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Seagate’s BlackArmor NAS 110: Not Very Media-Friendly
Most of the network-attached storage drives I’ve tested recently have been decidedly un-geeky products. But not Seagate’s BlackArmor NAS 110. While this networked drive is incredibly easy to install, its management software is a bit too techie for my taste, making this an imperfect solution for someone looking for a simple way to stream media files throughout their house.
The BlackArmor NAS 110, which is available in versions with 1TB and 2TB of storage, is designed for the small/home office or “prosumer” user, according to Seagate. And it does have some very business-focused features, such as the ability to back up as many as 10 connected PCs and support for Windows Server 2008, so that a small office could use the device as its primary server.
But it also offers some home entertainment features, too, such as the ability to share media files with DLNA-compliant devices, like many set-top boxes. It also works as an iTunes server, letting you share audio and video files with other computers on your network running Apple’s software. All of its media sharing features worked as advertised, but the BlackArmor NAS 110 doesn’t offer any extra media-friendly features that would make this drive stand out from what it becoming an increasingly crowded market.
Grammy Awards Getting Performances Online Soon, But Not On YouTube
24 hours following the 52nd annual Grammy Awards, the question was where’s the online content from the Recording Academy’s most online-ever show? And the answer is, 48 hours later: On its way.
While official clips from the show have been sparse since Sunday, approximately 50-75 percent of the live performances from this year’s awards will be up for purchase on iTunes as of tonight, according to chief marketing officer Evan Greene. This will include some of the night’s most discussed numbers, including Beyonce, Green Day performing with the cast of American Idiot, and Lady Gaga dueting with Sir Elton John.
Most will be available as video and audio packages, and in the case of Mary J. Blige and Andrea Bocelli’s duet of Bridge Over Troubled Water, 100 percent of the proceeds will be donated to Haiti relief.
The reason it has taken so long to get this content online is that the negotiation over rights to the 16 performances from Sunday’s show is being handled with each rights holder individually. “With anything related to audio or visual performance, making sure rights holders are comfortable with how their intellectual property is used is the most important thing to us,” Greene said via phone. Read more of this story
USB TV Tuner: No Cable Replacement
It’s time, I think, to get rid of my cable TV service. It’s over-priced and under-used in my house. These days, I can find most of the shows I like on Hulu or iTunes, anyway. Most, but not all. And there are times when I want to watch live TV. I like the Super Bowl, for example. And I want to watch the season premiere of Lost when it happens — not a day later, when ABC gets around to posting it online.
That’s why I thought a USB TV tuner might be the perfect solution: I could hook it up to my computer and view HD content on my shiny new 20-inch monitor. I’d pay only once — the upfront cost for the TV tuner — and could kiss cable bills goodbye forever.
As it turns out, though, paying cable bills might not be so bad after all, if the few days I’ve spent testing Hauppauge’s WinTV-HVR 1950 USB 2.0 Hybrid TV tuner are any indication. This $149 device has plenty of potential — and in the right circumstances, could prove useful — but it didn’t work well enough in my house to make me think about cutting the cable.
Get Ready for the iPad to Change the Way You Watch Video
Apple has always been in the innovation business, and the iPad is no exception. And the iPad, like the iPod before it, could fundamentally change the way we consume media — in this case, video.
The iPad might not be the first mass market portable media device to offer the ability to watch digital video on the fly, but it will probably be the most important one. Apple has been selling online video for viewing on the iPod and the iPhone for years. But those devices had some serious limitations — notably their screen size. With just a 3.5-inch screen, the iPhone was never an ideal video device, though it was “good enough” for watching video on the go. But with a 9.7-inch screen, the iPad is basically a portable TV screen, ideal for consuming video anytime, anywhere.
Video on the iPad: HD, But No Flash
We all pretty much knew it was happening, and Steve Jobs didn’t let us down: Apple introduced a tablet device called the iPad at today’s event in San Francisco. You can read a play-by-play of the unveiling on TheAppleBlog’s Twitter feed and check this post for links to the complete GigaOM network coverage. Of course, the aspect that we we’re most interested in is: How good of a newteevee device is the iPad?
Video actually played a big role during the announcement, with Jobs saying that a new device only made sense if it was better at watching video, among other tasks, than current laptops and smartphones. Jobs also demoed watching YouTube in HD and playing movies and TV shows from the iTunes store. However, a small detail during the presentation revealed that the iPad won’t satisfy all your online video needs.
Grammy Awards Online: Lady Gaga, Live Streaming, and Vevo, Oh My!
Last year, the Grammy Awards ratings rose 10 percent from 2008, with a 23 percent increase amongst viewers aged 18-34. And while there are a number of factors to which you could attribute that increase, one major factor is this: the 51st Annual Awards marked the first year that the Recording Academy took social media seriously, with a full team bolstering their web presence with Twitter, Facebook and other tools to engage with fans.
This year, though, marks a whole new evolution for the awards ceremony; not only is the site moving forward with a renewed use of the web, but it’s celebrating fan engagement with the music world. This has led to the unique step of building a sister site to Grammy.com — one that showcases how the music fan expresses him or herself online these days.
The We’re All Fans site uses technology developed by Visible Technologies to give a real-time portrait collage of what people are saying, Tweeting, and YouTubing about Lady Gaga, Maxwell, Leonard Cohen, Taylor Swift, Kings of Leon and ten other major artists from all genres of the music industry, selected due to the size of their followings and their relevance to social media. The campaign concept is currently driving print, outdoor and TV advertising, including 30-second spots that show the idea in action, such as this Lady Gaga adaptation built around fan videos from YouTube.
Vid-Biz: Apple, Discovery, Comcast-NBCU
Apple in Push to Halve Cost of TV Shows; the company is pressing US television networks to reduce prices for TV shows offered on iTunes in order to help spur demand. (Financial Times)
Discovery Readies 3D Network for Launch this Year; Discovery says it will launch one of the first 3-D television networks later this year or in early 2011. (Beet.TV)
Comcast, NBCU File with Justice Department; the companies made a formal filing for review of their proposed merger to the the Justice Department. (Multichannel News)
Blu-ray Players to Dominate by 2013; In-Stat says significant price drops drove unit shipments of Blu-ray players to triple in North America in 2009, and predicts 80 million network-enabled Blu-ray players will ship worldwide by 2013. (Financial Times)
YouTube Distributes Lionsgate/Massify Shorts; the online video site will release film shorts jointly produced by Lionsgate and film collaboration web site Massify. (The Hollywood Reporter)
Cineplex Selects Sonic to Power Digital Movie Distribution; the Canadian theater chain has licensed Sonic’s Roxio CinemaNow platform to power a new movie streaming and download service at scheduled to launch in 2010. (press release)
Internap Provides CDN for Sundance Film Festival; Sundance will use Internap’s CDN during the festival and afterwards for creation, delivery and management of interactive web content. (press release)
Vidyo Introduces Personal Telepresence System; the VidyoRoom HD-220, the first telepresence room system based on the Intel Core i7 processing platform, is available for $6,995 and delivers support for two 1080p video streams at 30 frames per second for dual monitor support. (emailed release)
Where to Watch Obama’s State of the Union Address Online
UPDATED: President Obama will hold his first official State of the Union address this Wednesday starting at 9 p.m. EST/6 p.m. PST. The speech in front of a joint session of Congress is a little bit of a political ritual, but the current administration decided to give it a new twist by actually live-streaming it on the White House’s web site, as well as through a new White House app for Apple’s iPhone and iPod touch.
The White House won’t be the only one streaming the event live. Obama is known to draw record-breaking crowds online. The administration’s recent health care troubles only add to the political drama, with everyone from CNN to C-SPAN will covering the event live as well.
Strike.TV: Still Stuck in the Year 2008?
Attending the Strike.TV screening at the American Cinematheque last Friday was like going on a trip in a time machine. I say this not because the hour-and-a-half screening — broken up by lengthy Q&As with a wide range of cast and crew from the approximately 15-20 web series featured — was held at the historic Egyptian Theater in Los Angeles, but because the entire evening was mired in the year 2008.
This attitude came from comments made by the execs present, such as CEO Peter Hyoguchi, who admitted that the reason Strike survived the economic downturn was because it’d never managed to become a full-scale operation. “It’s good we never got funded, because you have to be in business to go out of business,” he said. But while during both the introductory videos and the Q&As, creators waxed romantic about the joys of producing their content for the web, free of studio notes and other restrictions (exactly the same points that were made in 2008), some of those same creators did engage in some real talk about just how far, financially, they were willing to take their labors of love. Read more of this story
Vid-Biz: Epix, Adobe Flash, Verizon FiOS
Mediacom Will Launch Epix in April; the deal marks the second announced this week for Epix; the first was that it will be part of Cox Communications’ movie tier when it joins that distributor, also in April. (Multichannel News)
Microsoft Urges Windows XP Users to Ditch Old Flash Version; the company issued a security advisory asking users to uninstall Flash Player 6.0, as that version of the multimedia player plugin contains multiple bugs. (Ars Technica)
Verizon Sheds Light on FiOS’s TV Widget Plans; the service has more sports, multicultural, games, and program-specific widgets, including those for reality TV shows and other series. (Verizon at Home blog)
ActiveVideo Networks Helping Blockbuster Deliver a Converged Experience; the Blockbuster on Demand app developed using ActiveVideo’s JavaScript/HTML authoring kit will give users a web-like experience of search, discovery and previewing on their TVs, via connected devices. (VideoNuze)
Nielsen, Microsoft Expand Measurement of Xbox Live Audience; after measuring the 1 vs. 100 audience, Microsoft is now focused on deploying the joint measurement capabilities more broadly across the Xbox Live service. (Beet.TV)
Fuel TV Launches iPhone App; Fox Cable Networks’ action sports service has launched an interactive, media-rich application available for free via through the iTunes App Store. (Multichannel News)
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