Echostar/Sling Media TR40 Now The DTVPal, Gets New Look

Seen at CES in Sling Media branding, the TR40 is a digital TV converter box for antenna users. Slated for a June release, the hardware shown at CES had a Sling-ish trapezoidal shape. Now SlingCommunity is reporting that the final design of the box will be more curvy, with a softer, rounded body. SlingCommunity has an image, which looks like a render and not an actual box. And to go along with the new look is a new name to replace the dry ‘TR40′, it will be marketed as the DTVPal.

I’m ambivalent about curvy consumer electronics devices. It makes it hard to stack the boxes, which many people have to do. But it does look nice.


Disclaimer: While I currently work for Sling Media, which is owned by EchoStar, I don’t currently have anything to do with the TR40/DTVPal. I’m just reporting on what SlingCommunity said.

Posted in TiVo | Tagged , , , , | 9 Comments

D&M Holdings Looking For A Sugar Daddy

D&M Holdings, former owner of ReplayTV, is looking for a buyer. D&M Holdings is the parent company of Denon, Marantz, Snell, McIntosh, Boston Acoustics, Escient, and other high-end AV brands. The two leading contenders to purchase D&M are Kenwood parent Bain Capital and Best Buy, with the a price of roughly $700 million. Best Buy has strong reasons to pursue the purchase:

As Best Buy is D&M’s biggest customer, it makes good financial sense for the consumer electronics retailer. The implications for the types of equipment that will be offered in their Magnolia shops would increase in number as well as quality. McIntosh has a near fanatical following, though being able to roll down to your local Best Buy to check out the latest tube amps is probably going to be met with mixed emotions.

If they’ve been planning this for a while, and most likely they have, it could be a contributing factor in their unloading of ReplayTV to DirecTV in December. ReplayTV was the odd-man-out in this grouping of companies, and probably would’ve been a sticking point in the deal.

Picked up via EngadgetHD.

Posted in General Tech, ReplayTV | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

The Curse Of TiVo

I just came across what I take to be a humorous tongue-in-cheek opinion piece by Jack Gordon in the Star Tribune in Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN. I got a few good laughs out of it so I thought I’d share it. I understand the warning, I picked up my first TiVo in 2002 while I was laid off during the tech collapse, so I had plenty of time to watch TV. And I kind of overdid it – though in my case it was watching all of M*A*S*H and lots of forensics shows (Forensics Files, The New Detectives, FBI Files, etc.).

Posted in DVR, TiVo | Tagged , | 6 Comments

Setting Custom Styles

OK, I finally did it. I’ve implemented a way for readers to change the style of the site. If you look toward the upper-right-hand corner you’ll see a ‘Style Selector’ now. You can select the default style, the old TiVo Lovers style, or a new black & white style. Or you can even create your own style sheet and use that – though you’ll have to host it. For all of the details, see the documentation.

If you have any issues using this, please let me know my commenting on this post. Thanks – and enjoy!

EDIT: By the way, if you are trying to create a custom style and it would make life easier if some element on the page had a class or id attribute added, feel free to ask. I can’t promise I’ll add it, but I definitely will consider it. Most of the elements on the page already have class and/or id attributes for the default style that you can use. And feel free to share any creative styles you come up with. I may even add some to the site (with permission of course) if they’re good.

Now, as a warning, it is possible to do bad things with a style sheet. So be careful about using a style sheet supplied by some 3rd party. You may want to make a copy to host yourself, so you know what is in it, rather than linking to another site. Even if you vet the CSS before linking to it, it can change at any time without your knowledge.

Posted in Site Updates | Tagged | 2 Comments

PlayTeeVee Prepares For Multi-Player TiVo Gaming

The leaders in TiVo gaming, PlayTeeVee, have just added a new channel to their TiVo HME application. It is ‘Under Construction’, but according to their blog it will soon be home to their first multi-player game for TiVo. First they’ll be running a beta, so keep an eye on their blog if you want to be first to try it out. What kind of game do you think it will be?

Posted in Broadband, Gaming, TiVo | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments