live tv

'SNL' assaults social media experts

Social media experts are hard to friend.

Their sheer exalted certainty can often jolt the spine into uncomfortable spasms and jut the jaw into hitherto unknown positions.

It was inevitable, then, that in this moment of political excitement and uncertainty "Saturday Night Live" might attempt a poke or two in their direction.

Here we have a social media expert, Kourtney Barnes, who expresses her knowledge through the examples of one or two Facebook postings. A sample from one Hannah Goldberg on Mitt Romney's Facebook page suggests she doesn't find Mitt Romney terribly attractive at all.

"… Read more

Fund this: Koo Dey Ta promises a la carte TV service

My Comcast cable TV subscription gives me access to roughly three gazillion channels. Of those, I routinely watch maybe 15. So why am I paying for channels I don't want?

Because I have no choice, that's why. Indiegogo campaign Koo Dey Ta promises to change all that if it hits its $150,000 fundraising goal. The service aims to deliver a la carte TV channels, meaning you can pay just for the ones you want to watch.

Intriguing, no? Although it seems like a long shot at this point, even the promise of such an option seems too … Read more

Amazon pushes Kindles for classrooms

Wednesday's CNET Update is syncing your reading assignment:

Amazon has launched a way for teachers to easily push out reading assignments through a Kindle. Today's tech news roundup looks at Whispercast, which allows organizations to manage books and documents synced to a group of Kindle accounts. Everyone the group doesn't need to own a Kindle, but they do need a device with a Kindle app. Classrooms can also order Kindles with custom profiles that block Web browsing or disable purchasing.

In other news, Best Buy is joining retailers like Barnes & Noble and Toys "R" … Read more

Boxee now selling Live TV tuner for cord-cutting users

Boxee Box users now have a way to watch traditional TV as well as online content.

The company has just started selling its new $49 Live TV tuner, which connects directly to the Boxee Box to deliver over-the-air broadcast television channels, potentially making it a useful option for cable TV cord cutters.

Of course, as CNET's Matthew Moskovciak pointed out in a column in November, all HDTVs these days include a built-in ATSC (Advanced Television Systems Committee) tuner, so most cord cutters already have a way to grab broadcast TV without coughing up extra dough.

Still, the folks at … Read more

Microsoft in talks with Comcast, Verizon on Xbox TV?

Microsoft is in talks with the world's largest cable provider, Comcast, to bolster its upcoming live TV service on the Xbox 360, according to a new report.

The blog Digiday, citing anonymous sources, reported today that Microsoft is nearing a deal with Comcast that would allow Xbox 360 owners to sign up for the cable provider's service, and watch its programming from the game console. Digiday says that Microsoft is also in talks with Verizon Fios to form a similar deal with that company.

Microsoft unveiled its live television service at the E3 gaming expo in June. Although the company provided few details on the service at the time, Microsoft said that it would "partner with TV providers" for its offering. The software giant promised that local channels, news, sports, and all the other content available from television providers would come to the game console.

Related stories: • Xbox gets live TV, more ways to use Kinect • E3 2011: Live TV coming to Xbox this fall

Microsoft is expected to make its live TV service available this fall.

Microsoft's decision to rely on Comcast and Verizon Fios rather than try to go it alone in the television space has much more to do with simplicity than anything else, Digiday reported. The blog's sources said that Microsoft simply doesn't want to "pick a fight with cable."… Read more

This Day in Tech: Jobs unveils iCloud, iOS 5, Lion

Too busy to keep up with the tech news? Here are some of the more interesting stories from CNET for Monday, June 6.

Steve Jobs takes stage at WWDC (video) At Apple's WWDC in San Francisco, Steve Jobs opens to a warm reception from attendees. Jobs, who is on medical leave, took the stage to announce new Apple products. More

Apple's iCloud handles music, photos, more CEO Steve Jobs unveils an online storage service designed to make it simple to wirelessly share music, e-mail, photos, calendars, and other data between handheld gadgets and desktop PCs. • How Apple's event unfolded (live blog) • … Read more

Xbox gets Live TV, more ways to use Kinect

LOS ANGELES--A year after introducing Kinect, Microsoft used this year's E3 press conference to show how it's integrating its motion-capture console add-on to Xbox Live and games, and pump up the non-gaming entertainment experience.

EA Sports, EA Games, and Ubisoft announced baked-in support for Kinect in their 2011 Xbox 360 games. Tiger Woods, Madden, FIFA, Mass Effect 3, and Ghost Recon Future Soldier will support the Kinect. Forza 4, Microsoft's racing simulator, will also support Kinect. All Tom Clancy titles from now on will be integrated with Kinect, according to Ubisoft.

We saw demonstrations of how Kinect integration will work, including players taking the reins of a horse-drawn carriage, and firing guns and reloading ammo in games using only body and hand motions and no controller. Voice integration will also be woven into many games, including Madden to call plays. A demonstration of Star Wars with Kinect showed how a player can say "lightsaber on," and then using motions, swing away with the lightsaber.

Microsoft cleaned up the look of the dashboard, and is bringing a host of new features for Xbox Live. … Read more

Elgato HDHomeRun: Dual-tuner live TV streaming to Macs, PCs, iOS devices

For those who have succeeded in cutting the cord on their cable television, solutions for sensible TV streaming are, to say the least, a challenge. The Elgato HDHomeRun, announced today, offers up a small box that connects to a router and TV antenna and streams HD TV content via Wi-Fi anywhere in one's house. More importantly, unlike other Elgato products, the HDHomeRun comes with dual TV tuners for watching simultaneous recordings/viewings of two different channels on two different computers.

The $179 HDHomeRun is a small box that offers a lot of the same features as the small USB-stick Elgato EyeTV Hybrid, which we recently reviewed. The Hybrid, however, required physically interfacing with a Mac or PC via USB. The HDHomeRun more conveniently handles the video transfer wirelessly, and still works with (and is packaged with) Elgato's EyeTV3 Mac software for DVRing and managing TV content and programming.… Read more

Watch live and on-demand TV on your iPhone

Hulu who? If you've been waiting to watch your favorite shows on your iPhone, wait no more: the new MobiTV app streams both live and on-demand television content.

What kind of content? Oh, let's see, there's "Caprica," "Castle," "The Colbert Report," "Community," "Cougar Town," and "CSI"--and that's just the shows starting with "C." Needless to say, the on-demand selection is impressive.

As for live channels, MobiTV offers ABC, CNBC, The Disney Channel, ESPN, and MSNBC, among others.

The interface seems a … Read more