TV

CHIBA, Japan--Remember convergence? The idea that the TV and conventional technologies would merge? It came out about the same time as that series ER and has aged about as well in North America.

In Japan, it's another story. Watching TV on your PC is actually quite common. A huge number of desktops and notebooks come with TV tuners and people actually use them, according to several residents.

"There are a lot of ads for TV PCs," he said Yasutoshi Magara, managing director of Microsoft Japan. Sharp Electronics, he noted, just came out with a PC-TV combo with … Read more

This week, it's medicine vs. Madison Avenue.

On Monday, Johns Hopkins University's Bloomberg School of Public Health announced study results that for children aged 2.5 to 5.5, watching more than 2 hours of TV a day can lead to behavioral problems and poor social skills. A day later, Panasonic announced its "Bring Back Family Time" advertising campaign that promotes its high-definition TV products as a way to get families to spend more quality time together.

Quotations from the respective announcements couldn't contrast more sharply. Can you match which came from Kamila Mistry, lead … Read more

If you haven't managed to snag one of the free beta tokens from another Joost user, today is your lucky day, because the service has launched version 1.0, and is free and open to anyone who wants to use it. The once invite-only video content program is one of the few services we've seen since Google's Gmail to successfully use beta access to both intentionally control the scale of its user base and build up hype. It also doesn't hurt when it's created by the same duo that made Skype and Kazaa.

If you've been a loyal Joost user since the company rolled out its private beta last year, version 1.0 isn't a whole lot different from the latest build, however the newer "plastic" menus are much better looking than the contrastacular ones of yore. There's also a ton of content, which Joost pits somewhere above 150,000 shows, spanned across 250 or so "channels," including one with entire episodes of the original Transformers series.… Read more

If you haven't managed to snag one of the free beta tokens from another Joost user, today is your lucky day, because the service has launched version 1.0, and is free and open to anyone who wants to use it. The once-invite-only video content program is one of the few services we've seen since Google's Gmail to successfully use beta access to both intentionally control the scale of its user base and build up hype. It also doesn't hurt when it's created by the same duo that made Skype and Kazaa.

If you've … Read more

If Sony wants to be effective in this mystery marketing game, it's going to have to be more patient. Unlike B&O's "Serenata" campaign, which made us wait weeks before letting the secret out, Sony's latest product went live only days after its teaser site began to circulate in earnest.

But no matter. It turns out that the box under wraps was what it called the world's first OLED TV, referring to its ultra-thin and flexible screen technology that uses organic light-emitting diodes. The energy-efficient TV is just 3 millimeters thick and will … Read more

Last week, I had the honor of being a guest on G4's Attack of the Show with Forbes deputy editor David Ewalt, as host Kevin Pereira grilled us on whether we're reaching a tipping point when it comes to online social networking. I think the general answer was "yes and no"--yes, we're reaching a point where most new entries into general-interest social networking sector (hello, Pownce, Flux, and Mash) have a rather uphill climb ahead, but no, this stuff's not going to go away altogether.

P.S.: Do I look like I'm … Read more

It's been online for a few days now, but I just spotted (via PaidContent) Forbes' article titled The iFlop (subhead: "Steve Jobs tried to design--and dictate--the future of television. Here's how he failed.") Author Scott Woolley calls the Apple TV "a flat-out" failure, claiming that it's sold less than 250,000 units in six months. Among the supposed sins of the product: the lack of a built-in DVR and a "parochial and proprietary approach" to online video content. He also highlights a variety of on-demand video competitors, including Vudu, TiVo (via Amazon Unbox), and Xbox 360 (which offers rentals and sales of TV shows via the Xbox Live Marketplace)--while glossing over many of their shortcomings. Still, is he right? Is the Apple TV dead in the water? … Read more

Though there was much ado about Verizon Wireless' V Cast Mobile TV service when the carrier launched the service earlier this year, it's been eerily quiet since then. In particular, we've been waiting for new handsets beyond the original LG VX9400 and the Samsung SCH-U620.

Fortunately, our wait came to an end this morning when Verizon and Motorola announced the new Moto Rizr Z6tv. Sporting the familiar, and may we add quite attractive, Rizr slider design, the Z6tv offers a solid feature set beyond the Mobile TV support (which is quite enough by itself). You'll find Bluetooth, … Read more

Networking companies are beginning to deliver the new Vista-friendly Media Center Extenders that Microsoft outlined earlier this month. D-Link's entry in the race is the DSM-750. Like competing models, the DSM-750 attaches to a TV (standard or high-def) and streams live and recorded TV, video, music, and photos from networked Media Center PCs located elsewhere in the home. An update of the older DSM-520, the 2007 model adds dual-band 802.11n wireless (which has the speed and bandwidth for optimal streaming of HD video) as well as compatibility with the popular DivX and XviD video file formats. Unlike similarly … Read more