Vulkano Flow, The First Placeshifter Under $100

Vulkano Flow

Vulkano Flow, the first of two new Monsoon Multimedia placeshifters announced at CES, is now available for purchase from the likes of Amazon and Fry’s Electronics for a mere $99. Making it the least expensive Slingbox-esque product on the market.

Unlike Moonsoon’s 2010 Vulkano product that tried to do it all, with less than stellar results, the Vulkano Flow attempts to do one thing well — stream television content around and beyond your home. I’ve been evaluating the Flow for several weeks and it largely succeeds. In fact, you’ve already seen it in action (here and here).

As with all personal, hardware-based placeshifting solutions the Vulkano Flow hangs off your set-top box or between a STB and television. In my case, the Flow has primarily been used to beam FiOS TV DVR video to Mac, PC, iPhone, and Android software clients. While Sling still stubbornly refuses to integrate wireless capabilities, the Vulkano Flow can optionally connect to your home network via 802.11n – which is the config I’ve been using. And the streaming experience over WiFi, both within and beyond the home, has been very good. 3G, not so much.

Vulkano Flow

The hardware is contained within the same or a very similar enclosure as the original Vulkano (“Platinum”) which will presumably also be reused for the upcoming Blast… given the taped over SD slot and functionless IR receiver. But for 99 bucks, I can’t complain. In terms of size, the Vulkano is wider than all Slingboxes, but with a much lower profile – it sits well in the cabinet on a DVR. Streaming resolution is equivalent to the Slingbox Solo, maxing out at 720×480. So while the Flow can take in your HD content, the encoded retransmission is limited to standard def. However when on the road, especially via mobiles, this shouldn’t be a practical problem.

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Hulu Keeping Programmers Happy. How About Consumers?

Hulu posted some pretty awesome revenue numbers last night, including projections that the company will make close to half a billion dollars in 2011 and drive 300 million dollars in revenue to its content partners. However, all of that success comes with a price. Like every other over-the-top video provider, Hulu has had to limit … Read more

Turn-By-Turn Navigation & iOS 5

MobileCrunch has penned a piece on “10 Things That Simply Need To Be In iOS 5” ahead of Apple’s presumed Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) June iOS 5 reveal. While we’ll never see enhanced, integrated Gmail support (#4) or the ability to sideload third party apps (#5) under Steve Jobs, I have wondered if free turn-by-turn … Read more

Apple 1, Mirror Worlds 0

In a reversal of last year’s jury verdict, a federal judge in Texas concluded that Apple did not infringe on patents owned by Mirror Worlds, a company founded by computer science professor and luminary David Gelernter. At issue were patents relating to the Spotlight, Time Machine, and Cover Flow features in the Mac OS. Originally, jurors … Read more

How to Jailbreak iOS 4.3.1 (untethered)

The folks at the iPhone Dev Team have released updated versions of the redsn0w tool  PwnageTool that lets you jailbreak nearly any device that runs iOS 4.3.1 — the latest version of Apple’s iOS operating system. The iPad 2 isn’t currently supported, and the developers haven’t yet released the tools to carrier unlock an iPhone running … Read more

Replacing Adobe Software?

Yesterday, I came across a New York Times piece describing how EMC’s network security was compromised which led to the RSA SecurID data extraction. While several factors were at play, an Adobe software vulnerability was fingered as a significant attack vector. So, given the seemingly constant parade of Adobe security bulletins and updates, combined with CPU-crushing bloat, I tweeted the news as an opportunity for folks to once again reevaluate their dependence on Adobe products. And one follower wondered what options are available to her.

Adobe makes a number of packages many of us have come to depend upon. Yet, in two distinct categories, I’ve successfully reduced my exposure these last few months – beginning when I picked up a 13″ Macbook Air as my primary personal computer.

First, while I haven’t been able to completely excise Flash from my web travels, I have certainly cut back. And, of my three browsers, the plugin is only installed (by default) within Google Chrome. It can be crashy, and it does take a toll on performance, but there are still areas of the web inaccessible without it… despite Apple’s insistence on a Flash-free mobile OS.

However, image editing is the category where I’ve been able to completely excise Adobe.

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Cablevision Opens The (iPad) Firehose

Leave it to Cablevision… True to form, they’ve thrown caution to the wind and have launched the full fledged STB replacement iPad app we’ve been waiting for: ƒApproximately 300 channels of live television ƒMore than 2,000 titles of Video on demand (VOD) available today, with Cablevision’s full VOD library expected to be encoded and available by early summer … Read more

ViewSonic Preps 7″ ViewBook Android Tablet

So I was trawling the FCC for leads, as us bloggers are wont to do, and seem to have stumbled upon an upcoming 7″ ViewSonic Android tablet: ViewBook 730 is a portable entertainment center with: Internet access, a game station, an e-book reader, and much more. This versatile touch screen tablet runs the Android™ operating … Read more