However, before you get too excited, according to AVC Product Manager Allan Hsieh, the TV will not support placeshifting from Sling Media’s standalone Slingboxes. Rather, it is designed to work with DISH Network’s placeshifting products. I expect that means the ViP922 SlingLoaded DVR, and the USB SlingAdapter used with the ViP722 and the new Hopper DVR. I don’t understand why companies do this kind of thing, what is the logic behind limiting the usefulness of the embedded SlingPlayer? I really don’t see this pushing people to sign up for DISH and their products. Placeshiting is already a niche, there’s no reason to artificially limit the product.

That aside the set is respectable. It uses a 55″ LG Display flat pattern retarder panel with a 120Hz refresh rate, and it will be packaged with four pairs of 3D glasses. It has 4 HDMI and 2 USB inputs, and 4GB of internal storage with 2GB of DDR3 RAM to run the built-in apps on a dual-core Mediatek processor. No pricing has been released as of yet.

Front projection is the way to go for maximum screen size, if you have the space for it. MSRP on the HD20 is $1299.99 and Amazon sells them new for $834.20, so this is a pretty good deal for a Full HD projector.

It is not a Google TV device, it runs the same Android 4.0 found on phones and tablets on a 1GHz Cortex A9 processor. The current design has 512MB RAM, but they’re investigating bumping that to 1GB before going into production. It has 4GB of on-board storage, but also includes a microSD slot for up to 32GB of additional storage. There’s also a full-size USB port for input devices and mass storage, or even a webcam for videoconferencing. Network connectivity is via 802.11b/g/n WiFi. There’s no Bluetooth currently, but they’re working on it. All of that in a package 86x31x14mm and weighing only 35 grams.

There are two remote controls available. The standard remote, included with the Pocket TV, is a traditional IR remote with 5-way navigation and several dedicated buttons for specific actions and Android navigation (such as Home, Back, and Search). The other remote is one I think most users will want, and that’s the Air Remote. The Air Remote connects to the Pocket TV via the network, so no line of sight is required. It includes a gyroscopic sensor so you can control the Pocket TV by simply moving the remote, and it has a full qwerty keyboard to make text entry a snap. You can also use the Google TV Remote app for Android and iOS to turn your smartphone into a remote control for the Pocket TV.

It sounds like a pretty interesting device, no? But this isn’t a product from a big company; Infinitec is a small, three year old start-up and this is a community funded development effort on Kickstarter. I first heard of it from PVRblog and I jumped right over to help fund the project. I’m in at the $135 level for a Pocket TV and Air Remote. I thought it was a great idea and I love to see small companies trying creative ideas, so I thought it was a project worth backing. And those who back the Kickstarter project also save money – the bundle I’m signed up for has an expected combined retail MSRP of $190. You can pledge as little as $110 for the standard Pocket TV with IR Remote. There are 26 days left to get in on the Kickstarter.

While you’re over at Kickstarter check out some of the other projects. I’ve backed several and I’m always looking for projects that pique my interest. Thanks to PVRblog for bringing this one to my attention.

The HDHomeRun Prime is a remote tuner, you connect it to your cable and your network and the tuners are then available for Windows 7 Windows Media Center PCs on the network to use for watching live TV or recording. You can get the full product details from the SiliconDust website. Today the HDHomeRun Prime officially requires a Windows 7 Windows Media Center PC, but I did just talk to SiliconDust at The Cable Show this week. They’re working on adding DLNA/DTCP-IP support which would allow any DLNA/DTCP-IP-enabled device to access the tuners over the network. I’ll get around to writing a post on that.

It is a simple device. There is a coax connection for the cable, a slot for the M-Card CableCARD, Ethernet for the network, USB to support a Tuning Adapter if required, and a power connection. The $129.99 price is lower than Amazon’s $149.99 new price, and nearly half off the full $249.99 MSRP.

Keeping terrestrial TV broadcasting relevant will require “making it more mobile, making it more on demand, personalizing it more and making it more interactive,” said Kutzner, who has chaired several ATSC 3.0 working groups.  “We do need to deliver higher quality, and we certainly need to make it more efficient.” ATSC 3.0 will be targeted at both fixed and mobile receivers, and will need to encompass “state-of-the-art compression,” Kutzner said. It also will need to be “fully converged with broadband” and it will need to be upgradable to keep pace with fast technological developments, Kutzner said. “Looking ahead,” ATSC 3.0 is “likely to be a complete replacement” for ATSC and ATSC 2.0, “and so it does need to be worth the effort in terms of time and expended resources,” he said.

To accomplish these goals ATSC 3.0 is looking forward to the new High-Efficiency Video Codec (HEVC) being developed by the Motion Picture Experts Group, with the first version expected to be published in January. HEVC is expected to be twice as efficient as today’s MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 codec. That is vital if 4K & 8K video is expected to work over terrestrial broadcast, but it would also be a major advance for ‘standard’ 1080p HD video. Of course, HEVC content will require new hardware to support it.

The article also covers UHDTV delivery over IP, the possibility of using Blu-ray as physical media for UHDTV, and James Cameron talking about the adoption of 3D. Check it out.

• LG – We’re thrilled to welcome global consumer electronics leader LG to the Google TV family. LG will showcase a new line of TVs powered by Google TV running on their own L9 chipset at CES.
• Marvell – Also new to the Google TV family this year is Marvell, an innovative worldwide leader in chipsets. Marvell will be showcasing a new generation of Google TV solutions which will help bring more products across more price points to consumers.
• MediaTek – We’re also excited to partner with MediaTek, the leading Taiwanese chipset designer. MediaTek chipsets will power yet another wave of Google TV devices.
• Samsung – We’re excited to work closely with Samsung to bring Google-TV powered Samsung devices to market in 2012.
• Sony – We’re happy to build on our partnership with Sony. At CES, Sony will unveil new devices for the US and plans to offer Google TV powered products in several countries around the world in 2012.
• Vizio – Last year we announced our partnership with Vizio at CES. This year we’re excited to join Vizio as they hold private demos at CES showcasing their new line of Google TV-powered products.

The shift to ARM based processors has been widely anticipated, though the specific partnerships with Marvell and MediaTek is new info. It is a little surprising as you might expect well known chip vendors from the mobile industry, such as NVIDIA, Texas Instruments, and Samsung, to be involved but perhaps Google feels the requirements for Google TV are different enough from mobile Android systems that alternate chip designs are better.

Sony is the only vendor who brought first generation products to market to return to this list. Samsung and Vizio both talked about Google TV at the last CES, but held off on shipping products. Which was probably for the best, given the multitude of issues with Google TV 1.0. Now that Google TV 2.0 is out, and is vastly improved over its predecessor, it is much more viable as a connected TV platform. With the addition of LG, if all four vendors really execute on Google TV in their new models, we may well see Google make good on their bold claims of Google TV being in the majority of new TVs this year.

Via the Google TV Blog.

Edit: I see in my YouTube feeds that they’ve also posted a video preview of what’s to come:

Right now only a few HDTV models from Toshiba and Samsung have MHL-enabled inputs, but it is expected that many vendors will be announcing 2012 models at CES with MHL support as usage is exploding on mobile devices. Since it uses the physical microUSB port already on the device for data and charging it eliminates the need for a separate microHDMI port, and this makes it easier to shrink the size of the device while also reducing parts count and therefore cost. As part of the announcement Roku states that they already have a deal with Best Buy to bundle the Streaming Stick with a new Insignia HDTV model later this year.

So what is the stick? It’s a Roku box, only smaller. It is Roku’s entry into the Connected TV, or Smart TV, market. The stick contains the main SoC (System on a Chip) – which is the CPU, video decoder, etc. As well as RAM, Flash, and 802.11n WiFi. It has all of the channels and software features of today’s Roku boxes – on a stick. Everything – power, video and audio output, and control is handled through the single MHL connection.

Part of the MHL standard is that the TV’s remote control is used to control the attached MHL device using CEC (also used on HDMI). With phones this is so you can connect the phone and then sit back on the couch to watch – without a twenty foot MHL cable allowing you to control things from the phone. This works nicely for the Streaming Stick, though it implies the gaming features introduced on the Roku 2 family will be absent as there is no Bluetooth motion controller for the stick and TVs will generally lack such controls.

I have to say, this seems like a very clever solution. Roku rightfully points out that people don’t replace their TVs every two years, yet technology advances rapidly. With mobile devices we have a constant increase in storage, memory, and CPU power, and connected TVs suffer from lock in. What you buy today is what you’re stuck with for however long you keep the TV – and that connected experience will probably seem pretty dated in five years, let alone ten. Software upgrades will only go so far before they run into technological limits. Just as the Series2 TiVo couldn’t support Netflix, YouTube, etc., because it can’t decode H.264, today’s connected TVs may be left out in the cold by the next evolution in video codecs. And even if the hardware is capable, companies won’t update the software for old devices forever.

The Roku Streaming Stick offers the advantages of a decoupled STB, which can be readily (and relatively cheaply) upgraded as technology advances, plus the advantages of a tiny form factor and integration into the TV. Since control is through the TV and it offers a full Roku experience, it should be much like owning a ‘Roku Powered’ connected TV. Perhaps the only slight difference will be having to select the MHL input instead of a dedicated ‘Apps’ button. But if they’re successful in partnering with vendors, such as Insignia, there may well be a ‘Roku’ button on the remotes.

The combination of the form factor and use of MHL is what makes this work. I wonder if we’ll see this imitated by other vendors as well. Google TV, Apple TV, Boxee – all on a stick?

There aren’t any images of an actual Roku Streaming Stick yet, but Roku did post these renders:

As it is designed to be a TV companion it includes an IR blaster and, to take advantage of this, it includes a universal remote control app. So it isn’t just an Android tablet, it is a tablet remote for your A/V systems. As an entertainment focused device it includes SRS TruMedia Audio and an HDMI port for displaying content on your big screen. And the UI is based on the Vizio Internet Apps, or VIA, system found on their HDTVs. Connectivity is via 802.11b/g/n and Bluetooth. Amazon sells the tablet alone new for $299.99 and the folio case for $32.61. So this is a $332.60 value for half price.

Cyber Sale, 2 Days Only, Sunday-Monday. Online Only.
Sunday-Monday Only: Free $10 e-Gift Card with Store Pickup Orders of $100 or More.

Sunday-Monday Only: Acer Iconia Tablet with 8GB Memory, Sale $229.99.
Sunday-Monday Only: Targus Truss Leather Case/Stand for Acer Iconia A500 Tablet, Sale $24.99.
Sunday-Monday Only: Logitech Tablet Keyboard for Apple® iPad® or Android 3.0+ Tablets, Sale $35.99 each.
Sunday-Monday Only: ION Audio iCADE Arcade Cabinet for Apple® iPad® and iPad 2, Sale $49.99.
Sunday-Monday Only: Kobo eReader Touch Edition, Sale $99.99.
Sunday-Monday Only: Gateway All-In-One Computer with 500GB Hard Drive, and 2GB DDR3 Memory, Just $399.99.
Sunday-Monday Only: Asus Desktop with AMD Processor, 500GB Hard Drive, and 4GB DDR3 Memory, Just $349.99.
Sunday-Monday Only: AOC 20” Widescreen LED Computer Monitor, Sale $89.99.
Sunday-Monday Only: SanDisk Cruzer 8GB USB 2.0 Flash Drive, Sale $8.99.
Sunday-Monday Only: HP 2200 Webcam, Sale $7.99.
Sunday-Monday Only: Great Computing, Tablet, and E-Reader Deals.

Sunday-Monday Only: LG 32” Class ED 720p HDTV for $299.99.
Sunday-Monday Only: Great Home Theater Deals.
Sunday-Monday Only: Great iPod and MP3 Player Deals.
Sunday-Monday Only: All iPods on Sale.
Sunday-Monday Only: Great Music and Movies Deals.

Sunday-Monday Only: Xbox 360 Kinect Sensor, Sale $99.99.
Sunday-Monday Only: Select Kinect Games On Sale.
Sunday-Monday Only: Select Pre-Owned Games, $19.99.
Sunday-Monday Only: Buy Any Sims 3 Base, Expansion, or Stuff Pack, get the Second Item Free.
Sunday-Monday Only: $50 Off GoldenEye 007: Reloaded Double ‘O’ Edition Bundle for OPS3, Sale $99.99.
Sunday-Monday Only: Great Gaming and Gadget Deals.

Sunday-Monday Only: 25%-40% Off Select Digital Cameras.
Sunday-Monday Only: Free Bag and Memory Card with Select Digital Cameras.
Sunday-Monday Only: Free Bag with Select DSLR Cameras.
Sunday-Monday Only: 19%-41% Off Select Digital Camcorders.
Sunday-Monday Only: 5%-50% Off Select Digital Photo Frames.
Sunday-Monday Only: Great Digital Camera and Camcorder Deals.

Sunday-Monday Only: Motorola Droid 3 Mobile Phone, Free with a new 2-Year Contract from Verizon and Activation.
Sunday-Monday Only: HTC Wildfire S Mobile Phone, Free with a new 2-Year Contract from T-Mobile and Activation.
Sunday-Monday Only: Boost Mobile BlackBerry Style 9670 No-Contract Mobile Phone, Sale $149.99.
Sunday-Monday Only: Virgin Mobile BlackBerry Curve 8530 No-Contract Mobile Phone, Sale $99.99.
Sunday-Monday Only: Platinum Series MobileDock Dash/Windshield Mount, Sale $9.99.
Sunday-Monday Only: Great Mobile Phone Deals.

While the last round of deals included a link for the ASUS Eee Pad Transformer the link never seemed to work. The deal was only available in stores. I managed to grab one as a gift for someone else. I was still up at 4am Friday so I ran over to my local Best Buy. The Transformer was a ticketed item and all of the tickets were gone, but I managed to social engineer a tablet and keyboard dock from a Blue Shirt in a different department without a ticket. I normally wouldn’t go near a store on Black Friday, but $250 for the tablet and $100 for the dock was a very good deal.

First up, Special Holiday Deals on Select LG Home Entertainment Products. Save on 25 different HDTVs, three different Blu-ray Disc players, and three different Home Audio Systems.

Or maybe you’d prefer a Free Family Pack of 3D Glasses with Select LG Cinema 3D LED HDTVs with Smart TV. Five LG 3D HDTV models to choose from.

Or a free LG AN-MR200 Magic Motion Remote when you buy an LG Infinia 42LV5400 42″ 1080p HDTV with Smart TV.

Next up, Save Big on Select Sony HDTVs. Seventeen different models to choose from.

Of perhaps Great Savings on Select Panasonic HDTVs. Sixteen models to choose from!

Next, Save up to 45% on Select HDTVs. HDTVs from LG, Panasonic, Samsung, and Sony – 102 different models to choose from!

Maybe Big-Screen HDTVs for $999 or Less. LG, Panasonic, Samsung, Sony, TCL, Toshiba, VIZIO and Westinghouse, 42 models all together.

And to feed those HDTVs content, Blu-ray Disc Players and Digital-Media Devices Under $100. The Apple TV and TiVo Premiere are in there along with the Roku 2 family and Roku LT. Blu-ray Disc players from LG, Panasonic, Samsung, Sony, VIZIO, and Toshiba, and streaming devices from Iomega, Western Digital, Patriot, Netgear, and the aforementioned Apple, TiVo, and Roku boxes.

And for those Blu-ray Players, save on thousands of TV shows and movies on Blu-ray and DVD.

Now, if you want to create your own content, there is this special: Instant Savings on Select Sony Camcorders. Eighteen different models to choose from – from the $89.99 Bloggie to the $399.99 HDR-XR160.

If still photography is more your thing, get a Free DSLR Backpack, Memory Card, and Tiffen Filter with Select Canon Rebel DSLR Cameras. Thirteen different camera models to choose from.

Or perhaps you prefer to Save Big When You Bundle Select Canon DSLRs with Qualifying Canon Lenses and/or Printers. With seven different cameras to choose from.

Amazon certainly has your entertainment electronics needs covered.

Thursday-Saturday Only: Best Buy Exclusive Asus Transformer 10.1″ Wi-Fi Tablet, $249.99.
Thursday-Saturday Only: Acer Iconia Tablet with 8GB Memory, $189.99.
Thursday-Saturday Only: Dell Streak 7″ Tablet, $149.99.
Thursday-Saturday Only: Barnes & Noble NOOK The Simple Touch Reader, $79.99.
Thursday-Saturday Only: Great Tablet Deals.
Thursday-Saturday Only: HP Laptop with AMD Vision Processor, 500GB Hard Drive, and 4GB DDR3 Memory, $429.99.
Thursday-Saturday Only: Lenovo Laptop with AMD Dual-Core E300 Processor, 250GB Hard Drive, 2GB Memory, $179.00.
Thursday-Saturday Only: HP All-in-One Computer has AMD E-Series Processor, 4GB Memory, 1TB Hard Drive, $399.99.
Thursday-Saturday Only: Toshiba Laptop with Intel Pentium Processor, 320GB Hard Drive, and 4GB Memory, $349.99.
Thursday-Saturday Only: Samsung Laptop with Pentium Dual-Core Processor, 320GB Hard Drive, 4GB Memory, $299.99.
Thursday-Saturday Only: Great Computing Deals.
Thursday-Saturday Only: 50% Off All M-Edge eReader Covers.

Thursday-Saturday Only: Only $999.99 Samsung 55″ Class LED 1080p HDTV. Best Buy exclusive.
Thursday-Saturday Only: Great Home Theater Deals.

Thursday-Saturday Only: Free $50 Gift Card with Apple iPod touch 8GB MP3 Player.
Thursday-Saturday Only: $20 Off Any $100 iTunes Gift Card.
Thursday-Saturday Only: $2.99 Music CDs.
Thursday-Saturday Only: Great iPod and MP3 Player Deals.
Thursday-Saturday Only: Great Entertainment Deals.

Thursday-Saturday Only: Xbox 360 250GB Holiday Bundle with Fable III and Halo: Reach, Only $199.99.
Thursday-Saturday Only: Nintendo 3DS Game Console, $179.99.
Thursday-Saturday Only: Select Games for $34.99.
Thursday-Saturday Only: Select Games for $29.99.
Thursday-Saturday Only: Select Game Accessories for $7.99.
Thursday-Saturday Only: Great Gaming and Gadget Deals.

There are many more deals, so be sure to check them out. The links should be live on Thursday.

There are new specials each day, so be sure to check back in.

In addition to the current sale, they’ve also published a preview of what they’ll be offering on Black Friday – in stores and online.

In stores only you’ll be able to grab a Sharp LC-42SV49U 42″ Class LCD 1080p HDTV for $199.99, a Toshiba BDX2150 Smart Blu-ray Player for $39.99, a 15.6″ Samsung Laptop with an Intel Pentium CPU, 4GB RAM, and a 320GB HDD for $299.99, and the one I think is the most tempting, the ASUS Eee Pad Transformer Android tablet for only $249.99.

Also available in stores, the HTC ThunderBolt 4G LTE on Verizon for free with a 2-year activation and the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2 Blu-ray just $9.99. These will also be made available online – the Thunderbolt on Thursday and the Blu-ray on Friday.

They’ve listed specials that will be available online starting Thursday, 11/24, without revealing the prices. There will be deals on the Dynex 32″ Class LED 720p HDTV, a 15.6″ Gateway Laptop with Intel Core i3 CPU, 4GB RAM, and a 320GB HDD, the Dell Streak 7″ Android Tablet, a Dell desktop PC with Intel Core i3 CPU, 4GB RAM, 1TB HDD, and an 18.5″ widescreen LCD monitor, the FujiFilm FinePix AX350 16MP Camera, a Mr. Coffee 12-Cup Programmable Coffeemaker, the Tritton AX120 Headset, and the Nintendo Wii Console with New Super Mario Bros. Wii Game and Music CD. Check back Thursday for the pricing.

There are yet more deals, way too many to list here, so check out their webpage for the full listing. More HDTVs, laptops, PCs, phones, tablets, cameras, hard drives, flash drives, washers & dryers, PlayStation 3, games, etc.

As I’ve said before, TiVo is a better value for cord cutters. A TiVo Premiere with lifetime is $600, which is what the Channel Master TV will cost for four years of use – and TiVo has way more features. Or you can go monthly for just $10/month if you use TiVo with antenna only. Break it down; let’s call the $50/year fee $4.17/month. So $400 + $4.17x = $100 + $10x, or $300 = $5.83x or x = 51.45. That’s 51.45 months, or 4.29 years, before TiVo catches up to the cost of Channel Master TV and starts to cost more with the monthly option. Edit: Oops, Dave Zatz pointed out in a comment that the $10/month deal ended last week.

Front projection is the way to go for maximum screen size, if you have the space for it. MSRP on the HD20 is $1299.99 and Amazon sells them new for $899.99, so this is a pretty good deal for a Full HD projector.

But if you just want an inexpensive way to access Roku’s streaming services, you can’t do better than the Roku LT. You can get it directly from Roku, or from Amazon.

But don’t expect a UHD sets to be on the market any time soon. For now it will only be used for special events. For example, there are plans to cover some of the 2012 London Olympic Games in UHDTV for display at other venues. If UHD displays do come home, they most likely won’t be for displaying UHD images, but rather for glasses-free 3D. I was fairly dismissive of glasses-free 3D sets in my rant about the current state of the industry a little while back, mainly because of the compromises required for them to work. But the more pixels on the display, and the more pixels per inch, the more ‘sweet spots’ can be created, allowing for a wider viewing angle. That means less need to sit in specific locations relative to the screen to perceive the 3D effect.

Now, you may think that a 7680×4320 display much be huge, but that’s not necessarily the case. It is a factor of pixels per inch. Consider the iPhone’s retina display with 326ppi. At that density a UHD display would be only 24.5×13.25 inches, that’s only a 27 inch display. Now, that’s an extreme example, but it just goes to show that a UHD display can be scaled to different physical sizes using today’s display technology. Of course, it wouldn’t come cheap.

Ignoring the displays, how would you even get a UHD image? 16 times the pixels would mean, worst case, 16 times the data for the same quality image – all else being equal. Now, in the real world it doesn’t quite work that way since neighboring pixels will share data and it isn’t a linear scale, but let’s go with the worst case for now. How would you ever get that much data? You’d be looking at an 800GB Blu-ray, which is far more than even lab versions have hit.

The good news is everything doesn’t have to be equal. The other recent news is that the Joint Collaborative Team on Video Coding (JCT-VC), a cooperative effort between the International Telecommunication Union and Moving Picture Experts Group, is making progress on the standard for High Efficiency Video Coding, aka H.265. This is expected to be the successor to today’s champ, H.264. The first draft is expected to be released in February 2012, with a final standard in January 2013. H.265 takes advantage of the growth in processor capabilities. It is more computationally intensive than H.264, but should provide compression 25% to 50% better. That could mean that an H.265 UHD image would only have eight times the data as an H.264 1080p image. And with real world compression aspects factored in even less. That starts to bring things into the realm of possibility. Back in 2008 Pioneer demonstrated a Blu-ray disc capable of holding 400GB on 16 25GB layers. And BDXL, which is already a commercial product, holds 100GB/128GB on three or four ~33GB layers. And work is underway to push Blu-ray all the way to 1TB. So by the time UHD displays are viable for the home, we’ll probably have a Blu-ray disc capable of holding UHD content. Streaming? Does your ISP offer Gigabit connections?

But H.265 will have a more immediate impact. You don’t have to be encoding UHD to use it. That 25-50% savings applies to all content. And with mobile data plans all heading to tiered pricing, bandwidth caps on home broadband, and the explosion of streaming HD content, every bit helps. Just think, for the same amount of data you could have up to twice the run time. Of course, even once H.265 is finalized it will probably take a year or two for it to make it into silicon and then into new devices. And you will most likely have to buy a new device to use it. Most devices, like set top boxes and smartphones, implement video decoding in dedicated silicon. So you’d need new hardware to support H.265. Powerful PC CPUs and graphics cards might be able to do it with a software update, but otherwise it means a replacement.

UHDTV from Broadcasting & Cable. H.265 news from Multichannel News via Zatz Not Funny.

And sorry for the silence the past few days, I was off with my fiancee on a combination mini-vacation & wedding planning session at Walt Disney World.

“We are excited to be the first TV maker to support Adobe AIR on our Smart TVs bringing rich, Flash-based applications to millions of customers today,” said Kyungsik Kevin Lee, vice president, Visual Display Business, Samsung Electronics. “With the dramatic advancements in AIR 3, Adobe continues to push the envelope with innovative new features that will enable powerful 3D gaming apps and other next generation app experiences on televisions soon.”

“LG is working closely with Adobe to bring Flash-based applications with AIR to LG Smart TVs in 2012,” said Youngjae Seo, vice president, Smart TV Team, LG. “We can’t wait to see what kind of application experiences three million Flash developers will bring to our customers with AIR 3.”

“The availability of AIR will give us the tools to deliver better functionality, more features and a rich, seamless experience that our users expect from TiVo products,” said Jim Denney, vice president and general manager, Product Marketing, TiVo. “We look forward to the development of a rich ecosystem of multi-platform applications to make the TV experience even better.”

See the full release for more. I am, of course, most interested in how this will apply to TiVo. The TiVo Premiere is already using Flash for the HD UI and newer apps, like Hulu Plus. (Some of the older, legacy apps are still using the Java-based HME framework.) But the TiVo Premiere hardware supports Flash Lite, a reduced version of flash for lower powered embedded systems. Will this new announcement apply to the existing TiVo Premiere? Or might the new TiVo Premiere Elite and forthcoming TiVo Preview be using newer SoCs that would support the fuller Flash/Air experience? I’m not sure, but I’m hoping this means we’ll see new versions of the apps, and all new apps, across the Premiere lineup. Ideally I’d love to see TiVo open an app store for third party apps, and open up the platform to developers to explore.

Oh, and if you’re ready to bash Flash – just stop. Flash as a platform is extremely rich and powerful. While it has had some issues, all platforms do. Most of the problems users experience with Flash apps on the web are due to the app developer, not the Flash platform. In recent releases Adobe has made great strides in improving the performance and stability of the Flash interpreter as well. In the long run I expect it will fade out and be replaced by a collection of technologies many refer to as ‘HTML5′ – HTML5 proper, JavaScript, SVG, CSS, etc. But it isn’t going away overnight. Remember Flash itself displaced Java Applets and Shockwave back in the day. That’s just how it goes.

And all of that aside, Flash on embedded platform is not the same beast. Devices like TiVo and the smart TVs use hardware with dedicated Flash support, not a software interpreter on a generic CPU like a PC. And the platforms are generally more limited in what they’ll support – only what the hardware can decode. So it is a much more focused environment. So Flash isn’t the root of all evil that I’ve seen many make it out to be. It is a logical choice as a platform with many advantages in an embedded environment. Embedded Flash support is much easier to come by these days than embedded ‘HTML5′ support, for example. Especially as HTML5 is still a moving target as the standards evolve.

The bad: The TiVo interface is essentially window dressing, using it can be annoying, and the search function only works for the Insignia On Demand service. The TV’s picture quality is characterized by unnatural color, uneven screen uniformity, and issues with 1080p/24 sources. It also has fewer picture adjustments than competitors.

Read the full review for more.

Remember these are new, not refurbished, for just $249.99. The MSRP is $349.99 and Amazon sells them new for $279.98, so this is $100 off MSRP and even $30 off Amazon’s discounted price.

14.) How can a DVR be free? Most DVR’s on the market today require a subscription fee in order for it to be functional.
Last Updated: 09/13/2011

DVR manufacturers and service providers are required to pay fees for the television guide data that is delivered to the box via the internet or a service provider network. This expense is passed on to the consumer as a monthly DVR fee. With Channel Master TV, basic television guide data is transmitted free-of-charge by the broadcaster and our device receives this info and appropriately inserts it into the on-screen guide. While this info is basic and all depends on what the broadcaster decides to send, it is free. This being said, there may be times that some channels will not broadcast program information or it may be limited, but again, there are no fees for this. If you desire additional program information, Channel Master TV will have a Premium Guide upgrade for a fee of $99.99 annually. The Premium Guide offers additional program information including a 7-day viewing and recording window.

So you have a choice – you can take your chances with the free guide data, which in many areas only goes out for maybe 12 hours and is often incomplete and unreliable – or you can pay $99.99 a year for a Premium Guide with richer data that goes out for 7 days. That’s on top of the $399.99 purchase price of the box.

Alternatively you could buy a $99.99 TiVo Premiere, which as I covered in my previous post has more features and functionality, and then take advantage of the $9.99/month antenna-only rate from TiVo. You can use the TiVo for *15* years before you’d pay as much as the CM-7400 over the same period. (400+(100*x) = 100 + (120*x)) Even better, buy the TiVo with lifetime for $600 and after two years you’re saving money over the CM-7400 and getting more for what you spent. And the TiVo’s guide goes out up to 14 days, in my experience 10-14 is normal.

I thought the TiVo was a better deal compared to the CM-7400 with the free data, just on features and usability, but if you’re going to pay for the Premium Guide I think you’d have to be crazy to pick the CM-7400 over the TiVo.

EDIT: Even Channel Master must’ve realized how much their pricing sucked. They’re dropped the data pricing from $99.99/year to $49.99/year. Not that it really changes my opinion. It may stretch out the break even point with TiVo a little, but I’d still recommend TiVo over the CM-7400, hands down.