HBO Streaming Video Coming to the iPad

You know how you can sign up for a cable or satellite TV package to get access to some — but not all — of the TV channels available in your area? And you know how you have to pay an extra fee if you want access to premium channels like HBO or Showtime? Yeah, … Read more

CineXPlayer, Put Through the Wringer

CineXPlayer was released last week for iPad to much fanfare because it’s the first app featuring Xvid playback on the Apple tablet. People were amazed that Apple would allow a video player that plays more than the handful of Apple-approved file formats, but what was missed was the low quality of the application itself. The video … Read more

I Can’t Quit You, Hulu Plus (But I want to)

As I’ve alluded to in a few places, Hulu Plus ($9.99/mo) isn’t quite doing it for me. My main beef? The same one I have with Hulu Non-Plus — random, inconsistant content. In addition to the incomplete seasons found on Hulu, Plus also is missing seasons and does away with entire titles. So what I … Read more

Android Video Player for DivX, MKV, more

When it rains it pours. For the first two years of Google Android’s life there weren’t really any all purpose video players for the platform. The built in video player is bundled with Android’s picture viewer and only supports a handful of video formats. But recently RockPlayer launched an excellent video player with support for … Read more

CableCARD Support Coming to SageTV or MythTV?

HTPC enthusiasts, listen up. TheDigitalMediaZone broke some pretty exciting news Sunday afternoon. The first of this is important to SageTV, MythTV and many other HTPC software users because it partially opens up CableCARD to non-Microsoft MediaCenter software. I’ve been hearing talk of this for a while from different people, so it’s not a total surprise … Read more

5 Tips and Tricks: USB Video on the Roku

One of the big selling points for the XR version of the Roku is the addition of a USB port. And although there’s no official Roku support for USB video playback yet, there is a private USB channel available thanks to citizen-coder Nowhereman. (Submit your own channel in Roku’s developer contest by September 7th.) The … Read more

Unboxing the Nixeus Fusion HD

The parade of network-connected media streaming and playback devices continues. And we’re gotten our hands on yet another recent entrant, the Nixeus Fusion HD (~$220).

The Fusion HD probably has more in common with the WD TV Live solutions, rather than the Roku, given it’s 1080p local media playback capabilities – via both LAN (DLNA, UPnP) or directly connected storage. Speaking of which, the reason the Fusion HD is about triple the size of the Roku (pic below) is because it can optionally house a 3.5″ SATA drive (to no doubt support the BitTorrent client). Of course, web services are a requisite these days and the Fusion HD delivers multiple, including YouTube and Flickr. Additionally, they’ve even integrated a browser. However, despite the nice remote for this class of device, I’m finding text entry a bit tedious.

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AppleTV Rumors: iTV, 720P?

Engadget has posted something, that I’ll consider a rumor until official, regarding a much speculated AppleTV revision expected this Fall. Good News: The new version of AppleTV seems to be more and more likely. Supposedly will be priced at $99 which isn’t too bad. There would likely be an App store in this scenario since it … Read more