From the category archives:

Home Entertainment

The case for the writer’s strike

by Randy Stewart on November 14, 2007

in Home Entertainment,Off Topic,Video

Growing up in a union family, I’ve always had sympathy for the working man (ok, I’m also a working man, but you get the point).

Admittedly, some unions are better than others and not knowing both sides of the case, I whole heartedly, with full disclosure, present this video I found today about the writer’s strike going on in Hollywood.

Godspeed, Writer’s Guild of America and good luck. I’d like to see the Daily Show again this year.

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Macworld 2007

by Randy Stewart on January 10, 2007

in Apple,Conferences,Home Entertainment,HTPCs,Macintosh,Macworld

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Just a few quick general impressions from the show today.

iPhone and AppleTV

First, iPhone and AppleTV are two huge new platforms for Apple to develop and deserved the spotlight today. That said, not really being able to touch or to truly get a “live” demo of the iPhone was a bit of a bummer. I guess this is why Apple usually doesn’t release products that aren’t done.

[Jan 10, 2007 – David Pogue gets a hands on with the iPhone – “Typing is difficult”

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The AppleTV seems to be on the surface of things a great platform for Apple to develop. That said, I think they may need to do some convincing to those of use with HDTVs. While photos look great on this device, video was …lacking. Maybe it’s the fact that I was looking at a 42″ HD set from less than 3 feet away, but video looked kind of horrible. I’m not sure if it is the device or the video, but man, it didn’t look good.

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Fanboy Whining

No Macworld would be complete without a little complaining. I know we’ll see it soon, but I really, really wanna see what Leopard looks like. I get that two big products were introduced today, but what’s shipping from today? Typically, we get a little software to play with before the hardware ships, so I’m bummed that we didn’t get iLife ’07 today. I suspect that it is tied to the features in Leopard we haven’t seen yet.

Finally

From a visit to Macworld perspective, Macworld is pretty boring. Folks at home are getting as much of a hands on experience as we are at the show. However, the AppleTV and iPhone launch are the most significant new directions we have seen from Apple in years. Exciting times, indeed.


More pictures from the show

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Links for Monday, September 11, 2006

September 11, 2006

What is pretexting?I’ve only kinda sorta followed the whole HP fiasco, but here is Valleywag’s explanation of what the hell pretexting is. New InfluencersDraft chapters of the new book Paul Gillin about blogging and the influence it has in the world. Paul wrote the book to “help marketers understand the changes that social media are [...]

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Monday links

July 24, 2006

Mergers, wikis and movies, oh my! AMD buys ATIAre any TLA companies starting with “A” safe from this insanity? SocialText goes open source and JotSpot goes 2.0Two wikis enter, one wiki leaves. Will the open source wonder take down its more usable, more expensive foe? Amazon to offer movie downloadsJobs better get their service out [...]

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EyeTV meet FrontRow, FrontRow meet EyeTV

July 15, 2006

I’ve been a mostly happy user of EyeTV for about a year now (I’ve got the EyeTV 500 for recording digital TV signals), but I’d always hoped that they would go the 10 foot interface route. I use EyeTV in our kitchen and record programs mainly for my daughter and to stream signals to a [...]

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Thursday Links

June 29, 2006

ReplayTV resurrected? looks like my old pal ReplayTV is back from the dead in the form of PC software. But for $100 and a $20 yearly guide fee, uh-uh. Replay, you were my first and my favorite, why did you have to piss off the TV industry so? See Dave Zatz for more commentary. Yahoo! [...]

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Monday links

June 26, 2006

Digg goes to 3.0Third time’s the charm. Digg has updated their UI and added other categories including Science, Business, Entertainment, and Gaming. What, no Home and Garden? 10 Reasons High Definition DVD Formats Have Already FailedAKA why consumers hate format wars. Sofa Control and Remote BuddyTwo apps for the Apple remote control. [via Daring Fireball] [...]

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The D: All Things Digital

June 19, 2006

The Wall Street Journal released their report from the Walt Mossberg’s CEO love-in from a few weeks back. (FYI – “The D” is a small conference for executives from large companies and essentially is a series of discussions and interviews conducted by the Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher.) Interviews include Bill Gates, “who showed off [...]

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ABC shows online today

May 1, 2006

As promised a few weeks back, ABC launched their experimental streaming television shows today. Launch shows include Lost, Desperate Housewives, Alias and Commander in Chief. All shows come with 4 30 second ads from a single sponsor (reload if you don’t want the first one they give you. I’ve seen Tylenol, Toyota and Cingular) and [...]

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Yahoo! acquires Meedio

April 18, 2006

Ten foot interfaces. Microsoft has one and recently, so does Apple. And now, Yahoo! bought their very own. Meedio, one of the many television front ends for Windows XP, was acquired today by Yahoo! Strangely, tho, it appears that only the company was purchased but not all of their products, so it is unclear whether [...]

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Xbox 360 is in the house!

April 3, 2006

So, I’ve been secretly lusting for the Xbox 360 for some time. I told myself and others that I wasn’t going to hang out at Best Buy or Costco like the other nerds, but all the while I’ve made side trips into these dens of electronic goodness for the past several months. The persistence finally [...]

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Movie downloads compete with DVD

April 3, 2006

Movielink and CinemaNow announced today that they will have day and date releases with their DVD counterparts reports the Wall Street Journal this morning. Starting tomorrow with Brokeback Mountain, both companies will give users the ability to buy movies the same day they arrive on DVD. Both seem to limit what people can do with [...]

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New Tivo?

March 27, 2006

No Series 3 Tivo yet, but Amazon has specs on a SD dual cable tuner (one analog, one digital). Sounds like they may have one input for an external tuner and one internal tuner. Probably not the most straightforward thing to hook up, but Tivo has been pretty remarkable in the past making this stuff [...]

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Windows MCE on a iMac

March 20, 2006

Not satisfied with just running regular XP on an Intel Mac, the folks over at the OSX86Project have gotten Windows MCE up and running on an Intel iMac. They don’t have the IR port working yet, but I imagine that it will only be a matter of time. Read (Via Matt Goyer’s Media Center Blog.)

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Moviebeam relaunches

February 14, 2006

A number of stories this morning regarding the relaunch of Disney’s Moviebeam service in 29 markets this year. In a nutshell, Moviebeam is a hard drive based set top box that receives movies over unused television spectrum. The box ships with a 100 movies on the hard drive and about 10 movies are swapped out [...]

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AIBO, Qualia Roadkill

January 26, 2006

Sony, in a cost cutting effort, has cut the AIBO and Qualia lines from production, according to Akihabara News. I think quite a few geeks will be sad to see the AIBO line die, but few will lament the passing of Sony’s Qualia line. Qualia, FYI, is Sony’s ultra high end line of consumer electronics. [...]

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