TiVoShanan has posted the promo video she did for Netflix on TiVo, which appeared on the TiVo itself to announce the feature launch.

LG Electronics announced they’d be bringing Netflix to their Blu-ray players just in time for CES 2008. That support shipped in the form of the BD300, announced in July and shipped in the fall. Now, just in time for CES 2009, LG is announcing their next additions - CinemaNow and YouTube. YouTube seems like an obvious move, it is showing up on just about every connected device out there. Pretty soon I think YouTube will just be a default feature on any networked device, which should make Google happy.

But the real interesting addition here is CinemaNow, and not so much that it is being added but how it is being added. CinemaNow will be streaming to the Blu-ray players. That’s very interesting - as far as I’m aware this is the first indication we’ve had that CinemaNow was adding streaming support to their content. To date CinemaNow has been all download-based, not streaming, including on TiVo. Right now on TiVo only Disney content is available from CinemaNow, but it has been stated that additional content would be added. Since TiVo supports streaming, as used by YouTube and Netflix, I have to wonder if CinemaNow content will also be available via streaming on TiVo.

In general we’re certainly going to be seeing more of this kind of thing, adding content sources to devices to make them multi-function. Just to support Blu-ray content and to comply with the BD-Live specification a Blu-ray player has to be capable of decoding MPEG-2, H.264, and VC-1 video in high definition, as well as handing a number of audio formats. The hardware used to do this is more than capable of handling most online video formats. BD-Live requires an Ethernet connection and 1GB of local storage, which is plenty to handle streaming buffers. And the BD-J programming environment allows for complex applications. It makes a lot of sense for Blu-ray players to pick up additional features like streaming video to make them more competitive and appealing to consumers.

Press release:

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A clever little short horror film from arieScope for Halloween - The TiVo.

Picked up from Gizmodo Australia.

The Courier-Mail is reporting that Seven Network will begin rolling out network features to the Australian TiVo next month, including YouTube support, video on demand services, and TiVoToGo. Internet services have always been a key part of Seven Networks plans for TiVo. The Australian TiVo only works with free, over-the-air channels, which are limited in number - only 15 expected by mid-2009. To better compete with Foxtel’s pay TV service Seven will be able to use TiVo’s Internet capabilities to deliver additional content.

Nero was kind enough to invite me to a web conference on Friday to preview three new products that they’re announcing today: Nero Move it, Nero 9, and Nero LiquidTV. I’ll start by with Nero Move it.

Move it is an interesting product which aims to solve the problem of device proliferation and getting your content on the various devices, as well as moving content between them. The general idea is a drag and drop interface. You can select device one on the left, device two on the right, and then drag content back and forth between them. It handles photos, audio, and video content, and a myriad of devices - music players, PMPs, cell phones, cameras, etc. It will also handle transcoding, as well as uploading your content to YouTube, MySpace, and My Nero.

Here’s some official screen shots:

I also took some screen shots during the web conference on Friday:

So if you have content on your PC, iPod, PSP, cell phone, Nero Move it can keep everything synchronized, and also make sure the content is in the proper format for that device. If your device isn’t listed in the extensive default list of devices you can also create a new device profile. Or if you prefer different settings for one of the included devices you can also alter the default settings.

Move it will also handle ripping content from CDs and copying your content from mobile devices to the PC to backup your media files. In addition to uploading content to online services it can also download content to synchronize it to your devices to take it on the go. Renaming, copying, deleting, sorting, etc, it is all in there. You can even edit the meta data on the files - artist, album, description, etc.

Nero Move it will be available today, September 29th, for $49.99 for Windows PCs.

Press release:
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Following up on the new ‘The Badoop Badoop Show‘ channel on YouTube, TiVo has also created a YouTube channel specifically for Australian TiVo users. (RSS feed.) Currently the channel has one video, a ‘Welcome to TiVo’ for Australian users. As well as the US ‘YouTube on TiVo’ video, which has a ‘Coming soon to Australia!’ note in the description.

So if you’re an Australian interested in TiVo, or anyone interested in TiVo’s Australian doings, you might be interested in this channel.

Spotted by Alex at TiVo Blog.

Way back in the day, in 2000, TiVo dipped a toe into generating content for their users, and the broader market, through TiVo Takes. It was aired using a time slot on the PAX channel, so anyone could watch it, though it was really aimed at TiVo users.

By the time I purchased my first TiVo in February of 2002, TiVo Takes was already defunct, just something users would talk about wistfully. But for its time it was an interesting foray into interactive television. I think the user base, which considering they’d only launched in 1999 was quite small, wasn’t large enough to sustain such efforts. Though TiVoShanan has done a few in-house long-form videos for TiVo promotions. I remember some from couple of years ago where she went behind the scenes on some shows, I don’t remember if that was given a unique title though.

Well, a lot has changed in the past eight years, not the least of which is the rise of online video. And now TiVo is taking another stab at generating content, launching The Badoop Badoop Show on YouTube. The channel blurb:

Since its inception, the Emmy® award-winning TiVo service has changed the way millions of people watch TV. And coming soon: the “The Badoop Badoop Show,” a quirky show to keep you in the entertainment know with TiVo recommendations every week on what to watch, hear, download and more. This is not your average entertainment news show. And yes! The show is named after one of TiVo’s unmistakable soundmarks: Badoop-Badoop! Subscribe now for the PREMIERE of Badoop coming next week!

Right now there is one video posted, which is the promo video for the launch of YouTube on the TiVo Series3/HD. Having this on YouTube is great, and clearly a way to stealth market. But while watching it via YouTube on TiVo would be very meta indeed, I hope they offer the content up as a TiVoCast channel as well. I’m busy and lazy, I love it when content comes to me - be it TiVoCast, RSS, or what have you. Speaking of RSS, here’s the feed for the YouTube channel.

Thanks to Dave Zatz of Zatz Not Funny for the heads-up.

Picked up from TiVo Blog.

Web video from Hulu, CBS, ESPN, etc, is great, but it is generally stuck on your PC. Sure, you can hook up a PC to the TV, and some web video is available on set-top boxes, such as YouTube on TiVo, but it is still limited. There are are some devices which allow access to more of the sites, like the D-Link DSM-520, but then you need Yet Another STB in your A/V stack. What to do? Well, PlayOn from MediaMall Technologies can help.

PlayOn installs on your Windows XP or Windows Vista PC, and acts as a kind of transcoding proxy for web video. It retrieves the web video and streams it to DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance) compatible devices such as the PlayStation3, Xbox 360, and HP MediaSmart TVs. While those are the officially supported devices, they state that they will work to expand the list, and since they’re using DLNA I’m thinking may work on other DLNA devices even if not officially supported. They currently tout support for Hulu, CBS, YouTube, and ESPN, and promise Netflix support “just down the road”. They’ve also promised playback on the Nintendo Wii “by the end of 2008″. PlayOn is currently in beta, and MediaMall plans to charge $30 for the final product when it is ready for release.

MediaMall also has a blog where you can keep track of their development efforts. In a post there they reiterate that Netflix will be added before GA (that’s general availability, aka the official release for the non-geeks), and also state that CNN will be in before GA. MediaMall also develops the ActiveTV platform that powers the above mentioned DSM-520, which supports a plethora of web video sites, so it seems logical that they’d be bringing that know-how over to PlayOn to add more sites over time. After all, PlayOn was only released to beta on Monday.

Picked up from EngadgetHD.

No, that isn’t a redundant subject line, the full name of the new TiVoCast channel is ‘The Watcher On TiVo’. The Watcher On TiVo carries videos from Chicago Tribune TV Critic Maureen Ryan, and would seem to be the content promised in the May announcement of TiVo’s partnership with the Tribune. At the time it sounded like the videos would only be available to Chicago locals, and I wondered in comments on some other blogs why they wouldn’t make them available to all subscribers as it would help promote the Tribune. And it looks like that’s what they’ve done, since Worcester, MA isn’t exactly in the Chicago, IL area.

You can subscribe online or on your TiVo via Find Programs & Downloads -> Download TV, Movies, & Web Video -> Browse Other Videos -> All -> The Watcher On TiVo

And I was right about it being basically a TiVoCast with a corresponding Guru Guide. The Guru Guide is available under You can subscribe online or on your TiVo via Find Programs & Downloads -> KidZone Recommendations & Guru Guides -> Featured -> Best Bets from The Watcher The Guru Guide is also available online.

On a different note, I finally got 9.4 this evening and I’ve had a little time to explore. I tried the YouTube feature and was vastly amused to discover the today’s ‘Most Viewed’ video is a ~10 minute clip from the hentai anime New Angel (aka Shin Angel). Not too graphic, looks like it was edited with a meat cleaver, but still amusing. Ah, YouTube.

But I have to say, poking around and playing different videos, it looks surprisingly good on my 61″ DLP. Much better than I was expecting actually, giving the normal resolution of YouTube videos. Well done TiVo. I hope they make the streaming H.264 generic so other sites can use it.

Being able to Review Thumbs is interesting, but I wish it allowed me to sort it alphabetically. That would make it easier to find a specific program. It looks like it is sorted by some ranking system, since there is no discernible order. There are also odd duplications in the list, with the same program or movie appearing twice.

Everything seems to work as I’d expect, I think 9.4 is a nice update.