DVD – Page 3 – NerdBeach

Netflix Enters Living Room Arena with Roku Player

NetflixRoky1 The battle for the living room entertainment king continues, and we have competitors like Microsoft, Sony, Comcast, AT&T, Dish, and Direct TV, among others. But now Netflix has made a bold step into the arena with a $100 one time purchase of the Netflix Player. The mechanics are simple – you buy the small Roku box for a one time fee, maintain the Netflix membership (typically around $19), and you have access to over 10,000 movies, all without further fees – not to mention the DVD service as well. This number dwarfs the offerings that digital cable has to offer, and Netflix offers special content such has entire series of DVD (Hercules, Red Dwarf, etc).

It will be interesting to see which company becomes the king of the living room, but while they duke it out the consumer is sure to have plenty of choices.

Aloha from the Beach

DRM Rears Ugly Head in Vista Broadcast TV Recording

Greg Chaffins

Confirmation of a DRM flag that could be controlled by broadcasters at will to prevent home recordings of selected shows was confirmed to exist last Monday night when users of Vista Media Center found that they could not record NBC prime time programming.

This means that broadcasters could potentially restrict home recording (which is often used for simply time shifting broadcasts) at profitable times such as DVD releases. Another use could be to force users to watch their program selection as broadcast, ensuring accurate rating collection (especially at sweeps time). In other words, yet one more reason to avoid anything that is labeled DRM.

Aloha from the DRM Free Beach

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Versatile Reebok NXT Speaker Backpack

Greg Chaffins

Reebok_NXT_Speaker_Backpack The collective masses have definitely developed a love affair for portable media devices, and often it is handy to hook up said portable media device with external speakers. Of course, external speakers tend to have a requirement to be carried, so they are not always handy to have around.

The Reebok NXT Speaker Backpack (£70) simplifies this requirement by incorporating speakers into a black backpack, which allows you to carry the speaker and the rest of your gear together. (Of course, you could carry any speaker system inside of a standard backpack with your gear, but it would not look as cool). The speakers are powered by a couple of AA batteries, so don't expect a super subwoofer, but it should deliver an adequate sound for most listening applications. Connections are made by a standard 3.5 mm audio plug, so most things, including mp3 players, portable DVD players, and laptops, should have no problem hooking up to the speakers. Just don't forget the AA batteries.

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iRecord 1Touch Allows iPod Media Conversion Without Computer

Greg Chaffins

IpodRecorder

If you own an iPod (and a lot of people do) at some point you would like to put something on the sleek shiny device, such as music or videos. Typically that process would involve going to the computer, converting the media to a compatible format, pulling it into iTunes, and then (finally) syncing with the iPod. Now you can simplify that process, and without the computer,thanks to the iRecord 1Touch Any-Media iPod Uploader.

Basically the device takes the incoming video and audio stream of your choice (DVD player,audio player,even VHS, i.e, practically anything that has a clean video and audio out) and converts it to an iPod friendly format on the fly and stores it on the given iPod. But it is not limited to iPods, since it also will write to a USB drive attached to the unit. Unfortunately this convenience and versatility comes at a price, in this instance about $200, and you can find the iRecord 1Touch at SkyMall.

Aloha from the Beach

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