Dave Zatz

Picture of the Day: It Lives

MacBook & SlingPlayer @ DigitalLife For more Mac Sling coverage, check out a video interview and demo from DigitalLife and mysteriously obtained (large) screenshots.

Buy 1 iPod, Get 1 Virus Free!

In two separate incidents, digital music players have recently shipped with Windows malware payloads. I don’t even know where to begin. Mistakes happen, but this boggles the mind. My first question is: Was this malicious or accidental? An accident is more likely preventable, while a malicious act is probably harder to block. Dabbling in computer … Read more

Slinging Scoreboard to Scoreboard

Last weekend, Washington State U streamed the live football video footage and audio commentary to U Cal, Berkeley’s Jumbotron using a Slingbox. CEO Blake Krikorian shot some video at Cal’s stadium, where about 3,000 fans showed up to watch. Not only is this a cool demo of Sling’s technology, but it’s interesting in the sense that they bypassed the television network infrastructure to broadcast content one->many — YouSlingTube anyone?

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Interesting News Dave Hasn’t Covered

Never enough time… TiVo S3 hacked to 1TB of RAID5 storage. (TiVo Community) Local CBS News video added to Yahoo. (Press Release) TiVo viewing incorporated into Nielsens. (USA Today) Preview of PS3 online network. (Engadget)

Slingbox on Symbian, Coming Q4 in Europe & Asia

The Sling folks pinged me from London, where they’re attending the Symbian Smartphone Show. Today they will announce support for S60 and UIQ Symbian phones — first launching in Europe and Asia in Q4, followed shortly by an American release. If you recall, new Slingbox packaging clued us in a few weeks ago… but it’s … Read more

TechCrunch Covers Movie Download Services

TechCrunch has a piece covering a variety of movie download services. They put together a decent chart showing percentage of top rentals offered and comparative pricing for CinemaNow, Movielink, GUBA, Amazon, and iTunes. Notably absent from their roundup is Vongo (by Starz!) — the one movie download option with favorable pricing: all-you-can-eat, $10/mo. An interesting … Read more

CNET TV Out Of Beta, Inks Deal With Verizon

CNET TV has finally returned… Originally composed of tech-related television shows, the latest incarnation is a web site just out of beta: www.cnettv.com. While CNET has sprinkled video clips throughout their site for some time, we now have a dedicated video destination. Bonus: Most clips are downloadable MPEG-4s, perfect for an iPod or other portable … Read more

DVR Multiroom Viewing: Current State of Affairs

Multichannel breaks down the current state of affairs for multiroom viewing (MRV), covering the various vendors, pricing schemes, and thoughts on consumer acceptance. They speculate Dish may have the largest distribution of MRV-capable products, though general home penetration is low and consumers show little interest. Given the topic I am somewhat surprised TiVo’s MRV didn’t … Read more