Jaman Helps You Pick Movies For Your TiVo

A rep from Jaman.com contacted me today to bring my attention to a new widget they’ve launched to complement their recently launched TiVo downloads. The Cinema Slots widget is perfect for the indecisive who want to watch something, but just can’t decide what to download. First select a genre (sorry, you have to decide at least that much), and then hit ‘Spin’ and the slot-machine style widget will suggest movies. The genres are: Anime, Bollywood, Action / Adventure, Sci-Fi and Fantasy, Independent, Hollywood, Drama, Documentary, and Comedy.

OK, sure, it seems to mainly be a cute little toy to play with. But I could see it being a conversation starter if you’re trying to decide on a rental with friends or family. Though they might need to work on the randomizer a bit. I tried anime and it kept suggesting Ghost in the Shell, repeatedly, alternating between GitS: The Laughing Man and GitS: Solid State Society. Certainly not bad choices (far from it, Ghost in the Shell is one of my all time favorites), but since I’ve seen it I was looking for something else. Eventually it recommended something called Conehead, which appears to be a free short. Still, it was fun to play with for a little while just to see what it would suggest in different categories.

It brought to mind the Urbanspoon iPhone application I’ve seen mentioned on numerous other blogs, podcasts, etc.

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Roxio Toast Only $30.99 After Rebate At Buy.com

Through November 2nd, Roxio Toast is only $30.99 after rebate at Buy.com. List price $99.95, Buy.com price $50.99 with a $20 mail-in rebate to bring it down to $30.99. Roxio toast is the only officially sanctioned application for Mac for burning TiVoToGo transfers to DVD, and the official application to support TiVoToGo, along with Roxio Popcorn.

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Netflix Shines Silverlight, Streams To Macs

Netflix has begun rolling out the second generation of their Watch Now streaming player, this time using Microsoft’s Silverlight technology. Silverlight is most easily thought of as Microsoft’s competitor to Adobe’s Flash technology. The big change with this second generation player is that, for the first time, it works on Mac OS, albeit Intel Macs only. To date Netflix’s Watch Now feature has been limited to only Windows PCs. The Play Ready DRM features built into Silverlight apparently satisfy their need to protect their content licenses.

“Silverlight with Play Ready offers a powerful and secure toolkit for delivery of dynamic streaming, which offers faster start-up, and higher quality video, adapted in real time to users’ connection speeds,” said Netflix Chief Product Officer Neil Hunt. “Members who enjoy watching movies and TV episodes from the growing library of choices that can be instantly streamed at Netflix will be thrilled with this next generation improvement of access and quality, on a broader range of platforms, including Intel Macs and Firefox.”

The initial roll-out“will initially touch a small percentage of new Netflix subscribers”, but it is anticipated that it will be available to all subscribers by the end of the year.

Via Engadget.

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Requiem 1.8.1 Released, Works With iTunes 8.0.1 – On Mac

When iTunes 8.0 was released, Apple changed the FairPlay DRM encryption in such a way that it broke the Requiem DRM stripping tool which had worked with earlier versions of iTunes. Now Requiem 1.8.1 has been released, and it works on iTunes 8.0.1 – well, at least on Mac. So far a Windows version hasn’t been released, but it is expected to follow. A discussion thread in the Hymn project forums has the details. I’d link to Requiem, but Apple sends out cease and desist notices to sites that do, so I can just say use Google, it is available via BitTorrent.

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This Weekend’s Amazon VOD Sale

This weekend Amazon VOD has a few special offers. The Notebook, The Big Lebowski, and Then She Found Me are $0.99 rentals, while The Forbidden Kingdom and What Happens in Vegas are available for $1.99.

There are also ten horror films and thrillers available as $0.99 rentals: Dreamcatcher, The Initiation of Sarah, Little Shop of Horrors (1986), Buried Alive, Panic Room, The Unholy, See No Evil, Darkness Falls, Horror of Dracula, and Wolf.

With Saw V hitting theaters the first four films are 50% off. Saw, Saw II, and Saw III are $6.99 and Saw IV is $7.99.

And there are deals on NBC TV series. Buy Heroes season 1 and get season 2 50% off, buy Law & Order: SVU season 1 and get season 7, 8, or 9 for 66% off, and buy 30 Rock season 1 and get season 2 for 50% off. Or subscribe to The Daily Show with Jon Stewart or The Colbert Report, both 67% off.

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