Hasta La Gadget!

Fox Mobile unveiled its Bitbop venture this week that promises to provide a wealth of TV and movie entertainment from a variety of top-tier studios, and if you can get past the fact that you’re actually going to have to pay for this content, it’s shaping up to be a pretty promising system when it launches later this year. There’s no live programming — just a database of show episodes and movies that you have your choice of either streaming or downloading for later consumption over 3G or WiFi — which makes it a little bit like using an on-demand service from your cable company. Bitbop was only demoing the BlackBerry version of its app at CTIA this week, but it looks like there’ll be iPhone and Android versions on the way; at any rate, video quality looked plenty good on the Bold’s 480 x 320 display. Initially, there’ll be just one plan — $9.99 a month for access to shows, while movies will be pay-per-view exclusively — but we got the impression that the company is leaving the door open for other payment models down the road. Great, just what we needed: another really cool way to kill productivity. At least we’ll be able to catch up on Gossip Girl in the process, we suppose! Follow the break for video.

Continue reading Bitbop hands-on: is this the Hulu of mobile?

Bitbop hands-on: is this the Hulu of mobile? originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 25 Mar 2010 20:24:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A tiny device promises to make video conferencing a better experience by using the TV that’s already in your living room.

Nyoombl, an interestingly named startup, makes a gadget called Greypfroot that will sit on top of your TV and allow you to make calls from one TV to another or to a phone mobile or a PC.

“Why can’t [people] with laptops today enjoy video calls with loved ones who are currently familiar with TV sets?” Oladayo Olagunju, CEO of Nyoombl said during his presentation at the DEMO Spring conference Tuesday. “Teleconferencing really doesn’t have to require any corporate dedicated setup that has to cost thousands of dollars.”

The caller and receiver don’t have to always have the Nyoombl device, except in case of TV-to-TV teleconferencing, says the company. The only requirement is that one of the users have an account with an online e-mail service that also offers video chat such as Google Talk or Yahoo.

“We are working on open clients similar to Google Talk, and hope that the proprietary ones will open up to interoperability as we continue to engage them in talks,” says Nyoombl in its website.

Increasingly, TV makers are looking to add video conferencing as one of the applications built into TV sets. Samsung and LG, for instance, offer Skype on newer TVs. Skype on TVs will be similar in its interface to the application that PC users are familiar with, but it is not available on all TVs.

Nyoombl says its advantage is that it works with existing TV sets. The Nyoombl Greypfroot is a “palm-sized device” that sits on top of the TV screen. The device includes a webcam and comes with its basic conferencing own software that can send and receive calls from TVs. Nyoombl’s Greypfroot “connects via the TV’s coaxial connection and adds an interface to accept or reject incoming video chat requests,”  says CNET.

To initiate a call from a TV, you can use the TV’s remote, while the other person is on a laptop, say Google Talk. When the call’s connected, the TV screen is split into two halves, even as the show the TV is running continues in the background.

Nyoombl hasn’t disclosed pricing for the device yet but Olagunju says it will be more affordable than a “current smartphone on the market.”

Check out the video to see Nyoombl’s demo.

Ditch that clunky box connected to your set and get your streaming media directly through the TV itself. Toshiba has introduced the UX600 series of LED TVs, which all offer Wi-Fi connections. The line includes 40-, 46-, and 55-inch sizes ($1,399, $1,699, and $2,499 respectively).

Built-in applications include Vudu, Pandora, Facebook, and Twitter. You can also access Flickr, YouTube, and Picasa and stay informed with New York Times, AP, National Weather, and other news sources. The TVs let you create a customizable ticker on the bottom of your screen to stay current with Twitter, news, weather, or stocks no matter what you’re watching. That’s a great list, but it would sound a lot better if Netflix was on it. What exactly has kept the Toshiba execs to busy that they didn’t notice the most successful movie streaming service around? Add it, Toshiba, and throw in Slacker while you’re at it.

The UX600 TVs offer 3M:1 dynamic contrast, a CrystalCoat high contrast screen coating, and AutoView to create the optimal picture in any lighting condition. All three models will be available this month.

The whole portable TV thing never really caught on in the States, so we’re left looking longingly from afar at offerings like the Panasonic DMP-HV100 and DMP-BV200. Both are 10.1-inch sets that sport 1024 x 600 resolutions and, while either can tune DTV over the airwaves, they can also connect wirelessly (with an optional WiFi dongle) to a Panasonic DVR and stream content. The 200 model can also act as a sort of bulky PMP, playing back a variety of media formats from an SD card, including DivX and H.264. It’s good stuff, but there’s no price attached and, at this point, no release date either — not that they’re likely to ever hit the US, anyway.

Panasonic’s portable Digital Viera TVs handle more than prime time originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 18 Mar 2010 10:05:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We knew vaguely that Google was looking toward the living room, but the NYTimes has the details on Google TV, an ambitious platform to deliver web content to Android-based set-top boxes and TVs through partnerships with Sony, Intel, and Logitech.

Google hopes that the new platform will succeed where dozens of lesser efforts have failed—to truly and seamlessly integrate web content onto TVs, bringing services like Twitter and sites like YouTube, in addition to games, webapps, and, of course, Google’s search, to the big screen. The Google TV software reportedly includes a version of Google’s Chrome browser for doing some light surfing, as well.

The Times says Google TV will be delivered on set-top boxes that use Intel Atom chips and run an Android-based platform, though the technology will also reportedly be built directly into Blu-ray players and TVs from Sony. Additionally, Google is working with Logitech to built a keyboard-equipped remote control for the platform.

Though spokespeople from the companies wouldn’t comment on the project, the Times notes that Intel and Logitech have recently put out job listings for programmers with Android experience.

Television is a relatively unexplored frontier for Google. It’s one of the few spaces left in which the company it is yet to extend its services (as well as its advertising.) But Google TV is far from a sure thing. Many companies have struggled to figure out the right user interface to finally make web on TV make sense. Google’s interfaces tend toward the functional, rather than the beautiful, but on a big screen, the sexiness factor cannot be ignored.

Bringing web content to TVs is a role that’s still very much up for grabs. If Google TV, which has reportedly been in works for months, is the right solution for the problem—Gmail was for web mail, Buzz was not for social networking—then it could very well could be the platform that finally brings the power of the internet to the realm of the couch-potato. [NY Times]