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Lifehacker
DirecTV has officially canned their efforts to bring the HDPC-20 tuner to market. The device would have allowed subscribers to integrate their service with Windows Media Centre.
After punting their agreement with Dish Network to sell satellite as part of a triple play package, AT&T has decided to settle down with DirecTV. They'll keep hawking Dish through Jan. 31, after which they'll offer DirecTV anywhere they... Read More »
TiVo and DirecTV have a chaotic history, but now that it's all straightened out, the two companies can move forward to release new hardware. Now they're planning a follow up to the HD DirecTiVo, the aging, discontinued HD TiVo platform for DirecTV that used inefficient MPEG2 encoding. Expected in the second half of 2009, the new TiVo HD will support MPEG4 recording and newer TiVo features like Swivel Search. As a former TiVo user who's now running an HR21 with a less than optimal interface, I can only see more DVR options as a good thing. [Zatz Not Funny]
DirecTV is poised to take the lead in the HD battle by adding 30 extra channels starting on August 14th. That would give them 130 channels of HD in total--putting them well on their way to the 150 mark they floated around early this year. By the end of this month they also plan to be the first company to transmit all of their HD programming in the MPEG-4 Advanced Video Coding standard with Dolby Digital Audio. And the icing on the cake will come later this year in the form of 1080p movies.
Windows Media Centre still isn't what Microsoft wants it to be, but it has its fans, and its getting an update this month that they've been waiting for. Word is coming down, though, that this update isn't the one the users are lusting after, the one with H.264 and DirectTV tuner support. Instead it's a minor upgrade that adds things like international support. But fret not, users, as now it seems like there's another rumour flying around about another update later in the year which will add many requested features. Patience, my fellow home theatre nerds, we'll get our updates. [EngadgetHD]
This is classic corporate espionage/sabotage at its finest. Dish Network is accusing News Corp.—which used to have a 39 percent stake in DirecTV and still provides its security tech—of hiring hacker Christopher Tarnovsky to break into Dish's network, steal the security codes, and use them to make pirated cards to flood the black market. It sounds insane, but Tarnovsky admitted in court he was paid James Bond villain style, with US$20,000 cash payments mailed from Canada hidden inside "electronic devices."
John Sciacca at Sound & Vision says his DVR no longer lets him record his favourite show, Survivor. Sciacca claims that despite setting his Time Warner box to record every episode of the reality show, when the time comes, it acts as if there is nothing to record. Sometimes, he says, the record light even goes on during the show, but it isn't saved to the hard drive. Apparently he's not the only one stuck without Survivor.
The latest DirecTV 11 satellite just built by Boeing has the capacity to offer 150 national HD channels and 1,500 local channels sometime in the future. So get ready to fire up those HDTVs—the satellite is expected to launch in March. [Boeing]
Scans of DirecTV's PC Tuner showed up on the DBStalk forums, which supposedly has two coaxial inputs, one USB output, ethernet and USB inputs, Vista Media Center support, and a DVR interface that uses your PC's HDD. No word on whether the tuner is HD or SD, but If this is the real deal, it looks promising. [DBStalk Forums]
• A security researcher published code that is capable of bricking most HP and Compaq laptops. That doesn't sound too good. [Slashdot]
• Microsoft continues to rename everything in sight, this time folding IPTV, HD DVD, and Media Center into one group called Connected TV. [News.com]
