Media Archives - Page 24 of 75

Led Zeppelin Modernizes, Radiohead Evangelizes

Thank you Robert Plant and Jimmy Page for opening your catalog to digital downloads. Led Zeppelin gets started this week on Verizon Wireless but, come November 13th, will also make songs available via iTunes and other services. Kevin Tofel, of jkOnTheRun, has loaned me his Zune so I may try out the all-you-can-eat Zune Pass … Read more

Verizon FiOS TV Getting Media Extender Capabilities (and more!)

I journeyed up to Verizon’s New Jersey headquarters last week for a highly informative briefing by the guys defining FiOS TV product requirements and managing the engineering personnel. In addition to demo-ing the maintenance release due this quarter and having customer questions/concerns addressed, I’m the first person outside of Verizon to check out some compelling features they’ve got in the pipeline. It’ll take me at least two posts to cover all the info and, since the media extender functionality has got me all fired up, we’ll start there. The features below are pretty far along in development and slated to hit FiOS TV boxes in Q1 or Q2 of next year.

FiOS TV as Media Extender

Verizon’s FiOS TV Interactive Media Guide (IMG) currently offers rudimentary photo and music PC sharing capabilities. However, with upcoming releases, music and photo navigation will be enhanced (folders, playlists) AND the ability to stream video from “Media Manager” will be added. All sorts of file formats (AVI, MPEG4, DiVx, Flash, etc) will be transcoded on the fly. Currently, the transcoding is resolution-independent… Meaning you can throw any size video at it and, while the video will stream PC->DVR as MPEG2, the resolution won’t be touched. Thinking about all the HD video available via BitTorrent, I can see Verizon choosing to throttle back resolutions during the development process in order to keep transfers efficient.

$100 off Vudu

Ah, Vudu. The box that’s generated more hate email towards me than any other product write-up – several folks have taken issue with my critiques. Look, it’s not that I don’t like the Vudu hardware or movie service… It’s that I primarily don’t like the pricing ($399), which limits their chances at mass adoption. I’m … Read more

Jaman Almost Out of Beta, Launches Version .99

On the heels of Joost’s announced intent to offer live TV, I spoke with the CEO of online video distributor Jaman – a company taking a very different approach to delivering content. Jaman has gotten attention from some of the big wigs both for its focus on indie and international films and for its ability … Read more

Joost Pursues Live TV

Joost intends to expand their content beyond pre-recorded content into live television broadcasts early next year. According to paidContent UK: She said the live programming will include a âcombinationâ? catch-up option to watch on-demand shows following live transmission, then said Joost will offer widgets allowing viewers to bookmark favourite sporting moments and keep scores – … Read more

Xbox 360 Getting Full Extender Capabilities?

Microsoft had a fairly large (Media Center) presence at DigitalLife and I managed to sneak away Thursday for a bit to attend their press conference and visit the booth. In addition to educating the uninitiated in Media Center functionality, Microsoft also had new extenders on display ($300 and up from DLink, Linksys, and Niveus) and announced the public beta of Internet TV.

In the booth, MS reps had folks focus on the new extenders from their partners. I told them I already own an almost-great MCE extender in the 360, that all it needs to reach greatness is Divx and Xvid support. Bryan Koski, of the Windows group, went on to tell me that Media Center functionality is pretty much a self-contained chunk of code… Whatever powers the new extenders should ultimately end up intact on the 360. He didn’t know (or wouldn’t say) if that meant this fall or down the road, but he seemed fairly confident all new functionality would be retained in any 360 update.

September Slinging

After working 13 days on the road, followed by 48 hours of R&R (Halo 3-style), I’m ready to get back to some blogging. It’s obviously been a very exciting couple weeks at Sling Media (my place of employment), so here’s a quick roundup of September news in chronological order: Sling Collaborates with DirecTV on NFL … Read more

Another Joost Launch

Joost opens to the public today and NewTeeVee has a video interview with CEO Mike Volpi. The company started handing out beta invites many months ago and brilliantly enlisted the help of tech bloggers (ZNF included) to broaden the invitation process while still making it look exclusive. Then the much-hyped, TV-on-the-Internet application started getting some … Read more