Categories: TV

Fury over California’s Proposed TV Rules

Posted by: Cliff Edwards on November 03

With the California Energy Commission seemingly on the verge of outlawing flat-screen TV models that guzzle energy, the consumer electronics industry is taking issue with what it says are blatantly…

Macrovision Becomes ROVI, Launches New TV Menu System

Posted by: Arik Hesseldahl on July 16

Macrovision is the kind of company you don’t often think about, because most of the things it does are in the background. When you insert a CD into your computer…

High-Def Cables Get Smarter

Posted by: Cliff Edwards on May 28

Is it time to throw out your HDTV and home theater equipment? Consumer eletronics makers sure hope so. The consortium of companies that help create the standard for high-definition multimedia…

Is There an Ultra-Widescreen TV in Your Future?

Posted by: Stephen Wildstrom on April 24

Just when we are getting used to wide-screen TVs, it looks like they may been getting even wider. Last week, at a preview press conference in Malta for for the…

Roku Adds Amazon Video on Demand

Posted by: Cliff Edwards on March 03

Roku’s Video Player and Amazon’s Video on Demand service hope to make beautiful pictures together. For those who didn’t think there was enough goodness in Roku’s $99 streaming video box,…

DTV: A Mess That Could Have Been Avoided

Posted by: Cliff Edwards on January 27

As my colleague Steve Wildstrom wrote in an earlier post, it looks like the much-delayed transition to all-digital television will be delayed yet again. But will it really? The Senate…

A Death Knell for Plasma TV?

Posted by: Cliff Edwards on January 21

Is it time to unplug the plasma TV? European regulators are beginning to think so—at least for those giant energy-guzzling beasts that require several fans to keep cool. The European…

CES: Live TV Comes to the Car

Posted by: Cliff Edwards on January 09

Chipmaker Qualcomm has been quietly plugging away over the past couple of years trying to get its MediaFlo TV solution on more cellular phones. It has struck deals with Verizon…

Should the Feds Delay the DTV Transition?

Posted by: Olga Kharif on January 07

TV tech is hitting some speed bumps on its way into the Digital Age. One of the country’s most influential consumer groups is asking the government to push back the Feb. 17 deadline when so-called analog TV signals are due to go dark, making way for digital signals. The analog-to-digital transition has been a long time in the making, and Consumers Union, the nonprofit publisher of Consumer Reports magazine, says people need a little more time.

Redeem Your DTV Coupon Now — Or Be Sorry Later

Posted by: Olga Kharif on September 15

It looks like the government is running out of funds designed to help Americans transition from analog to digital television service. The National Telecommunications and Information Administration administering the converter box coupon program has asked Congress for extra funds.

3D TV: Not So Fast

Posted by: Stephen Wildstrom on August 29

LG Electronics has become the latest consumer electronics firm to show off a 3D display, only to show off again that the technology is nowhere close to ready for for…

Cable and the Digital Transition: Stuff I Left Out of the Column

Posted by: Stephen Wildstrom on August 15

In my column on the digital TV transition, space limitations forced me to shorthand what happens if you have cable, particularly if you have cable connected directly to a cable-ready…

Good Enough Technology: My New $30 TV

Posted by: Rob Hof on August 14

It so happened that my rather old TV decided to die on the second day of the Olympics, the one sports event my wife cannot do without. So I…

Will Sony’s Cable Deal Kill the Set Top Box?

Posted by: Stephen Wildstrom on May 28

A deal allows Sony to build cable TV set top box capabilities into TVs and other products. But subsidies may keep the traditional set top box alive.

Netflix Hitting Its Online Stride?

Posted by: Cliff Edwards on May 20

Couch potatoes rejoice? Not just yet. Movie rental company Netflix just introduced a $99 set-top box capable of streaming movies over the Internet directly to televisions in the home. The…

The HDTV Fallout

Posted by: Cliff Edwards on April 08

Could the long-awaited HDTV shakeout finally be happening? Once considered one of the most technologically savvy consumer electronics companies in the world, Royal Philips Electronics says it’s getting out of…

CES Dispatch—Bang & Olufsen’s $55K TV

Posted by: Cliff Edwards on January 09

OK, if you have to ask the price, you should probably shouldn’t be shopping in Bang & Olufsen’s stores. And if you’re really on a budget, the company’s new BeoVision…

CES Dispatch—Comcast (Sort Of) Gets Aggressive

Posted by: Cliff Edwards on January 07

Comcast CEO Brian Roberts won’t give his keynote speech at the annual Consumer Electronics Show until Jan. 8, but early indications point to a cable company that is getting more…

OLED TV or J-U-N-K?

Posted by: Cliff Edwards on January 06

The HDTV wars rage on. It didn’t take long for Sony Electronics’ competitors to trash its new organic light-emitting diode television at the annual Consumer Electronics Show. Hours before Sony…

Google Enlists Nielsen in TV Ad Push

Posted by: Rob Hof on October 23

We haven’t heard much of Google TV Ads since it was announced last April, with a deal to run ads on EchoStar Communications’ DISH network. The search giant is hoping…

The Analog TV Problem

Posted by: Olga Kharif on October 16

Today, the Federal Communications Commission fined a number of retailers including RadioShack, Fred Meyer Stores and Boscov’s for failure to post special labels on their analog-only televisions notifying consumers that their TVs will stop working in a year because of the analog-to-digital technology transition.

Social Television at Current.com

Posted by: Stephen Wildstrom on October 15

The timing could hardly be better for CurrentTV. Just days after board chairman Al Gore won a share of the Nobel Peace Price, the fledging youth-oriented news and information cable…

A TV That Listens Up

Posted by: Olga Kharif on September 20

TV maker Westinghouse Digital Electronics just polled 1,200 people about what features they’d like to see in their TV. Voice recognition topped the list: People want to be able to tell the TV to tune to Super Bowl, or to start taping a show. I bet that if a product like that comes out, sales would go through the roof.

All the More Reason to Just Buy the Damn Discs

Posted by: Rob Hof on August 31

So everybody’s in a tizzy over NBC Universal’s decision not to renew its contract with Apple to make digital downloads of TV shows available on iTunes. Personally, I couldn’t care…

HDTV Madness?

Posted by: Cliff Edwards on May 10

Pioneer officially took the wraps off its new line of plasma HDTVs on May 9. It’s impressive technology. Having seen pre-finalized versions at the Consumer Electronics Show, it’s clear Pioneer…

MediaFlo TV Programming: Oldies

Posted by: Olga Kharif on April 10

Trialing MediaFlo mobile TV service, I have found that much of the programming available today had already run in prime time yesterday. Is that going to be all right with consumers?

Will the Studios’ YouTube Killer Fly?

Posted by: Rob Hof on March 22

It looks like the long-rumored alternative to YouTube will actually happen, as NBC Universal and News Corp. team to provide TV show clips and even full-length movies to a new…

Movie Downloads Suck—But Don’t Blame Technology

Posted by: Stephen Wildstrom on February 09

I just want to amplify my colleague Rob Hof’s post on the suckiness of movie downloads. Charlie White at Gizmodo gives 10 good reasons, but it’s worth noting that with…

Movie Downloads: Who Cares?

Posted by: Rob Hof on February 08

OK, so I cheered when Amazon.com and Tivo hooked up to offer movie downloads you can actually watch on your TV. But Charlie White at Gizmodo, in a post listing…

Have You Tried Joost?

Posted by: Olga Kharif on January 18

Have you tried Joost? I’d love to hear what you thought of it.

Network2.tv:The Vonage of TV?

Posted by: Olga Kharif on October 10

Web-calling pioneer Jeff Pulver is working on a new venture, Network2.tv. His goal: To create an online network that will eventually compete with the likes of ABC and CNN.

Video Product Reviews: An Idea Worth Five Stars?

Posted by: Olga Kharif on October 03

Love Epinions.com and Amazon.com’s reviews? Check out video product reviews on YouTube.com or ExpoTV.com, which lets people record and post video product reviews. Soon, the site will start compensating posters for their submissions, too.

Video Tagging Gets Cool

Posted by: Olga Kharif on September 19

First, we tagged photos. Now, video tagging, promising to vastly improve video search, is the next big thing. Offerings from ComVu and Motionbox offer a glimpse of what’s to come.

Amazon’s Video Download Service Unmasked?

Posted by: Rob Hof on August 21

Alan Taylor discovered what appears to be a beta site for Amazon’s widely expected video download service, which looks like it’s called Amazon Unbox. Taylor, a former Amazonian, clearly did…

YouTube: 100 Million Videos a Day

Posted by: Rob Hof on July 14

Back in March at PC Forum, when someone from YouTube stepped up at a session and mentioned that the video service was streaming 30 million videos a day, I thought…

Why Carriers Will Love Place-Shifting

Posted by: Olga Kharif on February 28

A slew of recent articles seems to suggest that wireless and wired broadband service providers will do all in their power to fight so-called place-shifting technology, allowing users to watch their home TVs remotely. But I think that the opposite will be true: Carriers will jump onto the place-shifting bandwagon, pronto.

Tube Music Network And The New TV

Posted by: Olga Kharif on January 31

Yesterday, I talked with Les Garland, co-founder of popular music channels MTV and VH1. Last year, he launched The Tube Music Network, a music channel only accessible to people with digital TV tuners (currently, less than 1% of Americans have those, but their numbers are growing rapidly). As this digital TV takes off, we could see a plethora of new channels emerge — and do to traditional TV what FM did to AM radio.