Warner Bros. To Bring TV Content To TiVo, Sling, Veoh, Joost, And Dailymotion

Posted on Thursday, June 12, 2008 by MegaZone

The Warner Bros. Television Group has signed distribution deals with TiVo, Sling, Veoh, Joost, and Dailymotion to bring their programming to these platforms in a free, ad-supported format. The new distribution availability will launch in mid-September, bringing the studio’s content to these platforms. The agreement includes content from The WB Network, KidsWB, and the Warner Bros. collection. As well as original content being created for TheWB.com. In addition to themed channels for TheWB.com and KidsWB.com the partners will be launching two new themed channels, Classics WBTV and a Sci Fi channel. The former will feature full-length episodes of landmark series from Warner Bros. and the latter will feature full-length episodes of the studios science fiction series.

I’m really excited and happy to see this. It is good to see a traditional media company really diving into new distribution systems, and, even better, not re-inventing the wheel with yet another website or box – but embracing existing distribution channels. Personally the two that excite me the most, unsurprisingly, are TiVo and Sling. I’d love to be able to download WB TV content right to my TiVo, or watching it via SlingPlayer – or on a SlingCatcher. I’m a fan of animation, and The WB has produced some of the best modern TV animation (Batman, Superman, Justice League, Animaniacs, etc) and I hope all of that great content is available through this system. I’m really looking forward to this being available.

Press release below:
Continue reading →

Posted in Broadband, Press Release, Sling Media, TiVo | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Dave Zatz DTVPal Unboxing Videos

Posted on Thursday, June 12, 2008 by MegaZone

Following up on his initial hands-on post, Dave Zatz has received his own DTVPal and he’s shot some unboxing and setup video.

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Posted in Dish Network, HDTV | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

TiVo Settles Lawsuit

Posted on Wednesday, June 11, 2008 by MegaZone

No, not the Dish Network/EchoStar lawsuit, but rather a suit from Lycos. Back in January 2007 Lycos sued TiVo, Blockbuster, and Netflix for patent infringement over their recommendation engines. The San Jose Mercury News reports that TiVo has settled the suit with Lycos.

Financial terms weren’t disclosed in a May 30 court filing that said the two sides settled their dispute. TiVo General Counsel Matt Zinn said the Alviso-based company paid Lycos an “immaterial amount of money” to end the suit “before the case went very far.”

So that’s off TiVo’s plate, Blockbuster and Netflix remain in the case which is pending in federal court in Boston.

Posted in TiVo | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

A Blast From The Past – AOLTV

Posted on Wednesday, June 11, 2008 by MegaZone

Wow, I haven’t thought about this in a long time. Back in 2001-2002 TiVo and AOL were working together on a box called AOLTV. It was kind of a hybrid of WebTV and TiVo, a TiVo box which would also access AOL services like email, web browsing, etc. It never came to market, as AOL dropped the project in early 2002.

I was following TiVo back then and I remember the whole saga, but it was before I started blogging about it. So what brings this up? Well, I discovered today that my RSS feed for the WeaKnees Blog was out of date, and I’d been missing their posts for a while. So I was just catching up on the posts I’d missed when I saw this one.

While looking through some old boxes, someone at WeaKnees found a couple of old AOLTV/TiVo remotes! That’s excellent, I don’t think I’d even seen any of the associated hardware before. It looks like a couple of different prototype remotes – one looks like it is based on the S1 remote, the other looks like an S2 – different size thumb buttons.

Anyone else remember AOLTV?

Posted in TiVo | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Taiwan’s TiVo Units Support HME

Posted on Wednesday, June 11, 2008 by MegaZone

In the past one of the differences between TiVo units in the US and the TGC (TiVo Greater China) units sold in Taiwan is that the latter did not support HME (Home Media Engine). But this series of photos just uploaded to Flickr indicates HME support has been added. I don’t know if this is brand new, or if it has been there for a while and this user just uploaded the photos, but it is new to me. (If anyone knows when it was enabled, chime in with a comment.) The user seems to have tried it out by adding PlayTeeVee to his TiVo.

TGC HME Step 1, TGC HME Step 2, TGC HME Step 3, TGC HME Step 4, TGC HME Step 5, TGC HME Step 6, TGC HME Step 7, TGC HME Game 1, TGC HME Game 2, TGC HME Game 3, TGC HME Game 4, TGC HME Game 5, TGC HME Game 6, TGC HME Game 7, TGC HME Game 8

If anyone can translate the text on the TGC screens that’d be really cool.

Thanks to Davis Freeberg for the tip!

EDIT: The PlayTeeVee Blog found a blog post (in Chinese) which appears to be related to the photos.

Posted in Broadband, TiVo | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment