Advanced WishLists coming to TiVo?

Posted on Tuesday, September 4, 2007 by MegaZone

TiVo Advanced WishList Search
The annual TiVoCommunity Con (TCCon) gathering was held this weekend in Orlando, FL, and TiVo was there showing off some of their forthcoming updates. In a post at TiVoCommunity.com, user ‘stevel’ included the above photo, which shows what appears to be an explanation of advanced WishList Search capability – which includes boolean abilities. Note the two keywords ‘CHOCOLATE’ and ‘CHEESE’ and then ‘-LEMON’ with a category of Interests/Cooking – which will find cookings shows with chocolate OR cheese but NOT lemon as a keyword. Nice! I’m looking forward to this.

One of the years maybe I’ll make it to TCCon.

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NBC dumps iTunes for Unbox

Posted on Tuesday, September 4, 2007 by MegaZone

NBC and Apple had a falling out last week over the pricing of NBC’s content in the iTunes Music Store. NBC decided not to renew their contract with Apple, threatening to remove their content when it expired in September, apparently as a negotiating tactic. Apple decided to up the ante and immediately removed NBC’s content from ITMS.

Well, NBC has found a new distribution partner for their content – Amazon Unbox. Starting Monday, September 10th, NBC shows such as The Office and Heroes will begin appearing for download via Unbox. There will also be free downloads of the pilot episodes for new series such as Bionic Woman and Chuck, before they air on the network. Going forward programs will be available on Unbox the day after they air.

It isn’t mentioned specifically, but hopefully all of this new content will also be available via Unbox on TiVo. That would allow people who missed past episodes of programs such as Heroes to download old episodes and catch up before the new season. And if your TiVo ever missed an episode due to power outage, etc, you could grab the missing episode and watch it on the TV just like normal. Or if you only have N TiVo tuners and N+1 shows you want to record, you could download the NBC shows the next day.

Picked up from CNET News.com.

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Palm kills the Foleo – for now

Posted on Tuesday, September 4, 2007 by MegaZone

Back in May, Palm announced a new device, the Foleo. It was supposed to be a kind of companion for your smartphone – not only the Palm Treo, but other brands as well. The idea was that it would sync with the smartphone and give you a real keyboard to work on for email, web browsing, etc. It was kind of a Linux-powered sub-notebook, but it wasn’t designed to work as a standalone platform. And, with an anticipated price of $499, a lot of people wondered why someone would buy it on top of their phone, instead of just getting an ultra-portable laptop for a little more. It wasn’t long before blogs were referring to it as the ‘Folly-o’.

Well, it seems Palm decided they were right. In a post to The Official Palm Blog today, Palm’s CEO Ed Colligan announced that the Foleo was being dropped.

It seems the final nail in the Foleo’s coffin is that it was a completely different platform, and it was a distraction from Palm’s work to bring their next-generation Linux-based Palm OS smartphones to market. While the Foleo was also Linux-based, it was a completely different platform from the new smartphone OS. So it would be yet another platform to support for both Palm and developers, and that would be sustainable.

Going forward Palm will focus on the new Linux-based Palm OS and Windows Mobile as their two smartphone platforms. It sounds like Palm is not dropping the Foleo concept entirely, but it will wait until after they bring the new OS to market, and any revived Foleo design will share the same Linux-based Palm OS platform, so developers will have one environment to develop for and Palm one platform to support. As Colligan said in his post:

Jeff Hawkins and I still believe that the market category defined by Foleo has enormous potential. When we do Foleo II it will be based on our new platform, and we think it will deliver on the promise of this new category. We’re not going to speculate now on timing for a next Foleo, we just know we need to get our core platform and smartphones done first.

I’m sure this was a tough decision for Palm, as they were close to launch and will take a charge of nearly $10 million for the cancellation. But this is the right decision. From the very day it was launched, the Foleo was criticized for lacking features and power. Hawkins himself famously commented at the announcement that if he could change it he’d put in a processor powerful enough to support web video – and the general reaction was “Well, why don’t you?” since it wasn’t going to launch for months. It seemed like the Foleo was too weak to be a mini-laptop, yet cost too much to be a ‘cheap’ smartphone companion. It just didn’t have a niche. While some geeks, like myself, might’ve picked one up to play with it and try out hacks, I couldn’t see it being a success in the market.

I think Palm should rethink the Foleo and bring it to market later as an independent device, that doesn’t require a smartphone. Give it WiFi, even built-in cellular data. Make it a bigger Treo – with a BlueTooth headset it could even be a phone. Still give it the ability to sync with smartphones and all, but it will find a broader market if it isn’t tethered to one. And if it can really replace an ultra-portable laptop for most tasks – but it has to be significantly cheaper of you may as well buy the laptop.

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TiVo Blog reviews Roxio Popcorn 3

Posted on Tuesday, September 4, 2007 by MegaZone

Alex over at TiVoBlog.com has purchased Roxio Popcorn 3, which includes TiVoToGo support, and he’s posted a mini review with a ton of screenshots.

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Toshiba’s slim HD DVD burner for Europe, and the format war in the press

Posted on Tuesday, September 4, 2007 by MegaZone

At IFA this week, Toshiba unveiled an slimline external USB 2.0 HD DVD Super-Multi drive and HD DVD burner for PCs. The burner supports HD DVD-ROM and single- and double-layer HD DVD-R, as well as DVD+/-RW, and CD. (No BD, of course.) The Super-Multi is the same, sans HD DVD-R support. Both are just 128mm x 126mm x 13mm and weigh 165g. Prices start at £200.

From Crave via EngadgetHD.

And both CNET News.com and The Register have articles on the ongoing Blu-ray / HD DVD format war. CNET’s article is more middle-of-the-road – basically neither side is even close to giving up, and the war will probably drag on all through 2008 now that Paramount and Dreamworks went HD DVD exclusive. But it doesn’t look like either format will win in 2008, and overall HD disc adoption is still slow, so there is plenty of time for the war to drag on before any decisive sales levels are reached. Not really good news – and the war will only continue to slow adoption. Some semantic games are played:

Eight of the 15 top-grossing films of the year, including Shrek the Third, Transformers and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, were released by studios that distribute exclusively on HD DVD or on both formats.

Sounds good for HD DVD, right? Sure… but notice the or on both formats. Aka, anything from Warner. Those other 7 films? From Blu-ray exclusive studios. Combined with Warner ‘both formats’ Bros., BD actually has more of the top 15 films. Why write it that way? Seems like it was deliberately worded to favor HD DVD. The article also repeatedly refers to the 18-month exclusivity window for the Paramount/Dreamworks deal. This is something I’ve seen a number of HD DVD fans claiming is just a bogus rumor – but for a bogus rumor it is getting a lot of press and I haven’t seen Paramount or Dreamworks deny it.

The Register goes into detail on what both sides have been slinging at this week’s IFA show. The BDA is claiming that they have led HD DVD in sales since August 12, 2006. Up to August 12, 2007, over two million BD discs had been sold in the US, 1.71m of them just in 2007. For the YTD 2007, 66.3% of next-gen discs sold in the US were BD, and 70% in Europe.

The next day the HD DVD camp had their press conference and responded that they had 70% of the European IT market (PC drives) as well as 70% of the standalone player market (ignoring the PS3, and probably the 360′s drive). And, again, they played the numbers game that annoys me so. The Reg has a picture of one of their slides, which has the following lines together:
* 70% share of European standalone players
* Attach rate: 4 to 1 for HD DVD, 0.5 for Blu-ray.
So, again, they’ll ignore the PS3 when it makes them look good (percentage of players) but include it when it makes them look good (attach rate is based on including the PS3 for BD). And both approaches are crap.

To be far, I’ll call the BDA on their shenanigans too. They claimed that so far in 2007, for Europe’s six largest economies, 94% of devices capable of playing next-gen discs were compatible with BD, and just 6% for HD DVD. I’m sure it is true, but that includes a lot of PS3s that will never play a movie.

Both sides play games with numbers – but the bottom line remains that BD titles are outselling HD DVD by roughly 2:1 in both the US and Europe.

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