It’s amazing what’s available on the web today. Who needs user-generated content when you can post network TV? Guba.com appears to be like most of these services – another storehouse for UGC material. Some enterprising soul has searched that site for nuggets – not gold, mind you, but network and cable television full episodes. They’ve organized all that content into another site – peekvid.com – that offers up a nice handy list of episodes from shows like 24, Family Guy, Monty Python and The Sopranos. Not that these can’t be found on BitTorrent, but I can see the cease-and-desists flying through the air now… (via Thomas Hawk by way of Digg).
Tag Archives: Television
Yahoo! Releases MCE Competitor
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
CNN Enhanced on Dish is in the Wild…
TVWeek (free registration required) may have been the first to report this, under the headline ‘Interactive TV Gets a Big Boost’ – CNN has launched their first major one-screen interative TV application. I was the product manager on this effort, and it’s great to see the trades picking up on it. If you have Dish, please check it out and let me know your thoughts. The app combines photos and stories from CNN.com you can read while the CNN linear network continues to play in squeezeback. So for those couch potatoes among us who want a little more control over your news, this one’s for you! The TV Week story goes on with an interesting quote from Ian Olgeirson, an analyst with Kagan Research: “Certainly, being able to deploy the application to more than a small amount of customers is pretty critical to making the model work on any level,” he said. Still, ITV is not likely to lure new customers, he said.”
- TV Newser has also picked this up.
- CNNMoney.com has the PRNewswire story.
- Multichannel News and UPI also have short mentions.
- What’s Happening at CNN has a slew of screenshots.
Update (2/20/06): MediaPost has a story focused on the OpenTV back-end details. A nice quote from Joel Hassell, the SVP/GM at OpenTV who notes the value of the application providing content from CNN.com to a satellite television viewer:
“Television is ubiquitous, but the Internet is not, as yet–so you have a number of households that can get a real benefit in terms of staying connected.”
technorati tags: cnn, echostar, itv, etv, dish network
technorati tags: opentv
Happy Happy Joy Joy
I’m happy to announce that the Trotz household has finally entered the HDTV-age. Since I’ve been working for a broadcast company heavily involved in HD technologies for the last several years, I’ve been eager to experience this at home. After much research, agonizing, and negotiations with my lovely wife, we purchased a Sony KDS-R50XBR1 Grand Wega SXRD rear projection television last weekend. We talked about buying the 60″ version – Best Buy was selling both the 50 and 60 for the same price – but Amy knew that the 60″ would be waaaay to big for our living room.
I finally cancelled my DirecTV service last week – the constant outages and costs to upgrade to support HD (a new dish for $300, a new HD-DVR for $500-1000, new boxes for my other two rooms ($250+)). So we’ve been enjoying free over-the-air HD. It’s kinda sick that there is such a beautiful TV signal just floating in the air for anyone to pickup. I’m looking forward to today’s visit from the Comcast guy however – they should be bringing Motorola’s latest and greatest – the 6412 dual-tuner DVR. That baby has all sorts of features I’m eager to check out, including the ability to output recorded HD content over it’s Firewire ports to a Mac.I can finally get back to seeing how our own networks look, especially the Law and Order HD channel. Oops, I mean TNT!