The savvy guide to the Internet-TV connection

TVMama will be officially launched at BlogFerence, a major, two-day blogging conference being held in Herzliya, Israel, that is attracting such blogging world superstars as Om Malik, Jessica Coen, Andrew Baron of Rocketboom, Kent Nichols and Douglas Sarine of hysterically funny video blog Ask a Ninja, and Justin Kownacki from Something to be desired.

BlogFerence is being sponsored by Interdisciplinary Center, an elite private university that last year opened the first major university level journalism and communications school in Israel. We’re pleased to be teaching a course there this fall in new media.

We’re pleased to be attending this event, and will be shameless in our promotion of TVMama.

Here’s a preview of the press release we will hand out at the conference:

Say Hello To TV Mama!
Website Covering Media Streaming Devices and PC-TV Convergence Launches

Abbey Content, a developer and manager of content and websites for corporate and media clients, announces the launch of TVMama.com, a news website devoted to coverage of the emerging generation of media streamers and PC-TV convergence.

“We believe 2007 is the year that media streamers will come of age,” said Alan Abbey, President of Abbey Content. “We created TVMama.com to be the essential guide to this new generation of devices.”

TVMama.com will review new products, analyze the emerging industry and challenge hardware and software manufacturers to make their devices usable and accessible to a mainstream audience.

“More and more people are downloading and streaming content into their computers, and major industry players are viewing online distribution as the wave of the future,” Abbey said. “But it is difficult today to get that content onto the TV, which is a far more enjoyable and satisfying viewing experience than the computer. We feel the new generation of devices being developed now will eventually make the PC-TV connection a seamless and easy-to-use one that will change the way media are distributed.”

TVMama.com is aimed at industry professionals, early adopters and techno-geeks, but also is aware that TV and computer users will need help in understanding these devices in a non-technical way.

“This can be a huge industry if it is developed right,” Abbey said. “TVMama.com wants to be there to help it reach its potential. We will be critical of devices that ‘don’t get it,’ and praise those that do.”

TVMama.com will become a crucial channel for hardware and software manufacturers, as well as content distributors and developers such as the movie industry, to promote their wares. Special advertising and promotional opportunities are now available. For more information and a media kit, contact TVMama Sales, 718 210 3600, sales@abbeycontent.com.

Did we forget anything? Oh, yes: TVMama.com is a product of Abbey Content Enterprises Inc.

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What, you don’t have iTunes? You don’t have new iTunes 7.3? What are you waiting for. Get it here.

OK. Now that you’ve got it, here are some new things you can do with it: use it to work AppleTV. You’ve heard of, right? It’s that media streaming thingie made by the people who used to make computers and now make cell phones. Actually, Apple Inc. still makes computers only: iPhone is a “Mac Nano” in disguise, and AppleTV is the cheapest Mac Mini.

The 7.3 update (Apple propaganda follows) “can now activate iPhone service and sync it with your music, TV shows, movies and more. Also, you can now wirelessly share and enjoy your favorite digital photos from any computer in your home with Apple TV.” (end company propaganda)

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Lawyer and tech analyst Ranjit “a.k.a. Ron, never Ronny, and for godsakes not Ronnie” Mathoda (hat tip to Seeking Alpha, which reprints his stuff from his blog) has lined up the case for and against media streamers like AppleTV and the others we feature here on TVMama vs. good ole’ DVD’s. Let’s see what he says, and then we’ll have our say:

His reasons why Internet distribution is better than DVD:

1. It’s cheaper to do marketing through teases with content snippets and sharing. YouTube ratings and Facebook’s social graph let people know what content their communities prefer.

2. It’s easier to allow people to upload. Only a select few get DVD’s made. Anyone can share their video online.

3. It’s easier to encrypt on the Internet.

4. The Internet interface can be revised and updated, as will Internet-connected consumer devices.

His reasons on the other side of the equation:

The ways the Internet is inferior are:

1. It’s cheaper to move large amounts of data on discs than by copying bits. (Trucks are cheaper than the Web - for the moment.) He says the advantage trucks enjoy is diminishing, because the Internet is evolving swiftly and peer to peer file sharing systems dramatically lower distribution costs.

2. Legally it’s cheaper to move discs then to copy bits. Copyright law requires you to obtain rights to copy bits electronically but lets you move them around physically without permission.

3. It’s painful to hook up the Internet to hi-def TV (for now).

The trend (as Ranjit sees it):

1. The Internet is going to become a better place to market, upload, store and encrypt data than physical discs.

It’s unlikely the legal cost advantage of physical distribution will disappear - unless DRM becomes a dead issue (iTunes, anyone?). But the growing Internet advertising market will draw more professional content online. (see under: Joost)

Internet-to-hi-def will improve, he says. We agree with that - that’s the whole idea behind TVMama - to write about and advocate for easier/better/faster/cheaper media streamers and interfaces.

Well, I guess we agree with him on all counts. Score one for the web. Will this occur before 2007 ends or not? That’s what I doubt.

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The Diffusion Group says hardly anyone (13 percent) with a game console capable of playing DVD’s or downloads (80% of 8 million US game console households – that’s 6.4 million households, by the way) actually uses them for that.

Of the hardly anyone category, three-quarters of those use it only for DVD. Only one-fourth (breaking that down, that’s one-fourth of 13 percent of 6.4 million – or 208,000 households) have also ventured online to purchase or rent a digital movie download. Read the rest of this entry »

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Editor’s note: TVMama contributor E. Blasberg has put several significant predictions into this item. Take a moment to read all of it, because he builds his case carefully and compellingly.

By E. Blasberg

First there was the VCR (anyone remember Betamax?). The VCR allowed you to time shift and preserve your television viewing (provided you could figure out how to program it; I think more people had 00:00:00 blinking in their living rooms than would care to admit it).

Twenty-three years later came the next major advance: TiVO (I’m not counting DVD’s because no one records on to them from the air or cable). TiVO let you timeshift your viewing in a much easier way, but essentially it was a VCR on steroids (not a new idea in and of itself, but the way it allowed you to record shows was orders of magnitude ahead, plus it saved you lots of money on tapes).

Then came AppleTV. Now you can not only watch TV shows and movies that you’ve bought online or put on your computer in your living room, but you can play music from any playlist you had set up in iTunes for your iPod or see any photo album you created in iPhoto or watch any home movies you’d made with your digital video camera. You can even watch YouTube on your TV, and who knows what else may be coming down the pike for this device in its infancy (e.g., online TV shows and movie rentals in real-time)?

Now, as I’ve argued previously, AppleTV surely is (or soon will be) a paradigm shift of immense magnitude. But only for your living room. What if I want to multitask my TV viewing? What if I want to watch TV on the bus or subway or airplane? Why “waste” those transport hours when I could be watching the latest episode of Lost on a stunning, 3.5″ crystal clear screen?

Two paradigm shifts in one year? Maybe. I am, of course, referring to the iPhone. The next greatest “must have” gadget of this decade.

True, the iPhone is primarily a cell phone. True, video has been available on the 5G iPod for some time. But not in this quality, with this much ease of use and not with a full web browser (for watching web videos). It even does email.

But the ultimate secret about the iPhone is that Apple completely misnamed this device. And they did it on purpose. The true name of this portable media player/cell phone/Internet device is the “Mac Nano.” For you see, it’s actually running Mac OS X. So, while Apple’s billing this thing as a phone, what they’re really set to do is literally double the installed base of Macintosh users over the next 18 months. That’s right: 18 months. Mark my words: they will sell not 10 million by December 2008 (as Steve Jobs conservatively estimated at MacWorld this past January), but 25 million in that time-frame.

Being as there are about 23 million Macs around now, by December 2008 there should be easily 50-60 million computing devices running OS X. And that, my friends, is Steve Jobs’ true evil genius (well, it’s only really evil if you’re Micro$oft).

No one (to my knowledge) has mentioned this point as yet, but it’s one worth bearing in mind. The iPhone, like it’s sister AppleTV, is in its infancy. Once a method for developing real applications is released, this little device will really come into its own (can you say “Skype on the iPhone”?). In the meantime, Apple will sell tens of millions. And then they’ll start ads like: If your first Mac was an iPhone, wait until you see what you can do with its big sister the MacBook. If you know how to use an iPhone, you already know how to use a MacBook or iMac because they all work the same way.

Like the beginning of the end of an ice age, I’m calling June 29, 2007, the beginning of the end of desktop computing as 93% of the world knows it.

And, oh, by the way, it’s also the beginning of true, high-resolution mobile TV viewing as well.

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Neuros‘ work with the open source development community has yielded a YouTube browser for your TV - standard or hi-def - for its Neuros OSD open source media center.

According to the company, (company propaganda follows): “Functionality already in this release includes keyword searching and browsing by category and rating. Future releases will bring user interface improvements and added functionality such as sharing, subscriptions, and much more.” Read the rest of this entry »

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SageTV Media Center 6.2 for Macintosh (five years after the Windows version) is supposed to bring online video to your TV with a press of a remote control. The product adds beta support for watching, browsing, and searching YouTube videos. The software also allows transferring TV recordings to iTunes for enjoying on iPod and AppleTV.

With optional (i.e. - costs more) SageTV Placeshifter client software, users can access live or recorded TV, music, photos or video from the home anytime, anywhere on any Mac, Windows or Linux computer at the office, on the road, in a hotel room or in another room at home (Like Slingbox but in a software version). Read the rest of this entry »

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TVMama is creating product pages for all of the products out there in the PC-TV convergence world, both software and hardware. We’ll be providing details on them, technical specs, pricing information, and the like. We’ll link to firmware upgrades and to shopping and review information.

The first page we have completed (readers - we want your comments on them) is for the Linksys KiSS 1600, a full-featured convergence device that streams video from the computer to the TV either through an ethernet connection or wirelessly.

I know, where’s the AppleTV page? Where’s the Netgear EVA 8000? They’re coming. We promise!

Please tell us of the hardware and software products you want featured on the site (no charge, manufacturers!). And be kind enough to tell us of your experiences with these products: Do they work or do they stink? Once we get our hands on them (hint, hint, manufacturers…send them along for preview and review) we will review them ourselves.

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USBTV, the enhanced thumb drive for video transfer to TV’s that was previewed at CES in January by SanDisk Corp. will finally emerge from testing and refining in Q3, SanDisk tells TVMama.

The product was debuted along with a raft of SanDisk media players and flash drives, and so didn’t make much of a splash outside the tech press. It got lost in the shuffle, which is what SanDisk seemed to want. It wanted to test the waters, get the word out to techies and the TV manufacturers, but not promise too much, as it clearly wasn’t ready for primetime.

Most of the people who got their hands on the early versions gave it a thumbs up. Engadget was somewhat skeptical. Read the rest of this entry »

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Google Alerts keep us all in the loop, especially if they are focused tightly on the keywords we must follow online. But even the tightest screens sometimes let gnats through. If we’re lucky, the items that slip in aren’t annoyances but little bits of serendipity that allow us to enjoy the breadth, as well as the depth of the web.

So, what we found today made us smile - and I wanted to pass it along to you. Because of our interest in PC-TV convergence, we have a Google Alert screen for the letters “pctv.” Most of these hits, in fact, are not on point, but connect to a community TV station in Pittsburgh, or somewhere like that.

Today, however, it brought us to Read the rest of this entry »

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