Things must be looking up for the people at Slingbox, with their announcement at CES of the Slingcatcher, allowing content to be transmited on a Slingbox-connected TV to another TV set, either to one in the same house via a home network or to one in a remote location via the Internet.

According to Forbes, SlingCatcher will be available in mid-2007 for less than $200.

Users with a home Internet network will be able to highlight an online video on their computer screen and “sling” it to a TV outfitted with a SlingCatcher. The device will format Internet video feed so that it looks sharper than the poor resolution that would usually result from connecting a TV to a computer.

SlingCatcher will also be able to deliver other multimedia content to a TV, including digital photos, slide shows and music.

Tags: Slingbox, Slingcatcher, CES

“The Digital Entertainer HD is the first device that makes Youtube videos available on a television, claimed Netgear’s vice president of product marketing Vivek Pathela.”

Bullsh*t. Windows XP MCE edition plays YouTube videos on a TV via a very simple plugin. It plays Google Video videos as well as videos from Grouper and DivX Stage 6. I’m running an earlier version of the plugin (that only featured YouTube and Google video), but I’ve been running it for the better part of a year. Simply, Netgear has lied. I’m betting that some of the alternative software packages to MCE out there have YouTube capability as well. But before you say I’m talking software not a “device”, isn’t a MCE box a device? You can buy them online, both from mainstream retailers and specialists as well. Netgears box is after all nothing really more than cobbled together computer parts, and somewhere inside of it will be software to run it all.

Tags: NetGear, YouTube, MCE

Zatz Not Funny has all the details on the three new sling boxes. Looks like a whole pile of improvements. Given I’ve personally got my house wired to the max with multiple PC’s at all major entertainment points it’s not something I’ll be buying, but worth a look.

SageTV Media Center today becomes the first full-featured personal video recorder/media center software product to offer placeshifting capabilities enabling users to access their live or recorded TV, music and photos on any PC when they are away from home. The integration of PVR and placeshifting functionality in a single system yields better video quality and faster navigation than a separate placeshifting box connected to a PVR while also costing significantly less than purchasing two separate solutions.

The new placeshifting functionality is available immediately as a $30 add- on to both the Windows and Linux OEM editions of just-released SageTV Media Center Version 5.0.

“Placeshifting lets you enjoy your personal digital media library anywhere in the world, and combining PVR and placeshifting capabilities solves the performance, complexity and cost problems created by standalone placeshifting solutions,” said Mike Machado, CEO of Sage TV. “You don’t need an extra piece of hardware on your network, you don’t need to pay monthly subscription fees for a PVR service, you avoid the losses in video quality caused by having to rerecord the recorded video, and you don’t have to wait while the box sends IR commands to a PVR, records the TV signal and sends it for decoding.”

Record in Chicago, Watch in Hong Kong
With SageTV’s new placeshifting feature, users can watch live or recorded TV from their home network as well as access their music and photo libraries from any PC with an Internet connection — whether in a hotel, office, airport, Wi-Fi cafe, at the pool or beach, or simply visiting family in another city. Watch your hometown news or ballgames from out of town, see a “Desperate Housewives” or “Survivor” episode from your PVR, play your favorite Nine Inch Nails or Nickelback tunes, and share your latest family snapshots wherever you are. No tuner card is required on the remote PC, and no extra hardware or software is required at home.

Share Video at Home Even in 802.11b Environments
In addition, SageTV’s new placeshifting function can be used to stream video to any computer or TV in the home, including PCs located in weak wireless signal areas or those equipped with older 802.11b Wi-Fi. Only the PC equipped with the core SageTV Media Center application needs a tuner card.

No Interference with Family Viewing
Unlike standalone placeshifting products that cannot support different programming simultaneously, SageTV Media Center allows family members at home or away, or in different locations in the house, to watch the programs of their choice without being affected by each other’s viewing habits. With one tuner in the SageTV-equipped PC at home, one user can watch any live or recorded TV while the other watches any recorded TV. With two tuners, both parties can also watch either live or recorded TV at the same time.

Full-Featured PVR with 14-Day EPG
These features extend the functionality of SageTV Media Center, a full- featured PVR that enables users to record a single show or whole season of their favorite television programs on their PCs; pause, rewind and fast- forward live or recorded cable, satellite or antenna TV shows; and record multiple shows on multiple tuners simultaneously. Integrated 14-day U.S., Canadian and European program guides are available directly from the SageTV interface, eliminating the need to switch to a separate online application to plan one’s TV viewing and recording.

For end users, SageTV eliminates the need to subscribe to a monthly digital video recording service or buy a new Windows XP MCE PC or Windows XP MCE operating system to obtain PVR/media center capabilities. For OEMs, the application makes it possible to build advanced multi-stream PVR products that also provide access to all music, photo and movies on the network from a single interface on Windows PCs or Linux PCs and embedded set-tops.

Specifications, Pricing and Availability
Version 5.0 of SageTV Media Center for Windows and SageTV Media Center Linux OEM Edition is available immediately at www.sagetv.com . The special introductory price for both the core application and the new placeshifting feature is $99.95, a $10 savings over purchasing the $79.95 PVR/media center software and $30 placeshifting option separately. A complete package including the SageTV application with placeshifting plus an Hauppage tuner card is $179.95. Additional concurrent placeshifting connections are available for $30 each.

Minimum system requirements include an Intel Pentium III 600 MHz or AMD Athlon 600 MHz computer with Microsoft Windows 98SE, 2000 SP3 or higher, ME or XP (Home, Pro or MCE) and 128MB RAM (256MB recommended).

Yahoo couldn’t give a rats arse about ppl outside of the US at all. Meedio worked outside the US, obviously Yahoo isn’t interested in us though.

Says Meedio:

Today is a big day for the team here at Meedio; we have sold most of our technology to Yahoo!

David Brott, Jeff (beergeek), Kenny (fasttech), Pedro (flea0) and I are joining Yahoo!’s Digital Home team. We’ve had the opportunity to spend a lot of time with Yahoo! in the past few months and we love the way they are developing the best, most user-friendly services for the Digital Home.

As I said before, behind Meedio LLC the company, is Meedio the idea and all of us want to see it succeed. The sad truth is that we had recently hit a brick wall and did not have the resources to make it flourish. But, Yahoo! has a great team that is just as dedicated and passionate as we are in this space and, of course, they carry the content and might of an early Internet pioneer. Together, the combination can be nothing but a winner. We are thrilled at the opportunity to put the Meedio idea together with the Yahoo! experience and bring it to millions of people all around the world!

To be perfectly honest with you, before I wrote the first line of Meedio code, I envisioned a day when it could be used as the “new browser”; to bring all the content goodness that Yahoo! can provide to the 10 foot world. It is really exciting seeing it actually happen.

(via PVR Wire)

“If you want to turn your den, home office, or dorm room into a home theater without making the move to an A/V-style form factor, the HP Pavilion Media Center TV m7360n offers the same media-friendly features we saw in the previous model, the HP Media Center m7260n Photosmart PC; however, it adds a shiny Intel Viiv sticker on the front. Even though we like many of the proprietary features on the $1,150 (after $50 mail-in rebate) m7360n, including a LightScribe DVD burner and a slot for HP’s Personal Media Drive, the value of the Viiv branding is dubious.”

Full review here.

From the announcement:
2006-2-21 v0.96.8
- Added a checkbox to disable plugins. This can be useful for tracing the source of faults.
- Fixed a bug that would cause the task description to not show when using a horizontal menu skin.
- Now supports video in a window (not for XCard/PVR350).
- Added option to use alternative MVP dongle. This is still very new, and a bit buggy. It does allow the video inset window which was not possible with the original Hauppauge dongle. Its not until you try to write these things yourself that you realise how well someone else has done…
- Added a setting in config.xml to set the processor affinity (ForceSingleProcessorAffinity), which can be invaluable for users with multiple CPUs or multi-core CPUs. With out this, directshow can stutter on many setups.
- Auto PID tracking for BDA users.
- Fixed a bug that would cause an error playing music with visualisations for user with USB-UIRT as an input device.
- VMR7 now also remembering the ‘last aspect ratio’.
- Added menu options to the system tray to start GB-PVR or Config. Also added about box showing the version number.
- Added a couple of extra database indexes that should speed up a few activies for people with huge numbers of show listings
- Fixed a bug that could cause manual reoccurring to not automatic schedule new recordings under a specific set of circumstances.
- Fixed a bug with season recording duplicate detection.
- Playing DVR-MS files will now use the video decoder you have selected in the config app, rather than the system default.
- Fixed a bug that would cause the music visualisations to not kick in with the screensaver
- Added option to use new VMR9 Custom Renderer. This allows the OSD to be updated when video is not being played, which is essential for displaying some status messages about the DVB signal. Also means you can skip while the video is paused.
- Fixed a bug that could cause an error message when deleting a file from the video library
- Fixed a bug that could cause playback to stop when switching net radio stations
- Some speed improvements in the recordings screen.
- Fixed a bug that could cause a 30 second stutter in timeshift mode.
- Added some logic to give recordings a second chance. 30 seconds after the recording was started, the file size is checked. If it is not growing normally, then the recording is stopped and restarted.
- Added some logic to cope with US broadcasts networks that create one or two minute show overlaps to confuse PVRs. It’ll default to allowing up to a three minute overlap, but this can be changed using the setting in config.xml. The overlap period will be missing from the beginning of the second show. This logic is only applied if no other tuner is available at the time.
- A couple buttons that previously didnt work on the MCE remotes now work.
- Several improvements to the usage of zap2it data…multiple capture source share the single EPG request if possible, incremental updates to cover gap betwen current guide data and requested days plus today and tomorrow.
- FM Radio screen is now uses composite images for the station list so that it is more skinable than previous releases.
- Partial aspect ratio control (F7) support for Overlay renderer. Those aspect ratios that specify a number outside of the range 0…1 (ie, off the side of the screen) will not work.
- Added a new ‘System’ screen which allows you to shutdown/hibernate/restart etc. It also shows a bit of summary system information. I also intended to have a ’settings’ button in here to change plugin settings etc, but I ran out of time so this feature is hidden for now. It’ll make an appearance in the next release.
- Added checkbox and logic to the device configuration pages to ‘only show detected devices’. This should help with initial card setup difficulties that some users have.
- Added some logic to try to automatically compact the database after the EPG update. It can only do this if no other process is trying to actively use the database at the time.
- Fixed a couple of timeshift related bugs
- Fixed some other bugs which I forget.
- Added several languages to the default install, and the ability to switch between them in the config app.
- A right mouse button click now defaults to the same behaviour as pressing the ‘escape’ key.