Gadgets and Gaming…on the New Wal-Mart Blog

Thinking about it, it was only a matter of time before behemoth Wal-Mart would come out with its own blog. What’s more surprising is how decent a blog it is. Aptly named, “Check Out” is written by a team of Wal-Marters and has a high percentage (so far) of gadget and gaming coverage. Looking for … Read more

How Would You Like 4:3 Content On Your 16:9 TV?

NewTeeVee has an interesting piece up discussing why (and how) some television networks stretch 4:3 content to fill 16:9 screens. Given the sheer quantity of 4:3 content produced over the years, it’s not surprising this is an issue as folks upgrade to widescreen 16:9 television sets. NewTeeVee speculates that stretching is to efficiently simulcast SD … Read more

TV Studios Leveraging BitTorrent?

According to a few recent stories, including this write-up from Last100, some studios may be intentionally seeding content onto BitTorrent: While the Motion Picture Association of America is uploading fake torrents of movies to discourage torrent use, mainstream television show producers are engaging in flirtatious trials with torrents as a viable new way to promote … Read more

Digital Media Bytes

A periodic roundup of relevant news… from our other blogs: The Hulu HD Bandwidth Equation: Connected Home 2 Go Twas The Night Before DivX: Davis Freeberg’s Digital Connection A Look Back at CES 2007: Connected Home 2 Go On the Blog Council: Connected Home 2 Go

More Hulu Voodoo and News from NBC

More news came out today on both Hulu and NBC. First, Last100 picked up on a new site called OPENhulu which allows anyone to access Hulu content. No beta invite required. Read all the details on the Last100 post, or just go straight to the site and start watching shows. Only some of the Hulu … Read more

Snapstream Unleashes Godzilla PC DVR For Big Business

With access to four tuners and 1.5 terrabytes of storage, I thought that I had the ultimate DVR setup. However, after seeing Snapstream’s Enterprise PC DVR in action, I’m envious of its capabilities and my home entertainment system suddenly seems wimpy. I don’t know how much Snapstream is charging, but if money grew on trees, I’d be all over this in a heartbeat.

With 10 tuners, one won’t worry about programming conflicts. And with 2 terrabytes of storage, it would mean that one can record 10 different channels, 24 hours a day for at least 8 days before worrying about archiving. Even, if one needed to save old content, the software enables video backup onto DVD.

While the specs had me drooling, the search capabilities were what I found most impressive. By taking advantage of the closed captioning system, SnapStream is able to search the transcripts of any program you record. This allows you to record a lot of junk and filter it for the information that you care about. Unlike the DVR in your living room, this isn’t limited to one monitor. SnapStream has designed the DVR to act as a server, allowing multiple users to search and stream videos from anywhere on a network.

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Caps on Cable

Let’s just call it “As the Cable World Turns.” First it appeared FCC chairman Kevin Martin had suffered a major setback when his proposal to regulate cable based on the 70/70 rule was crushed by legislators unwilling to support conclusions made from sketchy data. Then Martin counterattacked with widely leaked plans to cap cable companies … Read more

AOL Shifts (Video) Gears

There seems to be a consolidation of web video services in the works… presumably driven by the costs of hosting and managing these online efforts. AOL started by announcing plans to dump their higher-def streaming option (“Hi-Q”), saying the user count is: “very small, so small that we haven’t tracked it.â€? Part of the challenge … Read more