Industry Archives - Page 22 of 145

230 Certified Wi-Fi Direct Products, And Yet…

According to the Wi-Fi Alliance website, there are now 230 products certified for Wi-Fi Direct support. And yet, despite tracking the standard’s progress for more than 18 months, I’ve seen virtually zero traction at the consumer level. I can think of three reasons for this. First, some of the products certified likely haven’t been released yet. … Read more

HDMI Licensing Strikes Again

The organization that controls the HDMI spec appears to be cracking down on unlicensed products. And its first significant victim is Mini DisplayPort-to-HDMI cables, as the specification only permits HDMI connectors. In fact, Macrumors reports that Monoprice has already pulled their inventory… offering instead an adaptor/dongle. As a Macbook Air owner intending to turn this 23″ … Read more

Yahoo Connected TV: Not Dead Yet?

In the category of “not dead yet,” Engadget has caught word from the Yahoo Advertising blog that the Yahoo Connected TV platform still has life left in it. According to a post from last week, the Yahoo platform will be embedded in TVs from Sony and Toshiba by the end of this year, along with … Read more

Verizon FiOS IMG 1.9 Rollout Resumes Next Week

As a soon-to-be FiOS TV subscriber, I was disappointed to hear in May that Verizon was putting the brakes on the rollout of its latest guide software update. But today I hear that IMG 1.9 is back on track. I noted a comment in the DSLReports forums yesterday suggesting the rollout would resume and decided to do … Read more

RIP ReplayTV (1999 – 2011)

Quite frankly, I’m surprised ReplayTV services have carried on since DirecTV acquired the intellectual property from D&M Holdings back in 2007. But the curtain call is nearly upon us, as onscreen messaging and the updated website indicate:

The ReplayTV Electronic Programming Guide (EPG) Service will be permanently discontinued on July 31, 2011. After this date, owners of ReplayTV DVR units will still be able to manually record analog TV programs, but will not have the benefit of access to the interactive program guide. Effective immediately, monthly billing for the ReplayTV service to remaining customers has been suspended. The industry conversion to HDTV is complete and ReplayTV DVRs are unable to take advantage of the wealth of HDTV programming. Please contact your service provider for current offerings.

Of course, ReplayTV and TiVo were the DVR pioneers… that disrupted the television industry. (Although, ReplayTV’s founder now portrays the DVR as transitional – perhaps to be expected given his current perch atop Roku.) ReplayTV had a rocky time of it early on as the company flirted with bankruptcy and changed hands a few times, their pricing structure also seemed to regularly vacillate between subscription-free and subscription services as they tried to find a critical mass of customers, and perhaps, most dramatically, the entertainment industry took Replay’s commercial skip functionality into court.

New Details on Comcast Upstream Channel Bonding

Word surfaced this week over on DSLReports that some Comcast subscribers are starting to see evidence of upstream channel bonding trials. Just like in the downstream, upstream bonding promises faster Internet speeds, this time for users who are uploading content online rather than downloading. (Think photo/video sharing and data back-ups.) After doing some investigating on … Read more

What You Need to Know About Comcast Xcalibur

Much has been made of Comcast Xcalibur, the code-named IP-based service designed to feed consumers their Internet access and video content all through a single fat pipe. In fact, the term Xcalibur has been whispered in back rooms for years, with some of us afraid to speak it out loud for fear of karmic retribution. It’s only recently, however, that Comcast has started to leak some of the details around Xcalibur for public consumption. Here’s what we know today. Consider it an advance tutorial for whatever more we may learn tomorrow when Comcast CEO Brian Roberts speaks at The Cable Show. (Live stream available tomorrow morning starting at 10:00 ET)

The Box

I first started hearing at the SCTE show last fall that Comcast was testing a Pace set-top box in the Augusta Georgia area designed to support both MPEG- and IP-based video. Since then, several sources have confirmed the information and offered further details. In addition to supporting IP video, the hardware (variously called the “Parker box” and the “Xfinity Spectrum box”) has a CableCARD slot, USB 2.0 port, IEEE 1394 connection, tru2way middleware, an Intel processor, four tuners, and between 500GB and 1TB of storage. The box is an HD DVR, which suggests use as a primary living room set-top, but its hybrid MPEG/IP nature also raises interesting possibilities related to the FCC’s AllVid initiative.

The Chattanooga Internet Train

This Chattanooga choo choo is more than the little engine that could. Reporting over at GigaOM, industry analyst Craig Settles has detailed in two posts some of the impact the city of Chattanooga Tennessee is seeing from its gigabit broadband network. While I’m looking forward to a consistent 15 Mbps downstream connection, the good folks of Chattanooga are thinking much bigger thoughts thanks to their significant (and apparently hard-earned) broadband wealth.

First, the city is getting its money’s worth by implementing smart-grid technologies to increase operational efficiencies and cut down on costs. According to Settles, with a gigabit of bandwidth, the city’s public utility company can reduce power outages from hours down to minutes. During a recent spate of tornadoes, the smart grid saved an estimated 730,000 minutes of power (more than 12,000 hours), and eliminated the need for 250 truck rolls. That’s money in the bank.

Second, the city is offering some serious Wi-Fi benefits to the local government with a mesh network that delivers 16 Mbps of symmetrical service. Current applications taking advantage of the Wi-Fi access include a fleet of wirelessly-controlled helicopter drones that stream video feeds from remote and/or dangerous locations, and a new imaging program that scans and uploads real-world 3D images to create static holograms. (Holodeck, anyone?)

Third, Chattanooga is wooing new business interests with broadband capacity that makes big-data computations possible. SimCenter Enterprises (above) is one example located in the city, and it uses the gigabit connection for high-end modeling and simulation exercises.