Hulu is fantastic, unless of course you happen to not live in the US then it’s a chocolate teapot unless of course you use a VPN to make the service think you’re in the US.  The name “geotarding” has been applied.  TV Gorge have currently overcome this and have lots of shows available for free online streaming.

It’s TV hell either, the lineup includes:

• The current series of 24 (and previous series)
• 30 Rock
• CSI (xyz)
• Chuck
• V

In fact there are lots and lots and lots of available shows, and the quality is pretty good.  The site requires flash, no shock there, an seems quite snappy.  I can’t find anything on the site that indicates that it’s not got agreements in place with content providers, but I do wonder if this will get geotarded soon.

[via Download Squad (who rock)]

Lifehacker have a very interesting how to all about how to run whole home audio over your homes internal phone wiring.  It’s kind of a neat solution if you have this in your home already…interestingly I’ve recently stripped my home wiring out since I don’t need it, kind of which I hadn't now.

It’s a very detailed solution and as you can see from the left it’s quite simple…no really it is quite simple.

I’d be interested if anyone’s doing this or has repurposed any other home wiring for the same kind of solution.

Techcrunch has an interesting article about Apple moving iTunes into the cloud, it certainly represents and interesting idea.  According to the article the plan is for a fully fledged cloud based iTunes, perhaps removing the need for a local install, certainly it could make purchases a great deal easier over the web.  There’s also the possibility of an API (which our developer community would right, imagine being able to purchase the track from a Media Center interface).

I wonder if we could see a Microsoft, cloud based Media Player or store?

As Brandon just reminded me, there is the Zune store which already is cloud based, yet another thing that Zune has over the iPod / iPhone…unless of course you don’t live in the US or Canada.  I’d love to see a Zune store API too though, I like APIs.

Anyway, a little off topic but lots of us need to use iTunes for those iPods and iPhones…Do you buy from iTunes, would you if it was easier? (I don’t unless I’m mobile and stuck for something to listen to)

--Simon May

Sarah’s written a great and very, very, comprehensive article for On10.net about all the different options for watching TV in Windows Media Center without a TV tuner, she covers:

• Hulu
• PlayOn
• Boxee
• SecondRunTV
• TunerFree
• TubeCore
• ZeeVee
• SkyPlayer

Wow, it’s impressive there are so many options…

Simon May

I seem to be getting hooked on the tablets.  No not little pills but the new wave of gadgets we saw at CES and even more by some of the ones that missed CES.  I’ve just spotted this at liliputing.com the HOTT M700 a small tablet (7”) that can output at 1080p and the price point is set for well under $300.

There are downsides, the OS isn’t something Media Center capable, it’s running Windows CE 6.0.  It’s hit me again though.  Custom installers.  This is a very viable home controller with the right app and the price for this could be right.

Head over to Liliputing.com for the video and more specs.

By Simon May

SkyDrive from Microsoft offers everyone 25gb of cloud storage for free, it’s the same space that’s used by Live Photo Gallery to create online photos and it’s exceptionally useful.

If you’re using the Office 2010 beta you’ll find that it’s super simple to publish directly to your SkyDrive and from there you can share with other people or just use it for your own storage.

Those without Office 2010 can also make use of the storage by “mapping a drive” to it, basically assigning a drive letter, just like a USB drive in cloud to it.  First off you’ll need to register if you’ve not then you can download software like Gladinet or SkyDrive explorer.

There’s a new kid on the block today though, Mike Plate has discovered how to connect to SkyDrive directly from Windows 7, no extra software required.  I’ve just tried it and it works a treat!

How to connect to SkyDrive with WebDAV – and my Office 2010 awakening – Mike Plate.

The New York times has an interesting article on how Microsoft are positioning Xbox360 with major content providers, like Disney an ESPN to be a TV device in your living room.  Nothing new there.  Interesting that it’s popped up in the Business section though and interesting that Disney is implicated – a Mr Jobs is on the board over there…

Also interesting is the positioning of interactive TV shows:

In November, Nielsen started to track “1 vs. 100” play and ad views. The pilot program “is the tip of the iceberg,” said Gerardo Guzman, a director for Nielsen Games; eventually, he hopes to generate TV-style ratings.

All in all, interesting stuff.

At the CES keynote yesterday Ballmer unveiled the “beautiful” HP slate and gave it a brief demo using the Amazon kindle application.  Cool stuff.  One thing worth noting is that it’s running Windows 7 and that naturally (depending on the version) means that Media Center is there, and it’s touch enabled and obviously so is Media Center…

So could this be the best PMP (personal media player) ever.  I think it could.

I can imagine being able to sync a whole bunch of media content to it (Mesh anyone?) and then be able to access everything on the go, or even using Internet Streaming from within Windows Media Player.  What’s more the screen size looks good enough to watch a movie on if you were in the back of the car (ala cheapo DVD player attached to the back of the drivers headrest) or on a plane.

I’m going to be keeping an eye on slate PCs for exactly that reason, rather than being great eBook readers, which the undoubtedly will be, they’ll be great portable media devices.  The key thing is going to be battery life here so we’ll have to see what other vendors put out in this space.

What do you think, do you see a slate becoming a great PMP?  Did anyone love the original Media Center PMPs? 

Here’s the teaser video:

According to the New York Times a group called DECE (Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem) is planning an announcement at CES about their plans to make content (Movies specifically) available in any format you choose once you’ve bought a single license to own it.  So you buy it once on DVD, and get the right to make copies, download it for mobile or even in a hotel suite if you choose and you only pay once…sounds too good to be true doesn’t it?

This might actually work though, there are big, big names signed up including Microsoft and all the biggest film studios (there is a notable exception) are signed on and at CES the group will announce that membership has grown and includes vendors like Tesco and Best Buy along with Netflix and some other big names.

This could work.

The way it will work might cause problems though, but that’s just detail surely?  The mechanics basically requires an online vault that stores your license for content and it checked against every time you want to use some kind of content….Ok this is all gong to go down to the mechanics isn’t it?  Hopefully with the whole life cycle (except the consumer?) represented in the chain we’ll see something workable.  Or we might see another DRM.

But this could work.  I’m sceptical but I’d love to be proved wrong, I’d really like the distributor to take over the burden of remuxing, transcoding, covnerting and the admin I have to do around content.

The big names not at the table, Apple and Disney.

[via TiPB]

According to the New York Times a group called DECE (Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem) is planning an announcement at CES about their plans to make content (Movies specifically) available in any format you choose once you’ve bought a single license to own it.  So you buy it once on DVD, and get the right to make copies, download it for mobile or even in a hotel suite if you choose and you only pay once…sounds too good to be true doesn’t it?

This might actually work though, there are big, big names signed up including Microsoft and all the biggest film studios (there is a notable exception) are signed on and at CES the group will announce that membership has grown and includes vendors like Tesco and Best Buy along with Netflix and some other big names.

This could work.

The way it will work might cause problems though, but that’s just detail surely?  The mechanics basically requires an online vault that stores your license for content and it checked against every time you want to use some kind of content….Ok this is all gong to go down to the mechanics isn’t it?  Hopefully with the whole life cycle (except the consumer?) represented in the chain we’ll see something workable.  Or we might see another DRM.

But this could work.  I’m sceptical but I’d love to be proved wrong, I’d really like the distributor to take over the burden of remuxing, transcoding, covnerting and the admin I have to do around content.

The big names not at the table, Apple and Disney.

[via TiPB]