Roxio Easy Media Creator 10 Wins PC Magazine Editors’ Choice Award

Posted on Sunday, December 2, 2007 by MegaZone

Roxio dropped a press release to celebrate the award:

Roxio®, a division of Sonic Solutions® (NASDAQ: SNIC), the leader in digital media software, today announced that Roxio Easy Media Creator® 10 has received a prestigious Editors’ Choice Award from PC Magazine, a leading resource for authoritative, labs-based reviews of computing products for over 7 million technology buyers. The latest acknowledgment adds to an impressive list of accolades and positive reviews that Easy Media Creator 10 has received from technology press in the U.S. and Europe since its introduction in September of this year and extends the brand’s decade-long history of securing top honors from leading technology journals. Easy Media Creator 10 is available at www.roxio.com and in retail stores throughout North America for a suggested retail price of $99.99.

Easy Media Creator 10 is the premier video package for Windows with official TiVoToGo support.

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A TiVo Gadget for Windows Vista

Posted on Sunday, December 2, 2007 by MegaZone

Reader Richard Hay sent me a tip on a new TiVo Gadget for Windows Vista. See the full post for all of the installation and feature details, but here’s the post’s feature summary:

  • Configure Folders if you want shows from the same series to be grouped together (like Kitchen Nightmares in the screenshot).
  • When the gadget notices a new recording, it will ding (if you have sound enabled).
  • If you configure more than one TiVo, click the friendly name of the unit (like Downstairs in the screenshot) to switch to the next unit.
  • Click the name of the show to see its description. The details flyout will contain more data in a future version…just didn’t have time to add it for the first release.
  • Your settings will survive a gadget removal/add thanks to Todd Northrop’s handy Settings Manager for Windows Vista Sidebar Gadgets.
  • When the gadget refreshes its data, it will close any groups that are open. While not technically a bug, it is annoying, and I hope to improve this later.

I don’t have a Windows Vista machine, but this does look like a nifty Gadget. If you try it out, leave a comment with your impressions.

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Clip+Sling and SlingCatcher in 2008 – and Slingbox for India?

Posted on Saturday, December 1, 2007 by MegaZone

There is an article in the Sunday edition of The Hindu, India’s national newspaper, which is mainly a fluff piece on the Slingbox, due to the development work done in Bangalore. But the article ends with a couple of interesting bits:

He [Manish Singhal, general manager, Sling Media] said features to be introduced in 2008 included “Clip and Sling”: the ability to record and share portions of the content, with friends, using a few clicks; and “Slingcatcher”: the ability to download content directly from the Internet without having to use a PC.

The company is exploring the launch of the product in India next year.

I think this may be the first (semi-)official confirmation that the SlingCatcher has been delayed until 2008. It was originally slated for release late this year. This isn’t surprising, since we’re already into December with no announced release, and the general feeling was that Sling has simply tried to tackle too much this year, with several client projects, the Slingbox SOLO, and the SlingCatcher. But I don’t think Sling has ever officially announced the delay. The last we heard on the SlingCatcher was the packaging details leak in October. Clip+Sling we’d already had word would be out in 2008.

A move into the Indian market would be interesting for Sling, which has always had a fairly aggressive international expansion effort for a small company – and now they have the backing of EchoStar.

EDIT: Dave Zatz emailed me to point me at a comment he made over at Sling Community on November 20th. An excerpt from his comment:

The bottom line is that this is a new product category for us and the development effort has taken longer than we anticipated. However, once we release the SlingCatcher in early 2008, I’m confident you’ll enjoy pulling content from a variety of sources using the sexy and innovative GUI on your television.

The comment is on a post about a video interview by the Satellite Guys with Brian Jaquet if Sling Media in which me mentioned the SlingCatcher would be delayed until 2008:

So it looks like there were previous announcements of the delay, I just hadn’t seen them.

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TiVoCast stitches up Quilters TV

Posted on Friday, November 30, 2007 by MegaZone

E. Stephen Mack let us know Quilters TV is the latest channel to join the TiVoCast lineup. Yes, it is a channel all about quilting. Not my thing, but I’m sure someone will be enthralled by it. You can subscribe online or on your TiVo in TiVo Central -> Find Programs -> Download TV & Movies. Happy quilting!

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Hack the Neuros OSD and TiVo, make up to $3500

Posted on Friday, November 30, 2007 by MegaZone

DVRUpgrade and Neuros are co-sponsoring two bounties for hackers. The goal is to get the Neuros OSD to inter-operate with TiVo so that the Neuros would record the same content as the TiVo, so you’d have ready-to-run copies for mobile devices without TiVoToGo and transcoding to contend with.

There are two bounties – the first is $1000 for interoperability with the Series2, Series2DT, Series3, or TiVo HD standalone units. The second is $2500 for interoperability with the Series1 standalone or any DirecTiVo unit. The intro to the bounties:

People love the TiVo DVR for its robust program guide and related features, and people love the OSD for the portability of its recordings. So, we’ve come up with a bounty for a project that combines the best of both devices. Namely for the OSD to piggyback on the TiVo’s recording schedule and make portable MPEG-4 recordings of those shows that you choose. It’s essentially like having TiVo simultaneously record onto a portable device at the same time that its recording to it’s hard drive. With no file transfer or conversion, you could have all your favorite shows automatically on your laptop, iPod, iPhone, Blackberry or whatever portable device you prefer. Ultimately, this functionality would be perfect for commuters, road-warriors or anyone that spends their days on the go.

See the thread in the DVRupgrade TiVo forums.

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