It’s here. Ceton’s quad-CableCARD tuner, aka InfiniTV 4, has finally started shipping to those who pre-ordered – and the first few end user hands-on reports are trickling out.

The Ceton tuner is unique for the following reasons:

• There aren’t a lot of choices at the moment for CableCARD tuners.  So anytime we see a company willing to devote nearly all of their resources to it we have to give them credit.
• This first version of the Ceton card is a 4 tuner CableCARD device. Yes you can record up to 4 shows all from this one card – including encrypted, digital cable HD shows.
• CableCARD has drawn a renewed interest from HTPC owners – particularly Microsoft Media Center users since MS ended the OEM PC CableCard requirement.

This tuner will cost you $400 so it isn’t cheap by any means, but it does seem to be a good piece of hardware.  Here’s the first few reports: Read the rest of this entry »

I am a big fan of the Eye-Fi card, and have had my 2GB SD version (i.e. photos, no video) for two and a half years. However, I rarely if ever used the old Eye-Fi Manager software, and over the last few months I’ve been without Eye-Fi wireless transfers altogether thanks to a PC migration, and general laziness on my part. Then last week I got a notice from the company that they’re discontinuing the old Eye-Fi Manager, and replacing it with new Eye-Fi Center software. The shift finally prompted me to set up Eye-Fi on the new computer and give the updated management portal a try.

The Eye-Fi Center has a clean, simple interface showing thumbnails of recently uploaded photos at the top, a list of connected devices along with a calendar to the left, a photo tray for sharing pics at the bottom, and a big preview screen taking up most of the display. There’s also a settings menu available with tabs for network selection, photo storage options, notifications, geotagging, and photo transfer preferences.

Stuff I Like: Read the rest of this entry »

AT&T has launched a new version of its U-verse app for iPhone users. It’s designed to let AT&T U-verse customers schedule recordings on the go — and download and watch some TV content on their mobile phone. AT&T says this makes the company the first TV provider with a mobile app that doesn’t just let you manage your DVR, but which also lets you watch TV shows.

The new app is called U-verse Mobile, and it repalces AT&T’s older Mobile Remote Access app for the iPhone. The DVR scheduling capability is available to all U-verse TV customers, but you’ll need to sign up for a U300 or U450 subscription plan if you want to be able to download videos using the mobile app.

Word on the street is that U-verse Mobile will eventually be available for BlackBerry 6 and Windows Phone 7. But there’s no word yet on an Android version.

You can download the Free U-Verse Mobile app for the iOS from the App Store.

This post republished from Mobiputing.

Let me preface my critique of YouTube’s captioning feature by saying I appreciate Google’s attempt to make YouTube video more accessible. And I’m sure it’s no easy programatic feat to transcribe audio on such a large scale of widely disparate content. However, for someone who obviously enunciates as poorly as I do while using significant amounts of technical jargon, the subtitles are (still) amusingly horrible. Some nonsensical highlights from my latest screencast:

• “the naked ritual are of and see your man” (1:04)
• “it is a vote she will live in the orgy” (3:47)
• “happy occasion firm in texarkana across the way” (1:59)
• “curtis and pass for catchers Wright came right” (3:33)
• “it is much nicer than those for in Russia” (3:19)

You can toggle YouTube’s closed captions and beta transcriptions (or translations!) here:

While Netflix shifts their focus to online streaming, Comcast (?!) and Blockbuster have teamed to provide DVDs By Mail — a soon-to-be-archaic method of content distribution and quintuply befuddling given Comcast’s large data conduit into millions of customer’s homes. I assume DVDs By Mail is primarily a marketing arrangement on Comcast’s end and potentially good for Blockbuster, who has been living on borrowed time – with imminent bankruptcy proceedings? (Put a fork in ‘em.) Netflix does anticipate their DVD shipments will peak in 2013 (or sooner). So there could be a small window of opportunity to capitalize on here… although I don’t see it happening.

(via HackingNetflix)

Ahead of Monsoon Multimedia actually shipping the Vulkano “God Box” later this month, their iPhone/iPad client has landed in Apple’s app storefront. Vulkano is the successor to Monsoon’s Slingbox-esque HAVA, and I suspect the new Vulkano Mobile app (v1.2.101) is an enhanced version of HAVA Mobile (v1.1.28) to now support the iPad and iOS4.

While I don’t yet have a Vulkano in my possession, I do have access to a pair of remote units (connected to DISH ViP 211 satellite receivers) for the purposes of testing the iPhone software. Once locked onto a television channel, video quality looked very good… And I enjoyed some arena football from the NFL Network last night, despite a max app resolution of 320×240 (equivalent to Sling’s current solution). However, initial buffering and issuing remote commands seemed quite slow. I had intended to do something of a quantitative comparison between Vulkano Mobile and SlingPlayer Mobile, but my Slingbox was unavailable.

The opaque remote control UI takes over a large chunk of the screen when triggered, which makes navigating the set-top box’s guide a bitch. However, Monsoon provides their own EPG which can be very quickly navigated. Not only can you trigger a channel change, you can also schedule a recording… not to your DVR, but to the Vulkano’s storage device! These recordings can later be transferred to the iPhone for offline viewing (or streamed around the house?). Once I get my hands on Vulkano hardware, I’ll dig deeper into all the new functionality.

Click to enlarge: