According to a report on MvixCommunity, MvixUSA is set to announce and ship a new product in their media center line. Dubbed the Ultio, this media center will handle numerous new formats such as FLAC, MKV, H.264, is also rumored to include an embedded UPnP and a bittorent client.
Read the full post at MvixCommunity.
Okay, Okay, I know we seem to love HAVA here, but we thought we’d let you know about the HAVA Titanium we mentioned in a pervious post. The HAVA Titanium HD WiFi (to use its proper name) allows you to stream HD video to your TV via a super-fast 802.11n connection.
The device basically works by streaming HD video through over your WiFi system to the dongles plugged into all your receivers (TVs and what have you). If you so wish, you can back away the box and take it with you on your travels (potential SlingBox killer?) – wherever there’s an internet connection you can watch your TV shows from home via a wide range of media, including mobile phones, and can stream simultaneously to multiple receivers, as with most of these cool HAVA items.
Price: $249.99
(Please note prices are subject to change and the listed price is correct to the best of our knowledge at the time of posting)
China has developed its very own high-def optical video disc format – the China Blue High Definition (CBHD) and a couple of local vendors have just produced 1st gen players.
This is interesting. Why? If you’re thinking the format war was just finished, consider that CBHD players are up to 40% cheaper than Blu-Ray players, and that developed and made in China means they can push those prices way down. They also have a huge local market to sell to (possibly even mandated). Right now, the Chinese government is only supporting the format and funding some manufacturers, but not quite making it official.
Warner Brothers for example has already said it will release 100 titles in the CBHD format this year. Blu-Ray may well be facing a new format war.
After months of negotiations, Disney (ABC) has agreed to take a stake in Hulu, NBC’s online video website and thus also air their shows on hulu.com. Fans of Lost Grey’s Anatomy, Desperate Housewives, and so on can now see full episodes online legally for free with an ad or two thrown in for revenue.
While Greg Sandoval at CNET seems to think this will hurt YouTube, I don’t think that’s about to happen just yet. Sure, this is an important deal as YouTube tries to reform its model to include more industry-approved content, but YouTube is a household name with over 10 times the traffic currently.
Have DVRs not brought the revolution they promised 10 years ago? So argues the Economist, saying that they have not undermined television, but instead done the opposite. I disagree. While television advertising hasn’t collapsed as many experts thought it would in the face of TiVos and other DVRs, being able to easily pause, rewind & fast forward through ‘live’ TV (not to mention act as a VCR) has revolutionized television-watching.
Now the Economist does make a good point which I do agree with, which is that TV now faces a new potential threat in the form of online video sites such as Hulu and the like. However, if TV does get done in, it’ll be by their own hands, as Hulu and other network run sites have been consciously set up by the networks and studios. But I don’t think that will happen. This is a good move by the industry as they realize there’s a growing online audience that isn’t about to migrate back to the living room sofa any time soon.
Here are some of our notable articles for the past week. First we pondered whether Twitter’s popularity would last. Google News now has a Timeline of Events – nice feature.
We noticed that YouTube were looking to accept full length and legal content, while Fuijitsu have developed some secure new memory sticks. Adobe announced their plans to integrate Flash technology with TVs.
Oracle is picking up where IBM left off, buying out Sun for around $7 billion. That’s a lot of Rubik’s Cube Clocks!
Digeo has rolled out a slew of new features for its Moxi HD DVR. If you have a Moxi DVR, then you can get these new services via a software firmware upgrade for free.
If you don’t have a Moxi, then you’ll want to consider getting one, as here are some of the new features:
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Digeo rolls out a slew of new features for its Moxi HD DVRRead More »
Adobe plans to bring its Flash technology to your TV screens by having TVs and set-top boxes built with support for Flash. Flash is the format used for roughly 80% of video online as well as many online video games.
This will certainly make it easier for studios to create content that is viewable on both TV and the Web.
I think that one of the things that needs an update is many of the interfaces and remote controls for the set-top boxes. Why? Because one of the powerful uses of Flash is building applications that are interactive. Take games for example. If Adobe would really like Flash to be used to its fullest, then those set-top boxes need to improve their current horrible non-intuitive interfaces as well as their power (I’m looking at you Motorola).
Adobe expects Flash-supported hardware to begin selling late this year.
YouTube and Sony are currently in talks to display full-length content from Sony Pictures on YouTube. About a week ago, a deal was closed between YouTube and Disney to do the same with some short Disney clips – but it seems that Sony Pictures may provide some longer content for YouTube.
This may be a case of YouTube are playing a game of ‘catch-up’ as service providers all over the world are allowing their shows to be watched online through their own websites which may be lowering the demand for YouTube slightly. Unknown to many, Sony Pictures owns Crackle.com which produces high quality video in-house for the sole purpose of being uploaded to that site.
If this deal goes ahead, we can look forward to a lot of quality content on YouTube professionally produced in addition to the excellent amateur movies out there. Nice.
We started off the week by reporting that Amazon’s Kindle Store has surpassed over 260,000 books with an exponential growth rate – at least that’s not a reason not to own one.
We took a look at the available VHS to DVD converters and other analog to digital converters (both hardware and software solutions).
We featured a bunch of Google-related news. The latest offering from Gmail Labs is a tiny addition but welcome one – insert images directly into email. Next are the many uses of Google Latitude and last is the news that Google and universal were partnering up on a music video website called Vevo.
Rounding up, we pleasantly discovered that Facebook is
not only attracting younger members. Rock Band fan? Nowhere to put your instruments? Then take a look at the ‘Rock Box’ Rock Band storage box.
