tech news and opinions
Samsung spilled the beans on the new P3 MP3 player at the company’s CES 2009 press conference. As an update to Samsung’s popular P2, the P3 shares many of its predecessor’s features, including a 3-inch WQVGA touch screen, DNSe sound enhancement, audio and video playback, photo viewer, FM radio, voice recording, and Bluetooth capabilities such as phone pairing and stereo audio streaming.
Elgato has announced a new edition of the EyeTV Hybrid USB TV Tuner. The new version includes improved reception of over the air signals, a new enclosure, and built-in FM radio tuner. The new tuner has been built in house by Elgato rather than by an OEM (which is how past EyeTV tuners have been made).
The tuner also includes a one-year subscription to television guide information for the EyeTV software ($20 a year regularly). The tuner itself isn’t the only thing being updated though, the EyeTV software has also seen some improvements including more information in the guide, coming from the switch from TitanTV to TV Guide information. The new software also allows you to subscribe to a season pass of your favorite show so that the software will record every new episode of the show.
Version 1.5, which is evidently being pushed out in waves, is allowing individuals to stream high-def Netflix content
Roku v1.5 firmware update brings HD Netflix streaming – Engadget HD.
Sony is rumored to be debuting a brand new 3.3″ touchscreen Walkman at CES that will come in 16GB and 32GB models. The yet to be named device will feature an OLED display which should help save that oh so important battery life from draining too quickly while also giving the device some incredibly gorgeous color detail.
The device should also come with Wifi, Youtube support, podcast subscriptions, and support for MP3, AAC, PCM, WMA, AVC (h.264), MP4, and WMV. The rumor also states that Sony would be partnering with Amazon to support over the air downloads of Amazon MP3s.
Alongside Wifi Sony has (intelligently) decided to (unlike the Zune) have a built in web browser, but it is still unknown whether or not the browser will be based on WebKit (as so many mobile browser are these days) or if Sony has decided to partner with Opera for this device.
It’s obvious that Sony is trying to compete with the iPod Touch with this device but the problem is that it (supposedly) does not have an App Store, which (in my opinion) is the reason the iPod Touch is so successful right now. But this is just another reason why Sony needs to rethink its strategy, if they were to release this device with an App Store it would ultimately compete with the PSP and Sony doesn’t want to do that. If they were smart they would be releaseing a device like this with similar features but also include a fast enough processor to let it become the PSP2, but I’m not sure if the guys at Sony have enough guts to do something like that.
The problem is that Sony is to sectionalized as a company, I’m not sure if the folks who work in their gaming department (PS3 and PSP) have any idea what the guys working on the next Walkman are doing, and that is why ultimately this device will fail, integration with your other devices is the key to success in the world of iPods and unless you can bring that same experience or better to the table, don’t expect to do very well.
Sony To Debut 32GB 3.3-inch Wi-Fi Touchscreen Walkman – ITProPortal.com.
I guess this is one way to try and compete with the iPhone 3G.
BlackBerry Media Sync: Download BlackBerry Media Sync for Mac Now.
Ustream.tv is working on a mobile streaming application and unless there was some trickery going on in the video above it looks like it may be a Qik killer, at least in terms of stability. Now all they have to do is release an iPhone application and I’m in. Especially since the iPhone doesn’t have video recording capabilities, as long as Ustream archives streamed video like Qik does it will be the first way to record video without jailbreaking (that I know of at least).
Ustream.tv working on a Qik killer, maybe : Boy Genius Report.
Let’s hope Apple approves this soon. Even though I don’t own a Slingbox I still would love to see this app in the App Store, and who knows, maybe it will convince me to get a Slingbox.
Slingbox for iPhone waiting on approval from Apple | 9 to 5 Mac.
Apparently some of the content in the iTunes store (from what I can tell, only the HDTV shows) have HDCP which means that if you want to connect one of those brand new MacBook, MacBook Pro, or MacBook Airs to a non-HDCP compliant display that uses DVI or HDMI your not going to be able to watch that content on that display.
I’m not sure if there is a way around it, I would guess that since the HDCP is ignored if connected to a VGA display you could get a DisplayPort to VGA adapter and then a VGA to DVI adapter which could (possibly) make your computer think that it is connecting to a VGA monitor and not a DVI monitor and therefore ignore the HDCP flag, but since I don’t have the hardware to test it I can’t say for sure if that will work.
Regardless of whether or not there is a workaround this is a problem and I don’t know if Apple is ever going to fix it, since the limitation is put on the media because of the content providers Apple will most likely tell consumers to complain to the media companies and not to Apple.
I just wish that media companies would stop treating regular joes as pirates and understand that the ones they really need to stop (you know, the guys who are selling pirated copies) don’t have any problem getting around this restriction and therefore is pointless in the “war against piracy.”
We all knew that HD-DVD was dead but you have still been able to purchase new HD-DVDs an have also been able to rent HD-DVDs from places like Netflix.
But Netflix has officially announced that HD-DVDs will be “going away.” Starting December 15, 2008 Netflix will no longer be carrying HD-DVDs. Netflix will automatically replace all HD-DVDs in your queue with regular DVDs.
Netflix announced in February that they would begin phasing out HD-DVDs and I’m a little surprised that it has taken this long to finish the process.
I’m glad that we can finally put this format war completely to rest. Now if Best Buy would stop selling those Blu-ray/HD-DVD players.
9 to 5 Mac is claiming that Sony BMG is going to start letting Apple sell it’s music in the iTunes Plus format. That means unprotected high quality audio of Sony BMG music in iTunes.
There isn’t any reason to believe that this isn’t true since 9 to 5 Mac has had a pretty good track record ever since they first leaked the Fat Nano photos. What makes me a little skeptical is that they aren’t giving any time frame other than in the next few weeks/months. That means that it could happen any time between 3 weeks and 3 months and that is a little vague. I understand that you can’t be too sure with these types of rumors but it’s almost like saying that Apple will be releasing new products some time in the next 6 months.
I’m not saying it isn’t going to happen and I’m not saying that 9 to 5 Mac doesn’t have any tips about the topic but I just wish they could have stated a more firm dte or smaller date range.
The Apple TV is a great device and I absolutely love mine but I haven’t really had much of a reason to hack it. Yes, the idea of being able to watch unsupported formats on my Apple TV sounded nice but honestly I have just much rather spent the time to convert those files to supported formats to keep away from that whole hacking mess.
But now I may be changing my tune. The wonderful media center software “Boxee” now supports the streaming of Hulu content through the Boxee interface and now that you can install Boxee on your Apple TV that means you can get Hulu content on the Apple TV (obviously, if A=B and B=C then A=C).
Along with this announcement Boxee has also announced that they have added CBS.com to their internet video sources.
What does worry me about this is that Boxee has not actually partnered with any of these content providers, so it is possible that these content owners would be able to block access to the content from Boxee essentially making this new features useless. I don’t really know why they would want to do that but seeing as how these guys are always so careful with where their content goes it isn’t out of the realm of possibilities.