All PVR

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451 Press, Writer Needed, All PVR

I want to write about two seemingly separate things today, but I am sure you’ll recognize the underlying similarity.

Lets start with Tivo. There are really two ways to enjoy prime-time shows pre-recorded for your convenience. Method One –Choose few of your favorites, tell Tivo to auto-record the season for you, and watch at your leisure. Method Two — Choose all prime-time shows (or over 80%), use dual tuner Tivo (or 2 dual-tuner Tivos) to record them (usually while watching the 3rd or the 5th prime-time show meanwhile). So then what? When on earth do you find the time to watch all these shows? Pull All Nighters, all week? Spend whole weekend watching? Do you really need to watch Everything? Is it humanly possible?

With ever increasing Amount and Quality of media, in the age that most anyone with a camera can produce quality content, I think we need to start learning that you can Not catch them all!

I think we all need to realize that the purpose of Tivo is to Liberate you from TV dependency. Gone are the days that if you don’t watch it live, you don’t watch at all. No longer do you need to choose whether to live your life on your terms or be bound by TV schedule into a strict routine.

Which one is you?

And now I want to touch on the other subject, as promised.

Your probably noticed by now that this blog ain’t engadget, or kotaku or anything like that. My goal isn’t to bring you every and all imaginable news from the world of PVRs, at the average rate of 5 stories an hour. I really doubt that many of you care that Tivo added some new TivoCast content, or that Fox partnered with Brightcove for some Web TV. And if you do care, I am sure you subscribe to several other PVR blogs and you will read it there anyway. One of my missions, is to sift through the noise out there on the Web and bring you the best and most important stories that are changing the Media landscape as we know it. Of course I am also here bring you some useful PVR DIY guides and other prudent information to make your PVR adventuring easier and richer.

So, what’s with the long post, you ask? I felt it was important to put this information about this blog out there, while also taking this opportunity to remind you to use your Tivo responsively.

Enjoy life, folks!

Tivo, Brightcove, Life Balance

Dave Zatz put up a nice confessional about using BitTorrent to download and catch up on a show. His reasoning is that it helped convert him into Live TV viewer, since now he wants to watch the latest episode of the show as it first airs.

Personally, I prefer Vuze client. With recent addition of paid content, and their extensive free content library, it’s an excellent choice. Moreover, the original and solid bittorrent implementation is still there, sitting under the shiny new exterior. In other words, it can download any torrent of your choosing.

Dave, kudos on being brave, and putting it out there. I do agree that a lot of people using alternate means to catch up on shows and end up as additional live audience, ultimately aiding the studios. And then there are those that will never watch live, either because it conflicts with another show they prefer in that time slot, or they just never get enough time to catch up on the whole season of shows. Finally, a lot of BitTorrent sharing is happening from outside USA. Often our shows get to other countries late, and Web viewer on ABC.com and others is blocked from abroad.

Have You ever done it? And what do you think about AT&T new war on it’s customers? Will they try to sniff out people downloading plain TV shows? The same TV which is normally available freely over-the-air, in HDTV quality?

I certainly hope AT&T will wake up soon and reverse their decision. Otherwise, the public relations nightmare will turn into major storm, something they don’t need while they are trying to position themselves as your friendly up-and-coming Everything provider.

bittorrent, vuze, at&t

Yes, Joost just added Paramount Pictures channel. There are several movies currently available already, and of course I tried one already.

Clockstoppers, a Nickelodeon Studios movie, is a great teen movie I sat down to watch with my kids. And I have to report, it was totally Ok on our 19″ LCD. During few scarce fast moving scenes, there was visible compression artifacts, but overall, it was really fine. In fact, my kids didn’t complain at all!

Very few titles are available right now, but I am sure more will be added in the future.

With Joost being free, and staying free, this seriously changes landscape of Movies on demand on the Internet. Soon you will be able to do a quick search in Joost library of movies, hopefully from multiple major distributors, and simply watch on-demand.

These sure are exciting times!

joost, paramount pictures, on-demand

Well, it was very tough to top our last Friday’s deal of getting standalone Toshiba HD-DVD player for $199.

We know our readers expect only the best, so instead of bringing you mediocre deals, there will be No Friday deal today!

I’d just like to remind everyone that tomorrow is the last day to get Series3 HD Tivo for $389 (alas, shipping is extra $16 or so). This price is of course after $200 Father’s Day rebate, that you need to remember to print out and submit.

PS: There’s a 42″ 1080p LCD from Hyundai. Can’t say that we can recommend that brand, but at $1299 + $99 delivery, it’s reasonably priced. Oh yea, and you get a free Fujifilm 8MP digital camera with that, to boot.

deal, tivo

Still deciding on which flavor you prefer? 

Don’t trouble yourself too much. Babelgum is actually another newcomer in the Internet TV category, closely resembling Joost, and based on similar P2P technology, as I understand.

I downloaded and played around with their first beta recently. Overall, the experience was positive, though the content available on Babelgum at this time is extremely limited.

Every step of the way it reminded me of Joost, but I did notice some interesting differences. First, I felt that the video quality is a bit sharper, though it’s hard to tell in my very unscientific eye test.

Babelgum attempts to more closely replicate TV viewing experience. It starts with providing a mini remote-control that appears on the left side of your screen and continues through to ‘Channel Surfing’ like experience. There are only few “core” channels, that are more like Categories than anything else.

Another interesting difference is a DVR/PVR like feature, where you can choose to “record” a video you are watching. This adds the watched video to Your collection, later accessible as a big Tivo like list. In fact, the show isn’t being recorded at all and the whole thing is more like Bookmarking video. When you do activate it from Your collection later, it streams then, in a same P2P fashion as everything else.

Finally, Babelgum promises to offer Custom channel, where content will be automatically matched to your likings, though it’s unclear to me how will they figure out what it is we like…

Babelgum has no deals with major content providers, and instead plans to focus more on high quality Indie produced content. It plans to remain completely free for viewers and plans a revenue model similar to Joost.

You can check out Babelgum by downloading their beta right here.

babelgum, webtv, internettv, joost

We love Veronica Mars show, which migrated onto the recently formed CW.

So, to remind you to watch Veronica Mars with us, and as a sort of follow up to yesterday’s post, did you know that Veronica is available in full color online streaming on the new CW?

Yep, the good folks at CW also use the high quality Move Networks streaming technology, so the quality is most impressive.

I know everyone loves PVR and watching on big TV and such, but this really changes things. We tried some time ago to catch up on some shows, sitting in front of my measly 19″ LCD. I must say, I felt that the experience was positive and even more intimate. There’s something special about two of us sitting close to the screen, which just isn’t there on the big couch/recliner where we normally watch.

But, maybe it’s just me, or maybe you don’t have a PVR or big-screen TV, or even cable/antenna/tv altogether. You can still watch America’s favorite TV from the comfort of your wireless laptop on the porch, or public WiFi down the street.

It’s just shame that CW chose to only include few recent episodes on their site. Hopefully this will improve in the future.

UPDATE: Veronica Mars was canceled? Shame… Hopefully there are some better shows in the pipe, we’ll see.

WebTV, CW

ABC Full Episode Streaming has been available for some time now, but the specialized high-quality streaming ActiveX component installation was not available for Windows Vista users.

ABC’s streaming is, dare I say, best in the industry at the moment. It offers highest quality video (try it in Big size, or even Full Screen!), via the ActiveX component technology that they licensed from Move Networks.

The good news is that Windows Vista is now finally supported. I tried it out this weekend, and it’s working as advertised. I did run into a minor quirk with the initial installation of Player in my Vista. After install, while the player worked flawlessly, other IE Tabs started having some behavioral issues, including inability to download or run files from the Internet. But, quick Vista restart resolved these issues, so even though officially restart isn’t required, I highly recommended it.

In related news, ABC’s Full Episode Streaming is promising to bring us High Definition streaming quality, hopefully in time for their Fall Season. This is really exciting, and I am looking forward to that, and will keep you posted.

Oh, and you do have to be physically located in the USA to make it work, as far as I know. So, if you are, and you are on Vista or XP, or even Mac, launch your ABC Player and catch up on your favorite shows, including May’s blockbuster Season Finales.

ABC, WebTV,  streaming video, HDTV 

Granted, this isn’t the latest model, and granted it’s refurbished. But, if you are looking for cheap entry into HD-DVD market, while waiting out to see which technology wins, you can’t go wrong with initial $199 investment (plus shipping).

This deal is from the good folks at TigerDirect, who I often shop for a lot of my technology needs.

Of course, if you have an XBox 360, I recommend getting HD-DVD drive for it instead. Though same price, it isn’t refurbished. You could also connect it to your Windows Vista PC, but you will need expensive HD-DVD playback software and HDCP connection to monitor, plus nasty Vista protected drivers to make it work.

So, why you still here? Click through and get your HD-DVD goodness for under $200.

We already brought you some coverage from the rapidly evolving category of Video Search. Those were examples of specialized video searches, such as educational videopedia style searches.

But, for more generic searches, such as when you are looking for specific video clip of presidential debate, or of kids dumping into walls, there are myriad of generic video search engines cropping up.

Some even combine Social aspect of supposed ‘crowd wisdom’ to add to the mix.

My favorites remain Google Video Search and the all time classic YouTube search, but your mileage may vary, depending on type of video you’re looking for.

Here is some more perspective from WebTVWire on this hot topic.

youtube, video search

I realize that most of the country don’t have AT&T’s IPTV yet. I know how you feel, I am in the same boat, waiting for IPTV rollout in our area…

It only makes sense, then, that I will bring you this story about non-existing (read future) features from non-existing (again, read future) service in your area.

AT&T U-Verse is promising holy grail of DVR functionality, with such features as record from any TV watch on any TV in the household and Photo sharing and Games on your HDTV.

Some features, however, like Caller ID, are already available on DishNetwork DVR and many other popular DVRs.

[via Connected Home 2 Go]

If you are still struggling with installation of MythTV on latest Ubuntu, even after our handy guide from last week, it’s time to try another approach.

MythDora is a Linux distribution that is pre-built specifically for running MythTV on your box. This distribution is based on excellent Fedora Core 6, which itself is an open source derivative of the Enterprise quality RedHat linux.

For more info, check out MythDora home page, or just check out the handy videos right away.

mythtv, mythdora, dvr 

Creative’s Wide Screen Zen Vision is an excellent 30 GB little unit, with high resolution screen and all the features you’d ever expect from your portable media player.

Of course it plays MP3s and WMAs, with Creative’s known excellent sound quality, but the kicker feature is undoubtedly video. Check out the impressive supported codecs list: MPEG-4 SP, XviD, DivX 5.0, DivX 4.0, MPEG-2, MPEG-1, Motion JPEG, WMV.

With this impressive list, chances are you won’t need to transcode any of your existing media, just copy as is and it plays!

Rumor has it that Microsoft’s Zune is going to get a wide screen edition in the future, but why wait? Another rumor has it that if you connect this or Archos unit to one of the newer DishNetwork DVRs, it will recognize it and let you copy your recorded shows onto it.

Just $199 after two rebates (yea, I hate rebates too, but I love saving money!).

zen-vision-w, creative, deal