D-Link announced the other day the new Boxee media center. I have to say I was very impressed when I first saw it. My only real concern with the design is stack ability. I hate having a bunch of devices by my TV all spread out. But I’m sure i can still figure out a good place for it. Boxee is a really cool media center. It was originally based upon the XBMC project and has since become known for its great UI and features that have been added in. I have to say this box will be a great alternative to the Apple TV or Windows Media Center
Specs and Pics:
- Item (WxDxH): 120mm x 120mm x 120mm
- 1 HDMI Connector
- 1 Optical Digital Audio (S/PDIF) Connector
- Composite Audio Connectors
- Power Button
- AC Power Connector
- Ethernet Connector
- 2 USB 2.0 Connectors
- SD Card Slot
Today Comcast, GE and NBC released information about a new venture deal that will give Comcast 51% ownership in NBC. From GE’s site:
“GE and Comcast have signed a definitive agreement to form a joint venture that will be 51 percent owned by Comcast, 49 percent owned by GE and managed by Comcast. The joint venture, which will consist of the NBC Universal businesses and Comcast’s cable networks, regional sports networks and certain digital properties and certain unconsolidated investments, will be well positioned to compete in an increasingly dynamic and competitive media and digital environment.
The combination of assets creates a leading media and entertainment company with the proven capability to provide some of the world’s most popular entertainment, news and sports content, movies and film libraries to consumers anytime, anywhere. The joint venture will provide consumers the broadest possible access to content, and support high-quality, award-winning content development across all platforms including film, television, and online. It will be anchored by an outstanding portfolio of cable networks and regional sports networks that will account for about 80 percent of its cash flow, including USA, Bravo, Syfy, E!, Versus, CNBC and MSNBC. The joint venture will be financially strong with a robust cash-flow-generation capability.”
This is really big news for everyone. This shows you just how much the market is changing and shifting. With the proliferation of content online and new distribution avenues through the web with services such as Hulu, Netflix and even Comcast’s soon to be release TV Everywhere. I believe this shows just how much the video distribution is moving away from traditional ways and will be moving to online avenues where it is relatively cheap to distribute. It’s very smart for Comcast to buy up content producers. It’ll make it cheaper for them to offer it with their services and also raise the price for others who want to distribute it.
Why would someone pick your service over someone else if you both offer the same content and services at about the same price? It’ll be interesting to see how this in fact pans out.
< Image from GE />
I have to say that I’ve always had a special place in my heart for this camera. To wake up to the news that it will be released this coming summer made me both really excited and sad. Happy that it’s finally coming out and I might be able to play with it. Sad because I don’t think I could ever justify paying 4k for it. But on the other hand to be able to take still photos and to shoot video up to 3k resolution would be amazing. This is definitely something I’ll add to my twisht list.
Specs:
- Increased REDCODE data rates
- New FLUT Color, Gamma and Sensitivity Science. Now same as EPIC.
- More extensive modular system integration.
- Interchangeable Lens mounts including focus and iris control of electronic RED, Canon and Nikon lenses, along with Zoom data (Scarlet 2/3″ Interchangeable)
- “Touch Focus Tracking” with electronic lens mounts and RED touchscreen LCD’s (Scarlet 2/3″ Interchangeable and 8x Fixed)
- Two independent microphone level channels, balanced input circuits, 48V Phantom Power, digitized at 24-bit 48KHz.
- GigaBit Ethernet port
- Scaled 1080P at 60fps
So over the weekend I’ve been playing around a little bit with HTTP video streaming. A lot of the newer video streaming technologies are starting to focus around HTTP + Adaptive streaming. The reason for this is because HTTP based streaming can scale very easily and Adaptive streaming can adjust very easily client restrictions such as bandwidth and hardware capabilities.
- Microsoft (Silverlight) – supports both HTTP and Adaptive streaming with their SmoothHD.
- Adobe (Flash) – supports Adaptive streaming and will be supporting HTTP streaming in FP 10.1
- Apple – supports HTTP and Adaptive streaming in Safari and on the iPhone.
- Move Networks – One of the first to support both HTTP and Adaptive streaming.
So in my attempt to better understand the world of streaming I ended up playing around with apples solution to live video streaming. Thanks to a few great articles at IONCANNON, I was able to create a little streaming application that would dynamically load video into Safari and onto the iPhone. Very cool stuff. I plan on working with what he created already and getting it to work with my other little side project.
So this month marks one year my wife and I have gone without a standard video service such as cable or satellite. I have to tell you it feels good to be unplugged and to be able to still watch good quality content online on our TV or Computer. I have to say at times it has been a challenge but overall the transition has been easy. The goal of disconnecting was being able to watch the shows we want to watch with out having to pay for anything. This causes some difficulties with some things such as sports. But if you can go with out or are able to find another alternative then you are set to go.
Here is my list of free online services I use most:
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The only difficult part about watching shows online is getting the content to your TV. Some applications work better than others and so on. My favorite application to do this is PLEX. How ever if that doesn’t work for you then you may want to check out Boxee or XBMC. They both allow you to watch a lot of the online content from several sites using plugins that extend the functionality of the application. They also work great for any personal content you may use.
So you have a mac and you have a Blu-Ray drive. But you can’t figure out how to get them to work with each other. Well unfortunately for us sad folks Apple has not been very supportive of the Blu-Ray platform for what ever reason. Fortunately for us though we have people out there in the open source and hacking community that are really smart and have made it possible. Unfortunately it’s not as easy as inserting your disc and pressing play. But it can be done and it isn’t all that hard.
