I have a soft spot for ReplayTV, having gotten an early Panasonic version of the company’s hardware back in 2001. However, there’s been virtually no word of the DVR pioneer since ReplayTV moved to a software-only business model last year.

Now Gizmodo reports that the company is launching a new product - an HD/DVR tuner for your computer. These types of gadgets already exist, and in fact I got a Pinnacle stick for Christmas last year. Unfortunately, I haven’t found much use for the product-type… yet.

First HDTV on my laptop ain’t that exciting. Second, with a USB tuner I’m not getting any content different from what I already receive and digitally record on my living room TV. I can, however, think of two scenarios where the ReplayTV gadget could come in handy:

1. For use with a large-screen computer display that could do justice to the HD
2. For use with a media extender for anyone who wants to digitally record over-the-air content (on the cheap) and doesn’t have TV service from a cable, telco or satellite provider

The problem is that both of these scenarios seem unlikely to occur for the general viewing public, which means the buying audience is very niche tech geek. Probably not going to create a great revenue stream.

Gizmodo says an official announcement from ReplayTV is due out on Wednesday.

This is what I’ve been waiting for. Something good to watch on the Web. Seriously, with the amount of bad television churned out by the networks these days, I’m all for having a few professionals take the plunge to produce for an online-only audience. Last week, MySpace announced that producers Ed Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz (Thirty Something and My So-Called Life) will debut Quarterlife on its site on November 11th. The show will not be seen on regular networks, only online.

While I don’t know if Quarterlife will live up to my TV-watching criteria (it doesn’t have Timothy Busfield after all), I’m extremely happy that professional producers are willing to give Internet-only distribution a try. Zwick and Herskovitz are almost sure to lose money, but they have a chance to convert some key TV-watchers to the Web and make the platform viable for other producers in the future. I could care less about watching TV online per se, but I’d do almost anything for good content, and it’s clear that producing quality TV for the networks is getting harder and harder.

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DigitalLife is just a few weeks away (9/27-9/30) - unlike most trade shows, this one is consumer-oriented and all are welcome. It’s also a fairly manageable event you can probably knock out in a day. So if you’ll be near NYC later this month, register for DL using the code ZATZ for 1/2 price tickets. (Disclosure: I receive zero kickbacks and have no monetary relationship with DigitalLife.) I’ll be in NYC that week, including working ShowStoppers and attending DigitalLife in one form or another - at least on Thursday.

The DL folks provided some event highlights to share: (more…)

Today’s Apple event was all about the iPod, with a little iPhone thrown in for good measure. (Nothing on Apple TV) Engadget and Ars Technica live-blogged the show. Here are the basics:

• New ringtone maker - pay another $.99 to make ringtones out of your iTunes songs
• New iPod Shuffle colors - pretty
• (P)hat new iPod Nano - wide screen for pretty video
• Cheaper 8GB iPhone - It’s gotta make the first movers feel good to see the 8GB model come down in price from $599 to $399. Be an early adopter, pay an extra $200.
• The revolutionary iPhone, er, iPod touch - Yup, it’s an iPod that works like the iPhone without the phone, but it’s got Wi-Fi built in and you can access the iTunes store wirelessly
• Wi-Fi and a dash of caffeine with your iPod - partnership with Starbucks so iPod Touch users can instantly tap in to whatever is playing over Starbucks’ speakers when they walk into a store and purchase the music if so desired.

Engadget is already calling the Starbucks feature weak, but I think I disagree. (How’s that for a strong statement?) Impulse music buying is still largely untapped. Sure you can bookmark songs with some services in order to buy them later, but we haven’t really seen an effective on-the-go version of this feature before. And this is music you can buy that you might never have discovered any other way. With the joy of personalized channels, I know my discovery of new music outside of my own set parameters is limited. Clearly the partnership with Starbucks is a first. Wonder how long before other partners jump on board.

Philips has announced it’s getting into the DVR software game. Apparently undeterred by the presence of TiVo, Microsoft, Verizon and Comcast/Gemstar, not to mention PC players like ReplayTV, the CE company has developed the Personal TV Channel. The software includes a program guide and recommendation engine for building a personal channel of favorite TV content. It will also be able to access Internet video and podcasts. On timing, the word is that a PC version will be available early next year (CES 2008?) as a free download for Windows Vista users and will ship to set-top makers within a year.

So here’s my question. What kind of set-tops is the Philips software built for? Cable or IPTV? Unless the company already has a deal in the works with TiVo, for which it used to manufacture hardware, I’d guess IPTV. Microsoft is close to the only game in town on that front, and I know operators would like a few options available.

Last week DivX released their 10-Q and while I was able to find the time to tune into their conference call, I didn’t get a chance to read through the actual document until this past weekend.

In the filing I didn’t find any bombshells or new lawsuits, but there were a few details on some of DivX’s recent acquisitions that did reward my curiosity. According to the filing, DivX made two purchases over the last quarter.

In May 2007, the Company made an equity investment in a private corporation that aggregates and distributes art via its web community and facilitates an open forum where artists can exhibit their artwork and build community around that art in an effort to drive commerce. The Company’s investment consisted of $3.5 million cash for which it received certain shares of the private corporation’s Series A Preferred Stock and entered into an advertising and marketing agreement. The Company has preliminarily allocated approximately $650,000 of the investment to the advertising and marketing agreement, based on its estimated fair value, and the remaining $2.9 million will be carried as an investment.

DivX doesn’t name the actual artwork site in their filing, but since I already knew that they had purchased a piece of DeviantArt, this one wasn’t hard to figure out. Originally, I had thought that they were only partially behind the $3.5 million investment, but according to the filing, it looks like they put in all of the cash. DivX doesn’t disclose how much of a stake they got for their money, but they do disclose that it is less than 20%.

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After months of rumors and false alarms, Blockbuster has announced the acquisition of Movielink:

With thousands of movies and television shows available in its digital library for downloading, Movielink offers customers the ability to legally download entertainment content for rental (VOD) and for purchase (EST). The acquisition of Movielink, which has VOD and EST license agreements with the five founding studios, as well as more than 30 other studios, television-content distributors, and foreign and independent content providers, enables Blockbuster to offer consumers downloadable entertainment content via their PCs, portable devices, television-connected home networks and approved set-top boxes.

Since we talked about this back in March, I’ll just go ahead and quote myself:

The purchase strikes me as a positive move for both companies… assuming they can pull it off. Movielink gets an audience (they’re pretty much unknown outside my geeky circle) and Blockbuster gets an immediate online download presence to compete with Netflix. Unlike Netflix Watch Now, Movielink movies don’t require an Internet connection to watch – useful for the business traveler in the air (I’ve rented movies from them for this purpose in the past). Movielink also allows purchases, in addition to rentals, and I’m assuming their current catalog is much larger (and current) than Netflix’s.

It’ll be interesting to see if Blockbuster changes the pricing structure and offers their current mail-order customers some sort of “free” or discounted downloads as Netflix does. And what are these “approved set-top boxes” ? Are we talking existing AT&T Homezone and Xbox 360, or do they have something else in mind…