Those who’ve been reading ZNF since my early TiVoToGo tutorial days should remember my fondness for the Dr. DivX video conversion utility. I’m not sure what led the DivX folks to kill the original app, but every now and then I find a use for the re-released open source version. At work, we’re hooking up … Read more
Eirik Solheim alerted me that Norwegian Broadcasting is embracing BitTorrent: As one of many ways to reach people with our content we have decided to do an experiment and make one of our most popular television series available through BitTorrent. The files are MPEG4 H.264, 1024×576 25fps, 3 Mbit/s. No DRM. Spreading brand awareness online … Read more
A periodic roundup of relevant news… from our other blogs: Networking HDTV at Home: Connected Home 2 Go Snapstream Shuttering Couchville TV Listings: Brent Evans Geek Tonic Broadband by the Byte: Connected Home 2 Go Hauppauge Unveils Real-Time USB HD Recording: Brent Evans Geek Tonic WiMAX at CES: Connected Home 2 Go
At CES, Logitech introduced their first updated Squeezebox since acquiring Slim Devices. The Squeezebox Duet ($399) does a nice job mashing-up Logitech’s discontinued Wireless DJ product and the prior Squeezebox by uncoupling the music display and controls from the audio playback hardware. As with all Squeezebox products, the device streams audio from a computer or … Read more
Two questions I have following Macworld’s live keynote coverage: Will Time Capsule functionality be made available to existing Airport Extreme base stations with USB-connected hard drives? (As mine is configured.) Will the MacBook Air‘s new multi-touch interface (that I requested) be made available on existing MacBook models? You can probably guess which answer I’m hoping … Read more
As rumored and speculated, Apple has pulled the trigger on iTunes movie rentals for Macs/PCs, iPods, iPhones, and Apple TV (see second paragraph). 20th Century Fox, Warner Bros, Disney, Paramount, Universal, and Sony are the larger studios in their stable. Typical digital rental terms: Begin watching within 30 days of download, 24 hours to complete … Read more
Vudu made a couple of CES announcements… Since their $399 movie download STB isn’t quite expensive enough, Vudu has introduced a higher priced model at $999 – offering only increased storage. From a business perspective, I get it – hard drives are cheap and “Vudu XL” margins will be much higher than the base Vudu … Read more
I didn’t realize quite how buried I’ve been in work until I looked up this afternoon and realized the Iowa caucuses are tonight. Fortunately, it’s extremely easy to get caught up on the Iowa happenings, not just by turning on the news networks, but by turning on the live online coverage. Check out the Brave … Read more