It's black, it plays nice with your PS3 and it enables owners in DVB-T territories to watch live TV via their PlayStation 3. Yep, it's Sony's PlayTV, and it has recently been reviewed on video by Stuff's Ruth Owen. We'd go into elaborate detail about exactly what she thinks, but then you might be discouraged from actually clicking through and hearing her most delightful accent. So we won't.

[Thanks, JimB]

There are a few must-do things when you wind up in the City of Brotherly Love: see the Liberty Bell, check out Independence Hall, scarf down an authentic cheesesteak and... peek the HD Video Wall at the Comcast Center? Shortly after wowing locals and making customers suddenly aware of where their money was going, the official visitor site for the Great Philadelphia area is now pushing the wall as a can't-miss tourist attraction. Comical though that may be, we can't say that it's really that absurd -- after all, who wouldn't want to see 2,000 square-feet of beautiful LED action when waltzing through a city on vacation? On that note, have any of you actually stopped and checked it out?

[Via Gadling]

PlayOn wants to make sure you can get your daily dose of Barackrolls and Airwolf episodes beyond the desktop, while Hulu might not have a slick streaming set-top box of its own, this media server software turns flash video RSS streams into easily browsed folders for your DLNA-compliant hardware. PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and HP MediaSmart HDTVs being at the top of that list (with Nintendo Wii support planned by year-end) owners can grab the beta release of the software and stream low-res episodes of Psych, or any assortment of YouTube video they please. With Netflix support "just down the road" this could provide an end around for PS3 owners looking for streaming love, or Xbox 360 owners without Xbox Live Gold (we know you're out there.) Bad news is the beta only lasts 60 days and there's a $30 pricetag waiting at the end of the free lunch highway. Our experience was good, with no stutters in a Psych episode streamed via Wi-Fi to the PS3 (albeit with no choice of HD clips), but we'd wait for confirmation on the whole Netflix bit before dropping any dough.

Update: Getting 69-C00D36C4 / folder could not be accessed errors on your PS3 or Xbox 360, or waiting for 64-bit Vista support to dive in? PlayOn CTO David Karlton updated the official blog to let users know fixes and additional support is in the works, so keep an eye out for more news shortly if things aren't working just yet.

Gallery: PlayOn Media Server

[Via PS3 Fanboy]

The New York Times is reporting that Amazon is scrapping its Unbox service in favor of a new online TV and movie store called Amazon Video on Demand. Unlike iTunes and Unbox, Amazon's new digital store-front will stream any of 40,000 movies and television programs to customers. According to Bill Carr, Amazon's VP for digital media, "Our goal is to create an immersive experience where people can't help but get caught up in how exciting it is to simply watch a movie right from Amazon.com with a click of the button." In this regard, the first 2 minutes of every video will begin to play when customers visit the video's product page. Movies can be purchased and downloaded to your hard drive or stored in an Amazon video library allowing you to stream the content to other (any?) Internet connected devices. Films and TV shows from "almost all the major studios and television networks" will be available for sale or rental in the US at undisclosed prices -- only Disney and its ABC subsidiary are holding out for uh, obvious reasons (Steve Jobs is Disney's largest individual shareholder).

Amazon also plans to bring the service directly to the living room through a deal with Sony (and others) which will ultimately embed store access into future Bravia TVs. For now, Amazon's VoD store will be available through Sony's $300 Bravia Internet Video Link device. The store goes beta-hot today for a limited number of "invited" US Amazon.com customers before going a live later this summer.

As far as mods go, it just doesn't much easier than this. Popcorn Hour's heralded A-100 HD media streamer contains a gap just big enough for a PATA HDD, and if you've been too timid to flex your DIY muscle and throw one in there, we've got the video to guide you through. Anxious to store files locally and turn your unit into a mighty useful BitTorrent client? Check out a demonstration of the painless procedure just beyond the break -- and grab your screwdriver while you're at it.

[Via eHomeUpgrade]

As the release date for ZeeVee's ZvBox draws near (we're hearing July 31st), the company is out and about in an attempt to drum up demand as the run-up to its launch progresses. During CONNECTIONS 2008, ZeeVee was in attendance with a ZvBox on display, and aside from snapping a few telling photographs, the folks over at eHomeUpgrade were also able to capture a couple videos to give you an early feel of its capabilities (and limitations). We don't have to tell you where the goods are, but if you're new here, that read link down there is a good place to start.

[Via SlashGear]

As the camera / camcorder world continues to embrace video sharing sites, it's no surprise to see this little critter emerge from the labs of JVC-Victor. The pictured dual codec LSI chip handles both MPEG-2 and H.264 / MPEG-4 AVC formats, theoretically cutting out the painful encode process from YouTube uploads. Granted, most of the technobabble behind the thing is lost in machine translation, but we do get the idea that it'll start showing up in the outfit's Everio line shortly.

[Via AkihabaraNews]

We spotted something this week that really got our heads spinning: a fairly fail proof method to keep ad skipping (at least partially) at bay. During a re-run of Family Guy on TBS, Bill Engvall casually walked onto the bottom of the screen, paused Family Guy and proceeded to pimp his own show for a solid 15 seconds. Yeah, TBS is known for self-promotion, but this just feels downright slimy. It prompted us to fire up this poll, however, which beckons you readers to cast your vote for the most annoying form of advertisement. Feel free to chime in below with specific experiences if you feel led, and make sure to use the heck out of that DVR while you still can -- clearly, these guys are all too ready to institute workarounds to hinder ad skipping. The Bill Engvall violation video is waiting after the break.

Oh sure, DirecTV's Media Share has allowed Viiv-certified machines to network in for a good while now, but what if you just so happen to prefer Orb? The same streaming software that functions with the Wii, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 has been caught playing nice (read: transmitting media from a WiFi-enabled laptop) with an HR21 HD DVR. Judging by the looks of things, the setup procedure isn't all that different from syncing up a traditional Viiv machine, but feel free to peek a step-by-step video posted after the jump if you're looking to give it a go yourself.

Read - PlayStation 3 firmware v2.30 walkthrough video
Read - Revamped PlayStation Store images
Read - DTS' own confirmation of the good news (Thanks, sTeViO!)

As the world at large waits for YouTube to support 1080p, Viddyou is getting a leg up by becoming the first online video-sharing destination exclusively for personal content to do just that. Of course, the ability to upload, store and share such high-resolution videos won't come without a price (unfortunately), and users interested in taking advantage of it are going to be forced to pay $34.95 per year. For those "Premium" members, they'll also get unlimited storage / delivery, the ability to download their original video source, embeddable HD widgets and access to all of their clips from their iPhone. For more on Viddyou, head on down to the full release -- as for us, we're just hoping this is a sign of things to come.

Our world is made up of two main senses that are reproduced in our home theaters, sight and sound; and for some reason when so called experts make predictions they like to pretend both are equally important. If you think they are, then just look at the trends in the consumer electronics industry with the best example being HDTVs. While people have no problem paying $3000 for a new high-def TV, they don't want to spend more than $500 on speakers. At the same time as big box retailers have more HDTVs than you can count, speakers get smaller and smaller and the HTIB is hotter than ever. The reason is simple, more people can appreciate the difference with improved picture quality than improved sound quality. So the next time you read that the home video industry will go to downloads this year like the music industry or that one of the HD media formats will end up like DVD-Audio or SACD, head on down and watch consumers buy a 50-inch plasma with the cheapest HTIB available -- or worse, just use the speakers in the set.

For HBO subscribers, HBO on Broadband sounds like a pretty sweet deal on paper. Unfortunately, the service is currently restricted to Time Warner cable and broadband subscribers in Wisconsin, but that hasn't stopped a video from surfacing showing off the service's capabilities. A clip over at Multichannel News shows it being demonstrated on an LCD TV, and while there's nothing really out of the ordinary -- it's an online viewing portal for peeping HBO programming, pretty simple -- it's still something to keep you satisfied 'til it rolls into your town. Speaking of which, we've found that discs are already arriving at homes of certain Wisconsin residents, and although a pair of Macs are used to advertise the service on the packet, there's a complete lack of OS X support on the discs themselves. Reportedly, the service worked "just fine" in Parallels, but this doesn't seem to be good news for those working sans any flavor of Windows. [Disclosure: Engadget is part of the Time Warner family]

[Thanks, Ken C.]

Just in case an elaborate hands-on with Pioneer's 9mm-thick KURO plasma wasn't enough to satisfy, why not check out a video clip of it wowing crowds at CES? 'Course, we should mention that it looked infinitely better in person, but we're dealing with YouTube here, people. Click on through!

Experiencing 3D on a television sans those horrifically unsightly glasses has been a dream for years, and while we heard that Mitsubishi had a few tricks up its sleeve last year, we're finally seeing the fruits of its labor. In a brief, completely monotonous video, the outfit demonstrates its "scalable system for real-time acquisition, transmission and autostereoscopic display of dynamic scenes," which translates to "3D TV" in layman's terms. We'll restrain from getting all up in the technicalities, but feel free to take a look at what the "future holds" in the video after the break.