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New Media News Every Morning

Boxee Brings NHL Game Center Live to its Updated Service in Beta

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For those of you who are currently using Boxee, which is currently in beta have a reason to rejoice as Boxee announced two new exciting features of its service. First is that NHL GameCenter LIVE is now available on Boxee.  If you are subscribed to this service on a monthly or annual basis, you can now enjoy watching great Hockey games and fights in HD mode on Boxee.

The other part of Boxee’s exciting announcement is related to updates to its service which is currently in beta mode. The latest version of Boxee beta has some interesting new features such as the following:

File Identification Progress – This feature lets you to easily see how many files Boxee is scanning, has identified, and doesn’t recognize in your media collection.  You can check the status of its media from any menu sidebar or from the Media settings menu.

Manual Movie and TV Show Identification – This feature lets you tell Boxee what’s in your media collection. It allows you to change incorrectly labeled files, find and identify unresolved files and select files to label them correctly.

Facebook & Twitter in your Boxee feed – Boxee Beta now lets you see recommendations from your Facebook and Twitter friends and contacts within Boxee. You can see shared videos in your feed with an icon on the right that tells you where they are from.

New & Improved RSS Management – The new version of Boxee Beta also now lets you better manage, discover and play RSS feeds in Boxee. You can search, arrange by category or sort through the most popular, top rated, new and HD feeds available on your Boxee account. You can then use the RSS feeds app to play back your favorites.

Bug Fixes and Fixes and Fixes, and Fixes! – Of course, just like any other version updates, the new Boxee Beta has addressed hundreds of bugs and issued various fixes to these.

Originally posted on April 19, 2010 @ 6:00 pm

Netflix Now Streams TV Shows and Movies to Nintendo Wii

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Nintendo and Netflix are treating Wii users all over the world with free streaming of TV and Movies on TV sets via Netflix services. The new TV and movie streaming services are provided free of charge to Wii users with existing Netflix plans starting at $8.99 monthly.

With a Nintendo Wii connected to a broadband service, a Netflix subscription you can practically turn your Nintendo Wii into a multimedia device. We’re talking here of unlimited movies and TV shows delivered courtesy of Netflix.  You can also opt to receive DVDs delivered straight to your door step.

Certainly this new service will boosts Netflix’s clout in the home entertainment scene. The Nintendo Wii remains to be the most popular gaming consoles, thanks to its motion controls which users find useful for both exercising and gaming controls.

As for Nintendo Wii, this new service extends its purposes and functions from a mere gaming machine to a portable multimedia entertainment device. It’s definitely a win-win for both parties.

To have streaming TV shows and movies from Netflix on your Nintendo Wii, you simply need to request for a free instant streaming disc from www.netflix.com/wii. Once you have your CD, you can pop it inside your Nintendo Wii and you will presented with a catalog of movies and TV shows that you can freely watch.

via Business Wire

Originally posted on April 12, 2010 @ 10:05 pm

Amazon Preps Up Kindle for iPad, Will Apple Approve It?

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If you were Steve Jobs running Apple which is about to release a magical and revolutionary product that has one of its features going up against the Amazon Kindle, will you allow the Kindle application on the iPad apps store? I mean knowing pretty well that this will compete with the iPads iBooks application?

Well, it seems Amazon is hoping that Apple will not mind this at all. After all, the Kindle for iPhone and recently Kindle for Mac were approved. But the thing is the iPad iBooks is not yet fully operational and full operation will commence only as soon as the iPad is released to consumers.  Publishers are expected to get into the iPad frenzy, making sure that their e-book catalogs make it through the iBooks app store.

Still, there’s no harm in trying. After all Amazon was clever enough to market its upcoming Kindle app  not as specific to the iPad but for other tablets as well. Hence calling its Kindle Apps for Tablet.

Kindle Apps for Tablet will have the same features as the other iteration of the Kindle app. Be it for the iPhone, BlackBerry, PC or Mac. Specific for Tablets are some enhancement in the user interface including:

  • Tailored to the size, look, and feel of your tablet computer
  • Customize background color and font size to ease eye strain
  • Adjust screen brightness from within the app to make reading easier
  • Page turn animation replicates the look of turning a page in a book. Or choose Basic Reading Mode for a simpler and unadorned reading experience

So there, will you be getting your e-books from the Kindle Store once you get your iPad or will you stick to the plan and get it from the iBooks app store instead?

Originally posted on March 22, 2010 @ 5:25 pm

Internet TV Guide Clicker Redesigns its Homepage, Goes Full Blast with New Features

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Clicker, an Internet TV guide which just launched 3 months ago is gearing up for a full blast operation as it launches a new homepage coupled with some new features.  If you’re like me who just learned about this site now, Clicker’s dictum is to help you, Internet TV consumers to find the right show, right when you need to find it – as in Now.

What Clicker does is to catalog all broadcast programming online including TV-quality web original shows. It then delivers a seamless and well organized experience for you to find what’s available to watch and watch isn’t. It also tells you where to watch the Internet TV show as well as which of these shows are well worth watching.

And to make all these happen, Clicker has redesigned its homepage and peppered it with social, personalization, recommendation and management features.

Key features of Clicker’s new homepage include the following:

  • Search on top – to make it easy for users with small screen resolution to use Clicker’s main service – Search
  • Headliners – include important shows and episodes, breaking news and other important TV content
  • Popular Shows/Episodes – a placeholder for soon to be personalized recommendations feature of Clicker
  • Clicker Right Now – lets you peek into what other Clicker users are doing/watching
  • Categories – browsing Clicker’s catalog by subject
  • Playlist – used to be buried on the second layer of Clicker’s site and is now place prominently on the homepage

So there, if you’re into Internet TV programs, check out the newly redesigned Clicker.com now.

Originally posted on March 5, 2010 @ 9:42 am

TiVo Premiere Will Change the Way You Consume Media Content

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TiVo, a multimedia company popular for providing advanced television services has just launched TiVo Premiere and TiVo Premiere XL Boxes.  Basically what these two boxes do is to provide you with a one box that aims to change the way you consumer various forms of media content.

TiVo Premiere combines cable programming, movies, web videos, and music all in one box  that will unlock the real value of your HDTV set. It is energy efficient and promises to even surpass what the DVRs have done to our media viewing and listening habits.

If you’re multimedia consumer, there’s probably no reason why you would hesitate in getting the TiVo boxes. Well, of course that’s assuming that you are ready to spend $299 or $499 for either of these two TiVo boxes. And these will all happen come April 2010 when the TiVo Premiere and TiVo Premiere XL will be released.

Don’t worry whichever you choose to get, you’d still get the same features such as broadband and broadcast integration, TV Baby Browser, easy to use HD layout, built-in Adobe Flash Player, 45 hours of HD storage or 400 hours of standard definition programming feature.  If you want more recording capacity, you can opt to get the TiVo Premiere XL box instead. This option offers 150 hours of HD or 1350 hours of SD programming.

Are you getting one of these TiVo boxes? Or are you satisfied with your current TV box.

Originally posted on March 3, 2010 @ 10:11 am