Vizio, one of the most popular HDTV makers in the United States, has come to the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show with a whole new product line that is getting a lot attention.  The lineup includes new HDTV’s, Tablets, Blu-ray players, and media players.

There are brand new Vizio V.I.A. Plus TV’s in 47 inch, 55 inch, and 65 inch versions.  “The V.I.A. Plus experience features an intuitive, app-centric interface on every device, making it easy for consumers to understand and navigate as they move between devices. Users can also access thousands of apps from the Android Market™ for even more entertainment options.”  V.I.A brings a large selection of apps, featuring iHeartRadio, The Wall Street Journal, M-Go, plus a lot more.  Most importantly this provides a gateway to the Android Market, which opens up a world of thousands of apps that will all be available right on your TV.

This technology is also included in other products like the new Vizio VBR430 Blu-ray player, which comes with a touchpad universal remote with a QWERTY keyboard and it can easily connect to any DLNA-compatible computer to let you play and view pictures, videos, and music.

The VAP430 Stream Player has built-in Google TV.  Vizio refers to it as “one of the most advanced Stream Players with built-in HDMI ports that lets users connect existing components like gaming consoles or set-top boxes for unified access to all media sources through the VI.A. Plus touchpad remote. It even supports 3D content and 3D streaming.”

All of these products are either available immediately or coming very soon.  You can learn more by visiting the Vizio CES site.

Sony‘s CES focus this year is on electronics, content and network services combining to deliver high quality entertainment anytime and anywhere. Supported by a slew of product announcements, new connected devices range from TVs, Blu-ray players and A/V receivers through to tablets, smartphones and PCs and on to camcorders and mobile music players. Sony is combining these with online services for music, video and game delivery, creating a great user experience (as they say). TVs, PCs, smartphones and tablets are key to this experience as the four main devices used for entertainment.

“Sony is committed to designing technologies for every aspect of consumer entertainment – in or out of the home, on the go, in the air, at work, at play, or wherever life takes you,” said Kazuo Hirai, Executive Deputy President, Sony Corporation. “When these products are combined with Sony Entertainment Network (SEN), which offers innovative services like Music Unlimited and Video Unlimited, as well as PlayStation Network, the user experience is truly unmatched and only made possible by a company like Sony.”

The Bravia TV line has been expanded in all three areas; entry level BX, step-up EX and flagship HX. Brightness and contrast levels have been increased and picture quality improved with Sony’s X-Reality and Motionflow video technologies. In particular the latter helps to reduce blur caused by rapid camera movements which is often a problem with LCD screens. Sony is sticking with the Google TV platform with a new network player and Blu-ray player featuring Google TV. Certain Bravia models will link seamlessly to these devices to provide Google TV features directly on the TV.

Sony’s Vaio range of computers will continue to be updated with more entertainment feature and new designs that fit with consumers’ needs and increasing mobility. At CES, Sony will be demonstrating new technologies and prototypes for a range of technologies including glasses-free 3D.

In the smartphone space, the Xperia brand has done reasonably well, but increasing the smartphone share in North America is now one of Sony’s highest priorities. Sony Ericsson will be subsumed into Sony Mobile Communications and all new phones will carry Sony branding. The latest addition to the Xperia line-up is the Xperia ion, Sony’s first LTE smartphone coming with an HD 720p display and aluminium body. Also new is the Xperia S which comes with 3D image capture.

On the imaging front, no less than 13 new Handycam camcorders are being unveiled. A new image stabilisation system called Balanced Optical Steady Shot has been developed that controls the complete optical path from lens to sensor as a single floating unit. This reduces handshake blur by up to 13 times compared to the previous models. There’s a new camcorder model with a built-in video projector that has improved brightness and enhanced audio. The trusty Bloggie range now has a “Live” model which will live stream HD video over a Wi-Fi connection and there’s an unboxing over at sister channel TPN.tv. Of course, Sony has a bunch of new Cybershot digital still cameras.

Finally, it wouldn’t be CES if Sony didn’t announce a Walkman or two. The new Z series of MP3 players comes with an application interface and connectivity to both Sony’s Music Unlimited and the Android Market. Content can be played from Z series devices either wirelessly using DLNA or via HDMI to Bravia TVs. To further improve the audio experience, no less than eleven new Balanced Armature earbud-style headphones are now available as well.

That’s it – a quick overview of the products on show at CES by Sony and they all look like fun.

This show is pretty close to the seven year anniversary of the show. It has been a great run, and I want to thank all of you for being loyal fans.. You will get a chuckle at the beginning of the show as I for some reason have no idea what day it is.. Lot’s of tech and thanks for all of the emailed comments.

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Siri and Iris to Change World.
No Siri on Mac OSX?
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Siri Security.
Nasdaq Hack.
Mac Trojan #1
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Google Search Change.
Keylogger Hack with iPhone.
Go Anonymous on Google+!
New Gmail.
Jobs Questioned Authority.
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Flash Player Bug and Webcam.
Bag Chair?
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Mars River Nuke power.
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Web Designer Podcasts.
Bieber?
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P2P Throttling.
Samsung Whoops.
Lytro Camera.
Google Music.
Google Self-Driving Cars Science.
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Free Software Foundation.
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Blu-Ray UltraViolet Failure?
uTorrent + Mac + RSS = Winner.
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PogoPlug Mobile.
Search Data ends in Arrest.
Yahoo is it Over?
$299.00 3D Camera from Sony.
Microsoft Banner Earnings.
Mexico Meat Safe?
I Want Ice Cream.
Windows 7 Tweaks.
Google Reader Replacement.

Credits:
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iCloud

24 hours after iCloud officially releases, talks are underway to fill your cloud drive with movies. In reports today, Horrible Bosses and Green Lantern will be the first of many movies you will be able to hold on your iCloud drive.

iCloud is a service available with iOS5 and at www.icloud.com. With iOS5, you can back up your phone to the cloud (what Apple is calling the PC-less setup and sync). So it only makes sense to also turn it into your all-in-one cloud device.

Hopefully, when Apple officially rolls out this service, that they will offer similar cloud options like Amazon. Things like free storage with any item purchased through Apple (so it doesn’t affect your personal storage limit). You get 5 GB free, then pricing starts at $20 for an additional 10 GB (15 GB total).

Is Apple’s Movie Service Too Late?

The real question is: Have you already committed to Amazon cloud service for movies? Would you switch back? Or would you want to skip the service and actually just get the physical DVD or Blu-Ray discs?

With iTunes still being a walled garden, it’s tough to commit to their services. At least with Amazon, one can get content to their iPhone, computer or Android. Apple really needs to look at this stumbling block, because we live in a cross-platform world.

The day of the DVD is numbered. Being able to access content without physical media is becoming reality. It’s just a question of where you get your content.

So will it be iCloud for you?

Jeffrey stops by the DLNA booth, but before we get to that, if you want to understand what DLNA is, the we recommend you visit their Wikipedia page.  They are showing off some cool devices with that act as DLNA servers, such a home media server, Droid X, laptops, TV’s, Blu-ray players, and an iPad.  Their new iPad app allows user to stream content from a server or upload content to a server.  With over 200 companies manufacturing DLNA-compatibles devices (and more coming) it could become the defacto standard for media content.  For more information you can visit the DLNA website.

Interview by Jeffrey Powers of The Geekazine Podcast.

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Sony today unleashed the Vaio F Series 3D notebook – an absolute beast of a machine featuring the latest i7 Intel CPUs, 16″ full HD 3D display, surround sound, Blu-ray drive, 11n and USB3.  In short, everything needed for a full-on 3D experience.

Hyperbole aside, the Vaio F series is a powerful machine.  Under the hood, it’s powered by the new Intel Core i7 processor, coupled with nVidia’s GeForce GT540M which has DirectX 11 support built-in, giving smooth full HD video and games.

The 16″ screen is full HD at 1920 x 1080, delivering up to 240 frames per second.  The screen uses “advanced frame sequential panel technology”, i.e. active rather than passive, giving sharper and brighter images.  Sony has standardised on active shutter glasses so they are the same as used with the Bravia 3D TVs.

Incredibly, not only can you watch 3D games and films in 3D (obviously), the Vaio F Series can up-convert 2D media into simulated 3D.  Now that I have to see.

Rounding out the multimedia experience is surround sound with Dolby Home Theater v3 (through headphones) and S-Force virtual 5.1 surround sound with Inbox bass-reflex speakers to give realistic sound.

Technical features include two USB3 ports, 11n wireless, Bluetooth 3, 8GB of DDR3 RAM, HD webcam, 640 GB HDD and Ms Windows 7 Home Premium.  Available from end of February.

I decided to update my IPTV at home. A newer TV and Over The Top (OTT) system. I have run Boxee for a while, but wanted to get the Roku Box. I heard that Best Buy had the Roku box, so I made the trek out to the store.

That was a bad idea.

I was on the east side of town, so I stopped into the East side location. I figured the Roku would be somewhere next to the Google TV display. It wasn’t – In fact, I could not find it anywhere.

I did something I try not to do – envoke a Best Buy employee. I never have any luck with these guys, so I avoid them. However, since I couldn’t find what I was looking for, I had to walk up to one. And the following conversation is why:

Hello. I am looking for the Roku box

Yes. They are over here (we walk to where the supposed Roku is). Here you go. It comes with Blu-Ray.

Excuse me? Roku does not have a Blu-Ray Model.

This one is. You can get Netflix.

I am sorry, but that is not a Roku box. Just because it connects to Netflix doesn’t make it a Roku.

Oh… Well, we are out of Roku players (pointing to the other shelf)

When will you get more?

We only got one. I don’t know when the next one is. However, we have a great line of internet connected players (pointing down the row).

This conversation really pissed me off. The guy  was quick to say that a Roku Box was some Blu-Ray from Insignia for $99. At first I didn’t think of it, but a couple days later I was in Best Buy on the West side and the exact same thing happened.

The Best Buy employee tried to tell me that this Blu-Ray player with Netflix was exactly like a Roku. Once again, I was annoyed and told him off. I walked out of the store, putting down what I was planning on purchasing.

Both stores only received 1-2 models of Roku. Both stores sold out in an hour and couldn’t tell me when the next batch was going to be here. Both employees also said that another device was “Just like the Roku”.

Certain Blu-Ray players do have applications. You can get Netflix and Vudu – along with other cool options to the player. However, this is not a Roku.

I started thinking about this: With the news announcement that you can get a Netgear branded Roku at Best Buy, I wonder how many people ventured out to get this. I also wonder how many ended up getting something else?

I have never been felt so misled by an employee in a long time. The last time I was, it was a Radio Shack employee trying to sell me a CD player stating it had MP3 support. Over 10 years later, I walked out of a store feeling just as annoyed.

The worst part about the Roku at Best Buy is it’s overshadowed by Google TV. The humongous display might make people change ideas for IPTV.

I ended up purchasing the box online, although I thought it would be nice to have a Blu-Ray Roku Box. Nonetheless, I think I will be avoiding Best Buy for a while.

It’s always fun when technology intersects, and it becomes possible to do something cool that was previously not possible and/or was never thought of.

Such is the case with my Sprint HTC Evo smartphone. Sure, it’s a pocket computer. Sure, it has WiFi. As such, sure, it’s a network device with a potential node on my home network.

Rewind. What was that last bit again? My phone is a network device with a potential node on my home network. Let’s see – what can I do with network devices – share resources, share drives and therefore share files.

Enter the free Twonky Server Mobile for Android. Twonky Server Mobile is a free piece of software available in the Android Marketplace that shares audio, video and photos from the phone to UPnP and DLNA certified receiving devices on a home network. This includes software such as Boxee and UBMC among others.

I had a copied a number of videos to my Evo’s 8 media card so I’d have them available to watch if and when I had time. Hummm – with the Evo’s WiFi turned on and connected to my home network, if I ran the Twonky Server Mobile software, would I be able to see Twonky Mobile Server as an available network share with my Western Digital TV Live Plus boxes? If so, how would it work?

I’m happy to report that the free Twonky Mobile Server for Android works flawlessly. Simply start the app and there’s nothing else to do on the phone. Twonky Mobile Server shows up as an available server on the network, and the audio, videos and photos show up and play with UPnP and DLNA certified receiving devices such as WD TV Live Plus boxes.

Twonky also offers a small array of inexpensive server software products that make it possible to easily share audio, video and photo media from your Windows or Mac computer via UPnP and DLNA to certified devices such as Playstation 3, many digital photo frames, many Blu-ray players, and other devices and softwares.

Having won the format wars, Blu-ray is the hi-def standard; USB3 ports are appearing more regularly on motherboards and 3D is definitely flavour of the month.  So it’s not entirely unsurprising that Buffalo has brought out an external drive that brings all three together.

The BR3D-12U3 Blu-ray drive was released back in September and brings together all the latest technologies into a good-looking external drive.  With a USB3 connection, it has 3D playback support for 3D movies and 12x write speed for both single and dual layer disks.  The full technical specs are here and the RRP is £199.

Buffalo kindly lent GNC a drive to test for a couple of weeks and, frankly, I liked it, probably because it matched my PC case.  However, let’s be a bit more objective.

The drive comes in the usual red coloured Buffalo-style box.  Inside, you get the external drive itself, a power supply, a USB3 cable, a quick start guide and a software CD.

The external drive is black and I think it looks good as far as computer peripherals go.  The case is a fairly hard plastic and the top surface has a shiny speckled surface which is attractive.  The other surfaces have a different matt finish which is plainer but not unattractive.  The front panel has a blue LED that lights when reading and writing.  There’s a green power LED at the back that perhaps ought to have been blue as well.

The PSU comes with UK and European plugs and connects into the external drive at the back.  There is no power button.

If you haven’t seen a USB3 cable or connector, you might be a little surprised. The A connector (that’s the bit that plugs into the PC) looks fairly normal, but the B connector (that’s the external drive end) is a bit different – it’s kind of like two connectors piggy-backed on top of each other.

The Buffalo drive was tested on an Ubuntu Linux 10.10 PC and an HP laptop with Windows 7 Home.  Neither of these actually had USB3 ports or 3D graphics cards, so some of the advanced features couldn’t be tried out.  Regardless, this was still a pretty capable drive.

Windows 7

Windows 7 instantly recognised the drive when it was plugged in via USB2 and put a new drive into Computer.  At this stage, any attempts to play a Blu-ray disk were met with errors as there was no media player installed that could decode Blu-ray disks.  Buffalo have helpfully included the ubiquitous CyberLink suite of programs to get round this.

The CyberLink installation went smoothly enough but it could have been clearer.  The laptop already had an older version of the CyberLink software and instead of saying that a previous version was installed, it simply says, “Do you want to uninstall CyberLink Product X”. This is a bit counter intuitive when you are trying to install the software.  Once I’d overcome that hurdle, it was plain sailing, though it takes a good twenty minutes to get everything loaded up.

The CyberLink suite is made up about six different components – one for playing movies, one for working with music, one for video editing, etc.  I tried out the movie player (PowerDVD) and the disk burner (Power2Go)

The Blu-ray films all looked deliciously detailed in comparison to DVDs and the playback was smooth – no problems here at all.  There were a few issues with the main menu, though.  In “Toy Story”, the animated background seemed to display over the menu so it wasn’t possible to see the options.  I was able to play the film by pressing Enter, but you’d have no hope accessing any other content.

The software also has two modes, “Classic” and “Cinema”.  The former plays the film within Windows 7, whereas the latter gives it more of a video player feeling.  The Cinema mode felt much more polished than the Classic with more attractive menus and preferences screens.

The data module (Power2Go) worked as advertised, allowing files to be dragged from the filesystem before being burned to the disk.  Helpfully, it has a thermometer style display showing you how much of your 24GB had been used.  If you’ve used any of these type of tools before, you’ll be right at home.

Apart from the issue with the top menu, the CyberLink suite seemed to work well enough, but it does prompt frequently to register and upgrade (at a cost).

Linux

Buffalo doesn’t provide any Linux software but using the drive with CDs and DVDs was trouble-free anyway.  DVD’s played well in VLC and there were no problems burning to DVD-R or DVD-RW.  Blu-ray disks were seen as data devices as there’s currently no Blu-ray players for Linux (AFAIK).  However, Brasero recognised BD-Rs just fine and wrote to a single layer disk without trouble.

Using dd to copy data from a Blu-ray disk gave an average of around 14 MB/s for 43GB disk.  Don’t forget that the drive was connected via USB2, not USB3.

Conclusion

As I mentioned at the beginning, I really liked the hardware.  However, I felt it was a little let down by the CyberLink Suite – if you are paying the best part of £200 for what is a high-spec device, you want the bells and whistles, not nagged into upgrading.

Regardless, movie playback was sweet, with the detail you expect from Blu-ray and I didn’t see any stuttering in the films I watched.

The recording or writing features worked well too, though I wasn’t able to test the high speed writing, partly because of an absence of USB3 ports but also the fastest media I could get my hands on was only 4x.

Overall, I’d say a solid and good-looking device and if you are in the market for an external Blu-ray writer, it’s definitely worth considering.

Thanks to again to Buffalo for providing the review unit.

I was listening to a podcast where the hosts were chatting back and forth about the newly offered Hulu Plus, where for $10 dollars a month, you can get Hulu on a wide variety of devices including smart phones and over-the-top Internet TV boxes. Hulu is also offering a somewhat wider, but still incomplete back catalog archive of shows. One of the hosts was saying he wouldn’t pay for content, he wanted it “for free.”

Whether we realize it or not, we are all paying for content, either directly or indirectly. Even if we have only a TV antenna and watch only the local TV channels, we are still paying for content indirectly via advertising. When we buy consumer products of virtually any kind, part of what we pay goes for advertising, which pays for content creation.

If we are paying indirectly only, someone else is deciding for us as to the quality of the programming content. We can either consume that content or not, but we still pay as consumers buying products. We have very little indirect control over what gets put on the air. On the other hand, if we pay for content directly, then we have far greater control over the quality of the media we are consuming.

If Hulu can offer value for the money, then it will succeed What they have to do is figure out what people are willing to pay for. Perhaps that value revolves around putting highly-sought-after content on as many devices as possible. Perhaps it revolves around coming up with the absolute best back catalog of old TV shows. Imagine having instant streaming access to every TV show ever produced in every country in any language, and every movie ever produced anywhere in any language. Something like that would be well worth paying for. Imagine a site such as IMDB.Com that lists every movie and TV show ever made, except as a subscriber you could instantly stream it – now you’re talking. Hulu, anyone else out there – are you listening?

I personally would be willing to pay for a service such as Hulu, except for one small glitch. There are no back catalog shows on the site at the moment that really excite me. Network drama shows can sometimes be quite good, but my tastes are somewhat different.

When I had Dish Network, I was watching a few selected shows on only 3 channels – Discovery, TLC and History. I can get most of these shows if I really want them at some point via Netflix. To my way of thinking, Netflix is a much better value. Netflix has a far wider variety of content, plus they also offer the handy rental service of DVD’s and Blu-ray discs.

The verdict is currently out whether Hulu will be able to figure out what value it needs to best serve its customers. If people are paying Hulu money directly, then Hulu had better quickly figure out exactly what those customers want and do its best to deliver it to them.

Hey Hulu, here’s an idea to try. Offer first-run streaming movies, but do it the Hulu way. I would be willing to pay for a first run movie streaming for a nominal pay-per-view fee, say $5.99. Vudu is offering streaming first run movies, but you have to have a big fat Internet connection to be able to use Vudu. The Vudu service demands way more bandwidth than my Internet service can currently deliver.

Here’s yet another idea for Hulu – offer exclusive, Hulu-only content consisting of well-produced material revolving around the “Entertainment Tonight” type of concept. Do exclusive interviews of movie and TV stars. Do exclusive interviews of directors. Give people real value for their money. Make your customers want to not only see you succeed, but motivate them to help you succeed.

There was a recent article at Arstechnica.Com describing how The Times in the U.K. ended up cutting its web traffic in half by simply requiring registration so that viewers could read their articles. Prior to this, the articles on the site were freely available. The registration requirement is in anticipation of their future paywall plans.

I have to admit that I’m one of the people who left their site more than once when I clicked on a link and was presented with the registration requirement. I’ve done the same thing on other newspaper sites as well. Will people pay for online news?

At its essence, news is often glorified gossip.

There are plenty of successful paywall sites. Here are three sites that incorporate paywalls that I personally find worthwhile enough subscribe to: Netflix.Com,  Rushlimbaugh.Com and FHU.Com.

Netflix began life as a DVD rental service and most recently added a very popular streaming service as value-added subscriber benefit behind a paywall. The Netflix streaming service helped convince me to sign up and become a customer, as well as the availability of Blu-Ray discs. If Netflix had DVD’s only, I wouldn’t be a subscriber. Streaming and Blu-Ray make me willing to open my wallet.

Rushlimbaugh.Com puts the site’s massive and growing archive behind a paywall that includes access to the Rush Limbaugh podcast version of his radio show where they perform the courtesy of cutting out all of the network ads. Being able to receive the ad-free podcast of the daily Rush Limbaugh radio program is why I subscribe. I rarely sign into the site and go behind the paywall. I want the ad-free daily podcast, so I pay, even though I could get the program for free by listening on the radio.

FHU.Com also puts a massive and growing archive of radio programs, books and video behind a paywall. I want access to this material, and since it’s a charitable organization, I am willing to donate to gain access behind the paywall and support them.

I don’t envision myself ever paying for access to a newspaper website. I have never subscribed to a printed newspaper. I used to subscribe to a number of printed computer, stereo and photography magazines, but somehow that lost its appeal a number of years ago and I let the subscriptions run out.

For a paywall site to be successful, it must have something behind that wall that people want access to. They must offer something of value that revolves around the essence of what they do best.

CyberLink PowerDVD Ultra with 3D Blu-ray capability is expected in mid 2010. What this means to consumers is that you will be able to watch 3D movies on your laptops.

Personally I question how good that experience will be, only time will tell.
If you are in the market for a new PC, you may want to ask about the capability, especially in high end systems.

Interview by Andy McCaskey @ SDRNews.com

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I know there are some good things about Blu-Ray, and have been impressed by the quality I have seen on Blu-Ray movies on a friends PS3.  Those of us skilled at pattern recognition will continue to avoid this doomed platform though.

With the recent announcement that Sony has dropped the UMD standard on the new release of the Playstation Portable (the PSP Go) we get to see yet another example of my oft repeated advice.

Never invest in a Sony controlled data storage medium!

Sony have tried to play in various storage markets before with completely Sony owned technology, and I cannot think of a single one where they eventually triumphed even when they started out technically superior.  To be fair to Sony I do not think they have specifically been bad at maintaining their technology it is simply harder for proprietary technology to keep up with open standards.  This is exagerated when you are working in an OEM environment where your customers are highly motivated to break your monopoly.

Sony used to be able to artificially extend their technologies by having really good equipment and bundling the technology in.  Now with Sony no longer having a quality edge on most of their conpetition it is harder to do.

Beta tape was much better than VHS but eventually was overtaken and disappeared.

DAT (Digital Audio Tape) was an alternative to CD’s which hung around for a long time in professional music circles but never took off in the consumer market.

AIT was a successor to DAT designed for the low end data backup market.  Despite being late to market it was making inroads on the similarly closed source DLT.  Then DLT was open sourced and wiped AIT out.

Minidisc never really made it outside of the Sony umbrella, and very little music was actually released on the format.  Once the other MP3 players moved from CD to hard drive or solid state minidisc died a quick death.

MemoryStick only survives by being the only option on many Sony products.  No other manufacturer uses the product and it is behind in capacity and more expensive.

The dark plastic “CDs” that PS1 games used to come on that even the PS2 struggled to read and ended life before the platform it was designed for.

Now UMD joins the pile of Sony data platforms defunct much quicker than any comparable open standard.  If you have bought content on a specific medium, I think it is reasonable to expect that you will be able to buy a new player for that content for at least the next decade, and that the cost of those players would go down over time.  This has generally be possible with any other standard in the past, but almost never with a Sony platform.

I saw where Sony was dropping one of their Blu Ray players down to $300. This will obviously send other companies to slashing their prices as well. There are different opinions on what the price point is where Blu Ray will take over DVD sales. I don’t know if it is $199 or $149 or even as low as $99. One thing that will slow the conquest is the sluggish economy. I am not one of these people who always think the sky is falling but I recognize a slow down when I see it. I am not talking about any stats I see on the “news” or musings by experts. I am basing this totally on people I know in business and others I talk to on a regular basis about it. So a Blu Ray player is something that consumers can do without especially when most own a device that does the same thing but just not as good. Some would argue that people did not wait to buy a HDTV when they had a TV that did the same job just not as good as an HD model. But that boom was a while back when the overall economy was better and people watch a lot more TV than they do DVDs.

I’d like to have a Blu Ray DVD player but I have not even bought an up-converting player yet, even at super low prices. I just have not seen the need for one. We get Netflix so we watch about 3 DVDs per week. Obviously we view enough movies to warrant Blu Ray consumption which I believe is the same price for now on my movie service as standard DVDs. But I just can’t pull the trigger yet even though the picture quality Is phenomenal. With football season starting this weekend that will hold me over for a few more months as I will have plenty to view in HD without worrying about Blu Ray.

We have Cherie from the Cheriecast.com as the guest on the show for the first 15 minutes or so and then and really full show content with some soapbox time as well.

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Show Notes:
Feds Shut Off CA.Gov Web Sites
First Space Photo
Why Internet Explorer is so Bloated
iPhone Sales tied to Unlocking
RIAA Trial Verdict Bad News
Apple Fanatic
Jobs has sold out to the Telco’s
PGP Whole Disk Encryption Bypass
Sony BMG Head Lawyer makes America Hate Sony
Google Body Slams Verizon
Plastic Shell Shears
WordPress Automatic Update Plugin
Level 3 Slashes Prices
Internet Explorer 7 Update
China Blocks RSS Feeds
Podcaster Awards Coverage
AT&T Content Filtering
Japan Lunar Princess enters Moon Orbit
Leopard Shipping Date this Month
More money for Shuttle
Seven Patches for Patch Tuesday
Copy Protection Issues for Blu-Ray

Two major rants tonight: Realistic privacy expectations in new media and signing exclusive podcast advertising contracts. Plus, a lot of great tech news and information.

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Dorthy iLife08 Video
Metric Conversions
Zune running iPhone Fake or Real
AMIE Street
NYT Lowers some Walls
Amazon Payment system for Developers
HDTV Worth Waiting For
Linspire – Indiana University — Listen to show
Flashlight that makes you throw up

Show Notes:
Spam Blogs
AOL will Kill Digg Clone
Google Deletes Own Blog as Spammer
MAC vs PC in Cost
Circuit City and No Refunds
Oklahoma Students Fight Back
Apple Strategy
iPhone Touch Screen Issues
Ford almost got my vision correct
Sprint + Nokia N800
iMac teardown
Apple Wireless Keyboard
Xbox 360 has HDMI
NASA Asteroid Buster mock up
Vonage Financials
Google Evil News Walled Garden
Be careful Jason!
Endeavor STS-118
Search Engine Privacy Improvements?
Big File Transfer
Hitachi Blu-ray Camcorder
iLife08
Low Marks on Video Downloads
DRM Stripped from Netflix Movie Stream
Universal Music DRM Free Test

Regular show tonight with a guest appearance by my daughter Natalie lots of news as usual.

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Show Notes:
Sprint 1
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OpenDNS
Cell Phone Spying
RSS for TwitterGram
Nielsen
Trillan Astra
WOW Setup
Microsoft Bag
Southwest WiFi
Vista SP1
California Solar Farm
NYC Surveillance
Time & Odeo
Blu-Ray DRM
Bottled Water
GetHuman
Aussie Speed Trap Prank
NASA Lifeform
OpenMoko.com
Apple Nano Based Phone
Open Source Template
PocketTweets
iPhone Web Dev

Congrats to our two newsletter winners, listen to win tonight. Lots of great content tonight late start here but lots of past show feedback at the end of the show.

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Show Notes:
RIAA – MPAA New Lobby
NBC wants ISP’s to Spy
AT&T $10.00 DSL
Drugs in the Sewage
Email Search Warrant Required
Shuttle Repair and ISS Spacewalks
ISS Computers
Truss Installs
Glubble
Crazyegg
Newspaper Aggregation
Webcam Enhancer
Google Labs
Google Public policy
Shuttle Image
Top 10 Destroy Planet Earth
Blockbuster = Blu-ray
HDMI Switch
Nascar and AT&T
Zune Marketplace Expands
Safari Bashed by Windows Users
Car Buried for 50 Years
100 Legal Free Games
Mac Defrag
Fix Dead Pixels on LCD
Ten Photo Mistakes
Leopard PC Switching
Wash a Keyboard
WordPress Themes
33 Free TV Websites
Digg Effect on Shared Servers
Dell does the right thing!
iPhone not so Sweet
Google Gears of War
Ten Second Rule

Thanks for the new site Feedback and great show inputs. I talk a little about getting Clearwire here at the house to complement cable.

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Show Notes:
Vista Limited Edition
Vista Content Protection
Geni.com got Slammed
WordPress 2.1
IE7 Loosing Ground
Blu-Ray DRM Cracked
Vista Owned
Windows Genuine
10 Steps
Sun-Earth-Moon
LG BH100 MultiPlayer
Flash Zune Q42007
Wi-Fi Antenna
Browsercam
Mobile Media Picks
DRM Free Music?
www.stolenidsearch.com
Perfomancing DOA
PDF Delivery via RSS
Top Sins of Vista
Computer or Spouse
Storm Worm on the move!
India Space Program
RIAA and CEA
MPAA and Movie Ratings
Top Ten Worst Domains

High-capacity DVDs (Digital Video Disks) that use blue laser technology may soon be available to information technology professionals. Blue laser DVD-RW (rewritable) disks are expected by Sony in the U.S. as early as this June. The disks will store 23GB of data and the drives will initially be connected by SCSI or USB 2.0 interfaces. The expected cost of the first models is between $2,500 and $3,000; however, fast price drops should follow.

When the drives are redesigned for general consumer use, the format of the disks should hold about 25GB, using Sony’s Blu-ray format, or 20GB, using HD-DVD format.

Currently most DVDs recorders use red laser technology, and the blue laser devices won’t be interoperable with the existing crop of drives.

Dave’s Opinion
I’d be piqued if my collection of home movies that I’ve burned to DVD aren’t compatible with the new drives; however, I judge that the major drive manufacturers won’t let this happen: too many people have invested in the current DVD technology to leave it by the wayside so soon.

Call for Comments
What do you think? Leave your comments below.