You could argue that having a dumb screen connected to a smart box is a much smarter solution to the question of getting digital content to your TV, but Loewe’s new Follow Me function looks like a pretty solid feature to have in any TV. It lets you stream video content from any Loewe SL series TV to any other Loewe SL series TV so you can pause the TV program and pick up where you left off in another room. More »
Given TiVo’s staffing woes last year, we’re not quite sure what to make of these sales figures. I guess the good news for TiVo is that they obviously sold more than they expected during a difficult year for the company. According to TiVo’s latest figures, TiVo sales grew more than 29% in December 2010 under what was widely considered by economists to be a fairly lacklustre retail season. More »
Aussie PVR manufacturer Topfield has released an update for their best selling PVR that would if verified, make it the first such PVR in the country to offer series recording without an internet connection. More »
Three more movie studios to offer VOD movies to TiVo customers. More »
Could Apple’s next-gen iPods be able to receive and record a TV signal? If you think that’s more suited to an iPod touch, guess again – as these unearthed patents reveal a Classic is also being considered. More »
Back when the latest iteration of Foxtel’s iQ launched, one of the most interesting aspects was that there was a 4th HD digital tuner inside, except it was just lying there like some kind of fairytale princess waiting to be woken up by a digital Prince Charming.
Well, the good news is that the digital prince will be rolling out to iQ2 boxes around the country starting next week to activate the sleeping 4th tuner. Once it’s been woken up, Princess Tuner Number 4 will allow you to record two channels at the same time as watching a third channel live (at the moment you can only record two and either watch one of them, or watch something already recorded to the HDD or watch one of the On Demand movies or shows).
All iQ2 subscribers should be getting the update rolled out by December 1, but you won’t be notified when it’s been upgraded. It’s also a staggered rollout, so you’ll just have to keep trying to record Futurama at the same time as The Daily Show and Star Trek Voyager to see if you’ve been updated yet.
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]
In case you missed it today, there’s a big conference happening in Europe called IFA at the moment. And while we haven’t yet seen the Panasonic presentation, the guys from Trusted Reviews did, and they scored a photo of the presentation slide for Panny’s new Blu-ray recorder. Although when we say new, we mean new to Europe, not new to Australia – the DMR-BW500 has been out in Australia for a couple of months.
But is it the same device? Eagle-eyed reader Anthony pointed out that the slide Panasonic showcased at IFA explicitly says that it features BD-Live technology, which we know for a fact that the Australian version doesn’t. Considering you need an Ethernet port (or inbuilt Wi-Fi, I guess) plus some dedicated storage on board to be able to use BD-Live, it would mean that the DMR-BW500 for Europe would have different hardware to the Australian model.
In case you didn’t already know, broadcasters can slip “flags” into TV shows telling your DVR to not record it or to delete it when it hits an expiration date. TiVo users last had a run-in with the auto-delete flag a couple years ago (Media Centre users had a more recent taste), but it looks like it’s back and haunting Star Trek fans.
