Archive for April, 2009
Posted on Apr 28, 2009 by Sam Costello at 2:53 am
Widgets are hot right now. From Internet-connected TVs to set top boxes to information appliances, everyone wants widgets. And a lot of companies are offering new ways to feed web-based content to widgets, from Windows Vista SideShow to Yahoo Widgets to proprietary versions.
Add a new heavy-hitter to the roster of widgets contenders: Adobe.
Adobe, titan of graphic design software, is also the maker of the one of the dominant web audio and video programs, Flash. Now Adobe is positioning Flash as a platform for developing web-connected widgets with its Flash Platform initiative.
Some of the big names that will be supporting the Flash Platform include Broadcom, Comcast, Disney, Intel, and Netflix. Nice to see a mix of hardware, infrastructure, and content providers there. That’s a smart strategy.
Adobe is coming to the widget game a little later than some, but if it can replicate the success of the Flash browser plug-in with the Flash Platform effort, we can expect to see Flash-based widgets popping up everywhere very soon.
Posted on Apr 24, 2009 by Sam Costello at 2:37 am
With the success of Apple’s App Store for the iPhone (they’re coming up on 1 billion apps downloaded), everyone is getting in on the App Store trend. And it’s great: turning devices into platforms means that instead of being tied solely to a manufacturer’s software, users will have their choice of great, innovative, unexpected apps to expand the usefulness of their hardware.
The trend towards App Stores is starting to pop up in information appliances, too, and one of the most promising such devices, the Verizon Hub, will launch an app store later this year.
The Hub, which combines a phone with a 7-inch touchscreen and a widget-heavy operating system, has been on sale to Verizon customers since February.
The app store will open up uses for the device and, along with that, it seems that Verizon will be making the device available through channels besides its Verizon Wireless pipeline.
Of course the success of this move towards openness will be, in part, determined by Verizon’s commitment to it and the ease of development for the platform, but I’m excited to see where it leads and to see what kinds of widgets and applications get launched when the app store debuts.
Posted on Apr 21, 2009 by Sam Costello at 2:53 am
Set top box maker Digeo has substantially bumped the functionality of its Moxi DVR, adding support for YouTube, Rhapsody streaming audio, DLNA networking, and PlayOn, a program that sucks web-delivered video from sources like Hulu and Netflix and sends it to your TV.
I’ve not encountered a Moxi box in the flesh, but with the new feature set, it certainly looks to be one of the leading challengers to TiVo’s supremacy in the space.
While it’s fairly widely agreed that set top boxes will be one of the major future paths for converging web-based content – audio, video, and photos – and the living room TV, how the space will shake out is less clear.
I tend to think that the set top box with the most compelling features and best user experience will net the most and best partnerships with cable companies, likely leading to the greatest user adoption.
It looks to me like Digeo is bulking up on great features.
Posted on Apr 18, 2009 by admin at 2:18 am
It seems nearly inevitable that connected TVs – TVs that can stream audio, video, photos, and other content from the web to the living room – are the wave of the future. New research from Parks Associates not only bears this out, but also shows that consumers are willing to pay a premium for these TVs.
The research found that nearly 2.5 million consumers in the U.S. are already eager for connected TVs. And, what’s more, they’re willing to pay as much as a US$100 premium over non-connected TVs to get the features they want. That willingness to pay a premium price could add as much as a $250 million boost to electronics company bottom lines.
Video-on-demand is the key driver that consumers are seeking according to the research, though I suspect as they move beyond that they’ll want to deliver photos, cartoons, and other information to these connected screens.
Posted on Apr 16, 2009 by Sam Costello at 2:22 am
There’s a lot of video on the web – from streaming movie rentals a la Netflix and Blockbuster to user-generated material on YouTube to broadcast TV shows at Hulu – but accessing them in a single interface and spreading them across your playback devices can be a challenge.
New versions of two tools seek to change that.
Vuze has a new media player application that integrates online video with playback across a range of devices including the iPhone, iPod, Xbox 360, and PS3.
ZeeVee, on the other hand, has unveiled a new version of its Zinc tool that makes watching TV shows hosted at various sites, as well as Netflix Watch Instantly movies, easier and more intuitive.
Both applications are free and compete with other, similar tools like boxee.
This space is getting dense with competitors. It will be curious to see who wins out and why. Will the decisive factors be usability, content diversity, deep pockets, features, or something we haven’t even thought of yet.
What do you think?
Posted on Apr 14, 2009 by Sam Costello at 2:20 am
It’s not just streaming movies that are poised to come to set top boxes everywhere: streaming music’s right behind.
The latest evidence of this is the announcement that Pandora, the popular Internet radio service, has been ported to the VUDU set top box via VUDU’s RIA platform.
The expansion of the kinds of media that are supported by these boxes can only be good for consumers, and VUDU is certainly supporting a wide variety of media types. As the screenshot shows, not only is the company’s built-in movie rental feature in place, so too are photo sharing, music, YouTube, and more.
