New Satellite DVRs Displayed

At the CEDIA Expo, which caters to the high-end home theater (installer), two new satellite DVRs were on display… DirecTV HR21 Pro TVSquad writes: a rack mountable unit ($1000) capable of recording 100 hours of HD programming in MPEG-4. It also packs an optical HDMI port for running long fiber optic cables without signal loss. … Read more

Digital Media Bytes: TiVo Edition

Never enough time… TiVo Now Available in Mexico City (Press Release): CNN Money No Ad Skipping For Australian TiVo: TiVo Blog How TiVo Can Its Groove Back: NewTeeVee Play video games on your TiVo: TV Squad $200 Series3 TiVo Rebate: TiVo Lovers Ramsay’s consulting gig for $144 an hour: Mercury News

FCC Meeting Does Happen… 11 Hours Late

Despite a failed webcast, yesterday’s FCC open meeting did take place, albeit 11 hours late. The result was a cable industry victory. The FCC voted unanimously to require cable operators to broadcast local digital channels in both digital and analog for three years after the DTV transition date. FCC Chairman Kevin Martin had been pushing … Read more

Digital Media Bytes

A periodic roundup of relevant news… from our other blogs: 3D TV, The Next Heavy-Bandwidth App: Connected Home 2 Go New NCTA Proposal on Digitial Must-Carry Channels: Connected Home 2 Go Video Streaming vs. Video Downloading: Connected Home 2 Go

Picture of the Day: The FCC Non-Webcast

fcc1.JPG

Seriously, if you’re going to offer an “audio/video broadcast” of an event, I expect a little more than muzak and images of businessmen casually conversing. That’s what I got for more than 4 hours when I activated the FCC’s AV link that was supposed to show me coverage of today’s open commission meeting. Guess I’ll be waiting for updated info on a-la-carte programming and digital must-carry rules from someone who made it there in person.

UPDATE: Multichannel News reports that the public meeting never happened because FCC leaders were “stuck in negotiations all day Tuesday.”  The hold-up is primarily debate over the digital must-carry rules.

More exciting photos after the jump.

Read more

Stuck in Rebate Hell?

Stuck in rebate hell? Wonder why? Mercury News uncovers what many of us have suspected, at least on occasion: I am staring at more than 1,300 rebate requests sent to Vastech [for Fry’s Electronics promotions] on Bonaventura Drive in San Jose. The envelopes were tossed – unopened – into a garbage dumpster near Vastech. I … Read more

Microsoft Internet TV Cometh

Microsoft is expanding their presence in the content delivery arena and will begin providing video downloads via Vista’s MCE interface. Unlike the iTunes fee-based service, MS is going the ad-supported route. Engadget uncovered a few details: we do know that content will fall into Sports, Entertainment, News, Top Picks, Music and Movies categories. Additionally, the … Read more

Half Price DigitalLife Tickets

digitallife.jpg

DigitalLife is just a few weeks away (9/27-9/30) – unlike most trade shows, this one is consumer-oriented and all are welcome. It’s also a fairly manageable event you can probably knock out in a day. So if you’ll be near NYC later this month, register for DL using the code ZATZ for 1/2 price tickets. (Disclosure: I receive zero kickbacks and have no monetary relationship with DigitalLife.) I’ll be in NYC that week, including working ShowStoppers and attending DigitalLife in one form or another – at least on Thursday.

The DL folks provided some event highlights to share:

Read more