Two questions I have following Macworld’s live keynote coverage: Will Time Capsule functionality be made available to existing Airport Extreme base stations with USB-connected hard drives? (As mine is configured.) Will the MacBook Air‘s new multi-touch interface (that I requested) be made available on existing MacBook models? You can probably guess which answer I’m hoping … Read more
As rumored and speculated, Apple has pulled the trigger on iTunes movie rentals for Macs/PCs, iPods, iPhones, and Apple TV (see second paragraph). 20th Century Fox, Warner Bros, Disney, Paramount, Universal, and Sony are the larger studios in their stable. Typical digital rental terms: Begin watching within 30 days of download, 24 hours to complete … Read more
Mari and I spent some time with a Slacker rep last week. She’s more fired up than I am… While I’m a fan of Slacker’s music streaming site and their business model for hardware service is interesting (though I’d want the premium tier), the device bulk (compared to the competition) turned me off. However, I’ll … Read more
Vudu made a couple of CES announcements… Since their $399 movie download STB isn’t quite expensive enough, Vudu has introduced a higher priced model at $999 – offering only increased storage. From a business perspective, I get it – hard drives are cheap and “Vudu XL” margins will be much higher than the base Vudu … Read more
It’s not that I don’t appreciate Logitech’s diNovo Mini keyboard and trackpad. It’s just that I can’t think of a use for this little guy since dismantling my HTPC(s) and projector 2.5 years ago. Back in the day, I settled on a Gyration set – less for mousing through the air, and more for the … Read more
By now it’s clear that I have something of an obsession with Retrevo as a buying guide for consumer electronics, so it was good luck when I ran into CEO Vipin Jain just inside the door at the CES ShowStoppers event. He had Retrevo up for display and was quick to show me some of … Read more
Looks like I only managed to get half the story last Sunday – it was literally the last 5 minutes of the event and I missed a critical piece of the equation. Thursday AM I managed to swing by TiVo’s booth and got a bit more information… In addition to manually configuring video folder monitoring … Read more
The bombshell: Warner Bros announces they’re dropping the HD DVD format to exclusively produce Blu-ray Discs. The aftershock: HD DVD Promotion Groups cancels their press conference. This seemed to be the most discussed topic in the days leading up to CES, both on-site and online. At this point, the next generation optical disc war has … Read more