Category: Digital set-top boxes
SURVEY: DVRs – good, aren't they?
What would companies be doing if they weren’t out surverying the public and, indeed, what would the public be doing if they weren’t out being stopped by people with clipboards outside Dixons?
Today is the turn of NDS to push their products on the world by giving us the results on the “just how wonderful the DVR is” survey…
MTV launching HD music channel across Europe, from September
Staring from September 15 you’ll be able to scrutinise the skin of your favourite pop star in more detail than ever before, as MTV and its parent company Viacom launch an HD music channel for quite a chunk of Europe.
Initially shaming Britney Spears in Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Poland and Sweden, the channel will feature “new music” and “programming for kids,” all in English…
Samsung teaming up with Yahoo to offer web-enhanced TV, via the Widget Channel
Samsung will, so it is believed, announce a deal with Yahoo to include a series of web apps with its forthcoming HDTV range at this week’s IFA tech show.
The apps, powered by Yahoo Widgets and operating under the name Widget Channel, will let you augment your TV-watching experience, having all sorts of little windows popping up to give you news feeds, tell you what the weather is doing outside and let you watch share prices plummet throughout that afternoon’s episode of Countdown…
Sharp launches two digital TV recorders, one with 1080i upscaling
Sharp has introduced two new digital TV recorders (DTRs), the TU-R252H (pictured) and TU-R162H.
The TU-R252H boasts a 250GB hard drive, while the TU-R162H has a more modest 160GB drive. The larger capacity model can also upscale standard definition content to 1080i resolution and connects to a TV via its HDMI port…
Sony PlayTV for PlayStation 3 landing on September 10th
Much to our disappointment (but certainly not surprise) Sony confirmed following its E3 press conference that the newly unveiled PlayStation Store TV and Movies download service would not be hitting European shores until next year. Maybe. But don’t fret, telly loving gamers out there, Sony has something in the way of a consolation prize: Sony PlayTV. And it’s landing in a little less than two months.
Freeview rebrands Playback DTRs as Freeview+
Freeview has announced that its Freeview Playback service will now be called Freeview+. It’s something Chris thought would be a better name back in 2006 when the service launched, because any DVR with the feature does for Freeview what Sky+ does for Sky, or V+ does for Virgin.
According to Freeview’s Director of Marketing Communications, Rob Farmer, there are already over a third of a million Freeview digital TV recorders in UK households, with the market growing 76% each year. Manufacturers include Humax, Goodmans, LG, Sony and Sharp and Tvonics.
WiiPlayer – a hacked and streamlined unofficial iPlayer app for Wii
Some extremely clever man has been working away on improving the Wii’s iPlayer, creating his own solution to the rather clunky and slow official Wii implementation of the Beeb’s streaming telly service.
Moaning that the Wii’s slightly duff Opera browser simply hasn’t got the right screen resolution to handle the BBC’s default text and layout, the creator has simplified the design, bumped up the font size and generally “Apple-ised” the look and feel of iPlayer so it’s quicker to operate and easier to find your way around…
Panasonic DMR-BW500 recordable Blu-ray and PVR is Australia's first
Panasonic has launched its new all-in-one Blu-ray burner and PVR in the Australian market, claiming it to be the first recorder on the continent.
The DMR-BW500 boasts some impressive features, including a 500GB hard drive, twin TV tuners, Blu-ray burner, and full PVR functionality including up to an eight hour buffer for live TV…
Amazon set to launch its own streaming movie rental service "in the next few weeks"
Amazon’s big boss Jeff Bezos, speaking at the D6 conference, said the retail behemoth is planning to launch its own online video rental service rather soon.
That’s pretty much all he said on the matter, although he pointed out you’d be buying movies individually on an “a la carte” basis rather than paying a subscription, then watching via a streaming…
Sharp intros AQUOS Blu-ray DVRs with up to 1TB of storage
Sharp is to launch three new AQUOS combo units in Japan, featuring a Blu-ray player and Digital Video Recorder plus digital and analogue TV tuners.
Available with three hard drive sizes — 250GB, 500GB, or 1TB — they record to the hard drive in the MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 format in any of three different bitrates (4.8, 8, and 12Mbps), so users can choose what quality to record at and, consequently, how much content can be stored…
