An article on ConsumerFury tells how at one point Time Warner cable stated that they would not provide CableCards to customers with Tivo Series 3 PVRs. This caused much outrage, and Time Warner has appologized.
Read more after the jump.
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PC World: CableCard Technology in Trouble
I set out at the CEDIA trade show to find out how–and if–manufacturers are implementing CableCard technology. Based on what I heard today, the technology is in big trouble, and you can blame cable television companies.
Microsoft has recently released its Zune DAP. One exciting feature is the ability to share all of your songs via wireless to your friends. There is a problem.
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I’m not going to spend too much time on this post. Maybe in the near future. I just spent a lot of time trying to analyze the National Surveillance Act of 2006.
I am impressed so far. After switching MythTV over to using OpenGL I am greeted with a nice fade-in and fade-out on the menus.
The integrated upnp server has been working perfectly (except for fast-forward, but I’ve had that problem with another upnp server too). It is nicer than my previous solution of using uShare and a renaming script to produce prettily-named symlinks to the video files. The integrated upnp server allows you to search by date recorded, title of the show, channel it was recorded from, … My old solution could only sort by title of show.
Good job Myth Team!
From BroadbandReports.com: 25 Cents to Stream a DVD Quality Film - 80 Cents for HD, a nickel for iPod TV…:
Dave Burstein crunches the numbers behind offering video via broadband and concludes that it costs a quarter to stream a DVD quality movie, 80 cents for an HD film, or a nickel for iPod or AOL TV shows. A much more reasonable analysis than the recent UK report that claimed it cost ISPs $39 to stream a two hour HD film. This compared to broadcast over the air video, which costs a few pennies per hour to distribute.
“For providing managed servers and internet bandwidth, several content delivery networks are bidding $10,000 to $12,000 per continuous gigabit per month. That’s enough for 700 1.5 megabit streams, almost DVD quality if pre-encoded in the latest MPEG-4, Flash, or Windows Media. Amazon’s choice of 2.5 megabit encoding may be raising the bar. It’s also enough for over 3,000 300 Kbps streams, appropriate for iPods or the quarter screen video AOL and ABC are distributing supported by ads.”
Burstein also comments on how players like Apple and Amazon will threaten TelcoTV’s already fragile projected profit margins.
A closer look at Microsofts Volume Activation program for Vista
With the release of Windows Vista and Longhorn Server coming relatively soon, Microsoft is looking to try a new form of product activation with its volume licensing customers. Through Volume Activation VA2, Microsoft customers will have two possible ways to activate Windows Vista and Longhorn Server.
Microsoft Hard-Balling EU Over Vista
Microsoft is spreading the word that it might not ship Vista to Europe if regulators don’t cooperate.
This after CEO Steve Ballmer issued that same threat to European Commissioner Neelie Kroes during a telephone conversation on Aug. 22.
From The Korea Times:
Motorola Suspected of Samsung Sabotage:
Motorola was behind the production of an Internet video clip mocking Samsung Electronics’ slim mobile phone “Ultra,’’ according to the Web site that first showed it.
Youtube.com, a popular video blog service in the United States, said Motorola is responsible for the video though it didn’t intended to circulate it.
This release has one feature that I have been longing for, an internal UPnP server. I have been using uShare, the MythRename.pl script, and a a few cron jobs to pipe the PVR content to my D-Link DSM-320.
Vista will also support the current IPv4. The side effect, according to Mockapetris, is that a Vista PC will make two DNS requests, one for each IP version, instead of just one.
“It is going to try a DNS lookup for the IPv6 address and then a DNS lookup for the IPv4 address,” Mockapetris said. “It just uses more DNS, and until we increase the supply, things are going to go slower.”
The article is a bit too sensational for my tastes. The clear and simple answer to the question “Will Vista stall net traffic?” is no.
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