techAU Gamecast Episode #1
Posted Tuesday, March 8, 2011 at 11:44 am by Jason Cartwright
Very happy to announce a brand new show for techAU – Gamecast will bring your the events of the gaming industry in video form. Hosted by James Goldsworthy, the first episode is now available below. As with all shows it will evolve over time, but let us know what you think in the comments.
Show notes
Aussie R18+ decision deferred again
Bungie’s next game = MMOFPS ‘Destiny’?
Battlefield 3 gameplay(release "fall 2011" sept) [video]
Crysis 2 demo – Crysis 2 will be released for the PC, PS3, and Xbox 360 on March 22, 2011.
Game Developers Choice Awards
Bulletstorm review by Nanopunk [link]
Hybrid (Xbox Live Arcade) – New movement system in up coming game hybrid
ABC iView returns to Boxee, brings 149 shows
Posted Monday, March 7, 2011 at 6:37 pm by Jason Cartwright
After drawing Boxee’s attention to the ABC iView 84% loading issue in November last year, iView was removed. This meant Australian Boxee Box owners lost Australian content until the issue was fixed. Well today that issue has been resolved and ABC iView content has once again returned to the little box that could.
There’s 149 shows on offer, ranging from the popular well known shows like Catalyst, Good Game, Doctor Who and even children’s programs like Thomas the tank engine. Each show contains multiple episodes, but in just how many episodes lies the problem. Content is very slim, with most shows offering a few episodes, sometimes as low as 2, many of which are also old back catalogue. This is very disappointing and I’d look to the ABC to explain why, obviously Boxee would love to have as much content as possible and the most recent content at that, which can only mean the rights holders are getting in the way.. again.
One gem in the addition of an ABC News 24 live stream in both medium and high quality, but unfortunately their definition of ‘high quality’ is not the same as mine. In fact the quality of the programs is on SD, meaning you’ll need to shift that couch back so the content on your super-expensive HDTV actually looks passable. This is clearly ABC iView’s stream quality, not a fault of Boxee’s, you can only do what you can with what your given.
One frustration you’ll experience when viewing ABC iView content on the Boxee Box is that after making your selection, you’ll have to wait for it to load, then click again to actually watch the program. In all other videos on Boxee this happens automatically with Boxee doing the hard lifting (maximize scraping) for you. Why the cursor isn’t hidden automatically is beyond me.
So its there people, go watch it if you have a Boxee Box, but this implementation is certainly not something that you should buy it for.
The future of Television: Upgradable TV concept
Posted Wednesday, February 16, 2011 at 6:07 pm by Jason Cartwright
While we don’t commonly think of televisions as gadgets, there’s no reason they couldn’t be the biggest and best gadget in our homes. TV’s are commonly thought of as just a dumb screens, with all the smarts coming from our set-top boxes. What if that all changed ?
What if instead of television manufacturers trying to guess what consumer needs will be, that consumers decide what features they need. As their needs grow over the years, they can simply upgrade components.
The idea came from the ease in which consumers can purchase and upgrade their HDD on the Xbox 360. When we combine that concept with what we’ve learnt in the computer industry over the past 10-15 years and consumer’s love for customising, its easy to see why this is the future of television.
Additionally by offering TV’s with the bare essentials, it drives the cost down and dramatically lowers the cost of entry. The model of buying a TV then becomes very similar to that of a computer, users choose which features they want, but importantly, only the features they want.
The potential upgradable components are listed below.
Upgradable components
- CPU/GPU (Single/Dual/Quad-core)
- RAM
- Number of OTA tuners
- Number of HDMI ports
- Networking (WiFi / Ethernet / Bluetooth)
- SD card reader, USB 3.0
- HDD/SSD (for DVR storage)
- Optical Drive (DVD / Blu-ray)
- Pay TV add-in (Austar/Foxtel)
These Upgradable components could be purchased in-store or online and delivered to the consumers home. This model is likely to also create a vibrant aftermarket of parts from consumers who upgrade to the latest offerings. With an upgradable hardware platform, this also means software developers now have the horsepower to drive innovation in this space. TV’s today are typically built on top of some derivative of Linux, due to its stability and ability to run on low-spec hardware, with that barrier removed, you essentially have a HTPC built right into your TV. This eliminates the need for multiple set-top boxes, sorry Boxee, TiVo and Apple TV. Gaming consoles may still exist in their own right, which is catered for by via the HDMI or potentially Wi-Di connections.
IPTV / OTA Equality
Never before has IP-delivered television been given the same presence as over-the-air broadcasts. Usually relegated to complex set-top box setup requiring a change to the TV input, making it unappealing and unavailable to the main stream. IPTV streams can be added as favourite channels and are accessed by the standard channel up and channel down remote operations.
YouTube Sessions: Laneway festival at 5:15pm today
Posted Sunday, February 6, 2011 at 2:33 pm by Jason Cartwright
Streaming Live through the powers of the internets, YouTube Sessions will be at Sydney’s Laneway Festival this afternoon ! You can watch all the action @ http://www.youtube.com/sessions from today, 6th Feb 2011 at 5:15pm AEST. As well as live performances from the sold out event, there’ll be back stage interviews with the bands, if your into music, you should probably high tail it to your nearest computer.
Boxee Box users, your purchase just became that much more valuable, beaming the Laneway Festival right into your living room. Just be sure to flip that remote over and use the qwerty goodness to search for ‘sessions’ in the YouTube app.
Update
That’d be too easy, apparently that only searches videos, not channels. Best way to get there is to launch Boxee Browser and go strait to youtube.com/sessions.
If you can’t find your way to a computer, don’t stress, there is also a Laneway App for both iOS and Android. Head over to the App Store or the Android Market to download it now.
YouTube switches to iFrame embed, broken in WLW
Posted Saturday, January 22, 2011 at 2:22 pm by Jason Cartwright
Along with YouTube’s new front page (when logged in), they also made an important change to how the embed code is handled. Traditionally embedding YouTube videos used the <embed> tags, but now uses <iframe> instead. There’s one big problem with this, support. Not all websites enable iFrame embeds, actually some actively prevent it.
More importantly for Windows Live Writer users, the iFrame code simply doesn’t work. Pasting in the new code..
.. results in a black box being inserted (pictured above), not the video. As a workaround there is still an embed option to use the old embed code which solves the issue.. for now.
While this workaround gets the job done, it is an extra, annoying step in the process of sharing YouTube video. I’d like to see an option to use the old embed code by default, rather than have to remember each time. As for Google’s reason for making the switch in the first place, that’s all part of their push towards HTML5.
If you use the new embed code style, your viewers will be able to view your embedded video in one of our Flash or HTML5 players, depending on their viewing environment and preferences.
An additional benefit of the new embed style is that it will eventually allow embeds to work on mobile devices, which typically use a built-in player instead of Flash or HTML5.
In effect, this change has exposed the fact that even the latest 2011 version of Windows Live Writer isn’t HTML5 compatible. Admittedly a brand new standard that is yet to gain mass adoption, that said the Windows Live team need to release an update to remedy this soon and be ahead of the curve. YouTube may just be the first of many video sharing sites to make the switch and wether we like it or not, HTML5 is coming. Its disappointing the once promised <video> tag still won’t solve the embedding issue.
Sorry Boxee Box, D-Links cheating on you, introducing Iomega TV.
Posted Tuesday, January 4, 2011 at 11:19 pm by Jason Cartwright
Digital Trends has a great post about a brand new hardware device from D-Link. While we seen a dedicated hardware set-top box with a cute-angled design from D-link in late 2010, D-Link aren’t stopping there. The Iomega TV set-top box has one significant difference – local store. Available in 1 or 2TB versions, the price is likely to be more expensive than Boxee Box, but both run the same Boxee software.
Another similarity is the remote with qwerty keyboard on the back. One advantage of coming second is that you can improve on what came before you. The front of the remote at first glance is more complex, but any boxee box user will see it as better functionality. The inclusion of a dedicated Home button is a big deal, something really missing from Boxee Box, at times you can be 4-5 levels deep with the only option available being the back button.
While the Iomega TV box is certainly not as sexy, unique or conversational as the Boxee Box, Iomega focus more on function, rather than form. It’s expected the latest Boxee-running set-top box will start at a recommended price of US$229.99, but that’s with no storage. Expect an the 1 and 2TB versions to be priced at $299.99 and $349.99 respectively.
Its expected the device will go on sale in the US in February, lets hope for Boxee fans that’s an international launch so there’s some competition in the market. Oh an by the way.. a ‘feature’ of the Iomega is that it will stack on top of your existing home entertainment gear.
Like most announcements this week, expect more detail to be released as CES officially starts, later this week.
Image source: Ubergizmo.com
Update
Ubergizmo has all the specs on the device, head over there now to get the details.
More @ Digital Trends
