Not much to report from New Orleans yet, but I’m on the ground. From the look of the sessions over the next few days, there will be a lot of tru2way talk, and no shortage of discussions on bandwidth, the DTV transition and cable advertising apps. Start looking for company news announcements today - a lot of folks won’t wait for the start of the work week. And if you’re a Twitter-er, the NCTA tweets under the name CableShow. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Drawbaugh at EngadgetHD has some potentially good news for those with CableCARD tuners on Vista Media Center HTPCs. Ben inquired with AMD and CableLabs to see if there was any hope for a “tuning resolver” for VMC. The response was not a emphatic yes, but it was in the words of Drawbaugh a “definite maybe.”

Without some way of handling switched digital video, CableCARD users in regions enabling SDV won’t be able to tune the entire digital channel lineup using their CableCaARD HTPCs. Read more on Switched Digital Video at wikipedia.

If you’re interested in this stuff (and if you’re using CableCARD technology, you should be) check out Mari Silbey’s post on Switched Digital Video and CableCARDs at Mediaexperiences2go.com and the NCTA State of the Union Call at ZatzNotFunny!

Check out more of Brent’s reflections on tech, gadgets, software and media at Brent Evans Geek Tonic.

In Episode 49 of the net@night podcast, Amber MacArthur and Leo Laporte interviewed the co-founder of animoto, Brad Jefferson. animoto is a web service that generates professional quality, customized videos from your images and music. FYI, here’s Leo’s video.

I decided to give it a whirl. I am impressed. So far I’ve ‘produced’ three videos including this one of my 2002 trip to Thailand (turn on your speakers for this).

The images in this video were taken from these Thai locations in this order: Bangkok (including the backpacker Mecca of Khao San Road), Ko Samui,Ko Tao, Phuket, Ko Phi Phi, Rai Leh, Ao Nang Krabi, Kanchanaburi (Bridge Over River Kwai), Phang-Nga then back to Ko Samui

Except for the uploading and processing time, assuming your pictures are generally ordered on your computer or hosted web service in the order you want them in your video, the process takes only about 10 minutes of your time.

Animoto ‘How To’ Summary

• Select Images: Upload your pictures to animoto (one picture per second or two of music worked well for me). Alternatively, you can select pictures from your flickr, facebook, smugmug, picasa or photobucket account
• Arrange Images: Arrange the photos in the order you wish. You can tell animoto which pictures to highlight in the video
• Select Music: Select one of their canned tracks or upload an MP3 file from your computer
• Payment: Pay either U.S. $3.00 per video, or $30 for a year long unlimited all-access pass, with Paypal or Google Checkout (unfortunately no credit cards yet). Note: See the referral program info below to get $5 off the all-access pass
• Processing: animoto will churn away for an hour or two analyzing your pictures and chosen music and then create a customized video. animoto will email you a link to the finished product when done

Below I describe what you can do with the resulting video and provide a step by step guide, showing how I made the Thailand video.

Read the rest of this entry at The Daleisphere »

TiVo’s been testing the return Lifetime Service on a promotional basis, and I’ve just received word that it’s back for good. (Until they shift course again…) Current DVR subscriptions run $12.95/month or $129/year, so it’d take about 2.5-3 years before benefiting from the $399 Lifetime Service fee. And since Lifetime Service is box-specific, you may want to save your pennies for whatever new (tru2way) TiVo standalone model is introduced during that timeframe. The going rate for secondary (and more) TiVo units is $9.95/month, $99/year, or $299/lifetime.

Like freebies? This one’s not bad at all. Laplink, which specializes in file syncing and migration software, is giving away copies of its PCmover product. According to the press release:

PCmover automatically moves selected files, folders, settings, and even applications from an old PC to a new one.

The software is normally $50, but to celebrate Laplink’s 25th anniversary, the company is giving it away for free for a very short time. The deal is scheduled to last for 24 hours starting tomorrow, but appears to be live on the site now along with steep discounts for other related products. Geeks descend!

I polled my fellow ZNF contributors for their current top three television shows. Not only are the networks and content diverse, but so are the methods used to acquire programming (in addition to the requisite DVR timeshifting). For example: I caught the first season of Dexter on DVD and most of Burn Notice via Hulu and iTunes, while Davis is catching up on Amazing Stories (from the 80s!) via Netflix Watch Now.

Mari

• The Riches (FX)
• Burn Notice (USA)
• Lost (ABC)

Davis

• Survivor (CBS)
• Reaper (CW)
• Amazing Stories (NBC)

Brent

• Lost (ABC)
• Reaper (CW)
• The Office (NBC)

Dale

• House (Fox)
• Lost (ABC)
• Battlestar Galactica (SciFi)

Dave

• Burn Notice (USA)
• Dexter (Showtime)
• The Riches (FX)

So, what are your top three shows and how’re you watching?

Mac TV software ‘The Tube’ has been updated to include an interesting new feature:

The new 2.7 release now supports “placeshifting.” Using iChat, you can drag a The Tube icon onto an active video chat to stream video on your TubeStick to friends using iChat Theater. Attendees can also record video clips of the show being shared.

It just so happens that I have an older (NTSC) Miglia TVMicroExpress USB stick review unit here… which includes a license for The Tube. While I’ve verified the iChat television sharing feature does exist (above), I haven’t actually tested this new way of socializing around television content. (Busy prepping for a work trip this afternoon… I’ll recruit Tofel to fire up iChat when I’m back home next week.) TubeToGo (below) is another notable new feature (introduced in March, v2.5), facilitating web archiving (and streaming) of television content. Something I’ll also need to check out more thoroughly when I return.

I’ve been meaning to follow up on Dave’s Sezmi post. I’ll start by saying that I love the idea of Sezmi, the former Building-B, but I simply can’t imagine how the enterprise will succeed.

As everyone has discovered, video services are entirely dependent on the quality of the transmission systems they use. Sezmi is relying on two transport methods, over-the-air transmission and fixed-line broadband networks. Both Cynthia Brumfield and Glen Dickson pointed out that leasing over-the-air capacity is not as easy as Sezmi has made it out to be. According to Dickson, Sezmi is unlikely to get more than 60 Mbps of capacity in any market, which probably can’t support more than ten HD channels at most even using MPEG-4 compression at very low data rates. Given that folks are complaining about the lack of HD channels with FiOS, how can Sezmi compete with only ten?

On the wired side of the equation there’s even more of a bandwidth issue. Sezmi plans to sell its service through broadband partners (ISPs, telcos without TV service, and some retailers), but if it’s truly successful, the broadband portion is going to place a tremendous strain on the Internet delivery mechanisms (likely not fiber to the home) of those partners. I can just hear cable’s new Slowsky commercials now.

Of course, all of that’s not even taking into account the issue of the content deals Sezmi is negotiating. Video deals are notoriously difficult to arrange, and certainly if cablecos and telcos ever truly sees Sezmi as a threat, no doubt those operators will bring every bit of leverage they have to bear to make sure the content Sezmi gets is not as good or wide-ranging as theirs.

Sezmi is attempting to do two things that consumers are anxious for: provide a cheaper option to cable TV, and create an effective interface that combines broadcast video with Internet video. On the first point, I think it will be blocked at every turn. On the second point, I think the company may show others a way forward, but it’s a problem that all the big guys are already working on, and will bring out their own solutions for when they’re good and ready.

Best of luck to Sezmi. These guys have been really innovative, and deserve huge kudos for trying something new. I wish the obstacles in front of them weren’t quite so daunting.