Never enough time…

• Sony expands LocationFree lineup. (CNET)
• Popular Mechanics leaks TiVo Series3 price? (Engadget)
• Sling Media execs interviewed. (Geek)
• Satellite TV on your PC? (PVRWire)
• Slim Devices (Squeezebox) profiled. (GigaOM)

It’s not cheap, but if you need pro football action outside of America (and don’t have a Slingbox stationed in the US), the NFL and Yahoo have you covered. $249 gets you live coverage of every game via the web. Even better? Works on Macs too.

Yahoo says: The National Football League and Yahoo!, Inc (Nasdaq:YHOO) today announced an agreement that will enable football fans around the world to watch live NFL games on the Internet. NFL Game Pass, powered by Yahoo! Sports, will allow football fans outside of North America to watch nearly every NFL game live and in its entirety on www.nfl.com/nflgamepass beginning this Sunday. The agreement marks the first time the NFL has made a full season of games available to fans via the Web. The new online subscription service will charge fans a fee of $24.99 per week or $249.99 for the entire 17-week NFL regular season, and each game will also be available in archived format up to 24 hours after its conclusion. “We are pleased to offer NFL fans around the world an innovative way to watch NFL games. The NFL is committed to taking advantage of new technologies to bring more value to our fans everywhere and Yahoo!’s proven leadership in technology makes them an ideal partner for a product like ‘Game Pass’,” said Brian Rolapp, the NFL’s vice president of media strategy.

If only they had announced this 2-3 weeks ago (as in before the first day of the NFL season)… My former fantasy league jumped to FleaFlicker and my current league is on Yahoo. If they had gotten this up sooner, I would have petitioned hard to keep one of my leagues on CBS Sportsline — because this is the most innovative and practical application I’ve seen out of the HME engine.

TiVo says: TiVo Inc, the creator of and the leader in television services for digital video recorders (DVRs), and CBS SportsLine, a leading Internet sports media organization and part of CBS Digital Media, announced today that CBS SportsLine Fantasy Football Companion can be accessed from any television connected to a broadband-enabled TiVo® Series2™ DVR. Registered users of CBS SportsLine Fantasy Football can manage their leagues, check stats and scores, and watch highlights from the comfort of their living rooms with their TiVo remote control. CBS SportsLine and TiVo are creating a new form of interactive sports programming for subscribers.

TiVo obviously has a big deal going with CBS: The press release indicates that in addition to rolling out the Fantasy Football HME app, TiVo will also be presenting CBS Sportsline video Showcases, Gold Star promotions, and interactive advertising tags. Earlier this week, TiVo also announced they would be premiering CBS’ The Class (via download) ahead of it’s live TV debut.

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If you recall, Yahoo purchased Meedio and then promptly released a beta of Yahoo Go TV. The beta was impressive, but a little rough around the edges (it is pre-release software, after all) — tonight’s update responds to some of the original complaints by adding support for additional tuners while improving responsiveness and consistency through-out the app. Additionally, personal Flickr photostreams, picture in picture, and LAN music streaming features have been implemented. The download is available here.

Amazon has jut launched their video download service, consisting of both movies ($10 - $15/ea to purchase) and television shows ($2/ea). Purchased shows can be archived to DVD, but are not playable on set-top boxes. Rented movies must be watched within 30 days, and once started must be completed within 24 hours like similar services (Movielink, CinemaNow). Amazon’s video player only runs on flavors XP, presumably built around Windows Media Player using Microsoft DRM as video files are Window Media Video (WMV). Amazon provides a FAQ explaining the terms of rental versus ownership, file size, download times, etc. They say they support portables, but I wasn’t able to find any detailed info at this time — I assume support will be limited to the usual suspects running Windows portable media software such as the Zen Vision and Gigabeat S. One interesting factoid… if you accidentally delete a movie you’ve purchased you can download it again from an online “media library,” a feature iTunes sorely lacks.

I’m still not convinced there’s a large market for movies delivered in this fashion unless you’re running an HTPC (or FrontRow once iTunes adds movies next week) connected to a TV or projector. There’s also a small market of road warriors who might put this to use along with curious early adopters — but I continue to fantasize of a TiVo/Netflix collaboration which delivers a wide selection of movies to my TV. In the movie download space, Vongo still leads the pack with their all-you-can eat movie rental plan for only $9.99/mo.

HTPC enthusiast Eirik Solheim spent some time with TVedia and came away very impressed, despite the software’s lack of DVR functionality. However… What immediately caught my eye was the Amazon affiliate advertising built into the interface (in addition to the $35 software fee). I exchanged a few emails with Eirik who informed me the “feature” is optional and sent along a screenshot showing how users can toggle the ads. It’s an interesting strategy and well executed given TVedia’s spartan interface and disable options.

Eirik writes: TVedia is a media center frontend with some extremely interesting networking functionality and a very nice interface for YouTube, Google Video, Flickr, LastFM and other media related web sites. I recently gave it a run on my Windows Media Center Edition box. So far this is one of the most interesting products I have seen in this space for a long time! The music library, networking and online features are way better than what I am used to in MCE.

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