Zatz Not Funny!

Closed Captions & 5.1 Audio Coming to Netflix

Dave Zatz — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 14:13:52 +0000

CNET got a look at Netflix’s 2010 roadmap… And we can expect both 5.1 surround sound and closed captioning from their streaming service in 2010. Depending upon who you are, these are both very meaningful developments. Which will hopefully complement better (newer, mainstream) movie content. Yes, I’m willing to pay more for premium content. Bring it. CNET’s original report also mentioned that video quality would be bumped from 720p to 1080p, but Netflix says that’s not in the cards this year.

CableLabs Confab

Mari Silbey — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 12:26:54 +0000

CableLabs is holding its Winter Conference this week featuring, among other activities, an Innovation Showcase. To bring a little buzz to the event, CableLabs hosted a short media teleconference yesterday announcing the winner of Best Product Idea among the Showcase participants. Jinni got the nod from conference attendees for its “next-gen guide” including personalization features and an emotion-driven recommendation engine. (Test out the concept yourself at the Jinni.com website.) According to the Jinni execs on the teleconference, the company combines Web crawling with natural language processing and filters for more than 2,000 emotional attributes (witty, funny, etc.). The idea is to create a better VOD experience, and Jinni says it expects to announce operator deployments of an EBIF version of the app later this year. For back story, check out Davis’ post on the company back in January of 2009.

Beyond Jinni, Engadget HD also reported yesterday about RCDb’s Innovation entry, a technology solution that culls information from databases like IMDB and Gracenote and delivers it via tru2way to set-tops. Tru2way still hasn’t hit the retail market in any major way, but it is on the roadmap for, if not already deployed by, many of the major US cable systems.

Other companies in this year’s Innovation Showcase included Wowza Media Systems, SeaChange, Clearleap, and FourthWall Media (formerly BIAP). Separately, CableLabs also announced this week that it has completed the new EBIF I06 spec in conjunction with Canoe Ventures to support 3D technology development.

The iPhone Apps of the Week

Dave Zatz — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 15:36:58 +0000

WorldCard

Now that my transition from Yahoo to Gmail is in full swing, I’ve also taken the opportunity to clean up and expand my address book(s). Google’s contact de-duper has been helpful. But the $6 WorldCard iPhone app has been a massive time saver. It’s not quite perfect, but it’s solid when it comes to analyzing 3GS photographs of CES-acquired business cards. I’d say it got ~95% of contact names, phone numbers, and email addresses correct. And the other fields I care less about. But WorldCard does provide field editing and allows you to match areas of a business card with select fields for additional cleanup. Once satisfied with the results, WorldCard dumps (or merges) the contact details into your iPhone address book. Combined with Gmail’s iPhone Exchange services, any new contacts show up online rather quickly and without intervention. Recommended!

Siri

Siri (free) received a good amount of positive buzz at launch last week. It provides a new spin on information aggregation and operates via decent voice recognition as you carry on a scrolling chat with your “personal assistant.” I doubt I’ll use it regularly as I’m not sure it saves any time over accessing separate apps. But Siri reminds me a bit of Wolfram Alpha’s advanced queries and is quite fun in a Magic 8-Ball sort of way — check out some additional screengrabs of our playful testing.

SlingPlayer

AT&T has finally relented and it appears that the iPhone Slingbox client ($30) will be shedding it’s WiFi-only designation in the near future. But it’s not going 3G without a bit more drama… AT&T says “we’ve worked with Sling Media” to further optimize SlingPlayer for 3G. Something Sling has absolutely no recollection of: “AT&T never discussed any specific requirements with us.” Regardless, the updated app should be available soon. My personal copy of the iPhone SlingPlayer has been active on 3G for several months. Unfortunately, the video quality isn’t great – a combination of AT&T’s overtaxed network, the max resolution Sling utilizes for their mobile clients, and a reliance on processor-intensive WMV decoding over native H.264. Plus, audio and video isn’t always in sync. Which is why I upgraded to Slacker Radio Plus ($48/yr), my constant and more reliable gym companion, via iPhone over the weekend.

The Top (Pantsless) Ads of Super Bowl 44

Dave Zatz — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 13:33:12 +0000

Fortunately, I don’t need to come up with the perfect ‘Ads of Super Bowl 44′ lede as NewTeeVee pretty much nailed it: Beer solves lots of problems, women hold men back from their dreams and this year, pants are optional. But I can’t say there are any commercials we’ll remember beyond this week. My personal fave was the Kia ad (above) – fun, engaging, not crass, and it made me think about their product. (What does Go Daddy do again?) Speaking of crass, the most entertaining pantsless commercial didn’t even make it on the air. And I’m bummed Denny’s Nannerpus nemesis has been replaced by chickens.

In what’s become an annual tradition, TiVo determined the top ads of Super Bowl 44 “using aggregated, anonymous, second-by-second audience measurement data about how 30,000 TiVo subscribers watched the game, and for the first time, determined not just the most viewed commercials, but instead the most engaging ads throughout the game.”

1. Doritos – “House Rules”
2. Snickers – “You’re Not You When You’re Hungry”
3. Focus on the Family – “The Tebows Celebrate Life”
4. Doritos – “Underdog”
5. 2010 Intel Core Processors – “Jeoffrey the Robot Gets Hurt”
6. E*Trade Financial – “Baby Love Triangle”
7. Bud Light – “Observatory”
8. CareerBuilder – “Casual Fridays”
9. TruTV’s NFL Full Contact – “ Punxsutawney Polamalu”
10. Hyundai Sonata – “Brett Favre MVP, Still Playing at 50”

If you missed any of the commercials, or just want to catch them again, hit Hulu, CBS, or YouTube. What were your favorites?

Click to enlarge:

So Long, and Thanks for all the Fish (Yahoo!)

Dave Zatz — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 18:33:04 +0000

I’ve been with Yahoo!, in one form or another, pretty much since the beginning (when they began life as a human-generated index of the then finite and mostly manageable World Wide Web). As a customer, as a blogger, and as a professional. Like most, I long ago moved to Google for modern web search. But I’ve been using Yahoo Mail nearly exclusively since the late 90s (never mind those two years of Hotmail and Mac.com experimentation and despite grabbing a Gmail account 11/04).

As changing homes is quite disruptive and I do quite like the ad-free Yahoo Mail Plus UI ($20/yr), I’ve tried to be patient while Google has run laps around the schizophrenic Yahoo. (Who else would kill the #1 web photo sharing site? And plenty of other initiatives I previously relied on.) But I’ve had enough.

Several things about Yahoo Mail in particular have irked me, leading me to Gmail fulltime. First and foremost, for no known reason Yahoo Mail search just stops working on a fairly regular basis. No results show. At all. Especially maddening when you consider Yahoo made its mark as a search engine. I’ve also repeatedly begged them for desktop IMAP, offering to pay more. But I’m stuck with the anachronistic, folderless POP. (Zimbra doesn’t count and, true to Yahoo’s ADD form, they’ve just unloaded it.) Then there’s the lack of security. Login SSL was a long time coming. And messages are still sent/received in the clear. I’m not dealing in state secrets, but why not just lock it down?

Given my complaints, you’d think I’d have made the jump from Yahoo to Google long ago. But Gmail isn’t without its faults. I’m perfectly content with folders and have never really embraced Web 2.0’s tags (aka labels). And Gmail is just ugly. At least with the default theme. But over the last year and a bit, both aspects have been addressed by Google. Labels now act a bit more like folders. And there’s a variety of (ninja) themes to choose from. Although, I generally roll with the Gmail Redesigned plugin/CSS skinning – as shown above.

Three features in particular have pulled me towards Gmail. For a few years, I’ve used my account part-time to receive Zatz Not Funny mail (and before that, engadget.com). Which was convenient, but still limited. However, Google recently beefed up their spoofing functionality by transmitting outbound messages via a host without the janky “on behalf of.” So, while I have one Gmail account, I’m actually sending/receive email from three distinct email addresses — two which have no relation to Google. And then there’s the fabulous Gmail+iPhone cloud syncing. Google licensed Microsoft’s Exchange services to push contacts, email, and calendar appointments to my handset. No more three way, serial web-computer-phone syncing for me. Lastly, Google made it real easy for me to migrate. By enabling Gmail to slurp in all my existing Yahoo Mail and kindly converting folders into labels.

So that’s about it for Yahoo and I. Other than the few months it’ll take to fully transition, I’m no longer using them for anything. Although we’ll continue to keep an eye on their Connected TV initiative.

Slacker Lands on webOS, Sirius XM on Blackberry

Dave Zatz — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 17:35:05 +0000

While Best Buy’s HD Radio may not meet our mobile audio needs, we’ve got two new and solid contenders in the digital streaming space.

As promised at CES, Slacker is now available for webOS and can be downloaded via the App Catalog. And, fortunately, I just so happen to have Kevin Tofel’s Palm Pre on hand (pic above). Of course Slacker rocks. And the app functions much like you’d expect it to. Although, as a webOS n00b, I’ve had to get used to finger swiping in lieu of tapping a back button. Otherwise, it’s quite comparable to their other mobile apps – a wide variety of “radio” stations and the option of upgrading to a paid subscription (~$50/yr) to display song lyrics, provide unlimited skips, and do away with all advertising.

Also new today is the Sirius XM app for Blackberry. I’m still somewhat down on Sirius XM these days (and will probably cancel yet again in the near future). But grandfathered subscribers or those willing to pay the online streaming surcharge ($3/mo), should find this app nicely rounds out satellite radio’s mobile offerings.

Battle of the Digital Media Players

Davis Freeberg — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 14:18:38 +0000

Click to zoom

While old school media types insist that content is king, when it comes to viewing said content, format and media player can make a big difference in the quality of the user experience. With new options seeming to crop up every day, let’s take a look at a few of the most popular software media players (and video destinations) to determine which one may be best for consumers. Individual results may vary, but here are the criteria I used to evaluate each:

Format Support
With so many different formats out there, it’s important that your top media player has robust support. Since consumers shouldn’t have to scour the web to add additional functionality, I didn’t include any plugins that consumers could use to expand support. Of all the players listed, the VLC clearly won this category. Whether you’re trying to watch Quicktime movies or play a VOB file, if VLC can’t handle the codec, you probably shouldn’t be trying to play it to begin with. The clear loser in this category was the Netflix Media player. While I have no complaints about the quality of their stream, the DRM restrictions and the requirement for downloading the Silverlight plugin, makes their web player pretty limited.

Ability to Stream Online
When digital movies first arrived, you’d have to wait a couple hours for the video to download. With the introduction of streaming media, consumers rarely have to wait more than a few seconds in order to access to that content. While most video players are able to support this functionality, I feel that Netflix is the clear winner for this category. Not only do their video streams take into account your bandwidth to reduce buffering issues, but they also seem to have the highest video quality when streaming content. The clear loser in this category was the VLC player. While technically, there are ways to use it to stream torrent files while downloading, for the most part the VLC player is best suited for offline media.

Ability to Play Offline
Many don’t think that this feature is very important, but as someone who commutes an hour per day by train, being able to view my videos offline is just as important as being able to stream them. Once again, the VLC Player takes top honors due to its ability to handle high definition files and the robustness of offline support. While Netflix and YouTube don’t allow you to easily save files on your laptop, because they offer hardware support, they get a free pass on this one. Hulu on the other hand, ranks at the bottom as they don’t allow consumers to watch a movie unless it’s on an Internet-connected computer screen.

Auto-Dimmer
In order to create a more cinematic experience, a few media companies have started to incorporate dimmer technology into their players. While Hulu does allow users to black out distractions manually, they don’t do it automatically. DivX on the other hand, will slowly darken the screen outside of your video, to help better focus on what your watching. This really is neat technology and something that I hope will catch on. Since none of the other media players include this functionality, it’s a tie for last place on this one.

Disable Screen Saver
Few things are more annoying than being totally immersed in a film and then BAM, all of a sudden your viewing experience is interrupted by your screensaver popping up. While users can always disable this themselves, it’s easy to forget to do this and cumbersome for media companies to expect them to. DivX, Windows Media Player, Amazon and VLC all take top honors for ensuring a seamless experience. Netflix finishes in a close second place, in part because I’ve noticed that their software will sometimes cause the media toolbar to pop-up when the screensaver tries to activate. At the bottom of this list is Hulu, who actually has the gall to request that their users disable their screensavers themselves, instead of helping to automate this experience.

High Definition Support
While many advertise high definition support, not all HD is created equally. As broadband pipes continue to get fatter, the ability to support larger and/or more advance compression algorithms is becoming a critical differentiator between various media players. The top honors in this category goes to VLC and DivX for supporting the MKV/H.264 format. The worst player is Real Media who may have pioneered video on the web during dial-up days, but hasn’t aged very well.

One Click Full Screen
While all of the media players reviewed allow for full screen support, some players make it easier for consumers to jump in and out of this experience. Making someone hunt around for a tiny button to maximize their video, just isn’t as friendly as letting them double click on their screen and instantly be able to see the full picture. Amazon, CinemaNow, DivX and Windows Media all make it easy for you to do this. Quicktime on the other hand, actually used to make consumers pay money in order to get this functionality . . .

Hardware Support
Consumers used to have to burn their movies to DVD if they wanted to play it on the big screen, but over the last few years, we’ve seen a number of connected devices that will allow you to easily transfer content to your television. The winner in this category is clearly Netflix. Not only have their pioneered this particular field, but they’ve been able to strike agreements with a wide range of consumer electronic companies. Whether you own a DVR or a video game console, they’ve set the gold standard for watching internet video beyond the monitor. The worst offender is Hulu. Not only are they limited to the web, but they’ve actually fought attempts by innovators like Boxee, to bring their content to the TV set. While their studio owners may have good reasons for trying to keep consumers from cutting the cord, such an anti-consumer stance will only hurt them in the long run.

Subscription, Pay-Per-View or Free Content
With so many different services offering different forms of content, it’s made life pretty difficult for the modern digital consumer. If you want to view new releases, you have to visit Apple, CinemaNow or Amazon. If you want content that doesn’t charge you to experiment, then a subscription to Netflix is the best way to go. If you’re looking for free content, then you should consider Hulu or VLC. While no one seems to have figured out a perfect way to consolidate all three features at once, CinemaNow has done the best job of offering consumers flexibility when it comes to how you want to pay for content. While they don’t offer much in the way of free or ad supported content, they do allow you to rent, purchase or subscribe to various digital packages.

While it’s hard to say that any one media player is THE best, my recommendation for consumers would be a combination of Netflix and the VLC player. Both provide an excellent user experience, as well as high definition support and while your options may be limited on Netflix, they’ve done a good job of integrating their video streams beyond the computer and into a larger hardware eco-system.

Davis Freeberg is a technology enthusiast living in the Bay Area. He enjoys writing about movies, music, and the impact that digital technology is having on traditional media. Read more at Davis Freeberg’s Digital Connection.

Question of the Day and HD Radio Giveaway

Dave Zatz — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 13:05:26 +0000

ZNF reader Larry C recently inquired about the HD Radio reception from Best Buy’s Insignia NS-HD01 portable ($50):

what is the range of reception – hopefully good clear sound within 50-75 mile radius

And I’d glad he brought this up. Because only after writing my mostly positive review did I learn how bad the HD Radio reception is. It appeared that I had excellent coverage at our old place (DC metro, suburban Maryland), yet I have zero coverage at our new place (suburban Virginia). More importantly, I have no HD Radio reception at my gym. Regarding Larry’s specific question, I’m not sure what my actual distance to the transmitters is. But I assume I’m well below even the bottom of his range (50 miles), probably by half. Furthermore, to address a follow-up thought he had, my gym has no large buildings or similar obstructions in the immediate vicinity. So I’m left to conclude this radio just isn’t very good at tuning programming. Coupled with horrible earbuds and a requirement to charge the unit via USB, I can’t recommend an Insignia HD Radio purchase. Even at a low $50.

However, the NS-HD01 might be worth trying out if you could get one for free… Perhaps there’s a firmware update somewhere out there or maybe you can hotwire an external antenna to improve reception. Better yet, maybe you live next door to a transmission tower. Regardless, if you’d like a shot at my HD Radio, simply leave a comment below. (US residents in the lower 48 only, please.) We’ll choose the winner at random in a few days.