Another channel joins the TiVoCast lineup, this time it is XYZ TV.
Find all the newest and greatest music videos, video game reviews, extreme sports, and behind the scenes coverage.
Subscribe online or on your TiVo via Find Programs & Downloads -> Download TV, Movies, & Web Video -> Browse Other Videos -> All -> XYZ TV
Joining LG Electronics, which supports Netflix streaming on the BD300, Samsung will support Netflix streaming on their BD-P2500 and BD-P2550 Blu-ray players. Samsung will also be working with Netflix to bring streaming to other Samsung products.
Their press release:
Read the rest of this entry »
This weekend Amazon VOD has a few deals available. First up Fight Club, Sex and the City, and 21 are $0.99 rentals, and Definitely, Maybe and Run Fat Boy Run are $1.99 rentals.
Second the October Scary Movie Sale continues this week with ten titles - though two of them are shared with the general sale, and I really don’t see how they’re scary movies or thrillers: Sex and the City and 21. I suppose they may be scary to someone, the though of having to watch Sex and the City is kind of frightening to me. But the other eight titles make more sense: Hard Candy, John Carpenter’s Vampires, The Devil’s Rejects, Fallen, The Seventh Sign, Body Snatchers, Poltergeist II: The Other Side, and Scream and Scream Again.
And they’re still running an Adam Sandler movie sale - seven of his films to purchase at $5.99 each: Anger Management, Mr. Deeds, Punch-Drunk Love, 50 First Dates, Spanglish, Adam Sandler’s Eight Crazy Nights, and Big Daddy.
The latest addition to TiVoCast is TMI Weekly. Described as:
Sex. Tech. Style. Catch TMI Weekly every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday with hosts Julia Allison, Meghan Asha, and Mary Rambin.
Subscribe online or on your TiVo via Find Programs & Downloads -> Download TV, Movies, & Web Video -> Browse Other Videos -> All -> TMI Weekly
The Courier-Mail is reporting that Seven Network will begin rolling out network features to the Australian TiVo next month, including YouTube support, video on demand services, and TiVoToGo. Internet services have always been a key part of Seven Networks plans for TiVo. The Australian TiVo only works with free, over-the-air channels, which are limited in number - only 15 expected by mid-2009. To better compete with Foxtel’s pay TV service Seven will be able to use TiVo’s Internet capabilities to deliver additional content.
TiVo’s just added three more channels to TiVoCast, and they all appear to be a bit self-referential. Not surprising as all three are grouped under TiVo Channels on the website.
First up, I mentioned The Badoop Badoop Show when it launched on YouTube last month. It is a short-form entertainment program hosted by TiVoShanan.
Since its inception, the Emmy® award-winning TiVo service has changed the way millions of people watch TV. And coming soon: the “The Badoop Badoop Show,” a quirky show to keep you in the entertainment know with TiVo recommendations every week on what to watch, hear, download and more. This is not your average entertainment news show. And yes! The show is named after one of TiVo’s unmistakable soundmarks: Badoop-Badoop!
At the time I said I wished it would come to TiVoCast - and here it is! Subscribe online or on your TiVo via Find Programs & Downloads -> Download TV, Movies, & Web Video -> Browse Other Videos -> All -> The Badoop-Badoop Show
Next up is The Best of Video Downloads, which should be fairly self explanatory.
Don’t know what to watch from Video Downloads? Check out our favorite clips each week for a sample of the Best of Video Downloads.
Subscribe online or on your TiVo via Find Programs & Downloads -> Download TV, Movies, & Web Video -> Browse Other Videos -> All -> The Best of Video Downloads
And finally there is the simply named Try This. It looks like a channel for all of the TiVo ‘feature’ videos they’ve done, introducing various features like music playback or photo viewing.
Learn more about the latest TiVo features and how to get the most from your TiVo experience.
Subscribe online or on your TiVo via Find Programs & Downloads -> Download TV, Movies, & Web Video -> Browse Other Videos -> All -> Try This
VUDU has been trialing higher quality HD downloads for a little while, but now they’re officially available for all users. The so-called HDX downloads are 1080p24 downloads which take longer to download but offer superior image quality compared to their usual ‘instant on’ highly compressed downloads. I’ve said before that I’d rather have quality over speed for most of my movie viewing, and I’d take Blu-ray over HD downloads be cause the services out there over-compress the content. As I said, all 1080p content is not the same.
So it is nice to see VUDU giving users the option to wait a little longer and get higher quality content instead of being limited to fast but comparatively poor quality playback. However, they don’t say just what the quality level is. They talk resolution, but, as I’ve said, resolution is just part of the puzzle. All 1080p24 content is, by definition, the same resolution. But if one is 40Mbps and the other is 4Mbps, all else being equal (same codec, etc), one is going to be much higher in quality. I really would like to know what the HDX bitrate is. Conventional non-HDX HD content from VUDU requires 4Mbps, I’m presuming HDX is higher, but how much?
Some press is calling it Blu-ray quality, but that’s bunk. Even without knowing the bitrate being used I’m positive it doesn’t match Blu-ray, and I’m just as positive it doesn’t use lossless audio like Dolby TrueHD or DTS HD-MA. The website says:
HDX technology delivers the best available surround sound quality for Internet delivered movies with immersive, high resolution sound at a 40% higher bit-rate than standard surround sound DVD’s.
‘Standard surround sound DVDs’ use Dolbly Digital at 448Kbps, sounds like they’re using Dolby Digital at 640Kbps.
HDX is definitely a step in the right directly, IMHO, but don’t believe it is Blu-ray quality.
EDIT: Found this from David Pogue at The New York Times:
To see why HDX looks so good — especially on big screens — check its data rate, a measure of how much information is used to describe each frame of the video. It averages around 9 megabits a second, but spikes to 20 during action scenes. Compare that with Vudu standard definition: (2.2 megabits a second), Vudu and Apple TV high definition (4), regular DVD (8) or Blu-ray DVD (40). In other words, HDX quality is somewhere between DVD and Blu-ray. The audio offers a 40 percent improvement, too.
That is a marked improvement over their normal HD streams, but yes, still not Blu-ray quality. It does make the product more appealing in my eyes though, and certainly puts VUDU in the lead as far as HD download services go. I’m not sure if he’s comparing just video bit rates or what - DVD’s full video rate is ~10Mbps, but that’s MPEG-2 so apples and oranges to the others which are H.264. Blu-ray is 40Mbps max for video (not that it is all used normally), 54Mbps total bit rate.
HDX raises my personal interest in VUDU, though with a TiVo Series3, PlayStation3, and SlingCatcher already it isn’t high enough yet to get me to put another box under my TV.
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.
A new channel has shown up on TiVoCast, TheWB.com. Right now it looks like there is just one program carried as part of the channel, Sorority Forever. Which describes itself as:
Phi Chi Kappa is the hottest sorority on campus. For every freshmen girl, getting in seems like a dream come true, but there are mysteries around every corner of the Phi Chi House. Behind the sex, the drama, and the beautiful people lies a terrifying secret.
Yeah, so I’ll be giving that a miss. But I do hope this is just a first step and more of the content from TheWB.com becomes available on TiVo, there are a few good shows there. It would be great if TiVo connected with more content sites like Hulu, CBS.com. etc.
Subscribe online or on your TiVo via Find Programs & Downloads -> Download TV, Movies, & Web Video -> Browse Other Videos -> All -> TheWB.com
<