Dave Zatz

I Saw Bionic Woman (and I’m not impressed)

In case you haven’t heard, Amazon Unbox is offering free downloads of various NBC fall premieres. Being a TiVo owner, I opted to watch Bionic Woman on television (versus PC or portable) and as the title indicates, I wasn’t overjoyed. Perhaps a two hour premiere or two-parter would have served the plot better – things … Read more

New Satellite DVRs Displayed

At the CEDIA Expo, which caters to the high-end home theater (installer), two new satellite DVRs were on display… DirecTV HR21 Pro TVSquad writes: a rack mountable unit ($1000) capable of recording 100 hours of HD programming in MPEG-4. It also packs an optical HDMI port for running long fiber optic cables without signal loss. … Read more

Digital Media Bytes: TiVo Edition

Never enough time… TiVo Now Available in Mexico City (Press Release): CNN Money No Ad Skipping For Australian TiVo: TiVo Blog How TiVo Can Its Groove Back: NewTeeVee Play video games on your TiVo: TV Squad $200 Series3 TiVo Rebate: TiVo Lovers Ramsay’s consulting gig for $144 an hour: Mercury News

Digital Media Bytes

A periodic roundup of relevant news… from our other blogs: 3D TV, The Next Heavy-Bandwidth App: Connected Home 2 Go New NCTA Proposal on Digitial Must-Carry Channels: Connected Home 2 Go Video Streaming vs. Video Downloading: Connected Home 2 Go

Stuck in Rebate Hell?

Stuck in rebate hell? Wonder why? Mercury News uncovers what many of us have suspected, at least on occasion: I am staring at more than 1,300 rebate requests sent to Vastech [for Fry’s Electronics promotions] on Bonaventura Drive in San Jose. The envelopes were tossed – unopened – into a garbage dumpster near Vastech. I … Read more

Microsoft Internet TV Cometh

Microsoft is expanding their presence in the content delivery arena and will begin providing video downloads via Vista’s MCE interface. Unlike the iTunes fee-based service, MS is going the ad-supported route. Engadget uncovered a few details: we do know that content will fall into Sports, Entertainment, News, Top Picks, Music and Movies categories. Additionally, the … Read more

Half Price DigitalLife Tickets

DigitalLife is just a few weeks away (9/27-9/30) – unlike most trade shows, this one is consumer-oriented and all are welcome. It’s also a fairly manageable event you can probably knock out in a day. So if you’ll be near NYC later this month, register for DL using the code ZATZ for 1/2 price tickets. (Disclosure: I receive zero kickbacks and have no monetary relationship with DigitalLife.) I’ll be in NYC that week, including working ShowStoppers and attending DigitalLife in one form or another – at least on Thursday.

The DL folks provided some event highlights to share:

Fall (and beyond) Television Premieres

Brent Evans has put together two comprehensive lists of TV show premieres: new and returning shows, new shows with synopsis. I’ve been down on most network television series for awhile now… Between premature show cancellations and crazy multi-week/month breaks, I’m afraid to invest much time in new series and generally have felt used. Brent pretty … Read more