Dave Zatz As rumored and speculated, Apple has pulled the trigger on iTunes movie rentals for Macs/PCs, iPods, iPhones, and Apple TV (see second paragraph). 20th Century Fox, Warner Bros, Disney, Paramount, Universal, and Sony are the larger studios in their stable. Typical digital rental terms: Begin watching within 30 days of download, 24 hours to complete … Read more
Mari and I spent some time with a Slacker rep last week. She’s more fired up than I am… While I’m a fan of Slacker’s music streaming site and their business model for hardware service is interesting (though I’d want the premium tier), the device bulk (compared to the competition) turned me off. However, I’ll … Read more
Vudu made a couple of CES announcements… Since their $399 movie download STB isn’t quite expensive enough, Vudu has introduced a higher priced model at $999 – offering only increased storage. From a business perspective, I get it – hard drives are cheap and “Vudu XL” margins will be much higher than the base Vudu … Read more
It’s not that I don’t appreciate Logitech’s diNovo Mini keyboard and trackpad. It’s just that I can’t think of a use for this little guy since dismantling my HTPC(s) and projector 2.5 years ago. Back in the day, I settled on a Gyration set – less for mousing through the air, and more for the … Read more
Looks like I only managed to get half the story last Sunday – it was literally the last 5 minutes of the event and I missed a critical piece of the equation. Thursday AM I managed to swing by TiVo’s booth and got a bit more information… In addition to manually configuring video folder monitoring … Read more
The bombshell: Warner Bros announces they’re dropping the HD DVD format to exclusively produce Blu-ray Discs. The aftershock: HD DVD Promotion Groups cancels their press conference. This seemed to be the most discussed topic in the days leading up to CES, both on-site and online. At this point, the next generation optical disc war has … Read more
They could have spent a ton of dough building one booth amongst many. Instead, Aliph set up shop at the CES concierge desk to trade Jawbone noise-eliminating Bluetooth headsets with anyone willing to give up their existing model. The strategy is genius on many levels (and reminds me a bit of TiVo’s VCR funeral). By … Read more
I’ve caught a bit of the Sony Rolly coverage over the last few months – an MP3 player about the size of a tennis ball that also happens to spin around on a flat surface whilst playing tunes via speaker. However, prior to seeing it in person Thursday, it hadn’t gotten my attention. Now, it’s … Read more