SED Back On Track?

Reports today indicate Canon will buy out Toshiba’s stake in their joint SED flat panel display business. The hope is that this will clear the way in a patent dispute with Nano-Proprietary, who asserts their technology is licensed solely to Canon. The ongoing tiff prevented SED sets from making an appearance at CES this week.

HAVA Gold Unveiled At CES

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The Snappy/Monsoon team has just released HAVA Gold, their latest placeshifting device. It has the same basic functionality and software of their higher priced line of placeshifters. The input/output lineup is slightly different, such as an additional audio input… So you can support composite and SVideo sources simultaneously, for example. The Gold box lacks WiFi and an internal tuner. It comes in black (compared the the original’s silver plastic) and is about 50% smaller.

With a list price of $129 (available now, online only), and $70 cheaper than their mainstream Ethernet box it looks like a good value. Which makes me wonder why they’d risk cannibalizing their own sales. They’ve told me they want to get this model into wholesale clubs, so I can only assume they haven’t been able to work a deal at this point.

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Why I Won’t Buy Apple’s iTV

I’m still at CES… And not only am I behind on events/info occurring here I’m also still getting caught up on Apple’s announcements. I just took a brief gander at the $299 iTV (now branded Apple TV), and am disappointed with the first rev of their software. What I’m bothered with as a consumer is … Read more

Dave Speaks

Yes, I’m still here in Vegas and have a decent amount of stuff to share! I was briefed on the Comcast-Motorola-TiVo box and Digeo’s upcoming boxes. Yahoo also has some interesting stuff in the works and of course there’s the Xbox 360 as IPTV ‘cable’ box news. It’s just a matter of finding some time … Read more

Sling Media Is Insane (Online Archiving)

sling-room.jpgWhen I say insane, I really mean it in the most positive of ways.

Over the summer Blake Krikorian (CEO) gave me a personal demo of a feature in the works… On his computer we fired up his Slingplayer to remotely view his satellite television feed and then he pointed out the record button. I thought that was somewhat cool — it’s not something I’d use, but I’m aware a certain percent of users have requested the ability to save clips or shows to the PC.

But then things got somewhat strange… You see, we weren’t scheduling a recording we were recording after the fact, via the buffer. And the video was being automagically sent somewhere. And then we watched the clip through a web page. That we could share with others.

I told him he was insane. I told him not enough people would be interested to offset the risk. Because, I also told him he would be sued into oblivion. Good thing for Sling Media he didn’t take my advice to bury it.

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Digital Media Bytes: Macworld Edition

Being at CES, I’ve had very little time to take in anything other than what I’me seeing first hand. Obviously this is a big day for Apple, so I set aside a few minutes to catch up with the news. No time now for a proper analysis and write-up, but I’m providing links to some … Read more