CableLabs has certified two tru2way-enabled CableCARD HDTVs from Panasonic, paving the way for them to be available to consumers this holiday season. The two models sport 42″ and 50″ HD displays. This is an important turn around from June, when Panasonic reportedly failed in their first tru2way certification attempt.

However, even if consumers can get their hands on the sets, there is no guarantee that they’ll be able to access tru2way content immediately. The cable industry has pledged to implement tru2way across their networks by July 1, 2009 - except for Charter which has until July 1, 2010. So early adopters may wish to check with their local MSO to see if tru2way support is available before jumping on these sets, or they may find themselves stuck with unidirectional CableCARD features until tru2way support is rolled out.

From Light Reading’s Cable Digital News.

Netflix has done a deal with Starz Entertainment, immediately adding 1,000 titles to Netflix’s streaming service, with 1,500 more to follow in the coming weeks. Following on Netflix’s deals with Disney and CBS to stream current and back episodes of TV content, this is a solid step towards increasing the relevance of their streaming service. The largest drawback to the service to date has been the dearth of first tier content.

From The Hollywood Reporter.

As announced back in January, today marks the end of Matsushita. The giant Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd today changed its name to Panasonic Corporation, the retail brand for which they are best known. Established in 1918 as the Matsushita Electric Housewares Manufacturing Works, renamed Matsushita Electric Manufacturing Works in 1929, and then Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd in 1935, they used the Matsushita, National, and Panasonic brands for years, but began to focus solely on the Panasonic brand in 2003.

Press release:
Read the rest of this entry »

I normally don’t post personal stuff on this blog, but I just had to share this.

I just turned on my TiVo Series3. I watched a TiVoCast program and it was fine. Then I went to play another and it started but stuttered a lot. I tried it a few times and it didn’t work right. So I tried another, same thing. I went to Live TV and it seemed to be OK, but then that locked up for a bit too. I’ve had weirdness before fixed by a restart, so I restarted the box. Live TV seemed to be OK, but the TiVoCast content still wouldn’t play. Then I tried normal recordings, same thing, even on recordings from days ago. Uh oh. And I thought I heard something.

So I got down by the unit, and I heard a clicking. Clicking is not good. I determined that the clicking was coming from the 500GB My DVR Expander connected to the TiVo. That’s definitely not good. I checked the connections and restarted again. And it told me the external device wasn’t connected. I rechecked and restarted again, same error. I knew it was hopeless but I tried a few more times anyway. Nope, my external drive just died. Click of Death. This is the second 500GB WD SATA drive I’ve had die in the past couple of months. I had one in a USB enclosure for my PC that also died, also with the Click of Death, and it was even younger.

So now I’m restarting the TiVo without it, and I know that means I’m going to lose recordings. Of course normally I’m caught right up with my recordings so I’d only lose a day or so. But no, this had to happen when I’ve been unusually busy and have a couple of weeks worth of programs, including the season premiers of several shows (Heroes, for example) unwatched. Not to mention shows that won’t repeat any time soon (a couple of weeks of Code Geass and Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit, for example). Oh yeah, it just finished and just about everything is gone - all that’s left is a handful of TiVoCasts that must have been 100% on the internal drive by chance. Even all the suggestions are gone.

Normally this wouldn’t be a big deal, since I have a Series2 in my bedroom that I have mirror my season passes, only without anything set to Keep Until I Delete, for just such an emergency. Normally. But, of course, that unit had started exhibiting a weird issue where the on-screen Guide would be fine, but the scheduler would be complaining it was running out of data. Like this morning the scheduler was complaining it’d be out by 10/7, but the on-screen guide went out to 10/12. I figure this was database corruption and everything else I’ve tried didn’t fix it, so, since it was only my backup unit, I took drastic action. Can you guess what I did? Yeah, less that 12 hours ago I did a Clear and Delete Everything. So all my ‘backup’ recordings? Gone too.

I’m so very happy at this moment.

Some of the content I might be able to grab from sites like Hulu, some I might be able to buy from Amazon VOD, but I’m just SOL on a lot of it.

I doubt there is any warranty on the My DVR Expander either.

Any help finding these:
Read the rest of this entry »