The team at SageTV continues their constant stream of new beta releases for version 6.5.  A little over a week ago they released 6.5.13 which added closed captioning to its list of treasured features along with several additional new features and bug fixes. CC support has been one of the more requested features along with the subtitle support (added in 6.5.12).

I successfully tried this out with my Hauppauge PVR500 tuner and Silcon Dust HDHR tuners. While I probably won’t use captioning all that much, it will be very nice for those that are hearing impaired and for those who need to turn down the sound at certain times. I’ll use it to show sports when I have company over but want to play music while the game is on.

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The Boxee team created an iPhone app for Boxee quite a while back which has been available for jailbroken phones for some time. Although it took a while to get through that mysterious Apple approval process, Boxee’s office iPhone Remote app is finally available in the iTunes Store.

The Boxee iPhone (and iPod Touch) app doesn’t stream to your iPhone, but it does turn your iPhone into a boxee remote control. The free application connects to Boxee via WiFi with two interaction modes: Gesture Mode and Buttons Mode. In Gesture Mode you hold your thumb down and drag the boxee logo around to move up/down/right/left. In Buttons Mode, you use the traditional buttons on the screen to control your Boxee Media Center functions.

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If you’re one of the many people running the Windows 7 beta you’ll be interested in this. Microsoft has announced several of the changes/updates being made to Windows 7 that will be included in the soon-to-be-released Windows 7 Release Candidate. A few of the media-related highlights from their notes include:

• Improved Internet Radio playback
• Improved playback support for video content from digital camcorders and cameras
• Cleaner Now Playing view
• Filtering content that cannot be played
• Resume from sleep
• Quieting Windows Media Player sync relationships
• Easier access to advanced settings
• Jump List improvement
• Enriching the Device Stage ecosystem

Not a bad list of improvements. However I don’t see too much directly related to Media Center, other than several “behind-the-scenes” fixes. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m a subscriber to Netflix’s one-out-at-a-time, unlimited plan ($8.99/month) to keep costs down, yet still receive a physical DVD every week and have unlimited access to the Netflix online video streaming. Some who use the Roku or Xbox 360 might wonder why there isn’t a streaming-only plan for a little less money. According to an interview with Bloomberg News, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings is considering that very thing.

Hastings didn’t reveal how much they might charge for a streaming-only subscription with Netflix, but he did say that this type of play could arrive “late this year” or in 2010. The question then would be: How much are customers willing to pay for such a service? They have definitely upgraded their streaming movie collection, but it’s still full of older movies and TV shows. If Netflix offered a “premium” streaming service with newer movies and a larger collection, I’d be willing to pay more. Would you pay for an online-streaming-only service from Netflix?

Check out more of Brent’s reflections on tech, gadgets, software and media at Geek Tonic.

Redbox, the popular movie rental kiosks, is being completely acquired by Coinstar. McDonalds is selling their share in the company (they’ll still own some stock as part of the deal) and are leaving the video rental business to the guys at Coinstar. The business has been pretty good for Redbox as they continue to expand their $1 per movie per day business across the country. Expect to see Blu-ray disc rentals for a bit over $1 (could be up to $2) in the near future based on a report by Inside Redbox.

Check out more of Brent’s reflections on tech, gadgets, software and media at Geek Tonic.

Microsoft Vista Media Center users have been watching from afar as Hulu support was added to Boxee and XBMC and announced for SageTV.  That envy may end shortly, as just this week it was revealed that SecondRun.tv will provide a third-party application to feed Hulu, Fox, Comedy Central and other online content to Media Center. No official word on whether this will work on extenders, but my guess at this point is it will not. No word yet on timing or pricing either. Some comments from the application developer below (and that’s his preview video above):

Its a native plugin for Media Center and I really like that way it is coming together… when I first stumbled across Hulu I couldn’t believe that no-one had developed a plugin for media center yet… again… it doesn’t do just Hulu and its not a direct interface into Hulu but most of the video right now comes from Hulu… I plan on expanding it to work with all kinds of video sources but I am concentrating on getting Hulu content up and running primarily.

Check out more of Brent’s reflections on tech, gadgets, software and media at Geek Tonic.

After months of testing, MediaMall’s PlayOn video streaming software has been released from beta. PlayOn pipes Hulu, Netflix CNN, ESPN and may other online content sources from a Windows PC to a Xbox 360, PS3, Popcorn Hour and many other DLNA or UPnP devices. I use it with the SageTV HD200, which isn’t officially supported by PlayOn, but does playback Hulu and some of the other sources, although not Netflix unfortunately. I’m not a huge fan of the interface you get with PlayOn, but if you need these video feeds on your hardware, it’s hard to argue against. Plus, they plan to add new features and Wii support in early 2009. PlayOn currently runs $30, but will increase to $40 on Feburary 8th. Download a free, 14 day trial at MediaMall.

Check out more of Brent’s reflections on tech, gadgets, software and media at Geek Tonic.