We first saw the Cisco FlipShare TV hit the FCC just over a month ago, and now that’s it’s official (well, official in the sense that Walt Mossberg broke the embargo by two hours) we’re still sort of underwhelmed and a little befuddled — although it’s made by Cisco, the Flip-focused media player doesn’t actually connect to your home WiFi network. Instead, the FlipShare software transmits data from your computer using a proprietary USB dongle, which means the player itself is useless unless your computer is on with Flip’s funky FlipShare software running and the dongle connected. Flip tells us the decision to go proprietary was made to make things easier for non-technical users to set up (like Flip’s cameras, the FlipShare software is preloaded on the dongle) but we can’t help but think it’s actually a bit more complicated, since Gran won’t be able to just turn the thing on and subscribe to your new Flip user channels enabled by FlipShare 5.0. Instead, she’ll have to get out her laptop, plug in the dongle, launch the software (which pulls the content from the internet), and then start using the FlipShare TV’s RF remote to get at your videos, which seems pretty complicated to us. Yeah, we’re just not sure, especially at $149 — we’ve actually got one here for review, we’ll let you know how we feel in the next couple days.
Continue reading Flip Video FlipShare TV beams video to the big screen
Flip Video FlipShare TV beams video to the big screen originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 01 Dec 2009 23:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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