The generation of “Me” now has something new to do with their “Wii.”  In between combating enemies foreign and domestic or just raising their unique handsets to show off  a case of virtual tennis elbow,  gamers can now get informed.

Nintendo has announced a new news channel that can be accessed by Wii players with a unique twist.  The Wii News Channel  features the ability to focus in on world, national and regional news by simply tuning in on a location within a map.  It can be accessed by users that have Internet access through the Opera browser for the Wii

Headlines in all countries except Japan will be supplied by the Associated Press, the wire service that serves most news organizations. Japanese players will get heir news from “Goo” a Japanese wire service. 

Nintendo’s Wii console has become a major player among gamers since its introduction during the recent holiday season.  The company says Wii is opening up new demographics for gaming consoles. 

My worry is that in the current state of geographic education, many players will not be able to find their region on the Associated Press map. Perhpaps a future channel will report only news about users who have caused physical or property damage with their handsets.

Posted by Barbara.

If the digital recording industry follows the advice of its critics, they may soon be able to paraphrase Shakespeare’s Henry VI: “First, we starve all the lawyers!”

Ever since vinyl started catching dust, the industry has fought all manner of piracy from eight-track tapes to high-definition DVDs.  Now that most homes are almost able to simulate a recording studio online, the industry has aimed its best and brightest to make sure some value remains in their intellectual property.  As the industry gathers in Cannes, music lovers fear that the industry beat is slowing to a waltz as more and more measure the effects of piracy.

Lawsuits against individual users and ldigital ocks have done little to discourage the trend in the distribution of free music online.  Although digital recording sales have doubled since the birth of I-Tunes, Rhapsody and other legal music distribution systems, actual sales of all recorded music are declining.  This has prompted experts in the field to push industry representatives to diminish enforcement efforts and concentrate on growing the industry itself.

Chances are there is a digital recording of the debate among industry insiders available somewhere for download.

Posted by Barbara.

In 1994, a local Pizza Hut revolutionized the process of ordering a pizza by letting hungry programmers in Santa Cruz, California, select from a primitive text menu on what would become the World Wide Web.  About eight years ago, Netflix revolutionized the process of getting a movie, by doing much the same thing. 

Pizza Hut delivered the old-fashioned way — with a driver and a car.  Netflix also used old-fashioned snail mail to make its deliveries.   

In the past year, there has been tremendous pressure on NetFlix to speed up the delivery process. After some starts and stops, NetFlix will enter the twenty-first century today with the launch of its “Watch Now,” service that delivers movies and TV episodes online.  This may not be news to a growing video-on-demand community, but for about 250,000  Netflix subscribers, the future is here. Those subscribers will have to run the Microsoft Windows operating system in order to use the company’s download application. 

The company is moving slowly in its launch,  making it available to about 250,000 of its subscribers at a time, as it tests its hardware and customer service facilities.  The launch is expected to take more than a year to reach the entire Netflix subscriber base.  

Postal workers need not fret. The launch is not likely to greatly diminish the carrier’s workload.  Only about 1,000 out of the 70,000 movies in the Netflix DVD library will qualify for online delivery. 

Meanwhile, Pizza Hut and its competitors are still seeking a twenty-first century delivery option for pizza that won’t gum up PC components.  

Posted by Barbara.

Watch out You Tube, BitTorrent  and evil-doing hackers.  Joost is on its way.

Competition in the online video market is nothing new in a world where suddenly everyone is a television producer.  But Joost is armed with some proven talent and a lot of bandwidth. 

The concept previously known as the “Venice Project,” has now become “Joost,” a meaningless name that means something to its distinguished founders, Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom.  Friis and Zennstrom,  a pair of great Danes, have never put together a dog.  Their previous projects, Skype and Kazaa, are doing quite well.

The founders say Joost will recreate the television experience.  Plans are to join TV, Tivo and Internet technologies to bring full-scale programming online.  Painted against a background of pronounced Internet economies like Skype and Kazaa,  it promises to have broad appeal.  The platform will be funded by commercial advertising.

If Joost can create some partnerships with Hollywood producers, it may even put young copyright violators in jeopardy.

Posted by Barbara.

A long time ago, on a desktop near you, computer WAV files resembled the sound coming from an analog TV connected to rabbit ears.  True audiophiles would rather scratch a needle on an original Caruso recording than be subjected to such an experience.

Over the years, television has added high quality sound to its pictures. At last, computers have joined the audio revolution.  Quality Mp3 sound isn’t just for iPods anymore.  Now, you can connect your music collection through your USB port to a superior audio component.

Among the players in this high-end game is the Bel Canto e.One S300iu, which converts the digital Mp3 files to an analog signal for your stereo.  Like most high-end audio equipment it comes at a high price — $2,200.

Another player, Margules Audio of Mexico has introduced a component that actually uses your iPod like a CD, and plays your music collection through your existing stereo. The “iEnd” retails for a mere $960.

Perhaps I can convince my significant other that it is time to upgrade our home karaoke system.

Posted by Barbara.

 

Those of us still marveling at our shiny, slightly used Betamax machines remain confused about the next generation of DVD players.  Bluray and HD DVD sound like a couple of characters in a future George Lucas production.  Chances are we won’t be trading in the Betamax any time soon, just to get access to a home video technology that may not last. 

Warner Brothers, owners of a huge library of videos ready to be played in high definition on the home screen, are offering a compromise technology.  The new “Total HD Disc” technology actually gives viewers “two,” count ‘em “two” technologies in one.  Instead of choosing between Toshiba’s HD DVD and Sony’s Bluray, why not play discs from both on a single player? 

The new player will be demonstrated at next week's Consumer Electronics show in Las Vegas.  At that time, Warner Brothers will announce whether or not it will license the technology to rival studios.

Back in the late 70s, video stores had whole sections of  Betamax and VHS movies.  In those days, of course, the numbers of home video titles were minimal and could fit in the average store.  If the trend continues in the years to come, Netflix and Blockbuster may have to build Big Box warehouses to accommodate titles in not only the new high def formats, but also discs that play in current generation players. 

Then again,  somewhere in Tokyo or Hollywood,  a company may be working on the “Definite Format” that will give your home theatre all the impact of watching Dumb and Dumber during the Christmas show at Radio City Music Hall. Hang in there.

Posted by Barbara.

If Santa brought you a huge plasma screen or something pretty in high definition,  you  might want to start looking into new delivery systems for that TV picture.  If you live in the San Francisco Bay area, Indiana or some other newly competitive areas, prepare for the telephone/cable fiber optic wars of 2007. 

The newly resurgent  Ma Bell,  doing business again as AT&T , plans to inject itself as a television signal provider through a new fiber optic system it calls “U-Verse.”

AT&T is expanding the system to the Bay Area after testing it in San Antonio and Houston, Texas.  Of course, the Bay Area’s primary cable provider will not sit quietly. Comcast Inc plans to upgrade a number of its local franchises from the East Bay to San Jose to go up against AT&T.  The result should benefit local consumers, some experts say.

AT&T’s U-Verse system includes both television and high speed Internet service, and starts at $44 per month in San Antonio, depending on the services requested.  Comcast, meanwhile, charges about $99/month for a combination of TV, telephone and high-speed Internet. 

At the same time, satellite providers are not standing still either. Direct TV, a challenger to cable television, plans to add low-cost high-speed internet to its satellite TV packages for $10 per month.

Posted by Barbara.

Where is Agent Jack Bauer when we need him?

There is an apparent terrorist plot in motion as Russian engineers are allegedly siphoning the profits out of the American music business.  A Moscow-based Web site called “allofmp3.com” stands accused of charging visitors pennies per track to download from its growing library of worldwide hits. 

You might ask, how can they charge only pennies, when a service like Apple Itunes charges 99 cents per song?  Apparently, the American music industry suggests a possible answer: none of the featured musicians have received royalties from allofmp3.com.

I am not an attorney, but as someone who has frequently produced copyrighted material over a lifetime,   I believe a good attorney might be able to make a case of this. 

The accused infringer, however, says it is following the spirit of the local Moscow law.  For a mere 14 cents, you can download their answer to the US music industry — in the voice of Karen Carpenter — “We’ve Only Just Begun.”

Posted by Barbara

The company that has a history of controlling ecommerce and domain names is now getting into the parentally controlled movie business.  Verisign,  which began life as a traffic cop on the information super highway will now become a home entertainment crossing guard,  allowing only language and offense-cleansed movies through its portal.

The service will be run as a subsidiary, Axiom Entertainment Inc., which expects to have its “Axiom TV” service in test mode early next month. Although movie download services are beginning to become more widespread, the Verisign service is the first to specialize in what it calls “family friendly” entertainment.” The service will require a simple cable between a computer and a television set to bring the movies to the family TV set. 

A new technology called "Mother"  is being used by Axiom TV to block pornography, violence and foul language from its content.  Presumably, the technology will be available in the future for Members of Congress, sex symbols and comedians approaching meltdown.

Posted by Barbara.

Necessity, it is said, is the mother of invention. 

And so it is that Audiovox  has created an answer to one of our mind-bogging dilemmas:

What to do about loud television commercials.

The Audiovox/Terk VR-1 senses the volume level of commercial and automatically adjusts the volume downward as the commercial producers adjust the volume upward.  The little set-top box is connected to the sound connection on your TV and requires little technical skill to connect. 

The unsaid question in everyone’s mind remains, however.  What happens when commercial producers realize that some viewers are adjusting the volume of commercials?  Will it cause all of us to pay $30 for the Audiovox/Terk  VR-1 in order to keep the commercial from blasting our neighbors? 

Or will it finally bring all of us to Tivo and simply skip the commercials altogether?

We’ll probably know the answer before the first commercials of the 2008 presidential campaign are aired.  

Posted by Barbara. 

Princeton students obviously have privilege. 

Their latest privilege comes in the form of free music downloads from Ruckus, a Virginia-based music transfer service typically sponsored by colleges that want to discourage illegal music downloads by students. 

For a mere $20 per semester, students can download from the 1.5 million song Ruckus library to their computers or an MP3 player.  However, the service does NOT work with the most popular MP3 player, the Apple IPod. 

Of course, Princeton students have long been recognized for their academic and technical skills.  Chances are the Apple IPod  owners there have already figured out a way to hack the system. 

At least they’re not doing anything illegal... 

Posted by Barbara.

 

 

It’s a bird!

It’s a plane!

It’s a movie download?

Wal-Mart stores want you to have it all.  Let’s call it “many happy Superman Returns.”

The returns of course are aimed at Wal-Mart’s bottom line.  In the Wal-Mart movie download option, you first buy the DVD of the movie itself.  THEN you have the option of downloading it to your computer or a mobile device.  For $1.97 you can download the movie to your I-Pod or your Zune.  For an additional $2.97, you can download it to your PC.

This is a test of one of hundreds of retail download options that movie studios hope will eventually deter the grey market in pirate downloads.  Wal-Mart apparently has great faith in the patience and spending habits of movie pirates. 

Yes, it is Christmas time.

Posted by Barbara

If you are culinarily challenged, but gastronomically inclined, you may find relief on the Internets this Thanksgiving.   Instead of spending the day chopping, boiling and turkey basting, you could spend your holiday watching football and hogging that new Xbox 360, Playstation 3  or Wii .

Perhaps this will be your first family holiday challenge, as Grandma and the rest of the family head over the river and through several security checks to your penthouse apartment in the sky.  With the hired help taking the day off, the family may look to you to stuff that turkey with everything you have. 

Fear not, there are first-rate chefs who have joined the holiday tradition, their skills and an overwhelming desire to stay at home themselves this holiday.  Instead, they mass-produce gourmet quality dinners that include the fully stuffed bird and everything else you need – right down to the pumpkin cheese cake. 

First class hotels and even local grocery outlets in many big cities are offering these feasts online for the first time,  in hopes of creating a new tradition.  They range in price from under $100  to $500 — including delivery. You can always get a mortgage on that Playstation 3. 

Posted by Barbara

It’s time to turn off the flashing “12:00.”

Some 30 years after its flashy entrance, the VHS format died a quiet death in Hollywood this week. 

Once upon a time, there was hope that the once-dominant format would survive at least one more Christmas season.  But it was not to be.  In a world obsessed with obesity, a half-dozen DVDs could sit in the space occupied by a single VHS.  Tivo and recordable DVDs replaced the once-powerful abilities of VHS to clone itself.  The format never took the hint to slim down.  

Since 2003, VHS has been denied more and more retail shelf space.  This week, the diminished space was reduced to an area limited to one “Barney” tape at Toys ‘R Us.  

Will the last “Barney” viewer be kind and rewind?”

Posted by Barbara

 

Surprise!

As the biggest shopping season of the year approaches, a Consumer Reports survey finds that most people would rather buy their electronics online than in a big-box retailer.  The survey polled 20,000 readers who shopped everything from independent local stores to the big-box national chains.  It seems, shoppers found little help from staff at the national retailers. 

As someone of the female gender who happens to have a little more than average knowledge of the workings of electronics, I can second this emotion.  A long time ago, in a place not far away, I pledged never to buy electronics again in an environment where I was asked “where’s your husband?”

Perhaps I’m being unfair if I expect the kid behind the counter to know the “areal den density, “of a disk surface, but I do expect the sales person to know the difference between a digital and an analog watch.  

I’ve never bought a television set online, knowing that if God wanted us to have television sets delivered by UPS, he would not have given us big, handsome neighbors.  Still, a Consumer Reports editor says, “People are just happier buying it online,” meaning they will even pay the freight on a large-screen television, rather than deal with the kid who is uncomfortable in an environment that doesn’t serve happy meals. 

 

Posted by Barbara 

Yesterday, Sanyo formally announced its new PLV-Z5 Home Entertaiment Projector. If you've got a nice 70 or 80-inch blank wall in your house, this is a great way to get an HD picture without having to haul a whole HDTV around.

 

The PLV-Z5 is an LCD projector with a 16:9 aspect ratio (that's real good and real wide screen) and can give you an effective 100-inch Hi-Def screen from only 9.8 feet away. It's got a new "twin-iris" system that integrates lens and lamp apertures for a (supposedly) much improved picture. Also has the same higher-end features you might find on an actual HDTV, including HDMI inputs (that's good), S-video connections, 3D-color management, 2x zoom, and a D-sub connector so you can talk to a PC (like your Windows Media PC). I would have preferred a USB or Ethernet port to the D-sub; but since the thing only costs about $1700 with a $200 rebate, maybe I should quit sniveling.

 

If you can check it out in a store, do it. With the right home theater system, this thing could really brighten your TV room

Right now, if you want the best in HDTV then you're looking at a plasma TV. But Australian news is reporting that plasma's days are numbered--and numbered severely. Seems researchers have developed something new: Laser TV. Whereas plasma-based HDTV supposedly shows between 30-35% of the colors viewable by the human eye, Laser TV is supposed to show upwards of 90%. Oomph.

 

The first such TVs will be coming from a new Australian company, called Arasor, and they'll be coming real soon--like the middle-end of 2007. Other companies, including Mitsubishi and Samsung are on board, too, so it looks like Laser is coming for real. 'Course don't expect to be able to afford them right away. Then again, they'll probably push down the price of plasma significantly, so you can buy one of those and the next time you buy a TV you can think about laser.

 

(via Slashdot)

If you're a video nerd, or maybe just a new parent like my friend Dave who can't seem to stop video-recording evertying that goes on in his house, then editing your videos, adding information and effects to them and similar operations are near and dear to your heart. It's just that hooking video cams to computers and getting the to talk to software can often be a pain. And converting older video into new formats is a deep Advil moment.

 

Fortunately, there are appliances out there to make your life easier. Pinnacle Systems just released two little appliances. The first is called the Studio MovieBox ($99) and Movie Box Plus ($149). These come in USB and PCI versions and can be had with USB or Firewire input/output. Purpose? They've got A/V hooks so you can attach your VCR directly to the MovieBox. From there, you can convert VHS home movies into digital formats (including MPEG-4 and MPEG-2) simply by hitting play.  The Plus version also had S-Video and stereo audio jacks for the higher-end freaks among you.

 

That's the VHS conversion appliance. Then there's the new Pinnacle HD appliance: This rules. Getting an HD-capable screen is no big deal anymore. Many flat screen monitors have HD display capable as do many laptop screens. But getting HD content hooked to these devices is the trick. There are free HD channels being broadcast over the air, but receiving them requires hooking an HD tuner to your attena and then dingin a way to channel that to your PC.

 

A headache before, but no longer. For $130, you can get the Pinnacle PCTV HD Pro stick. Basically a USB stick with USB 2.0 on one side and a coax connection on the other. Hook any antenna you want to the coax side (tho the Pro Stick comes with its own, too), point the whhole assembly at the window and depending on where you are you can get up to 5 HD channels and any number of digital channels. Tres cool.

 

(via Gearlog)

APC usually sends me the coolest new surge-control, battery and UPS gear for review in InfoWorld, but this is one sleek gadget on which I got stiffed. Must have words with APC PR. [Growl.]

 

Meantime, if you're an audiophile then you're most likely paranoid about the environment surrounding your audio equipment--especially the quality of the electricity running through them. And that's were power condtioners come in. All those spikes and dips that your power company sends to your house probably won't bother your toaster or microwave, but they tend to wreak havoc on delicate audiophile-type circuitry. But if you've got one of these, then those nasty surges and brownouts are caught by the power conditioner and smoothed into music-rack-safe electro-juice.

 

And, of course, because it's APC, they take the basic concept and go a few steps further. First, The APC S20 looks good enough to fit into any stereo rack (even some glowing blue LED you can't see on the picture) and they also tack Internet connectivity in there. Means you can connect to your S20 from wherever you can see the Web. That way, if your house has a power surge or failure, you can reboot or condition your lines while you're away.

 

Yeah, it's geeky, but I want one.

 

(via Gizmodo)

This is interesting. Personal video recorders (PVRs), including boxes like TiVo, often give viewers the ability to skip advertising. Not just in viewing but also recording. Means folks who auto-record lots of shows on their TiVos have the ability to simply skip over the ads when they decide to playback and actually watch the shows.

 

TV advertisers have been ignoring the new trend...until now. Seems FX TV has decided to try a little experiment in the UK. Instead of running a typical TV add for the show Brotherhood, which will apparently be airing on FX over there, they're just going to run a still image with the show's characters on it. Means it won't register as an add and won't disappear even if you hit fast forward.

 

Can't wait to see the response numbers on that.

 

(via Engadget)