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

Barnes & Noble Releases Nook iPhone App

Barnes & Noble has offered an eBook reader for iOS touch for a while. But the company’s eBook strategy was starting to look a bit schizophrenic, with a Nook device available online and in-stores, Nook software for Google Android, but Barnes & Noble eReader-branded software for the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Today Barnes & Noble … 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

If you liked Dash, check out Waze. (iPhone)

If you bought into the Dash Navigation concept, as I did, and happen to own an iPhone, you’re going to want to check out Waze 2.0 – which Gizmodo brought to my attention. The free GPS app provides much more than turn-by-turn navigation, by crowd sourcing live traffic and map corrections along with social game-playing elements. While … 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

Hands on with the Motorola Droid X

Instead of doing a full-on review stepping through each feature or characteristic of the Motorola Droid X, I’d rather focus on the emotional experience. And the Droid X is one of very few phones in recent memory that has sufficiently challenged the iPhone as my primary mobile device.

Unlike most handsets that pass through, I chose to use the Droid X nearly exclusively for the week I had it on loan it from Kevin Tofel (jkOnTheRun) last month. It shattered my notion that anything larger than a 3.5″ or 3.7″ phone is just too big — it’s 4.3″ LCD-toting body fit fine in my pocket, while feeling more comfortable and safer in the hand than the similarly endowed EVO. There’s no question the iPhone 4 has the clearest mobile display, but there’s something to be said for the extra screen real estate found on the Droid X, which I could see replacing my Kindle. The revamped “Motoblur” is mostly an innocuous Android skin job. It adds a few UI enhancements and widgets without bogging down the interface or taxing the Droid X’s speedy processor. As opposed to the more in-your-face Samsung TouchWiz, which seems to generate a distinct love or hate reaction.

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