Amazon Buy Two, Get One Free Blu-ray Sale

Posted on Wednesday, August 13, 2008 by MegaZone

Amazon is holding another sale on Bluray, this time it is Buy Two, Get One Free on 14 Sony titles. The titles are Across the Universe, Spider-Man 3, Casino Royale, Superbad (2-Disc Unrated Extended Edition), The Fifth Element (Remastered), Close Encounters of the Third Kind (30th Anniversary Ultimate Edition), Ghost Rider (Extended Cut), The Patriot (Extended Cut), Underworld Evolution, Black Hawk Down, We Own the Night, Surf’s Up, Kung Fu Hustle, and Spider-Man – The High Definition Trilogy (Spider-Man / Spider-Man 2 / Spider-Man 3).

Picked up from Blu-ray Stats News Log.

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First Impressions Of The Australian TiVo

Posted on Tuesday, August 12, 2008 by MegaZone

An Australian friend of mine, Matt, just picked up a TiVo and he’s blogged his first impressions. It sounds like they have some of the same guide data issues we have in the states, with repeats not always being so flagged. Though it is odd that other guides, like IceTV and even Yahoo7 get it right – especially when Yahoo7 is the online scheduling partner for TiVo Australia. So hopefully they can sort that out in time.

Australian networks are far, far worse than US networks when it comes to sticking to their published schedules, so padding and conflict resolution are even more important. Matt has an interesting idea that I think could be a nice upgrade for TiVo. Currently, when two programs air back to back on the same channel and both have been padded, one of three things happens. 1. The two programs are seen as a conflict and use both tuners to record the same channel simultaneously for the overlapping period. 2. If the second tuner is busy with a higher priority task and if Overlap Protection is on, and the overlap is within the clipping allowance, one of the two programs is clipped. So you’ll have two recordings and odds are one of them will have a bit of the other show in it. Which is tolerable, but not ideal. 3. If the second tuner is in use and Overlap Protection is off, or the overlap exceeds the clipping limit, the lower priority program is not recorded.

Matt suggests an alternative. If two recordings on the same channel overlap, take the output of the encoder, or the raw signal if it is a digital channel, and write two separate streams to the disc – one for each recording. The exact same data shared between the shows – maybe even just write it to the disk once, with both shows pointing at the same sectors. This way you would get both recordings with all the padding requested, without using two tuners. If this is possible given TiVo’s hardware, and I think it would be, I think this is an idea worth looking into for TiVo.

Hopefully as he gets more time with the unit he’ll blog some more under his TiVo tag. Maybe he’d be interested in contributing some posts to Gizmo Lovers.

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Bonus Feature In TiVo 9.4 – HME Video Streaming

Posted on Monday, August 11, 2008 by MegaZone

Since the TiVo 9.4 update enabled YouTube support a few weeks ago, I’ve been hoping that the ability to stream video would be extended to HME. Since the entire YouTube interface on TiVo is implemented with HME, using the HME toolkit internal to TiVo (probably with features first implemented for the OCAP development work), it makes sense that it would be possible to support video generically through HME.

And the developer community did not disappoint, they’ve figured out how to support video playback in HME applications. It is early days and people are still sorting it out, but it is possible to stream MPEG-2 and MPEG-4/H.264 video to a TiVo Series3 or TiVo HD with the 9.4 software. That means it is possible to implement a generic video playback application via HME to stream any MPEG-2 or H.264 video to the S3/HD – or any video as long as the application can transcode them. That’s fantastic news!

And the fact that MPEG-2 works for streaming implies that it may be possible for TiVo to add the streaming support to the Series2 for just MPEG-2, since the hardware can’t decode H.264. That hasn’t been any indication that TiVo will do so, but it would certainly be nice if they did as it would then be possible to produce a generic player application that transcoded to MPEG-2 for the S2 and MPEG-2 or H.264 for the S3/HD.

Of course, this is all reverse engineered by the developer community and it is possible TiVo could change something to disable this, but I would certainly hope that they don’t. In fact, I still feel quite strongly that TiVo should embrace HME and support 3rd party developers, and I would love to see TiVo issue an update to the public HME SDK which included official video support (and official HD support, as it is only in the beta SDK today – still).

But even without official support this has great potential. The ability to stream video from an HME application means that 3rd parties could bring video to the S3/HD directly. Sites like Revision3, Veoh, Break.com, Heavy,com, etc could host their own HME front end to allow streaming of any of their videos directly to TiVo. Of course, the elephant in the room is adult content, which TiVo seems loathe to officially acknowledge. But with the ability to stream right to the TiVo via HME, and bypass TiVo (the corporation), it is certainly possible. In general the ability to stream video is something that has been requested since the first days of HME, so now that it is here it may generate some new interest from developers who had moved away from HME. It would be especially useful if TiVo would bring the streaming support to Series2 units as it would create a much larger potential market, but even just the Series3 and TiVo HD are significant as it is a growing market with the HD being TiVo’s primary platform now.

I’m looking forward to seeing what people come up with, and when and if any video streaming sites embrace this.

Thanks to reader Kevin Moye for the tip.

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Best Buy Blu-ray Deals

Posted on Sunday, August 10, 2008 by MegaZone

This week’s “sale events” at BestBuy.com have a few deals worth mentioning. (When did a ‘sale’ become a ‘sale event’? Isn’t a sale by definitely an event? Anyway…) If you buy one of three Insignia 1080p HDTVs (42″ LCD $899.99, 47″ LCD $1,199.99, or 50″ plasma $1,399.99) you’ll get the Insignia NS-BRDVD Blu-ray player for just $149.99. That’s $130 off their standard $279.99 price. The NS-BRDVD is one of the many rebadged variants of the Funai NB500 unit, and it is a BonusView / Profile 1.1 player, not BD-Live / Profile 2.0.

You can also save 5% to 15% on four other Blu-ray decks. The LG BH200, which handles Blu-ray and HD DVD discs (for those of you who made the mistake of investing in HD DVD media), normally $599.99 is now $509.99. The Panasonic DMP-DB30K Blu-ray deck, normally $399.99, is $359.99. The Samsung BD-P1500 Blu-ray deck, also normally $399.99, is $339.99. And finally the Sharp AQUOS BD-HP20U, yet again normally $399.99, is $379.99.

Personally I can’t recommend the LH BH200 to anyone who doesn’t have a number of HD DVD discs they still need to play. It just isn’t a good value as a Blu-ray player, and it is BonusView / Profile 1.1 only, despite having an Ethernet port and supporting Internet connectivity for HD DVD. While the Ethernet port means it is possible it could be upgraded to BD-Live someday, it doesn’t seem likely as LG has really stopped work on this family with the death of HD DVD.

The Sharp unit is not only the most expensive of the remaining three, but also the least capable, being just Basic Profile / Profile 1.0, and not even BonusView. Give it a pass. The Panasonic DMP-BD30K is a nice player, but it is also only BonusView and as it lacks an Ethernet port it will never be updated to support it. The one recommendation for the Panasonic is that it has 5.1 analog audio output.

The real pick here is the Samsung. Not only is it the least expensive, but it is the most advanced of the lot. It is ‘BD-Live Ready’, which means that while it is BonusView-only today, Samsung plans to add BD-Live support via a firmware update.

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TiVoCast Adds Internet Superstar and Tekzilla

Posted on Saturday, August 9, 2008 by MegaZone

Now this is more like it! It certainly makes up for the last two channels that were added. ;-) I’ve been asking for Tekzilla for a while. (OK, since Veronica Belmont left Mahalo Daily to co-host Tekzilla.) I’m not as keen on Internet Superstar, but I’ll still subscribe.

It is nice to see that I called this one back in May when I speculated that TiVo was working on some kind of deal to bring Revision3 content to TiVoCast:

Still no TekZilla in Web Video. I’m starting to suspect that the hold-up is that TiVo is working some larger deal to bring Revision3 content into TiVoCast instead of via Web Video. One of the reasons I suspect that is that Revision3 just recently announced an agreement to bring their content to DivX Connected devices. And all of Revision3’s shows are available in HD, so they’d make fantastic additions to the TiVoCast lineup for the Series3 and TiVo HD.

Unfortunately, while the TiVoCast encodes do look very good, they’re not in HD. Since all Revision3 content is available in HD, that really would be killer for TiVoCast on the Series3 and HD. Other Revision3 shows, like Systm and popSiren are in the standard TiVo Web Video list in their HD versions. It takes a while for a PC to transcode the HD shows, but they do look great in HD on the TiVo. I have to admit I’d rather have the decent SD versions in TiVoCast in lieu of the HD versions via TiVo Web Video, just to avoid the mess of the PC transcode, but HD via TiVoCast would just be the optimal solution. I hope TiVo is working on that, allowing S3 & HD users to get the HD version of TiVoCast content when it is available. That is a logical progression from what we have today.

Anyway, to focus on today’s additions, Internet Superstar is described as:

Join Martin and Gator as they invite the online world’s most popular, compelling and outrageous characters into the shed to swap stories about what life is like at the top of the online heap. What life is like as an INTERNET SUPERSTAR

As you probably know by now, you can subscribe online or on your TiVo via Find Programs & Downloads -> Download TV, Movies, & Web Video -> Browse Other Videos -> All -> Internet Superstar.

And Tekzilla is described thusly:

Embrace digital technology. Join the Tekzilla crew and make your tech work better for you. Or you can go live in the woods with an axe. Every Saturday, Patrick Norton and Veronica Belmont deliver product reviews, computer help, tech tips on everything from iPods to camcorders, HD to the Internet, plus do it yourself projects.

Of course, you can subscribe online or on your TiVo via Find Programs & Downloads -> Download TV, Movies, & Web Video -> Browse Other Videos -> All -> Tekzilla.

I hope that this is just the tip of the iceberg and that we’ll be seeing the rest of the Revision3 lineup available through TiVoCast. They have some really good content, I’m currently subscribed to The GigaOm Show, popSiren, and Systm through TiVo Web Video. And if I didn’t have to go through that transcoding mess, if I could just sign up for TiVoCast direct downloads, I’d pick up a few more of their shows.

Well, technically they do already have another Revision3 show in TiVoCast – EPIC-FU. But Revision3 just acquired EPIC-FU on June 6th and it has been a part of TiVoCast for a long time now, so that’s a special case.

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