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Greetings from baby land!

Hello, world! Believe me, that little geek joke is more appropriate than you know right now. I'm Molly Wood, executive editor for CNET TV, and if you're thinking, "there's no Molly Wood on CNET TV," it's because I've been on a tiny little hiatus; quite tiny, really. How tiny? This tiny:

Anyway, when I'm not doing this, I'm the usual host of the Buzz Report, currently being handled extremely ably by the fabulous Brian Cooley. I do the Buzz Out Loud podcast, the Gadgettes podcast, assorted Quick Tips, Insider Secrets, and … Read more

Remote TV speaker can save marriage

With so many wireless headphones available, one might wonder why anyone would want something like the "TV Hear" remote speaker. Basically, it's a wireless "personal" speaker with a 30-foot range that lets you listen to the telly without disturbing a sleeping spouse or anyone else within earshot of average volumes.

But some people still like to hear things in the open air, and Brookstone says there are other uses for this speaker, such as listening to the TV while you "bounce from room to room--trying to cook dinner, for example, while catching the evening … Read more

Comcast buys stake in sports networks

Comcast said Monday it will pay $570 million in cash to acquire stakes in two regional sports networks owned by Cablevision. The deal will give Comcast 100 percent ownership of Fox Sports Net New England and 60 percent of Fox Sports Net Bay Area. News Corp. owns the other 40 percent of the regional sports network near San Francisco.

Craig Moffet, a senior analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co., said the deal makes sense for the cable operator since it's already the incumbent cable provider in both the San Francisco and Boston markets. The deal will give Comcast … Read more

Prostitutes? In Washington? Shocking, and the Internet vibrates in anticipation

There's already a federal indictment of a woman accused of running a call girl ring in Washington D.C. A deputy secretary of state, Randall Tobias, has resigned. Tobias admits to using the services of Pamela Martin & Associates only for back rubs. Deborah Palfrey, the woman who ran Pamela Martin services, is gaining some notoriety in the blogosphere.

Palfrey is threatening to call many prominent D.C. men into court to testify on her behalf. Clearly, Tobias would happily back up Palfrey's claim that her service was about massage and fantasy, not prostitution.

So where are the … Read more

SlingPlayer for Mac gets an Aqua makeover

After many months of promises, Sling Media finally delivered a Mac version of the SlingPlayer software in October 2006. There was just one problem: the public beta disappointed many Mac owners because--and I'm not making this up--it looked too much like Windows software. For instance, MacWorld's review noted:

Although the Brushed Steel interface skin approximates the QuickTime Player interface, it's betrayed by the series of Windows-style buttons in the top left corner. (It could be worse--they could be in the top right instead!) It's a little thing, but it's still ugly, and I hope that … Read more

Vudu: Netflix killer or just another VOD wannabe?

Heard of Vudu? Neither had anybody else until this weekend, when the Silicon Valley start-up got a double shot of well-coordinated publicity that's been burning up the Web: a big write-up in the New York Times and a batch of exclusive photos on Gizmodo. Vudu, it seems, is the latest stab at a video-on-demand movie box--a little set-top device that hooks to your TV and downloads movies from a broadband Web service. But Vudu looks to have some key advantages over past efforts from the likes of RCA and MovieBeam. First, it has the backing of most of the … Read more

Pikspot launches, joins media mashup fray

Pikspot is a new social network for groups to upload and share media. Each group can create its own themed page and add various pieces of content such as audio, video clips, and images. It's not a P2P network per se, consider it a media-hosting site like SplashCast with extended group features. Will it be the next big thing in media distribution? I'm not so sure about that, but it is launching with a lineup of content from several TechTV notables who have formed a channel called UndoTV. For any Webware readers who have watched CNET TV's new call-in help show CNET Live, this might be right up your alley.

Adding media to Pikspot channels is fairly simple. There's a batch uploader for photos and plenty of options to tag and credit content. Channel owners can also opt to let subscribers (registered users who have added the channel to their subscription list) add their own content. To sort through it all, there's a simple search. You're also able to browse through tagged content in a cloud, which is pretty neat looking.

Any Pikspot channel or piece of content can be embedded off-site on blogs or social networks. Like some of the embeds we've seen recently with SplashCast and Kyte.tv (hands-on), Pikspot lets users browse through the channel's entire content catalog and interact with other community members via comments without leaving the embedded player.

To customize a Pikspot channel, owners can select from a large selection of templates, or make their own using a fairly full-featured editor that gives complete control over the color scheme and branding. Any site still retains a small banner at the top of the page to bring you back to Pikspot, like you get on Blogger, Ning, and other networks.

The Pikspot experience is fairly slick, but I do have my nits to pick, mainly the upload speed for adding media to the service, which I found to be really slow. I'd like to see the inclusion of a live chat for each channel, as I had a lot of fun with this feature using Kyte.tv recently. That being said, the commenting system is really simple and includes a Digg-like way to vote on which comments are (and aren't) worth reading.

I'm very interested to see which other content providers stick their work on Pikspot. Since anyone can upload content, we're bound to see some copyrighted items on there. If it's anything like Joost, with the right people in charge, we'll see more partnerships and content provider-sponsored channels fairly soon.

I've embedded a Pikspot player below.… Read more

Beta watch: SideReel opens new video wiki

SideReel is a new video fan site. I talked to the site's co-founder, Bart Myers, at the SF Beta mixer last night, and he convinced me to check it out. What I found is, at its heart, a wiki. There are a few major video categories (Television, Movies, and "Video" for everything else) as well as a catchall category for nonvideo entries, such as actors. Pages for the video assets, like TV shows, have special fields. For example, each show has a "Watch it now" box, where you should be able to find links to … Read more

The smallest HD-ready TV ever?

So you've got a 50-inch plasma in the lounge, a 32-inch LCD in the bedroom and a waterproof TV in the bathroom. That only leaves the kitchen devoid of entertainment. No need to panic, though--Bush has released what could well be the smallest HD-ready television your money can buy.

The catchily named LCD15W08DVDHD has a 15.4-inch widescreen LCD, built-in DVD player and, of course, features an HDMI input for watching all your high-definition material.

This TV has a decent range of other inputs, too. There's a VGA-in for connecting a computer, or even an Xbox 360. There'… Read more