Today, Verizon and Redbox (Coinstar) announced a new joint venture to be a potential one stop shop for video needs of consumers. The service will include Redbox’s current Kiosks which rent DVDs, Blu-rays and video games as well as a streaming video catalog from Verizon. The to-be-named service (I like Red Verizon) is supposed...
Are you happy with the Roku you received this Christmas? Everyone I recommended a Roku to this past holiday has been happy with it. They all love the easy set up and that they can access lots of content from Netflix, Hulu Plus, HBO GO and Amazon Instant Video. It’s my go-to box for...
What’s a metadata crisis? It has nothing to do with the “Human Time Lord Meta-Crisis” from Doctor Who. It also has nothing to do with the resignation of Netflix’s Chief Marketing Officer. Instead, over the last week, Netflix has had some issues with the accuracy of their metadata. The metadata is what describes each title...
At CES, I was treated to a sneak peak of VIZIO’s new line-up of Google TV powered TVs, Blu-ray player and streaming box. The box sports VIZIO’s new design look which you can see in all of their new products including their new PCs, tablets and laptops. As reported by our friends at the...
Some of the best content is now getting great sounding audio to go with it. It was announced today that HBO will utilize Dolby Digital Plus in its HBO GO streaming video app. The important word here is app. Connected devices that use the web-based version of HBO GO will probably not be able...
Today, Roku announced a new version of its media player on a small USB-sized stick. With access to the same channels as the current Roku players and built-in WiFi, it will connect directly to TVs via the Mobile High-Definition Link (MHL) port, turning it into a Smart TV. The first partner for the Roku...
The last couple of weeks many of the connected devices (i.e. boxes that plug into your TV) have received software updates. In the style of Chris Berman, let me see if I can give you the run down in three minutes: The folks at Roku have been busy! The Roku 2 and new LT...
Recently, HBO announced that their HBO GO video streaming streaming service would be made available to both Cablevision and Time Warner cable subscribers (if you subscribe to HBO). In both press releases, it points out that you can watch HBO GO on both Apple and Android smart phones as well as tablets and PCs....
Today, Roku announced a new version of its Amazon Instant Video Player. The update overhauls the Amazon channel’s user interface (UI). Up to this point, the only advantage other Amazon Instant Video players from LG, Sony and Panasonic had was in the UI department. When I previously did a comparison of Amazon Instant Video...
Just in time for Christmas, there’s some user interface surprises for the Playstation3 Netflix player. If you go to the near bottom of the browsable categories, you’ll see the addition of “Holiday Favorites”. Besides getting us all in the holiday spirit, the category demonstrates some new ways to present cover art. As you can...
If Oprah can have a list of favorite things for the holidays so can we. The exception being that our list is much geekier than Oprah’s (and I don’t have a TV show or a billion dollars). There’s no one-size-fits-all for connected devices in the living room, so we’ll help you find the right box...
2012 CES Coverage