Categories Archives - Page 12 of 101

Watching HBO GO On The Big Screen

Coincidentally, last week, both Blake Krikorian and I worked out methods to move compelling HBO GO content from smartphone to television. Blake, who you might recognize as the inventor of the Slingbox and champion of the Crestron Android app, ultimately got it done via his Motorola Atrix… in conjunction with the multimedia dock. Like the … Read more

Hands On Fanhattan iPad App for TV/Movie Browsing

Yesterday at the D9 conference a new player entered the content discovery market. Fanhattan debuted an iPad app for finding TV shows and movie titles online. Reminiscent of the old Comcast Fancast site (now Xfinity-branded of course), Fanhattan shows you where to find the videos you want so you don’t have to go trolling around the net searching Netflix, iTunes, Hulu, etc. It’s competing against several other content discovery engines – Clicker, GetGlue, Miso and more – but Fanhattan’s focus isn’t as heavily centered on social sharing as its established counterparts. In my opinion, that’s a strength for the new app. You can get social if you want, but if you just want to watch TV, you can do that too.

There are nine basic modules for TV and movie selections: watch now options, episode details, reviews, cast and crew info, video clips (if available) soundtrack details, fan gear, connect options (Facebook or email sharing), and similar content. You get to this information by tapping through to either the TV or movie main menu and then browsing or searching through different categories. Filter selections include the ability to browse by user ratings, top picks, release dates, and much more. You can also search for titles by keyword.

The Fanhattan interface is quite visual, and, being an iPad app, entirely powered by taps and swipes. I have a few nitpicks about the design, but overall it’s very effective.

New Age in Digital Music – Cloud, Radio, & More

In the last decade we’ve seen the launch of the iPod, satellite radio, and streaming music services on the Internet. But as great as those innovations have been, they haven’t always made life easy for consumers. iPods brought with them the inflexible iTunes marketplace and DRM lock-in, satellite radio added in another monthly fee with no music ownership option, and Internet radio requires (shockingly) an Internet connection. The result is that most of us cobble together our own listening system – part CD, MP3, and radio, and entirely dependent on where we are, and what service or hardware we have access to.

Thanks to the cloud, that’s all about to change. In theory, we’ll soon all have access to everything, everywhere we go. And in practice, the shift has already started to take place. Here’s a look at where music is headed.

To the Cloud

It’s been an interesting few months for cloud music services. First, Amazon launched its Cloud Drive service, offering users a space to store digital music files and play them back on the web or Android devices. Then came Google Music, a very similar offering, though one still in invitation-only beta at the moment. And finally, word has circulated in the last week that Apple is set to launch its own music service – with the one critical difference that it’s sewing up licencing deals with the major labels first. With licensing agreements in place, Apple will be able to help users avoid uploading an entire library of music, and instead scan and match any owned titles with copies already available in the cloud.

New Slacker On-Demand Service Worth the Wait

I’ve been itching for the new Slacker on-demand music service to launch since last fall, and today the new app is (finally!) ready to go on the web, iPhone, iPad, BlackBerry, and Android devices. The whole Slacker experience has been overhauled, but the biggest change comes in the new Premium service tier. For $9.99 a month (or FREE for a limited time at www.facebook.com/SlackerRadio), Slacker Premium customers can now access individual songs and albums on demand. While this may not sound revolutionary, it is when you consider how Slacker implements its on-demand service. With a radio front end, users can find artists and songs simply by tuning to a station and either saving favorite selections as they play, or filtering through station content to find music worth storing. Naturally you can also search for any specific song and play it immediately, but the bigger benefit comes from station-based music discovery. Ask me what song I want to hear, and I may stumble over an answer. But play something I like, and I’ll add it to my personal playlist in a heartbeat.

After using Slacker Premium in beta for the last few weeks, I can happily say that the new service was worth the wait. I’ve only tested it on a computer so far, but I’ll be trialling it further on mobile devices in the near future, and the iPad video demo looks promising. From my own experience, the app is easy to use, and the ability to play favorite songs ad nauseum is addictive. I’ve never been one to collect music, so just being able to access songs when I want without having to make a commitment to buy is compelling. Even better, I don’t have to go out and search for music. If there’s a radio station I like, I can see the top 50 artists and songs on that station and jump around or create my own playlists at will. Stations, albums, and individual songs are also all cacheable for offline playback.

I spoke with Slacker CEO Jim Cady last week, who had a few things to say about where Slacker has been, and where it’s headed.

Netflix Enables iPhone, iPad Closed Captioning

While it may be arriving late for many, Netflix has just expanded video streaming closed captioning onto iOS devices with their 1.3 app update. There are limited display options, but subtitles are certainly a boon. And something I could have used yesterday at the gym when I forgot my headphones. Unfortunately, caption preferences don’t appear … Read more

Even Netflix Says Android Is Fragmented

Netflix has just released their Android instant streaming app. And that’s the good news. The bad news is that only a subset of handsets are supported. Unfortunately, it’s not really much of a surprise give the wide variation of deployed hardware and multiple versions of Android. As Netflix blogs: In the absence of standardization, we … Read more

Best Premium iPhone Video App?

I habitually subscribe to all sorts of audio and video services. While I do enjoy my fair share of quality entertainment, it’s more about ensuring a breadth of content and playback options. Over the last few months a selection of mobile streaming video apps have enabled me to regularly conquer the gym hamster wheels cardio gear. … Read more

Jabra Cruiser2 Bluetooth Speakerphone Review

It’s been almost exactly two years since I picked up the solar-powered LG Bluetooth hand-free gadget. For the first few months, I used it extensively in the car – very rarely needing to plug it in for supplemental juice. But the speakerphone eventually ended up collecting dust on the desk for quite some time, as I reverted back to my most favored Jawbone Prime, which has the right mix of style, comfort, and performance. As my car talk time began to increase several months ago, I pulled the LG out of cold storage. In 2011, its audio performance on either end is probably never stellar. More annoying is the tiny power button that needs to be held down a second or two and no standby mode. And, thus, my search for a replacement began.

Unfortunately, solar power speakerphones really haven’t taken off the way one would have hoped — there just aren’t too many options. So I settled on the more traditionally charged Bluetooth units, with two in particular standing out: The BlueAnt S4 and Jabra Cruiser2. They both run about $70 these days, and I was leaning towards the BlueAnt given its potentially useful voice control and styling. Yet, I came across the Jabra on a Costco run this week… and an impulse purchase ended the debate.