Placeshifting And The Law

Various media groups continue to choose sides in the brewing placeshifting battle. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has vocalized their support of the Slingbox as a means of remotely viewing content a consumer has paid for for, while Major League Baseball and HBO suggest placeshifting may break service agreements and violate copyright law. Now the … Read more

ZNF Contest Reminder

Tomorrow is the last day get your entry in… one Teflon apron and four TiVo coasters are looking for a home. Contest recap: To enter you must email me (davezatz@yahoo.com) and your subject heading must say CHEF TIVO. Second, tell me either why you deserve or why you want the prize OR offer up a … Read more

Amazon Unbox Movies On Xbox 360

There was some question upon the launch of Amazon’s Unbox movie download service if it would be possible to stream flicks to a TV via the Xbox 360. The answer is yes, and Amazon has provided these simple steps to automagically stream purchased content to a 360 from a Windows Media Center PC: Download an … Read more

Interesting News Dave Hasn’t Covered

Never enough time… Copy and collate Internet video with Tioti. (TechCrunch) Tag DRM-ed Amazon products as such. (Defective by Design) Buy an HD DVD player, get three HD DVDs free. (EngadgetHD) Another Apple iPod touch screen patent application. (Apple Insider)

Who You Gonna Call?

Need a little help with your gadgets? You don’t have to call tech support anymore. I’ve run across two applications recently taking different approaches to solving your gadget woes. The first is Retrevo. Launched at DEMOfall last month, Retrevo is a vertical search engine that lets you look up your devices to find product documentation, … Read more

Hollywood and Technology Endure Awkward Blind Date

One of the pranks I used to play in college was to dial the phone number of one of my friends, who typically was having relationship problems, and as soon as their phone would start ringing, I would immediately put them on conference call and dial their recent ex and then sit back and watch as both people thought that the other person was calling them. In retrospect it probably wasn’t a very nice thing to do, but the results were always unpredictable and hilarious.

Sometimes they’d just start fighting, other times they would actually make up, but most times there would be a certain awkwardness as both parties thought the other had called, but couldn’t figure out why. While it may not have been the nicest practical joke, today Forbes magazine played a similar version of this gag when they invited some of the top technology firms to interact with Hollywood fat cats at their MEET (Media Electronic Entertainment Technology) 2006 conference.

The list of technology experts was a literal who’s who of the geek world. TiVo, Sling, Netflix, Apple, Google, YouTube, you name it, the list went on and on. While many of these technology companies came to court Hollywood into embracing them as business partners, they faced a tough crowd and a hard sell for an industry that hasn’t been forced to make significant changes in the last 30 years. In a nice overview of the conference, Paul Bonds with The Hollywood Reporter, gives a great run down on some of the more memorable recaps.

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ZNF, It’s All Fun & Games…

First thing’s first… Way back in March, I spontaneously ran a contest to guess the release date and price of the Series3. Aaron, an internal medicine hospitalist from Richmond, VA was the big winner with a 9/15 @ $849 prediction. I offered him a choice of a TiVo-branded wireless adapter or gift certificate from Amazon … Read more