Doubletwist Android Player adds Internet Radio

There’s a new version of the doubleTwist media player app for Google Android, and in addition to support for playing music and podcasts on your device, doubleTwist 1.1 now lets you play online radio streams. You can access a director of radio stations by clicking the Radio tab on the home screen. From there you can … Read more

A Few Thoughts On Halo Reach Multiplayer

After giving up on Blockbuster (and Gamefly) to deliver Halo Reach in a timely fashion, I paid Gamestop a visit. I generally don’t purchase many titles given my short attention span for anything other than Call of Duty. But after 5 hours with Halo Reach, I believe it’s going to work out just fine. In … Read more

Question of the Day: TiVo Premiere + Slingbox?

tivo-premiere-slingbox

Today’s question comes our way from Stephen M:

Has anyone been successful at getting SlingPlayer or SlingPlayerWeb to control a Tivo Premiere? In the player setup, there are no choices for Tivo Premiere or Tivo Series 4.

This should have been a trivial question to answer, even though Sling hasn’t yet published an official virtual remote for the Premiere. Because TiVo’s IR codes and general remote layout are pretty consistent amongst their hardware lineup, classifying the Premiere as a TiVo Series3 or HD for the Slingbox should have handled just about everything other than the four OCAP shortcut buttons. However, after perusing Stephen’s lengthy transcript with Sling Media’s tech support, I realized something was amiss. And, unfortunately, Christina wasn’t able to deviate much from her script to identify that Sling has a problem on their end.

As it turns out, Sling’s online database of IR codes and remote skins has been corrupted or rolled back in some way. Perhaps related to their horribly botched data center migration that resulted in a week or so of downtime for many. Basically, in attempts to set up the AV source via Sling.com as two different TiVo models the remote skins were blanked out and non-functional in several ways/places.

What I did to resolve this problem was to set up the DVR (as a Series 3) in Sling’s stand-alone OS X software client. Once done, I headed back to Sling.com where the remote renders and works properly as seen below.

web-sling-tivo

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New Windows Phone 7 Apps Demo-ed (Netflix!)

Microsoft isn’t expected to officially release its new Windows Phone 7 mobile operating system to consumers, via new handsets, until October. But the developer tools for WP7 went final this week, and they’ve been showing off apps built for the new mobile platform left and right. The folks behind the Seesmic social networking client for Facebook and … Read more

NY Times Rips Vulkano A New Caldera

The New York Times took a look at the multifunction Vulkano digital media device … and the results are not pretty. Some of the review lowlights: “it’s a train wreck” “head-banging limitations” “so many problems” “recruited as a paying beta tester” Basically, “the Vulkano box is nowhere near ready for prime time” Devastating!

Of course, I’m not entirely surprised having had a unit in my possession a few weeks. I’ve held off formally evaluating the loaner Vulkano while awaiting some significant software improvements. One update was pushed out last week and I’m told “radically” improved firmware should be available soon. As it currently stands, when I last looked, folks merely looking to placeshift their home TV programming to various desktop and mobile platforms probably won’t be disappointed. But those interested in the Vulkano’s additional features (recording, apps, etc) will want to wait on making a purchase until Monsoon improves the situation.

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Justin.tv Adds Live iPhone Video Broadcasting

Justin.tv has launched a new version of its iPhone app with support for broadcasting live video from an iPhone. Up until now you could only use the company’s iOS app to watch live streams broadcast by other Justin.tv users. The company launched an Android app for broadcasting live video a few weeks ago, and the iPhone version … Read more

The TiVo Updates of the Week (Samsung, MoCA)

I’m not sure either of the recent TiVo (pre)announcements warrant an independent post, given the company’s typical long lead between partnership revelations and tangible products. However, given the pings and forum chatter, they’re probably worth touching on briefly as part of a larger ‘week in TiVo’ post. First, at IBC TiVo and Samsung announced that … Read more

Sneak Peek: Slacker’s On-Demand Music Service

Tonight at the annual Pepcom holiday event in New York, Slacker will preview its new on-demand music service, a major upgrade to the existing application available on the Web, and on Android, Blackberry, and iOS phones. As long-time Slacker fans here at ZNF, we couldn’t be more excited about the launch. In addition to caching stations and enabling downloads of favorite tracks (available with today’s Slacker premium service), the new on-demand service will let users call up and play specific artists and songs at will. The new genre stations, pre-programmed by Slacker DJs, will provide details on the top station artists and songs, with an option to jump around to those tracks and others at any time. The search function will also provide more information on artists and songs, including what stations they’re programmed on, associated albums, etc. You’ll also be able to sort and play favorites easily, and there will be significantly more functionality for programming your own custom stations from any mobile interface.

Slacker is planning to roll out the on-demand upgrade in October. The company will continue to offer a free service tier, and users will be able to unlock higher tiers for a monthly fee: Slacker Plus at $3.99 per month and Slacker Premium (full on-demand functionality) at $9.99 per month.

I’ve always believed Slacker has the best feature set of any online music service. From the revolutionary offline caching function, to its customization capabilities, Slacker, in my opinion, outperforms the competition. However, its mobile implementations haven’t quite lived up to the browser experience, or to my dedicated Slacker hardware. And the interface has needed an update for some time. Assuming the new upgrade adds the necessary polish, along with the new features, Slacker should have itself a killer mobile music app.

UPDATE: The older Slacker Premium service, which I originally linked to in this post, is no longer available. If you’re interested, just hold out another month, and Slacker should have you covered with the new version.

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