Recent Comments:
A la carte lawsuit against cable companies dismissed {Engadget HD}
Nov 4th 2009 10:08PM If you read the post you would know Engadget is not against ala carte. What they (and I) are pointing out is that suing the cable company isn't the right approach. The cable company is the middleman in the transaction. The reason you have to pay for 5 ESPNs when you only want ESPN1 and ESPN2 is because the channels are bundled by the content provider (Disney). Disney is the one you need to sue. Every middleman (Cable, Telco, and Satellite) all play by the same rules and that is why none of them offer ala carte.
This is as silly as suing the Cable Company because STBs are not available for retail. (And the reason they aren't sold at retail is because no retailer wants to deal with the hassle and the two STB manufacturers are interested in selling them at retail due to the support costs.)
A la carte lawsuit against cable companies dismissed {Engadget HD}
Nov 3rd 2009 8:05PM Well the biggest reason why these lawsuits never work is because the American Public sues THE WRONG ENTITY. Talk about not seeing the forest from the trees. If you want ala carte programming you need to start suing the Time-Warners, NBC Universals (before Comcast buys them), and Disney. It's like suing Target because you don't like the way Coke packages their beverages.
Microsoft officially delays Digital Cable Tuner firmware and Advisor Utility {Engadget HD}
Oct 22nd 2009 8:32PM Lame, Lame, Lame. I would be very surprised the Cable Companies had anything to do with this. They had to be on board with DIY, SDV, and relaxed-ever-so-slightly DRM for Microsoft to make the announcement at CEDIA. It wouldn't stop the firmware update This sounds like a less second show stopping bug that they thought might have been fixed by now. Doesn't sound like the coders made it.
No new date isn't a surprise. If you had Microsoft's history of not making announced dates, you wouldn't announce any dates either.
CableCARD tuners come to SageTV via SageMCTuner {Engadget HD}
Oct 21st 2009 5:59AM Kludgey, Kludgey, Kludgey. That's what you want in something that is supposed to be an appliance (ala Tivo), more background services, the whole SageTV application running, most of the Media Center (everything other than eshell.exe) application running, and some homegrown code to duct tape the entire mess together. I suppose this doesn't work with Live TV, does it? And I would also assume that Media Center only handles the Cablecard recordings and SageTV handles everything else (analog cable, ClearQAM, ATSC)? I can only imagine the software dependencies that is going to come with this.
And we wonder why HTPCs haven't had greater penetration that they do.
Here is one case where the HD-PVR would probably be a better bet and just let SageTV do the whole thing.
Windows 7 Media Center's upgraded Netflix Watch Instantly interface now available {Engadget HD}
Oct 20th 2009 5:12PM No HD, No Extender, only useful if I for some reason want to watch a movie on the 19" LCD display connected to a Media Center or on my Slingbox. Lame.
Windows 7 Media Center's upgraded Netflix Watch Instantly interface now available {Engadget HD}
Oct 20th 2009 5:11PM Now c'mon? Really? Of course that is what it is.
Only 443,000 CableCARDs deployed into consumer's equipment {Engadget HD}
Oct 1st 2009 6:05AM Huh? I have never seen a cablebox that is configures itself. Every system I have been on the tech has to either call in the number or use a PDA to do it himself. It's possible on a new install that the tech preconfigured a box to an account back at the office but that isn't the same as self configuring.
Only 443,000 CableCARDs deployed into consumer's equipment {Engadget HD}
Oct 1st 2009 6:02AM The real problem with the first Cablecard TVs was the simple fact that either your TV was like my LG and didn't have a guide or nearly as bad it used that crappy TV Guide solution that rode in band on some TV channel (One only has to look at on AVSforums to know that TV Guide wasn't a solution). And if you don't have a guide, anything over 10 channels is unmanageable just by channel surfing. That is what Tru2Way solves, you may not like the provider guide, but at least you have one. That I think was the limiting factor right there...no guide, no sell for Cablecard.
iTunes 9 breaking AirTunes connections? {Engadget}
Sep 14th 2009 3:26PM You may also want to turn off ipv6. That has broken AirTunes for a very long time. When I ran into it again a few weeks ago when I upgraded to 10.6, the system reenabled ipv6 during the update.
Join the Engadget HD podcast live on Ustream {Engadget HD}
Sep 14th 2009 3:07PM Joke, BTW, what happened to my . I think the system ate it.
