IPTV

December 3, 2008 --Sling Media yesterday announced the public launch of Sling.com (www.sling.com), an online video entertainment destination. Users can go to Sling.com to watch a huge selection of clips, TV shows, films, news and sports in high quality, for free, anytime they want. This includes video programming from over 90 content providers spanning 150 content brands.

“Sling.com is a wonderful combination of premium video content, television viewing, robust editorial and consumer-friendly access and socialization features,” said Jason Hirschhorn, President, Sling Media Entertainment Group. “Users will have a blast watching great clips, full length shows and movies while customizing the viewing experience to their liking.” Read more

You’ve got your office wired/wireless network, your home network, your multimedia notebook system, your TV and PVR, your MP3 (ok iPod) player, got your digital camera/camcorder, got your everything smartphone. Life is pretty good! Why do you feel a little uneasy then? Why are IT people sweating more bullets than a bank officer? Maybe it’s too much of a good thing. Phone, camera, computer, software, content development folks are packing more power, more features, more capabilities into their products at ridiculously low prices.

Internet connectivity now spans the globe. Broadband service is found in more and more homes. In five years the number of homes with broadband worldwide will triple and by then more than two million people will be on the Internet (the rest will be on their phones). Read more

See The Difference – Sales people love to show consumers how much better their TV shows will be with a big, beautiful, expensive HDTV screen. Turns out though that as many as 50% get SD content on their HD set…but they’re happy. Photo Source – Touchstone

“The government's been in bed with the entire communications industry since the forties. They've infected everything.” – Brill (Gene Hackman), Enemy of the State (1998) Read more

Travel to even the most remote parts of the world. Visit some of the worst hovels. You’ll see a TV set. People may barely have the necessities but they do have their entertainment (escape) hours. Television is the common bond across all income levels…all walks of life. More than 1.150 million households have at least one TV set.

"What about all that talk about screwing up future events, the space-time continuum?" -- Michael J. Fox (Marty McFly) – Back to the Future (1985)

Life – at work and at home is all about risk. Risk based on information. Problem is we have too much information – digital data, news, video and even analog. There’s so much information available you grab it all figuring you’ll find the right kernel of brilliance... when you have the time. It's getting worse instead of better.

The business solution has been network attached storage (NAS) and storage attached networks (SAN) to centralize data/content for internal sharing. Great in theory, sucks in reality. We want to have the combined information stored somewhere so we can access the enterprise information but ours is unique, different, special. Trust it to storage somewhere else? No way!

At home it is worse. People are increasingly installing networked storage for saving, using news, information, entertainment. In our household that means wired/wireless PCs (relatively easy) with NTI’s Shadow backup software installed on each, connection to the TV/stereo (real pain in the tush), and a pricey but big 1TB HD. Four months ago we thought that would be the last home storage device we'd need. Read more

Two events – GDC (Game Developers Conference) and NAB (National Association of Broadcasting) – set the stage, mark the trends we’ll see in a year or two in stores to fill our waking hours with entertainment content.

At NAB this year the “buzz” was all about breathtaking cameras like The Big Red One that shot stuff so beautifully you really knew you were part of the TV/movie script. Not to be outdone Sony and Panasonic said they had similar beauties… in the works.

Then there were the symphonies of beautiful NLEs from Avid, Adobe, Apple (guess what Disney uses?) and others that really streamline work for the production and post production people to make content regular folks want to watch. The new 3D tools which were perfected in gaming are becoming commonplace in content development with products like those from Boris that can finally deliver video that will get people off (and behind) their couch. Read more

While the great “digital home” hype implies that the technology of tomorrow is here today, consumers beg to differ. Or, maybe they just don’t get it – found a recent Hill & Knowlton survey conducted by Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates. More than two-thirds of the survey respondents could not define the term “digital home.”

When given a definition of the “digital home”, most people (90 percent) assumed it was very expensive, and two-thirds (66 percent) believed it was too hard to set up. However, consumers did show a definite interest in the individual digital home offerings. More than 63 percent of those surveyed wanted technology to control various devices in their home both while they are at home and when they are away. Read more

January 9, 2007 - Product launches and a major industry keynote by Microsoft's Bill Gates electrified attendees on the eve of the 2007 International CES®. Produced by the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA®), the 2007 International CES, the world's largest technology tradeshow runs through January 11, and celebrates the show's 40th anniversary.

"The pre-CES events generated major excitement and anticipation for what's to come this week at the 2007 International CES," said Gary Shapiro, president and CEO of the Consumer Electronics Association, producer of the International CES. "With 2,700 exhibitors debuting the latest technologies and consumer electronics gadgets, the 2007 International CES is the only place to be this week for consumer technology professionals. CES attendees are experiencing, first-hand, a new convergence of consumer technology products emerging from the show floor, with new products incorporating the features, services and content that consumers crave." Read more

Jan. 8 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Motorola is kicking off the new year at the 2007 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) by demonstrating the "wickedly cool and compelling" solutions that make anytime, anywhere and always-on entertainment and communication a personal reality.

Experience Motorola's seamless mobility vision that is redefining the way you can interact with information, objects and others by enabling you to simply and seamlessly link and sync with what matters most in your world -- anytime, anywhere, from any space. Read more

Jan. 8, 2007 -- Sony today introduced a high-definition living room PC with integrated Blu-ray Disc™ technology.

With the Digital Living System™ you can watch movies in stunning HD clarity, as well as record, store and playback personal content on high-capacity BD media. A built-in NTSC and an ATSC television tuner, in addition to a unidirectional digital CableCARD™, allows the VAIO® XL3 Digital Living System to replace an HD digital video recorder so you can watch and record TV without the need for a separate set-top box. Read more