Audio/Video, Home Theater

Last Wednesday, Hulu.com officially opened for business, offering up free-with-ads video on demand through the browser. The project is a joint venture of NBC and News Corp. Here now a quick look at how Hulu changes the online video-on-demand picture.

A few short years ago, I would have told anyone that video over the Internet was little more than a curiosity. Grainy, postage stamp-sized windows, endless rebuffering, and choppy, out-of-sync audio was the typical experience–given that there was another electronic box in the living room called a “television,” Internet video hardly seemed worth the effort.

That was then, this is now–and Hulu joins Apple’s iTunes Music Store, Netflix, ABC.go.com, Amazon Unboxed and others in actually providing a viable alternative to the TV Set for watching television shows and movies on your computer. …

Hulu.com–Free TV and Movies (with ads)Read More »

Need some help rounding out your classic Nintendo collection?

Old NES somewhere in the basement… CHECK. Purchased every Classic Console game on the Nintendo Wii… CHECK. But do you have a cool universal TV remote that looks just like a NES controller? No? ThinkGeek.com does and it’s ready for immediate delivery via winged turtle shell.

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Classic Nintendo Themed TV RemoteRead More »

The biggest American reality show on TV has finally joined the iTunes platform. Fox Broadcasting, Fox Interactive Media and FremantleMedia signed an exclusive deal with Apple to bring American Idol audio and video performances to iTunes as single song-sized snippets available the day after they premiere on air.

Audio performances of the top 24 contenders run 99¢ per song, and videos of the top 12 finalists performances will be priced $1.99/each from March 11.

Apple will also become one of the show’s premiere sponsors and maintain a branded presence on AmericanIdol.com, where some free streaming performances can be seen.

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A few months back I gave Toshiba some advice on how HD-DVD could win the format war. Perhaps it was too little, too late, or it was sound advice that fell on deaf ears. Either way, Toshiba has packed up camp and announced it will no longer be manufacturing or marketing HD-DVD players and ending the long format war once and for all.

It’s estimated Toshiba sold over one million HD-DVD players and three-hundred thousand personal computers with HD-DVD drives. Painful as it may be for early adopters, there will be no rebates, refunds, or credits toward Blu-Ray devices for anyone that bought in to HD-DVD early.

What brought the demise of HD-DVD? Though a full autopsy may be in order to find the detailed answer, I chalk it up to three things:

Read the rest at TechLore >>

Last week Apple announced they needed another couple of weeks to finish updating the Apple TV software that will finally allow users to rent movies directly from the TV rather than having to download on the computer and sync or stream the video to the Apple TV device. This anticipated software upgrade will be available as a free software download to existing Apple TV users sometime in February. By the end of February, Apple’s iTunes online music store should have more than 1,000 movie titles available including more than 100 high-definition titles. The DVD-quality movies will be available to rent for $2.99 for older titles and $3.99 for newer titles while high-definition costs a buck more.

Also last week, Apple announced the MacBook Air has started shipping. Hopefully Apple packages the MacBook Air in something a little more sturdy than the envelopes featured in the ads!

In the week following Warner Home Video’s surprise defection from the HD-DVD camp, sales of HD DVD hardware has come to a virtual halt dropping from 14,558 the week before to 1,758 whereas the Blu-ray players rose from 15,257 to 21,770. Granted this is only the first week of data following the HD-DVD defection, but those numbers must have the HD-DVD group members talking. These numbers are tracked by NPD who tracks sales figures of roughly two-thirds of consumer electronics hardware sales.

The defection coincides with promotions from both Sony and Sharp which are bundling Blu-ray Disc players with sales of their HDTVs. While these two factors are important, this Geek thinks Warner Home Video may have ended the battle between Blu-ray and HD-DVD. Only time will tell…