Hojun Nam, Director of LCD TV R&D at LG Electronics says that after considering many alternative solutions, LG Electronics chose to utilize Plex’s media server platform technology as a part of its next generation NetCast™ enabled home entertainment products because of the breadth of available applications and content and the ease of developing new services.

They ‘get’ where TV is going, and I have to make a confession – the first time I saw their Plex interface, talking to a remote Plex Media Server and flawlessly streaming content, I had to pretend I had something in my eye, says Elan from the Plex team.

To me, nothing spells “maturity” more than acknowledgement and partnerships with hardware manufacturers. By switching to a client/server architecture rather than a massive, all-in-one product, the Plex team has enabled Plex to easily be used in this capacity along with it’s iOS app for iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad.

Plex is also coming to more platforms. A Windows version of Plex is also due on the horizon later this year as well as some Android products (undoubtedly also Google TV) coming soon making Plex the most cross-platform/device media center out today.

This is a beautiful moment for open source media centers. Congrats, Plex team.

Press Release

PLEX TO ENABLE NEXT GENERATION OF NETCAST™ CONNECTED TV’S

San Francisco, CA & Berlin, Germany (IFA) – September 3, 2010 – Today, Plex (www.plexapp.com), a leading software provider of an open platform for media management and consumption, announced the availability of the newest version of Plex, the first open, three-screen media platform (PC, TV and mobile) designed to simplify and improve the way people experience personal, commercial and streaming content sources across a range of connected devices. Additionally, Plex revealed that LG Electronics will be integrating the Plex platform technology into its 2011 Netcast™ enabled HDTVs and Blu-ray devices, making media and applications accessible through a range of products.

“After considering many alternative solutions, LG Electronics chose to utilize Plex’s media server platform technology as a part of its next generation NetCast™ enabled home entertainment products because of the breadth of available applications and content and the ease of developing new services,” said Hojun Nam, Director of LCD TV R&D at LG Electronics. “Plex’s capabilities offer our customers’ additional methods of displaying their content on LG’s next generation TVs and that is exciting to us.”

With its rapidly expanding open platform, Plex is the first and only truly comprehensive digital media management solution that spans both personal and online content. The solution’s simple-to-use and intuitive user interface allows consumers to search, navigate, consume, store and sync digital content from multiple platforms and devices. It requires no additional hardware or technology knowledge, ensuring even the most novice user will easily be able to access their favorite TV programs, movies, photos and more – no matter where they are or what device they want to access it with.

“Plex was developed to provide a simple solution for navigating an increasingly complex digital media landscape. As our access to a greater variety of high-quality content continues to grow and we create more of our own content, it is clear that we need a new way to enjoy and provide a consistent experience across the expanding universe of disparate content sources,” said Cayce Ullman, CEO and co-founder, Plex. “Plex enables LG to more easily offer a wide variety of content sources to consumers using the NetCast™ services.”

Compatibility with mainstream mobile devices, such as iPad, iPod Touch and iPhone products, and soon to be announced Android based products including mobile phones and tablets, ensures that the Plex solution is the industry’s first truly integrated three-screen media platform, allowing a seamless experience across devices and media sources. Plex’s mobile compatibility also allows users access to their content from anywhere, making content consumption and management seamless across all device types – whenever and wherever users prefer.

“We’ve been working hard to build this killer platform, and we have an amazing community who has enabled access to over one hundred online content sources to date” noted Elan Feingold, CTO and co-founder, Plex. “It’s exciting that this content will now be available in a seamless manner on LG’s 2011 NetCast™ enabled TVs and Blu-ray players.”

Third-party developers and owners of content have the ability to develop Plex plug-ins, which will then be available to all Plex users across all devices. Currently, there are nearly 200 plug-ins available through Plex’s service including iTunes, Netflix, CNN, Revision3, YouTube, and many others. Plex for OS X is downloadable for free, with a Windows version to be available later this year. For more information, please visit www.plexapp.com.

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About Plex:

Plex was founded in 2009 by several technology veterans looking to fulfill the promise of a seamless digital media lifestyle. Plex Media Center, the flagship product, is an easy-to-use software solution that allows consumers to access digital media from a wide variety of sources. The Plex platform also enables content providers to make their content easily available across a range of devices. For more information, please visit www.plexapp.com.

More information for developers can be found at http://dev.plexapp.com.

After the HD200 being out of stock since June, SageTV not only has made the HD Theater available again, but has also provided an updated version that is smaller, more powerful and has more functionality. Meet the HD Theater 300. There is a lot of coverage on the web so I won’t go into details. Check out the following reviews or read the press release at the bottom for more details on the HD Theater 300.

Reviews (by People Who Know What They’re Talking About)

GeekTonic review - http://www.geektonic.com/2010/08/sagetv-hd300-hd-theater-geektonic.html
MissingRemote review - http://www.missingremote.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=5120&Itemid=1

Press Release

SageTV Releases $149.95 SageTV HD Theater 300 for Full HD playback of home Video, Music & Photos

Fastest Full HD Networked Media Player also offers online video from YouTube and major networks

Inglewood, CA (August 31, 2010) — SageTV, LLC, today released SageTV HD Theater 300 for $149.95, that’s the fastest and latest generation networked media player from SageTV that lets you enjoy virtually any home video, music or photo from your home network in Full HD on your HDTV. You can also search, browse and play internet video from YouTube and many other popular online video services on the SageTV HD Theater 300. The SageTV HD Theater 300 supports the latest HD audio formats including Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD/MA for bitstreaming to your HDMI 1.3 receiver as well as two channel decoding to provide full audio support on all TVs in your home.

Setup with the SageTV HD Theater 300 is really simple, connect the HD Theater 300 to your HDTV and connect to your home network and you’re ready to enjoy all your favorite digital entertainment. If you don’t have a home network near the TV, the optional USB wireless adapter ($29.95) is easy to use or any USB storage will work as well. Any NAS with Windows or Mac compatible networking or UPnP can also be used with the SageTV HD Theater 300.

The SageTV HD Theater 300 can also work as a whole home HDTV DVR solution by running SageTV Media Center software on any PC, Mac or Linux computer with a HDTV Tuner on the home network. With SageTV Media Center the SageTV HD Theater 300 works as a high performance HD Media Extender with providing a rich, animated whole home DVR and Media Center experience with full season recording. All the video, music and photos as well as TV Tuners and Internet video from the SageTV Media Center system are available when SageTV HD Theater 300 is used as a HD Media Extender.

Other notable features in SageTV HD Theater 300 include:

• Search for any content from USB, home network or Internet video.
• Works with flash or hard disk drive USB storage as well as UPnP, Windows and Mac compatible NAS or network storage.
• Access current weather and forecast with a touch of a remote button.
• Works with virtually any non-DRM video, music or photo format.
• Includes universal remote with programmable buttons and support for an optional external IR receiver.
• DVD and BluRay playback support (ISO, BDMV or VIDEO_TS)
• Very small footprint at only 5 1/16″ W x 1 1/2″ H x 4″ D

The SageTV HD Theater 300 provides an easy to setup way to enjoy your favorite home videos, music and photos and Internet video in Full HD at an affordable price. SageTV has been adding more and more new content and services to SageTV HD Theater 300 and SageTV Media Center and strives to deliver the best overall digital entertainment experience.

Specifications, Pricing and Availability

SageTV HD Theater 300 and all accessories are available at http://www.sagetv.com and costs $149.95. The optional USB Wireless g/n adapter is $29.95. The optional external IR receiver is $7.95. SageTV Media Center software, the DVR/Media Center software for Windows, Mac or Linux, costs $79.95. SageTV Placeshifter an add-on to SageTV Media Center allows live and recorded TV to be watched at home or anywhere over the internet, costs $29.95. Minimum system requirements for recording HD include a 3 Ghz processor or a lower cost processor in combination with a video card and decoder that support DXVA; Windows 98SE through Windows XP including XP MCE; 256Mb of RAM; and 60GB of available hard drive space to store recorded content.

About SageTV

SageTV, LLC is a pioneer in networked digital entertainment, dvr and home media center technologies that combine TV, video, music and related media into a complete, easy-to-use home media experience. The company was founded in 2002 and is based in Inglewood, CA. For more information, visit http://www.sagetv.com

Easily install skins and more with new Add-ons Manager

A new beta version of XBMC, the media center that seems like the granddaddy of them all, has been released. [XBMC] Dharma has been in development for over 9 months now, and we’re quite happy with the result says Team-XBMC. I’m quite happy and impressed as well. XBMC Dharma Beta1 brings many new features and improvements such as a new Add-on Manager, DXVA2 hardware acceleration in Windows and Mac OS X H.264 hardware acceleration.

What I’m most excited about is the Add-ons Manager. Team-XBMC has created this repository serving as a centralized, organized place to find, install and update XBMC add-ons making it much easier to enhance the look and functionality of XBMC. If you remember anything about the prior builds of XBMC, it was often a pain in the ass to use the SVN Repo Installer plug-in. It used to be hard to find what you need and while you’re installing, XBMC couldn’t do anything else. With the Add-on Manager, however, everything is different. Here is what I love about it:

• Well organized and easy to use.
• Add-ons are downloaded and installed in the background. You can navigate away from Add-ons.
• Add-ons are auto-updated unless you select not to.

No more manually downloading files and extracting folders around here, folks. Everything is done directly from the XBMC interface by simply going to System > Add-ons > Get Add-ons, finding your add-on and then clicking Install. That’s it.

Here are a couple notes Team-XBMC wants you to be aware of prior to installing Dharma Beta1:

• As always, treat this as beta-quality software. Be sure to back up your profile in case you decide to roll back.
• The clunky old web interface has been removed. We’re working hard to have a new one ready for final release.
• svn-ppa users may have to remove old xbmc packages before installing Dharma.
• You may have to reset your screensaver and visualization settings after upgrade. These are now addons.
• Pre-Dharma scripts/plugins/skins will NOT work with Dharma, but most have been updated accordingly.

To try out Dharma Beta1, head to http://xbmc.org/download/ and grab the testing release.

Image credit: CrunchGear

While most of you have been aware and awaiting the release of Plex/Nine media center tomorrow, you probably didn’t know that the Plex team was holding out on you. You knew about the new Plex Media Manager, the media flagging, the gorgeous skins, and other changes, but there is a bit more. Along with tomorrows release comes Plex App for iOS devices. Plex App is a brand new mobile app for iPhone, iPod Touch and the iPad that not only allows you to control Plex/Nine but also streams your content from Plex to your iOS device. You have a mini Plex media center in the palm of your hands.

The Plex team has given an exclusive hands-on to CrunchGear which you can view on video after the break. I think it’s safe to say that Plex is officially the multimedia software for Mac OS X–putting its foot on the neck of everything else out there. I need a Mac.

Plex users are patiently awaiting Plex/Nine which brings new features that enhance the Plex experience such as the Media Manager. The wait is (almost) over. According to the Plex team, it looks like they’re just days away from launching Plex/Nine which will be on 9/1.

On par with it’s TV Show Library which was introduced in the Boxee Beta back in January, Boxee has added a Movie Library giving you access to thousands of online films. To begin with, Boxee has partnered with EZTakes, Indie Movies Online, MUBI and Openfilm to provide (mostly) free, ad-supported movies. You can also movies available from Hulu and YouTube. Boxee will be adding more movies from additional sources and even directly from studios, so look at this as an early stage with slightly rough edges. Check out a video demo after the break which shows the TV Show Library and Movie Library.

To start enjoying the Movie Library (and many bug fixes), download the latest version of Boxee. The AppleTV version will be updated next week.

If you’re like me and have been looking for a cheap Android-powered tablet to use as a media center remote, today just might be your lucky day. Meet the Neuros Control Tablet: a cheap Android tablet intended to control XBMC and Boxee on the Neuros LINK using your choice of Android apps. Until August 26th, you can get one for $100 if you’re interested. After that the tablet will cost you $150.

Check out some of the modest specs below.

• Google Android OS 1.6
• VIA MW8505 600MHz
• 128MB DDR2
• 2GB NAND Flash, support most TF card up to 32GB
• 7-inch (diagonal) high-brightness TFT LCD widescreen touch display
• 800 x 480 resolution
• 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi certified network connection
• SD (support up to 32G HCSD)

As you can tell from the specs (and cost), this is no iPad and quite frankly it doesn’t need to be. Neuros Technologies CEO Joe Born says that cheap Android tablets make great remotes. I completely agree. While they might not be the best choice for general use, they should be sufficient for running XBMC Remote. A capacitive screen would be nice, but for $100-150 I’ll take whatever 7″ screen I can get.

Image Credit: usingwindowshomeserver.com

Timothy over at Using Windows Home Server has chronicled how he built a low powered computer to record TV streams from his SiliconDust HD Homerun tuners on a Friday night. He whipped up this bad boy using a Cooler Master Elite 100 Case ($70) and other obvious essential HTPC parts. What I like most about this build is that it mounts underneath a desk (or other cabinetry). This provides a minimal effect and allows you to add a HTPC to your existing setup without looking out of place or obtrusive. Read more about this $230 HTPC build at Using Windows Home Server.

Read more about the Evolution Theme.