Trotz.com

So, after suing folks who published ‘rumors’ of upcoming Mac products, his Steveness decided to do some rumor-mongering of his own today with a classic ‘one more thing’ during today’s announcement of iTunes 7 and the new feature films on the ITMS. Flying in the face of the Apple-PR bible, he confirmed the existence of an unreleased product well in advance of release: a Macintosh set-top-box optimized to connect directly to HD tv sets. Codenamed ‘iTV’, (and priced at $299) the new box is due in Q1 2007, and will be 1/2 size of Mac Mini, built-in power supply (no brick!),

• Networking: 802.11, Ethernet (not sure what flavor of 802.11, though)
• USB2
• Video: HDMI connector for the best HD goodness or component RGB
• Audio: Analog via RCA jacks or optical digital

Steve also shows off the UI, a very slick and more 3-D treatment of the existing Front Row interface for the new device and wows the crowd by playing an HD-quality flick. At root, this completes an ecosystem - rather like ITMS and the iPod did for music, you now have a STB device (the iTV), a storefront (Showtime in ITMS/iTunes7), and a portable outlet. If they can bring more content aboard, this has a good chance of taking a strong foothold.

Problems I see - no TV tuner or information on how this might take incoming video from your existing cable or satellite vendor. It’s also unclear if this is going to have a hard drive at all, or provide any kind of DVR features. And I’d worry about the stability of the wireless connection for HD video content (I know my Windows Media Center and 802.11pre-N network struggles with SD at times). I suspect that the lack of a tuner and possibly of a drive are quite intentional - you’re probably less likely to buy flicks and shows on the ITMS if you have free alternatives like ripping content off the cable and saving it to your drive. That sucks. But if this provides access to HD movies, I’m sure I’ll be buying one as soon as it’s available.

Tags: Interactive Television, Mac, macintosh, windows media center

Since the February launch of the CNN Enhanced interactive television product, there has been very little trade coverage of what I think is one of the most interesting and widely distributed domestic ITV projects around - it reaches over 11 million Echostar Dish Network households with constantly updated, 24/7 news content. Interactive TV Today,aka [itvt] has just published a lengthy interview with myself and Kevin Cohen, SVP at Turner Broadcasting who was the main sponsor of the project. I worked on this project for over a year before it launched, and I’m quite proud of what it achieves.  Here’s my favorite quote from yours truly:

Trotz: At CNN, we try to make practical and logical reuse of things that we create for one medium in others. There are probably several dozen syndicated products that use the feeds from CNN.com–whether those products are on mobile or on other Web sites or are RSS feeds or what-have-you.

We’ve essentially taken that same approach with this new interactive TV application–this approach of repackaging the content that we produce for CNN.com. The site has nearly 25 million unique users per month, and it’s updated every minute of the day. So we want to make that broad array of constantly updated content available to viewers on EchoStar, and–later, hopefully–on various cable platforms. And we want to do this in such a way that it’s accessible while they’re watching our bread-and-butter core product, the CNN US linear network.

Update: PaidContent.org’s Rafat Ali has also linked to the interview.

Tags: CNN, Interactive Television, windows media center, work

Just weeks after closing their deal to buy Meedio, a software developer of a ‘roll-your-own’ digital entertinament solution akin to Microsoft’s Windows XP Media Center Edition, Yahoo! has put a branded version of the software out for free download. called Yahoo! Go. Download the software here and give it a spin. It includes features to access video, music and photos on your local PC, as well as TV tuner integration should you have one, including DVR features. I do wish the Flickr piece was a bit more feature-rich; currently there’s no way to select your own photos or specify a tag to view, it simply includes a half-dozen or so pre-selected tags/groups to view as slideshows. One nice bit of integration is the ‘Video’ area - with Yahoo video content presented alongside your own, as well as search features for other video content. Overall, a very nice UI with a ton of features.

technorati tags: yahoo, mediacenter, mce, meedio

Tags: Television, Web, windows media center

Important news last week to position Microsoft as an ever-increasingly established competitor to the Motorola and Scientific Atlanta (nee Cisco) set-top box makers. Microsoft has struck a deal with CableLabs, the non-profit cable industry technology consortium, to allow Windows PCs to view HDTV content from cable providers, including premium networks. The technology should be shipping before the end of 2006.I’d like to hear what the upgrade path will be, if any, for current MCE systems.
The agreement includes efforts to qualify MSFT’s digital rights management under the OpenCable standards, and paves the way for the Microsoft Media Center Edition (and then Vista), to receive the full spectrum of content from the cable industry. The announcement also touches on the ability for consumers to share this content throughout the home on compliant network devices - including the Xbox360. And while the CableCard is a one-way device (no interactive TV, EPGs, etc which require 2-way comms), having a PC with broadband connectivity on one pipe and HDTV coming in the other should further expand the impact of Microsofts eHome stratgegy, long before IPTV establishes a significant footprint.

Technorati Tags: mce, cablecard, cablelabs, iptv, xbox360, drm, vista, ehome, microsoft

Tags: windows media center

I’ve been meaning to catch up on this announcement from last week - Intel took the wraps off their new technology and branding effort called Viiv - rhymes with ‘five’, by the way.

The announcement notes that:

Working together with a variety of Intel-verified consumer electronics devices, online services and software — including movies, music, photos and games — Intel Viiv (pronounced “vīv” and rhymes with “five”) technology, disclosed for the first time at the Intel Developer Forum today, will help usher in a new era of entertainment choices for consumers. PCs based on Intel Viiv technology will be easy to use with a remote control and will be powered by a suite of Intel technologies, including a dual-core processor, chipset, platform software and wired networking capabilities.

Aside from the PR-speak, the blogosphere has a lot to say about this new effort. Stephen Speicher (writing on Engadget.com) wonders aloud about the comparisons between Viiv and Centrino; but also notes that Viiv is a set of standard components a manufacturer needs to include to get the Viiv logo, rather like Centrino. These machines will include, according to the entry, Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition, 5.1 sound, a dual-core processor, remote control, etc.

So what does that mean to me in my home? Basically, just as the Centrino badge tells me my PC laptop will work at any Wi-Fi hotspot, the Viiv label should clarify that this hardware will make for a great home entertainment experience, allowing me to experience my content from one device to another. Chris Lanier talks about how “This will surely be a boost in sales for Microsoft for the MCE platform, plus consumers will get to bring a new world of growing opportunities with Media Center Extenders, much like the built-in Extender that will ship with the Xbox 360.” Cool!

Interestingly, ArsTechnica wonders aloud if Apple’s move to the Intel platform might not mean that Macs of tomorrow might also share this Viiv brand. Good food for thought.

Tags: windows media center

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.

Xbox 360 [Design Interact]

(Via Kotaku.)

Tags: Gaming, Interactive Television, windows media center

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)

Tags: Gaming, Interactive Television, windows media center

It’s taken a bit of time to get around to blogging this, but Amy and I bought a new home PC recently. My old Dimension 8100 was showing it’s age (bought in 2000), and Dell had a great sale on President’s Day a few weeks back. All told, I saved almost 50% off the normal price on a brand-spanking new Dell XPS Gen 4 machine. Yes, that’s the one with the glowing faceplate, aimed at the gamer market. And yes, the front panel backlight can be changed to any of eight diferent colors. Silly, but cool nontheless. It’s a sweet piece of machinery. The specs:

P4 650 w/ hyperthreading (3.4 GHz, 800 front-side bus)
2GB 533MHz dual-channel DDR2 SDRAM
ATI Radeon x850XT/256MB Video Card
250GB SATA/7200RPM HD
Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005
16x DVD/CD Burner, Double-Layer write capable

Anyway, the machine absolutely rocks. Most of the settings were fairly easy to migrate from the old machine (although some of our email seems to be lost to the ether), but boy oh boy - games run like butter on this bad boy. I’ve cranked up Far Cry and the Half-Life2 Demo to their absolute maximium, and there is no lag whatsoever. Battlefield Vietnam is a new-found joy to play. And I cannot wait for Band of Brothers to be released this week.

Related: AnandTech XPS Review
Related: Dell.com XPS Page

Tags: windows media center

Guest columnist Ross Rubin blogs on Engadget today that despite Apple not calling the Mac mini a media center device, it has all that in spades. DVD-player? Check. Rip, Mix, Burn? Check. Ken Burns hi-res slideshow effects? Check. Add on a USB TV tuner, and this thing is your TiVo on steroids. Rubin suggests the mini is a stealth MCE. The apps in iLife are all that a user is looking for when they want to access their media (movies, music, photos), and of course, there is the elegance factor. He also talks about the possibility that Apple is waiting to enter this market for a true media center once the CableCard standard is settled. That’s a great point - you should see how my IR blasters are scattered around with my MCEs, TiVo, etc. Anyway, others have blogged about ‘mini as media center’, but I think he hits the nail on the head here.

Tags: windows media center

Interesting bit of info from CES. Shuttle, makers of super-small form factor PCs, showed off a set-top-box form factor Windows XP Media Center Edition box. It’s super slim (like half the height of the AlienWare DHS), so I’ll reserve comment until more specs come to light. Interesting, though.