Oh, these kids and their big ideas. (Disclosure: I was an NYU kid until Thursday.) Myra Einstein's project, Ambient , aims to bring tech to TV and would make a great add-on to or the upcoming Xbox 360 setup.
While some of the ideas aren't so new mdash;swarm recommendations, so that Lost watchers would be directed to follow fellow viewers to Heroes, for instance mdash;its friend setup in particular seems like a big draw and a natural fit for IPTV.
Basically, you can recommend a show to any (or all) of your friends on your list, and it'll simply pop up in their friends channel. It also works to some extent like a Flickr pool, so you check out what your friends have been watching.
The other Flickr/YouTube-like feature is the ability to tag shows, which is potentially extremely cool and incredibly useful, more so than automated recommendations. I just wonder how long it would take for every show to be tagged "09 f9 11 02 9d 74 e3 5b d8 41 56 c5 63 56 88 c0." Video demo after the jump.
The has been underway for a while, and its proprietors are busy figuring out an easy way to bring TV to you over the Internet. Now they've gone and changed their name to , and invite you to download a copy of its software that attempts to provide the best of both the Internet and TV worlds. While we test this Beta we're trying to get invited to, let's have a poll!
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We'll have more about Joost as we experience it first-hand. Stay tuned.
will begin IP rental of films and television this week. Those with better plans get more hours, from 6 to 48 hours a month.
Although limited in selection to about 1,000 titles and available initially to a few subscribers, this is the beginning of Netflix's main business plan to net rent video straight over IP that just wasn't technically feasible back when they started. It's limited to the PC right now, on XP and IE only. Over time, they plan to expand the service to the livingroom, and beyond.
Quality depends on the users bandwidth, which can range from 1-3mbits, the higher equating to DVD quality. A stream can be watched in 10-15 seconds. The new service will rollout to about 250k users a month, as they scale up their delivery service to satisfy the entire Netflix user base of 6 million.
That should happen, according to the website, by June.
livingroom solutions by Sony, Apple, Microsoft and all the cable providers are on their way or here. So, we'll see how fast Netflix jumps to the livingroom.
Could be time for that we asked for at xmas.
[UPDATE: I Suck at Reporting.
Changes below. ] Whoa! just announced a set top box that can downloadstream HD video and audio over the internet for use on your TV.
Free! Free? Of course, any system like this is only as good as its content mdash;Sony's is coming from AOL, Yahoo!
and Grouper, as well as Sony Pictures Entertainment and Sony BMG Music. I think Spiderman is a movie you can DL. But obviously, if the service is free, and unable to bill for premium content, there isn't going to be much, other than from Sony Pictures.
The system will also let people access other net content, like RSS feeds and "user generated videos"
Oh, the hardware itself is a small module that fits into most new TVs, small enough that it won't prohibit the TV from being hung on the wall. And its wireless. [UPDATE: It's ethernet.
]Sounds like it'll take a long time to DL content. And that it probably has a HDD. [UPDATE: It doesn't]And since it only works with some TVs, this means that it uses some hardware inside of the TV to function.
Of course, it's Sony, so it has to be a closed system in some way. Here are the limited number of TVs that support the tech.
Dean T.
of the Mercury News just made an oops and leaked some 360 announcements was planning on dropping next week at . Not only does he mention the with 120GB hard drives and HDMI ports, he also talks about the use of the as an set-top-box.
The says Microsoft's IPTV services will have instant channel change, multiple picture-in-picture, broadcast shows, video on demand, and functionality mdash;gotta use those 120GB for more than just .
Sounds like Dean Takahashi's getting a Takahating from Microsoft tomorrow.
You've seen how voice-over-IP services such as Vonage and Skype have turned the world of plain old telephone service upside-down, and now may be just about to play a similar trick on the cable TV and satellite TV market space with its end-to-end (Internet Protocol Television) and transmission technology.
Here's the Matrixstream set-top box, currently in the testing phase, which is said to be able to deliver video over an everyday "best effort" broadband connection.
According to the company, the system accomplishes this feat by using compression and proprietary XMS streaming technology built into its head-end units it'll offer to service providers, and then decodes those signals with this set-top box which could be coming soon to a home theater near you.
The best part of this equation is that by the end of this year, IPTV might give you choices beyond just cable or satellite TV. Small, hotly competitive service providers are currently gearing up to offer the same services you get on cable and satellite, at even higher resolution.
Sounds pleasingly disruptive.
Introducing , Gizmodo's new writer on all things TV.
He'll talk about everything that's coming next mdash; , Video-on-Demand, HD, Blu-ray, Interactive Media, iPod and cellphone video, video downloads mdash;stuff that's going to turn a decades-old, highly-entrenched industry on its ear. Brian is a reporter and consultant on all things digital, runs the , and writes for Money,Men's Health, and Laptop.
Let's tune in.
..
By Brian L.
Clark This just in from the obvious news bureau*mdash;a new study from IBM entitled, The Future of Television 2012, clearly shows that TV as we know it is changing; that disruptive technologies like IPTV will put consumers in charge of the viewing experience and, in turn, screw up TV s traditional business model.
Duh.
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