Next Week [Playstation Blog]
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CNN is currently offering live streaming video of the rescue of the 33 trapped Chilean miners. It’s a bit surreal, to say the least–but then, there’s very little about this whole story that isn’t surreal, I suppose. The miners have managed to survive underground for 69 days. They survived for weeks by rationing food, until a rescue team was able to lower down everything from food to medicine to movies.
Now, more than two months later, the rescue is finally underway. For safety’s sake, the rescuers are taking things slowly, pulling the miners up the 2,000 feet drop, one a time. At last count, 13 of the miners have been rescued in the 11 and a half hours since rescue began, much to the relief of all of the family members present.
The footage, while slow, is pretty engrossing, as the miners emerge, one by one, to smiles, applause, and hugs.
The innocuously-named FileBrowser is an iPad app which lets you access files on your computer over the local network or the internet. This is a function shared by roughly one zillion other apps in the store. What makes FileBrowser different is that it can access network-attached storage (NAS), letting you stream video and music to your iPad from a Time Capsule or other network drive without switching on a computer.
The app will connect to Macs, Windows PCs and NAS devices via SMB sharing. There is some setup involved, but the app comes loaded with PDFs which walk you through step-by-step. I grabbed it so I could stream files from a hard-drive hooked up to my Time Capsule, a feature added in the latest version of the app. It was easy.
All you need to do is give FileBrowser the name of the Time Capsule (or Airport Extreme base station), along with your user name and password. That’s it. Over an 802.11n connection you can drill down into the internal and external drives as fast as if they were local storage, and clicking on a compatible video file will play it right there in the app, with the standard media-control buttons.
The trick is that the movie files need to be in the right format. If it would sync to the iPad via iTunes and play in the “Videos” app, then you’re good to go. This means you’ll have to convert movies before using this solution: If you want to stream and convert movies on the fly, you’ll still need a computer running something like the excellent Air Video.
However, if you have a movie-playing app like CineXPlayer installed, you can choose to open AVI and other movie formats with that instead. These don’t stream, though: FileBrowser downloads them first.
FileBrowser will also work with any file that iOS can recognize, and can hand those files off to other apps. It costs $3, which is $3 you’ll save in weeks by keeping your computer switched off.
FileBrowser app page [iTunes]
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Considering our leak a couple of days back came directly from Sony itself, this is hardly a suprise, but Eurogamer has done the diligent thing and managed to confirm with the dudes in suits that British film streaming service Lovefilm will indeed be coming to the PlayStation 3. The everything console is adding the UK answer to Netflix to its stable of software enhancements, which will let people buy pay-per-view movies or, provided they’re on Lovefilm’s £5.99 subscription or above, let them stream away without a care in the world. Oh, and the video ad that got pulled? We’ve now got it for you after the break.
Update: Electric Pig have been told that the PPV option will be left off the table for console streamers.
Update 2: Lovefilm has gotten in touch with us directly to say the service is rolling out this November.
PS3 and Lovefilm make it official, streaming movies to consoles in the UK this November (updated) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 13 Oct 2010 06:56:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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The new Pogoplug Pro gets a color change, from a cake-frosting pink and white to a somber, businesslike black, and adds one essential that has been missing until now: built-in Wi-Fi.
The Pogoplug is a small box that hooks up to both your router and up to four USB drives. It then makes all of the content on those drives available to you via the internet, wherever you may be. You can do this with a computer, but the advantage of the Pogoplug is that you don’t have to leave a power-thirsty desktop running at home, and the configuration is also a lot easier.
With the addition of Wi-Fi, the box just got a whole lot more versatile. It still does the same as before, but now you can stash it in a closet along with the hard drives and even a printer and forget about stringing ethernet cables, or adding external Wi-Fi adapters.
There is also a Pogoplug app for the iPad and iPhone which will let you stream your music and videos or access other files direct, whether away from home or directly over the local network. For many, who keep large movie libraries on external drives, this could be the killer app right there: the Pogoplug apps let you stream your video direct from the drives with no pesky computer required.
The Pogoplug Pro is available now, for the same $100 as the original, meaning you should only buy the old one if you love pink, and are allergic to Wi-Fi.
Pogoplug Pro product page [Pogoplug]
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