Mobile Tivo thoughts

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Two interesting data points:

New York Times: Studios Rush to Cash In on DVD Boom (via Scripting News):

Between January and mid-March this year, Americans spent $1.78 billion at the box office. But in the same period they spent $4.8 billion — more than $3 billion more — to buy and rent DVD’s and videocassettes.

Ipsos News, Downloaders Expanding To Motion Pictures And Music Videos (via David Akin):

New findings from TEMPO, Ipsos-Insight’s quarterly study of digital music behaviors, reveal that in late 2003, more than one-fifth (21%) of American downloaders aged 12 and older had downloaded a full-length motion picture off of the Internet. Further, nearly one out of ten (9%) did so within the 30 days previous to the survey.

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Wired: With a DVR, the Puck Stops Here

When Scott Mellanby of the St. Louis Blues apparently scored the tying goal late in a recent National Hockey League playoff game with the San Jose Sharks, Sharks assistant coach Tim Hunter wasn’t worried.

He quickly replayed the whole scene on his tablet PC equipped with TiVo-like functionality and verified that there was no goal. In contrast, it took officials 2.5 minutes to call up to the booth and then rule on the play.

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Microsoft Monitor: The Blog in Your Living Room

Why shouldn’t the family want to gather in front of the Media Center PC to watch a video or photo blog?

I was amazed at how easy it was to drop the memory for my camera into my Media Center and browse my photos (and rotate, delete, and touch them up) (thanks Ben! (Ben, my office mate, ‘owns’ this functionality)). The end to end solution I now want to see is using my remote control to get them on my blog. I have a bunch of photos languishing on my camera simply because it’s too much effort to get them onto my blog. I need it made easier and that’s what the 10′ UI is all about.

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Yay, for new toys!

Tomorrow morning I’m trading my HP 873n Media Center in for the Viewsonic m2000 Media Center because I need an optical (SPDIF) audio out port on it to get surround sound working with my receiver.

Ideally I’d like to try a Gateway 901x (link goes to 901) but I’m pretty far back on the waiting list.

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Press release, VBox Announces Support for Microsoft’s Windows XP Media Center:

DTA150 and DTA151 add Digital High Definition television reception and recording to Windows XP Media Center Edition 2004

Now if only my building had a @#$% HDTV cable provider!

In any event, this is very cool. I think it’s also big news. I’m surprised this hasn’t popped up on Engadget, Gizmodo and PVRBlog. I mean enough press people clamour for this.

Update: Engadget coverage

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I got my take home Media Center yesterday! It’s a HP 873n (it looks like it is no longer available). Specs: P4 2.5ghz, Hauppauge tuner, nVidia GeForce FX5200, DVD writer, CD writer,… It has DVI output and surround sound. Most importantly it’s running the latest most bleeding edge build of Windows Media Center.

…A big perk at working in the eHome division is that you get a free take home Media Center. The catch is that you have to run the latest builds which is great because we get the latest functionality first but means you’re finding (and logging) a lot of bugs.

I’d invite you all over to check it out but I don’t have a TV or cable yet. When that happens I will.

Brad: I haven’t had a problem playing any of the TV shows I’ve downloaded off the Internet.

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$99 Re-furb’d Tivos. I just might buy one.

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Announcing: Newsgator for Windows Media Center.

NewsGator Technologies launched NewsGator Media Center Edition today, which allows users to read syndicated content feeds on their TV with Windows XP Media Center Edition. Both text and multimedia content is supported, with an interface designed to be used with a remote control from across the room. NewsGator Media Center Edition shows information that has not already been viewed on another device by synchronizing user subscriptions with NewsGator Online Services.

I got hooked up with the beta for this but was not able to find the time to try it out until today (well Monday). My first impression is that this is very slick. I can’t wait to get my slick TV and really try this out.

If it wasn’t past midnight I’m sure I could go verify this.. But does it support downloading enclosures? If so, it’d be great if it would download the enclosures in my feeds and then put the downloaded multimedia into My Videos so that I could watch them easily.

(See Paul, this is an example of our rich third party bleh bleh bleh :).)

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From Ray who has combined RSS+BitTorrent:

Thought you might be interested in this. I wrote a python script that
parses RSS feeds, looks for the enclosure
tag(http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/bitTorrent) then downloads any
new torrent found.

My problem is that apart from legaltorrents.com there is no site that I
have found that supports the enclosure tag. Ultimately I would like to
put in a search string that says something like ‘Alias’ so when new
alias episodes come out, it just downloads them for me.

Reason that I’m emailing you is, maybe you know of some rss feeds that
have the enclosure tag, and I thought you might be interested in the
script :)

Anyone have any feed recommendations? Would it be possible to scrap a feed together from somewhere like Suprnova?

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