The place-shifting universe expands next week with the introduction of HAVA, a Slingbox-like hardware device. I rang up Mark Rouchonik, a Director at Monsoon Multimedia, for the details. Mark tells me the major distinction between their device and the Slingbox are LAN multicasting and WiFi features. Multicast doesn’t do a whole lot for me as … Read more
Never enough time… Place shifting companies must license content in the UK? (eHomeUpgrade) UK to outlaw power standby for electronic devices. (Gizmodo) MobiTV lands $70 million investment, plans geographic and technological expansion. (GigaOM) HD-DVD consortium to spend $150 million on advertising. (HDBlog)
Anyone live near LA? In two weeks the American Film Institute (AFI) is hosting a pretty interesting digital media gathering. Some of the compelling sponsors include presenter Starz (aka Vongo) and exhibitor Brightcove (a TiVo partner). More importantly TiVo and DTV have been nominated for Interactive/Enhanced Television Programming Emmys and the winners will be announced … Read more
Everybody’s favorite universal remote is on sale for $150 off! Dell is offering the Harmony 880 for a low $100… until midnight. The retail price is $250 but this deal includes an instant $120 off, a $30 mail in rebate, and free delivery. UPDATE: If you have a smaller budget or don’t need a color … Read more
Never enough time… DirecTV HD TiVo getting upgraded to 6.3! (HDBeat) Optical component reads Blu-ray and HD-DVD. (EETimes) Court rules against “film sanitizing.” (AP) Audio interview with Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Fred von Lohmann. (eHomeUpgrade)
As you may have gathered, I spent a few days in Canada. While taking in Montreal’s Jazz Fest, I noticed XM is a new sponsor this year (XM Canada didn’t exist last summer). I don’t read/speak French, but I picked up a GM/XM brochure which probably says something about 50 vehicles offering satellite receivers. In … Read more
Both TiVo and Netflix posted interesting job openings this week… First up is Netflix, who’s looking to hire an interface engineer. Based on the description it seems they’re interested in exploring Vista’s GUI functionality to possibly produce a front-end for on-line movie distribution. Keep in mind Vista will bundle Media Center Edition features… which currently … Read more
The Akimbo story isn’t over yet… As Om Malik reported yesterday, Akimbo has picked up $15 million dollars from a variety of investors including Cisco and AT&T. Not so coincidentally, Akimbo will be providing content downloads for AT&T’s upcoming Homezone service. While Akimbo’s hardware revision has been pushed to the fall, PC Magazine just published … Read more