Filed under: Cellphones, Home Entertainment, Portable Video

As a natural followup to their Wireless Audio Gateway AD-42W (pictured), it looks like Nokia might be getting into the video streaming game with a new WiFi device for streaming video from your phone. The rumor comes courtesy of T3, and deets are slim, but we’re sure Nokia can figure out some nifty functionality for such a device if it does turn out to be real. We’d love to see such a unit act as a DVR and prep videos for your phone, but blurry and pointless camphone vids streamed from your Nokia onto the big screen will be nice too. We’re not quite sure we’d be naming this thing a direct iTV competitor, but between this, a Slingbox, a Media Extender, an iPod video loader and an iTV, our TV setup is starting to look more device-laden than our desktop, so we’re thinking something’s gotta give.

[Via atmaspheric]

Read | Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

SPONSORED BY: BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time.

Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment

It’s the stuff fanboy dreams are made of: Google and Apple, sittin’ in a tree. In fact, if you nearly passed out when Stevie J. walked onto the stage the other day sans mock turtleneck, or started into hysterics when Larry Page rode into CES on the back of that SUV, you might want to sit down for this one. Google and Apple are supposedly, maybe, possibly talking up video interoperability with Google Video and Apple’s forthcoming iTV device. All we’ve got to go on so far is a quote from Google’s consumer product chief, Marissa Mayer, who has confirmed the two companies are “engaged in talks.” What level of iTV integration this indicates, if any, is yet to be seen, and with the usual amount of tight-lipped action we normal get out of Apple and Google, we don’t expect to know much more until the feature is upon us, but the addition of Eric Schmidt to Apple’s board of directors is a good sign of things to come. Plus, we’re sure good, video-ey things can happen with these two companies putting their heads together, and a bit of internet video can’t hurt a device that so far doesn’t look to have much more than DRM interoperability to set it apart.

[Via BBC News]

Read | Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

SPONSORED BY: BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time.

Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment

We know what you’re thinking: another Samsung HDTV, another HDTV technology standard, another day. But you might actually want to check out Samsung’s 56-inch SVP-56K3HDB, the first production model featuring ACAP. For those who haven’t previously heard anything about it, the Advanced Common Application Platform (ACAP) standard was developed with the intention of being the future universal standard for interactive television (and is already a part of the ATSC spec in the US). Oh, sure, iTV’s been around in various incarnations since forever, but there’s never been an internationally standardized internet-connected TV system based around the concept of moving apps and data to and from your set — hence ACAP, which might enable newsfeeds, weather and traffic, as well as commercials linked to online merchants, and, of course, in depth sports stats, backgroun info, or interactive information about the program you’re watching. We don’t know much else about the plasma dusokay the ACAP system’s powering in the SVP-56K3HDB, but we’re a little more interested in the two way data right now, if you don’t mind.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

Filed under: Home Entertainment

hspace="4" border="0" align="right" alt="TiVo logo"
src="http://img.engadget.com/common/images/6189743642128408.jpg?0.4969988746515964" />It was no surprise that href="http://www.engadget.com/2005/08/04/tivo-launches-banner-ads-less-obtrusive/">TiVo’s fast-forward banner ads
didn’t quite take as they might have hoped, but BusinessWeek is reporting that next month we can expect to see some new
TiVo-based advertising systems rolled out, including interactive ads and ads on demand. Yes, yes, we’ve seen interactive
advertising and enhanced television done umpteen times now, but from what it sounds like (BizWeek was kind of vague –
we don’t have a lot of specifics yet), TiVo’s taking a slightly different approach by background-downloading and
storing ads in the system for viewing; this also lends to a new kind of choose your own adventure style ad
system that lets viewers pick how they want to be advertised to with spots that unfold depending on user input. The
irony here is that the first round of TiVo’s interactive ads were apparently bought by Sony for the href="http://www.engadget.com/search/?q=bravia">new Bravias they’ve been pimping so hard lately — HDTVs that your
trusty old standard def DVR won’t be able to take full advantage of. Still, if you want to learn more about Sony’s new
TVs, their TiVo commercial will apparently have twelve different endings to choose from.

[Via href="http://techdirt.com/articles/20060412/0251259.shtml">TechDirt]

Read | Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments