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Conan O’Brien goes on the road to make people laugh, Leno asks ‘What’s laughter?’

A little update on Conan O’Brien, seeing as though we spent a couple of days there talking about his every move. The man is taking his show on the road, bringing the funny to a city near you in the coming weeks! It’s the called “The Legally Prohibited From Being Funny On Television Tour,” and I’m sure it’ll be wonderful.

TNA Wrestling can trend on Twitter just fine, but can it draw actual TV ratings? (No.)

We’re all well aware that Twitter represents man’s best chance of Redemption. No one’s disputing that. What is in dispute today is just how representative Twitter is of The Real World. Case in point: TNA Wrestling made its long awaited move to Monday nights this week, and all throughout the night “TNA” was a trending topic on Twitter. We’ve been led to believe that anything that trends on Twitter is hugely important, not merely in the cozy confines of the Twitterverse, but all over Planet Earth. Explain this, then: the show only drew a 0.98 rating (it rounds up to a 1.0). I thought Twitter = ratings?

Cablevision subscribers: You do know that broadcast TV, like WABC, is totally free, right? You just need an indoor antenna.

Thanks to some last-minute heroics, Cablevision customers here in the Northeast were able to watch the Oscars last night, which aired on WABC, the local ABC affiliate. Cynics have suggested that’s because WABC wasn’t prepared, no matter how cavalier its previous rhetoric, to give up the night’s ratings (and ad dollars) because it wanted to eek out a few more pennies from Cablevision. (WABC had wanted extra money from Cablevision per subscriber, sorta like that Fox-Time Warner Cable feud from a few weeks ago.) But until both sides came to an agreement, people were freaking out: how are we going to watch the Oscars?! Will it be on YouTube? Hulu? BitTorrent? Newsflash, citizens: a simple, indoor ATSC antenna is all you need to watch WABC (and other broadcast channels), provided you live within range of the broadcast tower.

Germany’s 1st 3D broadcast happens next week. It’s a soccer match, as it should be.

I need to move to Europe for several reasons, but the one that’s relevant right now? 3D broadcasts of top-tier football (“soccer”) leagues. Sky Deutschland has announced that it will broadcast the March 14 match between Bayer Leverkusen and Hamburg (that’s the second place team versus the fourth place team). Lucky devils.

Switched On: Why it’s time for an iTunes TV subscription

Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about consumer technology.

In the 10 billionth song that Apple sold through iTunes, Johnny Cash’s “Guess Things Happen That Way”, a man other than Steve Jobs famous for black attire bemoans the happenstance of his romantic misfortune. But nothing could be further from the story of iTunes, in which Apple’s meticulously crafted ownership of the end-user experience led to a dominant position in music sales. Now, on the dawn of releasing a new device that could be to television shows what the iPod was to music, Apple has an opportunity to create as commanding a lead in TV distribution — if it is willing to again capitulate to consumers’ media consumption habits.

Apple has enjoyed great success with iTunes in part because it adopted the purchase-to-own model that had been so successful with CDs and records before them. However, Apple didn’t simply mirror that model. By allowing consumers to purchase the vast majority of songs as singles, it provided better perceived value, Such an option was also a natural fit for the iPod, where playlists made it trivial to create the digital equivalent of “mix tapes.” The iPod’s capacity for thousands of songs was also no match for most albums that typically had a dozen or so songs.

Continue reading Switched On: Why it’s time for an iTunes TV subscription

Switched On: Why it’s time for an iTunes TV subscription originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 04 Mar 2010 23:32:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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InFocus rolls out three new large, thin displays for business, education

InFocus rolls out three new large, thin displays for business, education originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 04 Mar 2010 16:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sony opens 3D Experience in Vegas

Well, TV manufacturers are definitely embracing 3D for the home. Obviously it’s going to require the networks to jump in too, as evidenced by Sony and CBS building the “Sony 3D Experience” in the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas.

Let your geek flag fly with official Xmen TVs

Word has come down that Marvel has licensed some of their characters to TV builder RTC23. No, I’ve never heard of them either, but apparently someone has since they are now producing the official “ultimate comic book fan” television.

The new TVs will be available in 22, 32, 42, and 55-inch versions, and feature custom splash [...]

Rosum’s Alloy chip promises ‘precise’ location using TV signals

Though plenty of firms (including some big ones) have been trying to commercialize consumer-facing indoor positioning technologies for years, none have succeeded on a wide scale — which certainly seems to leave the door wide open for a system that actually works to be wildly successful, doesn’t it? Rosum has been toying with the idea of using plain old TV signals to accurately locate people and objects within GPS-hating structures for years, and with today’s launch of its so-called Alloy system with partner Siano, the company could be closer to wide-scale deployment. Basically, Alloy combines AGPS (for maximum precision outdoors and in marginal areas) with support for a variety of types of TV signals to enhance coverage and provide <150 meter accuracy even in the deepest, darkest, dankest corners of your home where traditional GPS would never dream of going. What’s more, Rosum touts that TV positioning is several orders of magnitude more power-efficient than AGPS, music to the ears of anyone who’s struggling to get a full day’s battery out of their phone. They’re sampling chipsets beginning this month, but don’t expect it in handsets right away — Rosum’s primary target appears to be femtocell makers. The devices traditionally require GPS reception, requiring unsightly remote GPS antennas if you’re not interested in balancing the cell on a window sill, so a technology like this should let you properly bury that network extender behind a bookshelf where it belongs. Follow the break for Rosum’s press release.

Continue reading Rosum’s Alloy chip promises ‘precise’ location using TV signals

Rosum’s Alloy chip promises ‘precise’ location using TV signals originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 01 Mar 2010 17:09:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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TV antenna disguised as picture frame

Long range over-the-air HDTV antennas can get mighty unsightly and expensive. Clixxun’s “Fancy Alpha” attempts to stem that tide with a $40 TV antenna that’s disguised as an unassuming picture frame.

Philips intros new Ambilight HDTVs, speakers and other AV wares

Philips ain’t much for introducing new gear here on US soil, but for those fortunate enough to buy their milk with Euros, the company has a cornucopiaof new kit to tempt you with. It seems as if the company chose to skip right over CES and do its own thing here in late February, with the “2010 Consumer Lifestyle” event bringing to us a refreshed lineup of LED-backlit Ambilight HDTVs (7000, 8000 and 9000 series), a new Immersive Sound home theater system (with tri-speaker satellites) and the aluminum-tinged Soundbar HTS9140. We’re also told that the new line of 8000 and 9000 LED 1080p TVs are 3D capable, with a “3D upgrade pack” to be made available separately and include two Active3D glasses and a wireless transmitter. In related news, that now-forgotten Cinema 21:9 set — which was supposed to ship many moon ago — now has a “summer 2010″ estimated arrival date on it, though we certainly aren’t holding our breath just yet. Hit the source link for all the other goods, but don’t expect to find much in the way of pricing and availability.

Philips intros new Ambilight HDTVs, speakers and other AV wares originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 25 Feb 2010 10:33:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Cablevision’s new ‘PC to TV Media Relay’ slings PC media to your cable box, fuzzy on the details

It’s been done before, and in many ways, but Cablevision’s new plan for slinging what’s on your PC to your TV might be one of the most interesting tries yet. Dubbed “PC to TV Media Relay,” the new service will let subscribers that get their broadband internet and cable TV from Cablevision load up a bit of software on their Windows PC (a Mac version is forthcoming) that pushes whatever is on the computer through to a dedicated channel on the cable box. The real win here is the absolute lack of new hardware that’s required (as far as we can tell), though we’re guessing Cablevision is doing something fancy on the back end to route the video locally instead of streaming it over the entire internet. The service will start trials in June, and is a pretty overt move to keep users from dropping their cable TV service altogether as internet video continues to gain steam and Intel Wireless Display makes something like this into default functionality. In all, it’s hard not to see this as just a stopgap, but it’s certainly an intriguing one.

Cablevision’s new ‘PC to TV Media Relay’ slings PC media to your cable box, fuzzy on the details originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 24 Feb 2010 16:17:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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