The Showstoppers event was held last night (Wynn), where a variety of (mostly) smaller companies set up shop. Not much caught my eye, though I ran into the Engadget, Gizmodo, and CrunchGear teams. (That’s Peter Rojas above, with Randall Bennett handling film duties on the right.) The food wasn’t as good as Digital Experience the night before (Caesars) but they did project Florida’s Buckeye butt-kicking which I appreciated.
TiVo was present and I chatted a bit (with a more lengthy chat to follow today) and played around in Mac TiVoToGo. Sounds like the Music Choice and Rhapsody deals are in their infancy, so I’m not sure what technology (if any) has been developed at this point.
I know there are some unhappy with the cost associated with Roxio Toast 8 Titanium… I wonder if it’s technically possible to separate the TiVo Transfer tool from the package. As you would expect, I didn’t get much from that line of questioning. ;) Let me remind folks that TiVoDecode Manager is free, community-developed software which performs TiVoToGo transfers and file conversions. However, Roxio’s software is showing up for as low as ~$50. Personally, I’d rather have the official software (which includes DVD authoring). Not to mention… I learned that some more functionality is on the way.
As timing would have it, http://www.cheapstingybargins.com has Toast 8 Platinum for $40.
Actually, Buy.com has two $20 rebates, bringing the AR price to $37.xx. Use your wife to sign up for a Google Checkout account (since I’ve already got my money’s worth from mine), and get an additional $10 off. I love TDM, but for $27 shipped, I’ll fool around with Toast 8 as well.
http://www.buy.com/prod/Roxio_Toast_8_Titanium/q/loc/105/203869000.html
Be careful with the rebates. One of them is an Upgrade rebate. If you read the terms, it says you have to be a user of a previous version of a few qualifying Roxio products…I almost pruchased think it would be $27, but since I don’t have any other products, it would have ended up $47….