If you haven’t jumped into the world of placeshifting yet, with a Slingbox or HAVA, here is a chance to win one. Zatz Not Funny is giving away a HAVA Gold, and all you have to do is leave a comment and be the lucky winner of the drawing.

HAVA, from Monsoon Multimedia, is the primary competition to Sling Media’s Slingbox. HAVA has some features not found on Slingboxes - such as supporting multicast on a LAN (multiple, simultaneous clients), officially supporting recording on PCs, working as a tuner within Windows Media Center, learning new IR codes, and more. Additionally, all HAVA Mobile clients are free, unlike SlingPlayer Mobile. However, the HAVA products tend to be less polished than Sling, and little rougher around the edges. While Sling has clients for Windows and Mac OS, and mobile clients for Windows Mobile Standard & Professional, Symbian S60 & UIQ, Palm OS, and BlackBerry, HAVA Player is available only for Windows, Windows Mobile Standard & Professional, Symbian S60, and Maemo (the Linux flavor on Nokia N810 Internet tablets).

Sling has submitted their iPhone client to Apple, while HAVA demo’d an early version of their iPhone client at CES, so they’ll hopefully be submitting that soon. HAVA is also apparently developing a client for Mac OS. So as long as you have a supported platform, it could work fine for you.

Good luck!

You know, if HAVA really wants to compete with Sling, they should probably go after markets where Sling isn’t yet - like Android and Linux desktops. And since all HAVA boxes stream in MPEG-2 and MPEG-4/H.264, while Slingboxes stream in WMV/VC-1 (except the PRO-HD which also supports MPEG-2 and MPEG-4/H.264), and Flash video supports H.264, they might be able to put out a Flash-based client. A Flash client would be a killer app. Release a reference implementation and open-source it - widespread client availability would sell hardware.

Also, since they give away their clients for free, unlike Sling, they’d have nothing to lose by getting HAVA Player built into things like Boxee, VLC, the Roku Digital video Player, etc. Maybe even TiVo - since Sling Media parent EchoStar and TiVo are still slugging it out in court, and EchoStar is adding placeshifting to DISH DVRs and cable boxes, TiVo could use HAVA to respond.

But that’s a tangent and maybe I should just do a whole post on my thoughts on the placeshifting market.

Unrelated, sorry I haven’t been posting. I thought I’d be jumping back in when I posted a few weeks ago, but I underestimated just how draining the job hunting process can be. The good news is I’ve accepted an offer and should be back to work soon. The only downside is that the job is in Somerville, MA, and I live in Worcester, MA, so I’ll have a commute of about an hour each way. But I’ll be working 3rd shift, so traffic shouldn’t be bad, and I’m happy about the job itself.

Well, it seems that Sling Media has licensed SRS WOW HD audio technology from SRS Labs to incorporate into SlingPlayer for Windows. It looks like this will be used as part of the work to enable surround sound streaming from the Slingbox PRO-HD initially, but will also feature as an enhanced solution for all Slingboxes. The updated version of SlingPlayer with SRS WOW HD is due in 1Q09.

And while I do work for Sling Media I wasn’t aware of this until I saw this press release come across the wire from SRS Labs. I did confirm it is accurate.

Sling has been making a number of announcements around CES, but since I work there and act as blogger liaison I haven’t been posting them since it wouldn’t be cool to ’scoop’ other sites. I may post a summary later - unless Mark jumps in with more posts in the meantime.

Press release:
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DivX has come full circle, what started out as a reverse engineered version of Microsoft’s non-compliant implementation of MPEG-4 Version 3 over ten years ago with DivX 3.11 is now a full-featured product based on H.264 (aka MPEG-3 AVC) with the release of DivX 7. It sounds like DivX 7 is a full featured H.264 application, including support for advanced file formats such as Matroska (.mkv) which has been growing increasingly popular for online video distribution as it allows for packaging of multiple video, audio, subtitle, etc, streams in one file.

Along with the new player and new feature support comes a new DivX certification, the DivX Plus Certification. Hardware vendors who certify their products at this new level will support the new DivX 7 formats, while older DivX Certified products will likely only go as far as the DivX 6 equivalent.

The press release:
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I reported on the release of SuperSync 2.3 back in April, but now version 3.03 is being announced in conjunction with MacWorld. SuperSync is an iTunes library manager for PC, Mac, and iPod.

SuperSync makes it easy to create a main library, and have a subset on computers and laptops around the house. By offering an easy way to visually compare and merge multiple iTunes libraries, all music, movies, and playlists can be synced across all devices. Any new content that is added on one computer can be uploaded to the master library.

Use SuperSync to:
* Keep track of all music across multiple computers - Mac OS X, Windows, and iPod
* Compare and merge any two music libraries
* Move music, videos, and playlists from one iTunes library to another
* Export all or a subset of a library as a well-organized directory of tracks
* Find partial albums, duplicates, missing tracks, corrupt files, and other common music library problems
* Intelligently import media from a hard drive, iPod, or network drive without duplicates
* Easily move a music library from Windows to Mac, Mac to Windows, or any combination
* Access a home music library from anywhere - upload/download songs, movies, and playlists
* Share a common library with multiple iTunes users on a network drive
* Access your MP3’s and playlists from Tivo

More information in the full release.

I’m really getting tired of this. I’ve mentioned this before, but I just have to mention it again since I was just burned, again - TiVo Desktop is terribly buggy. Some of the bugs are annoying, but some of the bugs are serious - for example, up and losing all of the TiVo Web Video subscriptions. This has happened to me several times now, on two different computers. I won’t touch TiVo Desktop for weeks, just letting it do its thing, but then I’ll realize I haven’t seen anything from my TiVo Web Video subscriptions for a while - and when I check, the configuration file is wiped.

TiVo Desktop stores the TiVo Web Video subscriptions in files under C:\Documents and Settings\[account name]\Local Settings\Application Data\TiVo Desktop, at least on WinXP. The files concerned are RssFeeds.xml and wspc.xml - with DownloadQueue.xml of lesser concern. What seems to happen to me is every so often TiVo Desktop up and wipes out wspc.xml, which is the main file. I’ll find the file back to its default 1KB state without any subscriptions. Having done my share of development and support I suspect what happens is that when the server is updating the file something goes awry and instead of the updated copy being written it is wiped out. Then the default file is recreated when the server sees it is missing.

This is infuriating and frustrating. And it is a rookie bug. There are ways around this - a simple one is A/B files. Write a ‘B’ file then, only when you confirm the file is correct, remove the ‘A’ file. Then reverse that the next time. Or keep the file in memory until you do a checksum and confirm the file was written to disk successfully, and if not, try again until it is. And considering the subscriptions can only be managed from the cloud, and my TiVo still thinks I’m subscribed to these channels, in the worst case the subscriptions should be reloaded from TiVo’s servers.

I’m a geek, and when it stops working I know where to go looking for answers. But if this happens to an average user I’d expect them to be baffled - their TiVo would still show them subscribed but they wouldn’t be getting any new content. And the resolution isn’t clear - you basically have to delete and re-add the subscriptions so the server recreates them. Or, if you’re a geek and kept a backup copy, recreate the file manually. Of course this means it goes and re-downloads lots of old content.

And that’s not the only serious bug, it also fails to clean up after itself. After downloading content and transferring it to the TiVo, it is supposed to delete the downloaded file - and it does, most of the time. But it misses some and over time they build up. I’ve found multi-gigabytes of orphaned download files left using up space on my drive. If you subscribe to HD versions of content the ‘leaking’ burns space faster. Before Revision3 was added to TiVoCast I used to subscribe to many of their shows via TiVo Web Video, and they were HD versions. Just a few of those left behind can add up to a GB. You can check to see if TiVo Desktop is leaving files behind in C:\Documents and Settings\[account name]\Local Settings\Application Data\TiVo Desktop\Downloads I just removed 746MB of orphaned files from the past couple of months, and that’s after I’d dropped all the Rev3 HD shows.

Bugs happen, I know that, but these have gone unpatched for a while now.

These are hardly the only issues, just the two that really get under my skin. But there are other changes that really need to be made. And why is it that the TiVo Web Video interface on the TiVo itself seems to be stuck in the past, rarely reflecting the current episodes on the feeds? That makes the ‘Download Past Episodes’ feature useless. These are RSS feeds, would it really be so hard to make the server pull in the updated list automatically? And now that HD TiVo models can decode H.264 and VC-1 it would be nice if we could skip the transcoding entirely for compatible downloads.

I love the concept of TiVo Web Video, but it feels more and more like abandonware. All the attention goes to TiVoCast where TiVo can make business deals, and TiVo Web Video just rots on the vine. I know there are third party solutions to replace TiVo Desktop, but the point is this is what most TiVo owners will be aware of and use. TiVo needs to fix this issues if they’re serious about this as a product feature.

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.

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.

NewTeeVee’s Liane Cassavoy has test driven Nero LiquidTV | TiVo PC and posted a review. While the review starts out fairly positive, once she got into it she had some performance issues. As she states:

I love my TiVo DVR, so I had high expectations for Nero’s LiquidTV | TiVo PC, a combination of hardware and software that brings the features of a TiVo DVR to a PC. But after testing out a newly updated version of the product, I’m a bit disappointed, as it suffers from a few glitches that make me hesitate to recommend it.

Check out the full review for the details.

Smarthouse is reporting that Seven Network’s Hybrid Television Services is considering bringing Nero’s LiquidTV | TiVo PC to Australia. As I covered back in September, LiquidTV | TiVo PC turns a PC into a TiVo DVR with most of the feature you get in a standalone TiVo, and a few you don’t. Seven, of course, launched the standalone TiVo in Australia a mid-year. Bringing the PC software to Australia would expand the market to media center PC users, and I’m sure leverage the guide data infrastructure in place for the standalone model.

Blockbuster has teamed with Microsoft to bring digital video to mobile devices using Microsoft’s Live Mesh technology. It sounds like this will still be a download service and not streaming, based on the suggested use case of buying content from an airport kiosk to sync to a mobile device to use while traveling. Though you might think otherwise from this quote:

“Eventually, we’ll give customers instant access to any movie on any device with an internet connection and a screen,” vowed Blockbuster Chief Information Officer Keith Morrow in an interview with the Dallas Morning News.

When I read “instant access to any movie on any device with an Internet connection and a screen” my first thought is instant streaming access, not download to watch. But that’s marketing spin for you.

Picked up from MarketingVOX.