The Premiere works with antenna, analog & digital cable, and Verizon FiOS. It also supports a number of broadband content services: Amazon Instant Video, Netflix, Hulu Plus, Music Choice, YouTube, Pandora, Rhapsody, Live365, and web videos from a variety of sources such as CNET & Revision3. Stream music from your PC. View photos from your PC, or online via Picasa & Photobucket. You can control the unit via free apps for iOS & Android. Schedule recordings online via TiVo’s website.

Transfer recordings to your PC via TiVo Desktop, or a Mac with Roxio’s Toast or Popcorn. You can also move content to & from the unit, or stream video to the TiVo using third party applications like kmttg, Streambaby, or pyTiVo. And if you’re a Comcast customer, the TiVo Premiere is receiving XFINITY On Demand support. It is available now in the SF Bay Area and coming soon to Boston, with other service areas to come.

There is a reason TiVo is still the gold standard for DVRs, and this is a good deal on the current model.

Keeping terrestrial TV broadcasting relevant will require “making it more mobile, making it more on demand, personalizing it more and making it more interactive,” said Kutzner, who has chaired several ATSC 3.0 working groups.  “We do need to deliver higher quality, and we certainly need to make it more efficient.” ATSC 3.0 will be targeted at both fixed and mobile receivers, and will need to encompass “state-of-the-art compression,” Kutzner said. It also will need to be “fully converged with broadband” and it will need to be upgradable to keep pace with fast technological developments, Kutzner said. “Looking ahead,” ATSC 3.0 is “likely to be a complete replacement” for ATSC and ATSC 2.0, “and so it does need to be worth the effort in terms of time and expended resources,” he said.

To accomplish these goals ATSC 3.0 is looking forward to the new High-Efficiency Video Codec (HEVC) being developed by the Motion Picture Experts Group, with the first version expected to be published in January. HEVC is expected to be twice as efficient as today’s MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 codec. That is vital if 4K & 8K video is expected to work over terrestrial broadcast, but it would also be a major advance for ‘standard’ 1080p HD video. Of course, HEVC content will require new hardware to support it.

The article also covers UHDTV delivery over IP, the possibility of using Blu-ray as physical media for UHDTV, and James Cameron talking about the adoption of 3D. Check it out.

This actually isn’t a surprise, as I’ve posted a couple of times, a while back Comcast made the comment that New England was high on their list of territories to follow the SF Bay. Why? Well, to quote myself:

New England is where Comcast launched the old ‘soft-TiVo’ project. The software-only Java-based TiVo interface that was downloaded to run on their standard Motorola DVR hardware. Despite several years of effort it just never worked well. The HW was under-powered, and with the TiVo interface running in Java on a virtual machine running on top of the native OS, it wasn’t a great performer. And Comcast never seemed to iron out the issues with the head end that was supposed to allow them to dynamically push the TiVo software to units in the field. While the effort was abandoned when Comcast switched focus to XFINITY support for retail units, the existing deployment of soft-TiVo units are still supported. Comcast is looking to finally phase them out by getting the users to migrate to a TiVo Premiere once they can do so without losing their On Demand. So they have an incentive to prioritize New England.

So they still have a number of those old units in the field that they’d love to stop supporting, and I bet many of the customers would love the added benefits of having a real TiVo to boot. And perhaps Comcast will be able to recycle some of the work they did on the head end for that project to support the new roll out. In any case, TiVo confirmed today via email that Boston is the next market that will see this roll out. They didn’t provide a specific time frame, saying only that Boston would see this ‘soon’.

As always, you can sign up to be notified when this is available in your area at tivo.com/comcast

Remember, Comcast controls when this is rolled out to a new area, not TiVo. TiVo has delivered their part, the software integration on the unit. The other piece is the head end upgrades to support the service, and that’s what Comcast needs to do for each service area where this is deployed. That’s why it wasn’t flipped on for everyone at once, and why it is getting a region by region roll out. So don’t bother TiVo with questions about when it will come to your area. Odds are they don’t know, and even if they do know they can’t speak for Comcast until Comcast is willing to announce their plans. If you need to pester anyone, pester Comcast.

The new design looks a bit different from today’s airliners. It is still a tube-and-wing design, but the wing is high-mounted and has a very high aspect ratio – it is very long and thin. Because it is so long and thin it is also strut-braced – something you really only see today on high-wing light aircraft and a handful of smaller transport aircraft. Using struts allows you to avoid beefing up the primary structure to carry its own load, which can add a great deal of weight. It is a trade off between the added aerodynamic drag and structural complexity of the strut vs. the added weight of a pure cantilever design. And some designs may not be feasible without the added support of a strut.

Another unique feature is that the wing is designed to fold to allow the use of today’s airport gates. That may sounds a bit crazy, but it isn’t the first time Boeing has designed such a thing. The B777 was originally designed with the option for folding outer wing panels to allow it to use the same gate spacing as the smaller B767. This was done mainly for American Airlines – who then went on to not order the B777 for a while, and when they did never opted for the folding wings. But Boeing designed, tested, and certified a wing fold mechanism for the B777, so they have experience doing this for a commercial aircraft.

While they first unveiled the SUGAR Volt concept back in 2010, they’ve continued to refine it and just published the following video to YouTube:

Personally I really like Boeing’s more recent SUGAR Freeze concept, an N+4 concept for the 2045 timeframe. It evolves the SUGAR High & SUGAR Volt concepts by utilizing liquefied natural gas (LNG) and fuel cells to generate power. In either case, LNG is a cheaper & cleaner alternative to Jet-A, but it adds the complexity of needing to be stored cryogenically under high pressure.

I’m still partial to the blended wing body concepts myself, just because they are so radically different from today’s wing-and-tube designs. But I know in the end there are many factors that will determine future designs – materials, propulsion, aerodynamics, maintenance, ground handling, passenger preferences, etc.

There isn’t a lot to see in the video, the test firing only lasts for two seconds before the planned abort. I still think it is fun to watch, and it shows just how sparse SpaceX’s pad infrastructure is. When they start manned flights of the Dragon I suppose they’ll need a more traditional service tower for crew access.

I’m excited for the mission, while at the same time trying to temper that with the knowledge that it is very much a test flight and there is a good chance it won’t go off as planned. But if anything does go wrong SpaceX is committed to learning from the mission and trying again, just as they did with the first few Falcon 1 flights which, while failing as a larger mission, we successful as instructive test flights, leading to eventual success. And ultimately to the successful flight of the Falcon 9 and Dragon.

Good luck and godspeed, SpaceX!

I’d love to see this integrated into the US units. As in the UK, keep the back-dated guide data going back a week or so. While we don’t have the dedicated catch up services like they have in the UK, we do have Netflix, Hulu Plus, Amazon Instant Video, and MSO On Demand services where supported. So the guide could link directly to the available service(s).

Well, actually, Samsung is better than that, since they had nothing to do with it. It turns out the stunt was staged by, of all companies, RIM – as uncovered by Macworld. And RIM fessed up once it was uncovered:

UPDATE: RIM Australia issued a statement this morning, May 1 9:20 AM AEST, with Richelle Gillett, Account Director from Spectrum Communications for Blackberry confirming:

“We can confirm that the Australian ‘Wake Up’ campaign, which involves a series of experiential activities taking place across Sydney and Melbourne, was created by RIM Australia. A reveal will take place on May 7th that will aim to provoke conversation on what ‘being in business’ means to Australians.”

I don’t know what is sadder – the idiotic stunt itself, all of the free publicity RIM effectively bought for Samsung (with more to come as updates, like this one, get posted), or that it seems RIM wasn’t even considered as a possible culprit in the PR stunt. When you think of companies staging social media stunts, RIM just isn’t the company that comes to mind. They just aren’t considered ‘cool’.

It reminds me of the old OS/2 Warp ads in which IBM tried so desperately to seem cool. As my best friend once put it some years ago: “It’s like watching your grandfather breakdance, seeing a company like Honda or IBM try to Get Down Verbally. You don’t know whether to be mortified or just afraid he’ll break a hip.”

Way to go RIM.

Good work by Macworld and MacTalk in finding the real culprit behind the idiotic stunt.

The MSRP is $359.99 and Amazon sells these new for $217.95, so this more than half off Amazon’s price, and less than a third of MSRP. It is still a little pricey for a table fan – but it is the world’s coolest table fan! And how many table fans can do this?

Now NASA has begun a second round of testing on the J-2X on the revised A-2 Test Stand at NASA’s Stennis Space Center in Mississippi.

They also released a time lapse video of the J-2X being installed in the test stand:

With the change, the company said in a statement provided to Multichannel News, it will shift resources to support “EchoStar’s unique intellectual property and advanced content-delivery technologies.” The company owns Sling Media, developer of the Slingbox device, and acquired the adaptive bit-rate technology of Move Technologies last year for $45 million.

However, EchoStar said it “remains firmly committed to supplying advanced hardware, software, and system solutions to its global cable, satellite, and telecom customers outside of the U.S. cable set top box market.”

“EchoStar recognizes that the highly demanding and competitive nature of the U.S. set-top market is very cost-competitive,” the company said. “After considerable review of the market and EchoStar’s sales/product development efforts, EchoStar has concluded the U.S. cable market offers insufficient revenue return opportunities to the company and our investors.”

That’s good news for TiVo, as Aria had the potential to be a serious competitor, especially with small-to-medium MSOs, if EchoStar was able to execute. EchoStar certainly knows how to make DVRs; something like a CableCARD version of DISH Network’s Hopper could’ve been quite a strong whole-home product. The death of Aria removes a potential competitor from the field, and really effectively leaves only ARRIS’s Moxi lineup to compete with TiVo for the small-to-medium market. The larger MSO market is dominated by traditional players like Motorola and Cisco, though TiVo has made inroads there with the likes of Charter.

The post seems designed to cast further doubt on the value of Nielsen’s C3 (Live+3 days) data, the mainstay of today’s ad buying. It does this by raising questions seemingly designed to generate a little fear, uncertainty, and doubt in the mind of the reader:

Changing Channels In 2008, according to Nielsen, the average TV household received 130.1 channels. Today, a midrange DirecTV package includes 225+ channels. Is the C3 metric and the Nielsen sample size equipped to handle this increased fragmentation?

Tablet Time In April of 2010 the first iPad was released and second screen viewing began to accelerate at a rapid pace. In fact, according to a recent study commissioned by Viacom, tablets have surpassed computers for full length TV show viewing and now account for 15% of all viewing. The industry doesn’t currently have a viable way to measure data for second screen viewing so where is it going to come from in the future? Nielsen’s cross-platform measurement plan cuts their NTI sample in half leaving approximately ten thousand homes to interpret what is occurring on the second screen, hardly a robust sample size.

DVR Domination And then there’s the DVR: According to a number of research studies, DVR penetration has more than doubled since 2007, going from 22% to over 45% today. The C3 metric was produced in an attempt to assuage the affect DVRs had on viewing in the home. C3 measures average viewership during the specific times when commercials are aired on a minute-by-minute basis. There are a couple of flaws in this formula, the most prevalent of which is minute-by-minute analysis. If a commercial break during Modern Family begins at 9:14:46, as I understand it, 9:14 is included in the C3 calculation. Bucketing this way can cause data which doesn’t paint the real picture of viewing. Let me show you what I mean.

He then goes on to highlight the increased accuracy of TiVo’s own Stop||Watch service. And they continue to pick on poor Modern Family as their example show:

At TiVo, our Stop||Watch rating service tracks viewing on a second-by-second basis and when analyzing a top rated show such as Modern Family, the time-shifted ratings in DVR homes can drop as much as 60% over a 14-second interval in the moments after a commercial break begins. 60%! Including those 46 seconds into the C3 calculation inflates the viewership levels for almost half of all U.S. homes. There are other factors that further complicate the equation – pod busters, commercial-program integrated spots, network promos, etc. – none of which were contemplated in the construction of the C3 metric.

TiVo really seems to be gunning hard for Nielsen’s spot as the ratings provider used as the basis for ad buying. Of course, they do seem to have a superior offering that provides much more accurate data to ad buyers.

Via MediaBizBloggers.

The end of the video displays this text progressively: “With technology that fits in this easily, you can now stand out from… …everyone else.” And when it displays “everyone else” the video shows a pen full of white sheep ‘baa’ing. While they never call out Apple or the iPhone, given the history of their rivalry I think it is clear who that is aimed at.

So that’s all well and good, a little jab at the competition. But they also apparently arranged another stunt at an Apple Store in Sydney, Australia as part of a pseudo-viral “Wake Up” campaign that seems to be designed to drum up interest in advance of the Galaxy S III launch. (And here I am writing about it, so I guess it is working.) The website wake-up-australia.com.au is just a large countdown timer. There have been incidents of “Wake Up” popping up around Sydney – on billboards, in a pool, etc.

But this time a couple of large black buses pulled up outside of the Apple Store in Sydney and disgorged a horde of black clad ‘protesters’ who held black placards emblazoned with “Wake Up”. They then proceeded to chant loudly outside of the store, blocking the sidewalk and generally creating a disturbance. And a local blogger caught it on video:

Frankly I think this is way over the line, and just completely dickish behavior. That goes beyond good natured ribbing and is just harassment of the Apple Store employees and customers. And the general public who had to deal with the obstruction and disturbance. All to drum up attention. But this is like a toddler throwing a tantrum to make everyone pay attention to them. Samsung – you’re better than that, cut this crap out.

EDIT: Apologies to Samsung, the real jerk is RIM.

From mUmBRELLA via Android and Me.

The TF300 Transformer Pad is closer to the TF201 Transformer Prime than the original TF101 Transformer. Like the TF201, the TF300 has a quad-core NVIDIA Tegra 3 CPU, 1GB RAM, 802.11b/g/b WiFi, and a 10.1? 1280×800 display. However, the display is IPS, not Super IPS+, and it is only available in 16GB & 32GB versions – instead of 32GB or 64GB. The TF300 has Bluetooth 3.0+EDR, up from 2.1+EDR. The TF300 loses the flash on the rear camera, though it is still 8MP, with a 1.2MP front camera.

While the TF300 is currently only available with WiFi, it will also eventually come in HSPA+ & LTE versions. Battery life is 10 hours, 15 with the dock – down from 12/18 on the TF201. And it is physically slightly larger. But it also has a $399.99 MSRP for the 32GB model, $100 less than the Transformer Prime. However, with the TF201 available for less than the MSRP, while the TF300, being new, isn’t available at much of a discount, the gap is currently smaller. It isn’t a clear choice – do you get the TF300 with most of the features and save a little, or go for the slicker TF201 with all of the features for just a bit more?

When the forthcoming Transformer Pad Infinity, effectively an HD Transformer Prime, launches it’ll be interesting to see if they keep the original Prime in the lineup or drop it to create more differentiation in the lineup. For now I’m happy with my Transformer Prime.

I love this kind of thing; I’m addicted to shows like Build It Bigger, World’s Toughest Fixes, Big, Bigger, Biggest, etc. I own a few books on Boston’s Big Dig and other such projects. There have already been episodes on the new Bay Bridge, and I’m sure there will be more once it is completed. Anything with extreme engineering. (Yes, I watched all of Extreme Engineering too.)

Also founded in 1912 was the Glenn L. Martin Company. In 1961 they merged with the American-Marietta Corporation to become the Martin Marietta Corporation. After years of ups and downs, mergers, buyouts, spin-off, etc., Lockheed and Martin Marietta merged in 1995, creating Lockheed Martin. This year marks the 100th anniversary of Lockheed Martin – doubly so as both parent corporations were founded the same year.

To mark the anniversary they’ve released the following video:

Watching the video it is hard not to note the many significant developments along the way – the Vega, the P-38 Lightning, the SR-71 Blackbird, the Trident SLBM, the C-130 Hercules, the B-26 Marauder, the U-2, the C-5 Galaxy, the F-117 Nighthawk, the F-22 Raptor, the F-16 Fighting Falcon, the F-35 Lightning II, the Titan I, II, III & IV ICBM/launchers, the Littoral Combat Ship, the Orion space capsule, and a lot more. Not to mention all of the milestones not shown in the video like the P-80 Shooting Star, the F-104 Starfighter, the Electra, the P-3 Orion, C-141 Starlifter, the Constellation and Super Constellation, the L-1011 TriStar, the Atlas series of ICBM/launchers, etc. That’s a packed 100 years.

I’ve known this was coming for a while, it was one of the things we discussed during my call with TiVo back in February. I’d heard about it through the grapevine before the call, but TiVo asked me to sit on the news until they made it official – which happened this weekend. They feel the ‘XL4′ branding is more in line with the Premiere and Premiere XL branding, and more clearly indicates where the product sits in the lineup. (Note there has been at least one report out there than the XL is becoming the XL2. I confirmed with TiVo that that is incorrect, the XL remains the XL.)

So nothing changes feature-wise, it is just a change to branding – which includes new, glossy retail packaging, more retail marketing, etc. The Elite was initially sold in a plain brown box, primarily through custom installers and high-end A/V retailers. For example, Best Buy sold the Elite through their Magnolia centers – kind of high-end sub-stores within the Best Buy. But the XL4 looks like it will be on shelves alongside the Premiere and Premiere XL.

So now we have the Premiere for $149.99 – now with 500GB drive and dual cable(analog/digital)/FiOS/antenna tuners, the Premiere XL for $249.99 – with 1TB and dual cable(analog/digital)/FiOS/antenna tuners, and the Premiere XL4 for $399.99 – with 2TB and four cable(digital only)/FiOS tuners. The XL & XL4 are THX Certified and come with Glo backlit remotes, but otherwise the features are the same across the three units.

And since this is kind of a non-event, some entertainment:

As you might expect, this time around they’re giving away gas – or, rather, $1000 in gas cards. Four people will each win ten $100 Chevron gift cards. It looks like they’ll work at Texaco as well, as Chevron and Texaco are sister companies. Which would be good for me if I win; there are no Chevron stations in my area, but there are a few Texaco stations.

In connection with the sweepstakes, TiVo is also running a promotion – purchase a new $149.99 TiVo Premiere with $499.99 product lifetime service or a one-year commitment to $14.99 monthly service, and receive a TiVo 802.11n WiFi adapter free. See www.tivo.com/freeadapter for details. TiVo calls it an $89.99 value, but that’s the full MSRP. Amazon has them for $64.50.

The sweepstakes is open to everyone, so you may as well enter. Even if you don’t have a car you can always sell the cards to someone else for less than face value. Selling them for 75 cents on the dollar still nets you $750, and the buyer saves 25% on gas.

It has been a long time coming, but TiVo Premiere using Comcast customers in the San Francisco Bay Area now have access to XFINITY On Demand content. Well, at least some of them. It started rolling out on April 9th and should be rolled out across Comcast’s SF Bay service area by the end of the month. So if you’re a Comcast customer in the SF Bay Area and you don’t have XFINITY On Demand on your TiVo Premiere yet – give it some more time. You can check for current availability in your zip code, and sign up for notification of future availability, at tivo.com/comcast.

As for Comcast customers outside of the SF Bay Area – you’ll just have to keep waiting. Comcast hasn’t announced any definite plans or schedules for expansion of XFINITY On Demand support for TiVo to other service areas. And this is 100% in their hands. TiVo has delivered their end, but Comcast needs to update their head-end systems in each service area before they can enable this. The only indication we’ve had is that New England is high up on the list to get this after the SF Bay roll out is complete.

New England is where Comcast launched the old ‘soft-TiVo’ project. The software-only Java-based TiVo interface that was downloaded to run on their standard Motorola DVR hardware. Despite several years of effort it just never worked well. The HW was under-powered, and with the TiVo interface running in Java on a virtual machine running on top of the native OS, it wasn’t a great performer. And Comcast never seemed to iron out the issues with the head end that was supposed to allow them to dynamically push the TiVo software to units in the field. While the effort was abandoned when Comcast switched focus to XFINITY support for retail units, the existing deployment of soft-TiVo units are still supported. Comcast is looking to finally phase them out by getting the users to migrate to a TiVo Premiere once they can do so without losing their On Demand. So they have an incentive to prioritize New England.

Beyond that all we’ve heard is that other service areas will see support “in the coming months”. You’d have to ask Comcast for more details – not that they’re talking just yet.

And now it is just $49.99 for new Verizon Wireless customers when purchased through Amazon Wireless. And if you’re an existing Verizon Wireless subscriber looking to upgrade it is just $149.99 with a contract extension.

The UK originally planned to purchase the F-35B and they ordered two aircraft from LRIP (Low-Rate Initial Production) – BK-1 & BK-2. They later decided to switch to the F-35C CV (Carrier Variant) and the third LRIP aircraft was switched to that model, and dubbed CK-1. Though now it looks like the UK may be switching back to the F-35B. That all aside, this is the first flight of an F-35 produced for an international partner.