August 02, 2005
Creating the Xbox 360's Interface
Design Interact has a fascinating story up that talks about the two-year process of designing the Xbox 360's user interface. The process included Microsoft designing their own Flash-like animation tool, working with design firm AKOA and narrowing ten ideas down to one. The end result is a sucked in interface that resembles the console's own sleek design and features the ability to quickly cycle through games, photos and other entertainment capabilities.
(Via Kotaku.)Posted by jetrotz at 07:30 AM | Comments (0)
August 01, 2005
Xbox 360 gonna have a qwerty controller?
Update: This image came from a demo Microsoft did in Spain, showing off this detachable QWERTY keyboard for the controller, plus lots of other goodies. LINK
This might make the whole Media Center Extender experience built-into the Xbox 360 a whole lot more useful for those applications requiring more text input than you'd want to hunt and peck with an on-screen virtual keyboard.
(Via Engadget)
Posted by jetrotz at 07:47 AM | Comments (0)
May 23, 2005
Who are these people?
A new study reported this morning on Mediapost.com (registration required) describes a study commissioned by ESPN to study the use of DVRs by non-early adopters. The report says that 57% of people given a DVR, ultimately returned the unit because they didn't want it.
Of the 157 households that participated in the test, 90 returned their DVRs for a variety or reasons including: complaints about the installation process, the cost of DVRs, or the fact that the digital set-top devices clashed with or didn't fit into their home furnishings.Oh - the study also said that most of these people didn't tend to fast-forward through commercials. Hmmmm. If anyone happens to have an extra Tivo Series 2 lying around after this test, please send it my way.
Posted by jetrotz at 08:29 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 17, 2005
TiVo Blows Off Comcast?
The gray lady reports today that Tivo was close to a deal with Comcast (free registration required) to put TiVo technology into Comcast's set-top-boxes, but TiVo's board backed out based on the recommendation of Michael Ramsey, then CEO and Chairman. Now, Ramsey has resigned the CEO position, but remains as chairman. An interesting read, for sure. If TiVo continues to make boneheaded moves like this, the company won't be worth much more than the spiffy plush TiVo mascot I have on my office shelf. Sad, really.
Posted by jetrotz at 08:52 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 07, 2005
DirecTV follows Dish with Mosaics in U.S.
DirecTV launched three 'mosaic' television channels on Thursday at CES in Las Vegas. The channels aggregate into one screen six or seven video signals by category, allowing a news junkie to keep tabs on CNN, CNN Headline News, CNBC, MSNBC, Fox News Channel and The Weather Channel on the same screen at one time.
CBS Marketwatch coverage here.
The Sports Mix includes ESPN, ESPN2, The NFL Network, TNT and others, but has the caveat that it may be blacked out subject to local programming restrictions. Kids Mix features children's networks such as Nickelodeon and Turner's own Cartoon Network.
These channels (which I was happy to see at home on my DirecTV system on channels 102, 104 and 111) follow the succesful launch of mosaics last Summer and Fall by Echostar's Dish Network. They broke this ground in the U.S. with an Olympics mosaic over the Summer showcasing the various NBC channels carrying that programming, and followed that up with an election-night mosaic featuring CNN and the other news networks.
The new DirecTV mix channels can't truly be called interactive, however. They are a static collection of the networks with (on the news and sports channels) a somewhat annoying barker channel talking about news/sports programming on the network. Unlike the Dish version, the user cannot use the channel to move from video to video and change the audio signal. That small detail alone would, IMHO, vastly improve the usefullness of the service. The Dish version also allowed the user to highlight one of the streams and click to tune.
I suspect DirecTV will follow up with click to tune and switchable audio with a new version soon. BSkyB, their sister company in the UK, has numerous similar applications running there which have these features and more, including interactive news feeds and stories.
More screenshots here at Engadget.
Posted by jetrotz at 10:19 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 21, 2004
AFI Presentation
Today, I presented to the American Film Instititue Enhanced Television Interactive Showcase. I showed a behind-the-scenes look at 'Crossfire Interactive,' a project where we created a synch-to-broadcast environment on the Web which allowed users to comment on the show, participate in topical trivia, etc. Shelly Palmer, of the National Academy of Arts & Sciences, commented on our presentations.
Posted by jetrotz at 10:48 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack