Posted on Sep 28, 2009 by emily at 8:09 am
CNET recently announced that podcast aggregator, Mediafly will soon be available on the Roku media player. Mediafly will make content available from popular television and web content providers, including Comedy Central, CNN, ESPN, and NBC. While these programs are easily available on a PC, the Mediafly channel should provide a quick and easy way to enjoy them on a TV or living room audio system as well. The capability to access audio and video podcasts exists on competing products such as Apple TV and TiVo DVRs, but both of them are considerably more expensive than the $99 Roku box.
For the full story from CNET, click here.
Uncategorized
CNET, cnn, comedy central, espn, FrameChannel, mediafly, nbc, Netflix, podcast, roku, Set Top Box
Posted on Jun 8, 2009 by emily at 8:10 am
Lots of rumors have been circulating about the possibility of Hulu support on Roku players. With hundreds of movies and TV shows available on the Roku player from NetFlix and Amazon.com, the addition of Hulu could make Roku the top set top box.
This does beg the question – will Hulu remain free? News Corp’s (the company that owns Hulu) chief digital officer Jonathan Miller has been quoted saying he “envisions a future where at least some of the TV shows and movies on Hulu, the premium video site co-owned by News Corp., NBC Universal and Disney, are available only to subscribers.” A paid model would certainly put a dent in the overall number of Hulu users, but would likely be readily adopted by those with set top boxes.
Time will tell what the future holds for Hulu and Roku, but it seems like a great pairing. I know I’d be more likely to buy a Roku player if they added Hulu support.
Posted on May 13, 2009 by emily at 11:28 am
Newswires and tech blogs were abuzz earlier this month when TiVo and Amazon announced that you can now download movies and TV shows to TiVo via Amazon’s Video On Demand service.
Did you know you can also get all your photos and music through TiVo? With TiVo, you can get music from services such as Rhapsody, Music Choice, and Live365. You can also listen to podcasts as well as your personal music library. Certainly a good way to put those surround sound speakers to good use!
With TiVo you can also view your photos on your TV. Not only can you view the photos you have stored on your computer, but you can view photos from Photobucket and Picasa as well. So, if you have a TiVo or are thinking about getting one, take advantage of all of its capabilities beyond TV shows and movies!
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Amazon, Amazon.com, internet tv, Live365, Music Choice, photo sharing, Photobucket, Picasa, rhapsody, Set Top Box, tivo
Posted on Mar 11, 2009 by Sam Costello at 2:54 am
Information appliance maker Chumby is teaming with chipmaker Broadcom for a hardware play that will add Chumby’s widgets to living room electronics.
Broadcom is one of the leading makers of chips for all kinds of electronics and will, under this deal, add support for Chumby’s widgets to its system-on-a-chip offerings that go into HDTVs, Blu-ray players, and set-top boxes. As a result, users of devices with these chips will be able to view Chumby widgets onscreen. The widgets can display photos, video, podcasts, music, and other data delivered over the Internet.
Though convergence of the web and home entertainment system has been underway for a while – and covered fairly extensively at this site – this deal marks perhaps the first direct integration of an information appliance into home entertainment hardware. I suspect it won’t be the last, though.
One question I have, though, is what does this mean for Chumby? The thing that sets the company truly apart is that it offers an engaging, unusual hardware platform to display content on. With this deal, the hardware goes away. How does that change Chumby’s appeal?
Hard to say. I suppose only users will be able to tell us that, once devices with these Broadcom chips hit the market.
Posted on Mar 4, 2009 by Sam Costello at 2:42 am
If you live outside Europe and want to enjoy some the sleek, media-player goodness that LaCie is offering to folks in the EU, you are out of luck: the LaCie Black MAX set top box isn’t available in your market.
Here’s hoping that changes soon. The Black MAX is a set top box with a 500GB or 1TB hard drive, an Ethernet or WiFi connection, and the ability to stream all kinds of digital media – photos, video, music – to HDTVs.
No word on if or when the Black MAX will be available stateside, but given that so many set top boxes are so visually unappealing, I’d love for North Americans to have the chance to make their living rooms as appealing as Europeans. The box is running about UK$389.99 (about US$554) right now.
Posted on Jan 30, 2009 by Sam Costello at 2:37 am
Furthering the integration between TVs and Internet-delivered content, Sony has added support for the Slacker Radio music streaming service to its Bravia Internet Video Link. The Sony Bravia Internet Link is a hardware/service combination that allows users to deliver web-based content to their Sony Bravia HDTVs.
Slacker Personal Radio is a service that allows users to stream millions of songs to the Internet Link for playback over the TV or home stereo system. Other services offered by the Internet Video Link, which retails for about $300, include movies, TV shows, and other web-based video.
This deal is yet another in a long line of pacts that have married web-delivered content with traditional home-entertainment options like TVs. These combinations are to be found in set top boxes, Blu-ray players, and many other products. What’s not present in any of these deals – yet – is support for photo-sharing services.
Things like movies and music may drive people to these products initially, but I suspect we’ll see photo-sharing support added to at least some of these devices in 2009.
