Welll, in just under 10 hours I should be on a plane to Las Vegas, NV for CES. The show properly is Thursday-Sunday, but there are press events Tuesday and Wednesday which I’ll be attending. During the show itself I’ll be splitting my time between working Sling Media’s booth and trying to visit other vendors as a blogger. As is usual for me, my first victim, er, target of the show will probably be TiVo. Since I’ll be working half the show my time for seeing the rest is cut in half, but I’ll try to do what I can.

Going into this CES I’m not sure what the big deal is going to be this year, if there is one. The economy is down and I haven’t really felt any particular buzz about any given area of the market. HDTVs get bigger while getting thinner and faster (refresh rates). We may see some interesting 3D technologies which will start to enter homes in the next few years. Palm is expected to announce Nova and new hardware, but I’m not excited. I was a die-hard Palm OS user for many years, since 1998, and still carry a Treo 680. But after five or more years of waiting for Palm OS 6 Cobalt Nova I just don’t feel that inspired. I’m already focused on Android as my next likely platform, and it would take a lot for Palm to sway me. Even if they produce an incredible OS, they have an uphill battle ahead to win over developers. I don’t think they have a real chance at this point to gain significant market share. And without that the developers won’t come – and the apps really make the platform.

Going forward I think the mobile market will effectively be, in no particular order, Windows Mobile Professional, BlackBerry, Symbian S60, iPhone, and Android. The original Palm OS is the walking dead, and I don’t see Nova/Palm OS II carving out enough market share to be viable. Symbian UIQ is effectively dead as SonyEricsson and Motorola have pulled out and the Symbian world is focused on the S60-based open source effort. Windows Mobile Standard (aka Smartphone) is rapidly dying as Professional-based touch screen devices move into the lower end of the market where Standard used to focus. I expect Android, which is basically just coming into the market, to post the biggest gains as more devices land. I think the LiMo/LIPS effort will falter and expect to see some of the vendors who have been working on it switch to Android. I think those five platforms will provide the bulk of the smartphone market, anything else will be a small niche.

We’ll probably see more tru2way devices on display from a number of vendors this year, but I don’t know that we’ll see anything revolutionary in that market. I’m hoping TiVo may be showing off their ‘Series4′ tru2way-enabled model, which they’re believed to have been working on for a while. And they may be showing their new DirecTV software, which I expect will be running on the HR20/21/22 DirecTV DVR Plus hardware. I’m not expecting anything else major, maybe some new content partnership announcements and perhaps plans to bring TiVo to more countries. (I’m surprised they haven’t re-launched in the UK yet with the DVB-T model actually.)

The past couple of years the Blu-ray vs. HD-DVD fight provided some interest. But that was effectively over with CES2008, and officially ended when Toshiba threw in the towel in February. There aren’t likely to be any big announcements in the Blu-ray world, aside from more content partnerships like LG adding CinemaNow and YouTube to Netflix on their players. Maybe someone will be showing off higher density disc or 3D content concepts.

I’m hoping to be surprised by something at the show, something just unexpected. If you know of something I should be on the look out for, do let me know. And if you’re going to CES drop by the Sling Media booth and say hello. I believe I’m on the afternoons of Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday, and on Friday morning. I’m also scheduled to present for Sling Media at CntrStg on Saturday. Frankly I’m nervous as hell about that. It has been years since I’ve done a presentation or talk at a tradeshow and never at anything as big as CES.

OK, off to finish packing.

I’ve been remiss in keeping up with Requiem news since my last post, back in October. At the time I reported on the release of Requiem 1.8.1 which enabled FairPlay DRM removal on the Mac for iTunes 8.0.1, but didn’t work on Windows. In the meantime iTunes 8.0.2 has been released, which breaks Requiem – so don’t upgrade to that if you want to use Requiem.

But Requiem 1.8.2 was also released, which enables DRM removal in iTunes 8.0.1 under Windows. The discussion thread in the Hymn project forums has the details. If you need iTunes 8.0.1 you can get it for Windows or Mac from OldApps.com.

I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again, I do not support or condone piracy. I stress that Requiem strips the DRM but does not strip personally identifiable information. If you share the freed files they can be linked to your iTunes account. I support the use of Requiem solely for personal fair use, being able to use the music on non-Apple devices – like streaming to a TiVo or loading them on your non-iPhone smartphone.

I’d link to Requiem, but Apple sends out cease and desist notices to sites that do, so I’ll just say use Google, it is available via BitTorrent.

We first heard of XStreamHD in November of 2007. They’re working on a system to use satellites to delivery Full HD (1080p) video into homes with 7.1 sound (DTS-HD MA) in ‘Blu-ray quality’. More details appeared in December, and then in January to coincide with CES. I managed to visit their booth at CES 2008 and take some photos and gather more info. They popped up on the radar again briefly in October.

Well, it looks like they’re still out there working away, and they’ll be at CES 2009 next month. As will I, so I’ll try to check out their booth again. They issued a press release to announce a successful test of their transport system using the AMC-16 satellite. This confirms that their technology works using existing FSS (Fixed Satellite Services) capacity, which is part of their plan. They’ll use leased capacity on existing FSS satellites to distribute their content to end users.

Their technology and plans are interesting, but it remains to be seen if a new entrant can carve out a piece of the market. The last to try, Voom, didn’t succeed.

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Sorry I’m a little late in posting this one, I missed it when it came in. Buy Nero 9 for $79.99 and get Nero BackItUp 4 and Nero Move it free! That’s a $110 savings off MSRP. Offer good through December 28, 2008.

It’s easy, sometimes, to forget that gizmos don’t have to be elaborate, expensive things with embedded application software and 45 different world-shinking, life-simplifying, William Gibson-thought-of-this-in-1985 functions. Not that there’s anything wrong with those; I love a good gee-whiz electronic gadget as much as the next guy. The very idea that a person can just look up, say, the span of years in which the F-4 Phantom II was in production (1958-1981) anywhere, at any time, without having to wait for the library to open still catches me short with amazement sometimes.

But these are dark times, and not all of us can afford to pursue the latest word in ultracompact personal electronic backup brains or super-high-resolution home theater gear with umpteen-watt wireless Dolby surround speakers. What’s a gizmo lover to do when all the buzzworthy gizmos are out of reach?

Some people find some smaller bit of technology to focus their addiction on. My mother, for instance, has a curious fixation with USB flash drives. She has dozens of them, more than she’ll ever have any actual need for. White ones, black ones, pink ones, ones with store logos on them, ones with clever rotating covers, even one that looks like an old-fashioned Eberhard Faber Pink Pearl eraser. (She doesn’t have one of the ones that look like a severed USB cable yet, but she knows of them and wants one very much.) Whenever we’re out shopping, if we go anywhere that sells flash drives, she’ll leave with at least one. It’s like a compulsion.

But I don’t sneer at that, because I’ve carried on my own minor-tech-widget love affair for years. In my case, it’s not flash drives. It’s flashlights.
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Through December 31, 2008 at Amazon, buy a Flip MinoHD camcorder and receive two free accessories. Flip really changed the market with their small, relatively inexpensive camcorders which are tailored to creating online video. The original Flip Video recorded in 640×480 up to 60 minutes on 1GB internal memory. The follow-on Flip Video Ultra and Flip Mino also recorded VGA up to 60 minutes, but on 2GB – at a higher bitrate for higher quality. And now the Flip MinoHD records 1280×720 (720p), 60min on 4GB. You can compare the models online.

I’m seriously considering picking up one of these, probably the MinoHD, to use at CES. I’ve never shot video for the blog before, but it could be interesting. And with the low costs of these cameras, and the ease of use, I might give it a try. If you have one yourself, what do you think of it?

PayPal is sponsoring weekly specials at Buy.com. There are some good deals, like an HP dv9819wm Notebook for just $569.99 – you save $630.00. Or a Sharp AQUOS LC-52D43U 52″ LCD HDTV for $1219.99 – you save $1279.01! Of course there are deals at the low end of the price scale as well, like a 4GB SDHC card for $12.86, or a 4GB microSDHC card for $19.99. They even have the new Sling Media SlingCatcher for $249.95, a savings of $50.04. There are 29 products as part of the specials, prices good for the next seven days.

Disclaimer: I work for Sling Media.

Well, it looks like Home Media Magazine was right, Blockbuster is releasing their own set-top box. Well, like Netflix partnered with Roku, Blockbuster is partnering with 2Wire. The 2Wire MediaPoint digital media player is currently available for free if you pre-rent 25 movies for $99, or, another way to look at it, is you get the box for $99 with 25 free rentals. So at least they’ve done the right thing in matching Netflix’s pricing.

I didn’t think the Netflix STB would be successful, and frankly I’m still a bit skeptical in the long run, I think the real strong part of their service is their partnerships with TiVo, Samsung, LG, Microsoft, etc. It is a lot easier to sell a service for boxes already in homes then to sell new boxes. Unlike Netflix’s subscription-based service, Blockbuster’s service doesn’t require any subscription, it is strictly pay-per-rental. Which may appeal to those who don’t rent movies often enough to warrant a subscription. Another difference is that the Blockbuster service is a download service, not streaming like Netflix. That means users get full quality, no matter their broadband connection speed. On slower connections the rentals will simply take longer to download. And they can be downloaded in advanced and watched later.

Sonic, the digital media company best known for their Roxio products, not the drive-in food chain, is acquiring CinemaNow. I think that leaves Netflix as the last independent digital movie rental site. Akimbo is gone, Blockbuster bought Movielink. I suppose you could count VUDU, though they’re tied to their own hardware platform – so I don’t. Sonic and CinemaNow have already been working together, with CinemaNow offering download-to-burn content for Qflix DVD drives, via Sonic’s software.

Interestingly, both companies also have relationships with TiVo. TiVo recently added downloadable content from Disney, which is provided through CinemaNow. More CinemaNow content is promised going forward. And, of course, Sonic’s Roxio Creator, Toast, and Popcorn are the only commercial products officially sanctioned for use with TiVoToGo.

Press release:

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Long-time TiVo expansion and service vendor DVRupgrade is today launching new TiVo life-extension services. While DVRupgrade has long offered pre-upgraded TiVo units, as well as drop-in replacement drives and the tools needed it to do-it-yourself, they’re now offering full TiVo repair services as well.

While DVRupgrade is best known for their TiVo related offerings, they’ve also branched out into other areas. They sell VideoReDo, a popular video editing and DVR burning package often used with TiVoToGo recordings, and a number of accessories. They also offer VUDU, HDHomeRun, Neuros MPEG-4 Recorder II, and a number of other products such as Slingboxes, Logitech remotes, and more.

I’ve used DVRupgrade’s products myself. A few years ago I used InstantCake to image a drive to recover and expand an old Series2 before I sold it to a friend. A just a few months ago I picked up a 750GB replacement drive to replace the factory 80GB drive in my Pioneer DVR-810H when it finally gave up the ghost after four and half years of constant use. I’ve always been very happy with both their products and their service, and I recommend them highly.

Press release:

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