Mplayer codecs mean you can handle just about every file format you can find (including uncompressed VIDEO_TS rips). Other add-ons include the Sapphire media organizer, a WebKit browser, game emulators, the ability to FTP into your box to avoid iTunes and more, all without blocking any of the out-of-the-box functions. Not bad at all for $60. [aTV via 43 Folders]

Those crazy Japan-addicts from the Pink Tentacle have grabbed the first commercial ever made by a fembot. Actroid DER-2 stars in a 15-second TV ad titled "The Woman Who Doesn't Rust", promoting an insect repellent and sunscreen spray. From afar, she looks hey-babe-how-you-doin' kind of good, but then they have to cut to a close-up and almost gave me a heart attack. Why a fembot needs sunscreen is beyond me. Lube after a few Old Fortrans, on the other side, it's a completely different story. [Pink Tentacle]

This whole concept of this show depends on humiliating its participants. The producers, though, must have caught on to something more: everyone on this show is pretty annoying. Shrewdly, then, ISJGS smashes them into wooden doors. Thanks, ABC!

Those prices Vizio quoted are reasonably solid, the company says, though not 100 super-duper percent, as the LCD market is the only thing more volatile than the stock market.

The bigger news, though, is that you'll see features like 120Hz trickle down from the high-end XVT line to the VW-class Wal-Mart sets in roughly 9-12 months. Yes, a year from now, you'll be able to buy a 120Hz Vizio LCD from Wally World, at God only knows how cheap a price. Vizio's competitors on the cheap TV scene really can't keep up.

Here are the updated specs for the XVT line:

Size
47 and 42” FHD LCD
Performance
Smooth Motion V-engine
Motion Estimation
Motion Compensation
Improved Noise Reduction
FHD – 1920x1080
PIP, POP
500 Nits, 5ms response, 6500:1 Contrast
178/178 Viewing Angle
10 Bit Color Depth – 1.07Billion Colors
24P Input Capability
Rear Video inputs
2 HDMI (5.1 Output Capable through SPDIF or Wireless)
1 VGA with RCA Stereo Audio
2 Component with RCA Stereo Audio
2 Composite with RCA Stereo Audio
Side I/O
2 HDMI (5.1 Output Capable through SPDIF or Wireless)
1 component with RCA Stereo Audio
1 Composite with RCA Stereo Audio
Read Audio
SPDIF Digital Out – Tuner input
RCA Output
ID
VIZIO Black Tie
Slim Bezel
Black
Audio Performance
3 Channel (L,C,R) 3x10 Watt
SRS TruSurround XT
5.1 Wireless (2.4GHz) upgradable with Dolby Pro Logic II

[Vizio]

Amazon sees this as a way to not only bypass set-top boxes and go directly for the TVs (even though Bravia Video Link is currently a $300 add-on) via platforms like Tru2way; the NYTimes also speculates on a move to get the whole Amazon store inside your TV, which makes a lot of sense, even though customers capable of setting up a VoD system directly on their TV are probably just fine with making orders on their laptop—while sitting on the couch. QVC killer! [NYTimes]

If this challenge is a metaphor, I'm a little lost. Even more lost, though, are the contestants, who apparently don't fully grasp that they are on a show called I Survived a Japanese Game Show, asking questions like "Where do they come up with this shit?" Stay tuned for more game show gadgetry next week. [ABC]

The first episode opens with tons of booms and fire—Michael Bay-esque even—with Humvees streaking across the shimmering dessert strafing enemy tanks with 50-cal. machine guns and calling in support from Cobra helicopter gunships. Then you realize it's all just a training mission, and that the tedious desert hours that follow are the real meat of this show.

On the tech side, these Marines are struggling. Yes, there is in fact a Blue Force tracker console in the lead Lieutenant's truck, showing satellite maps of the battlefield and tracking friendlies and enemy units via GPS. But at the same time he's showing it off, other drivers are bargaining for salvaged hoses and gaskets for their busted Humvees, and grabbing smuggled batteries brought in by an embedded reporter from Rolling Stone for their NVGs. "It's like Gilligan's Island—they're giving us rocks and coconuts to make radios with," says one. Yes, recon Marines are legendary for getting things done quick and dirty, but when low-rank Marines are spending $500 or more of their own money for parts for their own trucks—damn. That may come as no surprise to anyone who has been or knows someone who has been deployed, but for us sitting here watching HBO in our living rooms, it's something we can't be reminded of enough.

Generation Kill was created by David Simon and Ed Burns (based on the book of the same name), the minds behind the just plain fucking brilliant The Wire. To Iraq they bring their same absolutely no bullshit treatment they gave to the Baltimore streets, with no clean-cut, by-the-book plots, practically no background music, and no warm and fuzzy morals or bleeding heart polemics. Just the straight stuff, which unfortunately includes Marines ordering titanium armor for their Humvees' turrets off of eBay and hoping they'll get FedExed to the Kuwaiti desert. With all the far-out DARPA concepts you see online every day, it's important for everyone to remember that despite a lot of leaps forward, here in the 21st century, the shit is still the shit.

FlyWire is set for October, though those looking for the mildly cheaper in-room option will have to wait until early next year. Both of them are pricier than Monster's $600 wireless HDMI setup, which is also supposed to hit in October (though it cheats a bit by using UWB-over-Coax to nail whole-home streaming). Check out all the specs below to compare for yourself:
[Belkin]

Tru2way is actually the brand name for a common Java-based middleware stack and software platform (aka OpenCable, aka OCAP) that'll be supported across the entire cable industry (all the majors like Comcast and Time Warner others are way onboard). Hardware comes into play by way of CableCARD, the little card you can plug into your TiVo (or whatever) to get cable on it without a set-top box. It decrypts the encrypted signal the cable company sends out.

Up until now CableCARD has had some problems: It was meant to replace your set-top box, but besides crappy industry support, it was missing stuff like the programming guide and VOD. Tru2way aims to fulfill the original promise. Not only will tru2way be in half of all actual cable boxes by 2013 according to ABI Research—Time Warner already has a million boxes out there—TV manufacturers like Panny, Sammy and Sony are building tru2way sets that won't need cable boxes. (ABI principal analyst Steve Wilson tells us that Sony's agreement is particularly important in pushing tru2way forward, since it got the cable operators to agree to the same set of specs and common goals, like a full rollout by 2009.) So tru2way isn't vaporware—it's not a butter smooth road, but you will probably see it fairly soon(ish).

The biggest tru2way advantage for consumers is that the box becomes an option based on the capability of your TV. You'll finally get the program guide, VOD and other advanced features with a tru2way TV, without a black behemoth next to it. And, as is implied in the name, it allows two-way communication, something older CableCARD devices couldn't do. That means cable operators can offer a lot of the same interactive features as AT&T's U-verse IPTV service. Since it's a common platform for all cable operators, a developer's app that works for Time Warner will work for Comcast and vice versa, no messy porting required. And it's just Java, so there's not much of a learning curve, paving the way for lots of innovative apps (if the cable co. allows them), not to mention the obvious like local weather widgets, voting, news, RSS. ABI's Steve Wilson also mentioned an on-TV caller ID app similar to AT&T's.

The major catch is that this requires new hardware, either a new box (from the cable company) or a new TV (from you wife's pension fund). Cable dudes are going to cycle to the new boxes gradually, not replace them all at once, and that will take some time. Also, don't expect these wonderful new services to be wonderfully free, Wilson tells us. The super-sweet stuff is going to be part of higher-tiered services that are probably gonna cost you. And the boxes themselves might be pricey. There will lower levels with more basic interactivity, but those cheap-o boxes will have a slower rollout. (Though it'll be hastier in markets invaded by FiOS and U-verse according to Wilson.)

So, while CableCARD and tru2way aren't going to invade the country overnight, the way most people watch TV—even if they actually still sit on a couch in front of an actual boob tube—is going to change significantly in the next couple of years. But it's not like they have much of a choice anymore. Even now, people (mostly young whippersnappers) are changing the way they watch TV, whether or not the cable companies and telecoms go along. Time to evolve... or die.

There's a chance you won't, actually, see this TV in a few years, at least served up from AT&T. Only 379,000 subscribers are currently hooked up to U-Verse TV, and it's not available to a whole lot more than that. Rollout is slow. But listening to Peter Hill, VP of voice and converged services, talk about what the company is working on for U-verse, you'd never know that everything he was showing me was just for a tiny, privileged sliver of TV viewers. (BTW, for a great hands-on cable vs. U-verse review to see what they're getting, check out this piece.)

The first thing I spot—and ask about—when I walk in is the Xbox 360 on the shelf, a ghostly reminder of the promise of a ubiquitous IPTV box. The status? Microsoft and AT&T have to "come to terms" on it. Whatever that means, but the shaky laughter dotting our exchange implies you'll probably never see it in the States. On to the real show.

Integration is the key to AT&T's IPTV vision—integration with the internet, with your home network and media, integration with AT&T's services. But that doesn't mean TV itself is taking a backseat. Whole home DVR is arriving soon, so that one DVR box will stream content to any and every TV on the network (currently, only the TV directly jacked into the DVR can play back DVR content). You'll totally be able to pause something in one room, and pick it back up in another. With whole-home DVR, the box will be able to simultaneously stream eight feeds to every TV in your house: Three hi-def plus one standard-def stream from the DVR, plus 2 HD and 2 SD streams of live programming. All those TVs are getting all that content from one box. (For the nerds, each HD stream is encoded in MPEG-4, running at a variable bit rate that hovers around 6.5Mbps. The U-verse pipe is built on a 25Mbps profile, which is divvied up by high-end QoS for TV and your internet.)

Next, we go into some of the media sharing stuff, which probably looks familiar to anyone with an Xbox 360 or media extender since U-Verse uses Microsoft's IPTV platform. Music, movies, pictures, streamed to your TV from a standard Windows Vista or Media Center PC on the network—basic, but nice, since this is all just pumping into your set-top box. They've also got TVersity running off their network, which basically will stream anything to any device with a web browser, be it PSP or iPhone. It's running over Wi-Fi and it's actually damn snappy. I'm not really sure how this fits into the IPTV platform, other than their vision of a totally networked home.

All of this is "six to nine months" ahead of the field now. So, you could expect this stuff in the next year, though it's not officially announced yet. It's all about mainstreaming media streaming and sharing—a baby step, but probably necessarily to get, say, your parents ready for what's coming after it. This is when Peter pops on the "ultra-bleeding edge box" though he warns me none of this is actually guaranteed to become a TV reality.

Fire up the box. Welcome to Peter's favorites. Yep, like Sezmi, everyone gets their own personalized TV setup, with recommendations, favorites, etc. You can also log in and control the set-top box from the iPhone, like a sweet multi-touch remote. It's running over Wi-Fi and it's as responsive as any other remote control. But you know, sexier. An app for streaming to the iPhone? Not yet, I'm told, since there are "certain areas of the iPhone" where "Apple is keeping the experience..." "Controlled?" I volunteered.

It's a good transition to the more internet-y stuff they've got going on. Integrated RSS feeds—you can read Giz on your TV and have it not look like crap! Video RSS feeds are where it's at though, like a feed of CNN clips that constantly refreshes. It's like Headline News, without the waiting. Course, it can also pull in YouTube, though I'm more interested in Hulu.

Here's where AT&T benefits from being AT&T here, with your phone jacked into your set-top box. Maybe more "cool" than critical. A message asking for a video share call from a local Atlanta 404 number appears on the screen. Caller ID on the TV. We smack yes, and we're looking through the eyes of an LG Glimmer on our TV. Yeah, it looks like shit on the 60-inch DLP set, but it really works. Next, I call Peter's cell and leave a voice mail. A few seconds later, we're informed by the TV we've got a new voicemail waiting, so we flip over to a list of incoming calls. We can remotely check out the voicemail or add the contact to our address book.

The finale: It's basically Twitter TV. You jump into a chat room with your friends (or invite them) and you can bleat out IMs that are collected on a timeline as you watch Leonidas atomically kick effeminate Persians into bottomless pits. And lest you were worried about text-typing via a crappy remote control, I actually used an iPhone to input the text. Later you can go back and scour the conversation timeline like regular IM, looking for a nugget of insight that might've accidentally slipped out during the orgy of violence (or whatever else you and your friends are simultaneously watching). BTW, the cheesy avatars will be updated to look less like late-'90s Messenger, I'm told.

While these are all, by themselves, just little bits of coolness, taken together, it is a shift from the mostly passive way we watch TV. We actively time and place-shift now, but once we're plopped in front of the screen, input from us stops, despite decades of prediction that TV would become more and more interactive. U-Verse is not wholly revolutionary, but it's a stride toward true TV 2.0, with content from multiple sources, fueled by the internet. TV's got to do something, after all—there's less and less reason to be drawn to that particular idiot box, when there are so many boxes out there for so many different kinds of idiots. Of course, cable's got its own ideas about the future of TV, and soon we'll be looking into that too.

While it looked like the Panasonic's better color reproduction, more accurate gamma, reduced power consumption and $1100 price advantage over last year's Kuros was going to give Pioneer a run for their money, the new Kuro has stepped up with improved noise reduction and matched color reproduction and power consumption to the Panasonic. Pile that onto what Kuro is most famous for—the blackest blacks on any TV anywhere.

Unfortunately, the King doesn't come cheap: At $5,000, it's $1,500 more than the Panasonic. For the full down and dirty, check out Gary's review. [HD Guru]

The set has a contrast ratio of 10000:1 and a 20mm thick display panel. It requires about 30% less power than regular LCD TVs and gets its juice from one of Sharp's triple-junction thin-film solar cell modules. The modules are about the same size as the television's screen.

Sharp plans to market the LCD and the energy system as a pair and says that its product could be a hit with both people living off the grid and environmentally-conscious consumers. The company will be exhibiting this, and other energy-saving technologies, at the G8 summit on Monday. [Physorg]

Silicon Valley Insider thinks that Unbox support is unlikely on account of its status as a direct competitor to Netflix streaming, but TiVo supports it so I wouldn't rule it out completely, plus a $99 provider-agnostic box would fill a conspicuously empty gap in the market, and my heart. [Forbes via Silicon Valley Insider]

But first, the basics. The difference between the TV you're used to and this fancy IPFreelyTV stuff is that IPTV is delivered to you like any other data sent over the internet—in data packets. You even plug an Ethernet cable into your receiver box/DVR. Of course, the internet's a messy place with lots of muck bouncing around the pipes and you'd be really pissed if the Yankees game stuttered or crapped out, so this is all running on the telco's "walled garden" network with a fat, dedicated lane for video. (Your internet service, which is bundled since it's running on the same network, runs on a different lane, delineated by quality-of-service, or QoS, protocols.)

Now that that's out of the way, back to why its good for HD. With a standard cable setup, the channels are basically always being piped into your home, whether you're watching or not. To add more channels, they've gotta compress 'em down farther or open the pipe up, especially since HD eats up a lot of bandwidth. Since IPTV is sent in regular ol' data packets and the system is two-way (the nature of internet protocol), they're basically only sending what you ask for, when you ask for it. So theoretically, they could offer way more HD channels than cable, since they're not as limited here. Also, like that mythical Xbox 360 IPTV box, the number of streams you can watch/record simultaneously is basically only limited by your bandwidth.

The two-wayness of the infrastructure is another point of awesomeness. It can be used for actually useful interactivity—one of AT&T's apps for the Olympics can bring in a stats feed you can check out while watching the game. Or regular internet video, like YouTube, can be piped in and integrated with the other video on your box. It's all just regular data over standard internet protocols, so there's a lot of flexibility to do stuff you simply can't with a traditional setup.

The problem is that building the infrastructure necessary for IPTV service is slow and expensive, largely cause it requires a heavy fiber optic component. Verizon runs fiber all the way to your door (which is why it can offer those crazy FiOS internet speeds), while AT&T runs it to the node, which you're then connected to with copper and (which is why U-Verse internet is slower). So right now, both have puny subscriber numbers—1.2 million FiOS TV customers, and a scant 379,000 on U-Verse TV.

Still, there's a lot of potential in IPTV, even if it's taking forever to get to your doorstep. AT&T actually showed me some of the stuff that could be at your door in the 6-9 months—and beyond—and it's definitely worth getting excited about. We'll be telling you all about it later.

Something we missed, or you still wanna know? Send any questions about IPs, TVs, chewing gum or anything else to tips@gizmodo.com, with "Giz Explains" in the subject line.

Lisa, who grew up watching them will probably write about how shitty and tacky and how culturally out of context the show is on her blog. But we did enjoy when the host would make fun of the Americans in Japanese. See, it's better because everyone is making fun of everyone.

I just hope next week's contraption is a little bit crazier because that's what does it for me. What did you guys think of the show? If anyone knows the crew members who design and build these contraptions, please email me. I want to quit my job and work on these sets! [ABC]

• Crowning your 1:25 reproduction of the Statue of Liberty.
• Hold a poker hand.
• Neatly store four dildos and a lube bottle.
• Dock a shaker and four flasks with the ingredients for Perfect Manhattan cocktails.

Which as you can tell, is what I had with my cornflakes this morning. Really, for $59.98, this product is a bargain. [Taylor Gifts via Random Good Stuff]

JVC TO OFFER WORLD'S THINNEST TUNER-EQUIPPED LCD TV WITH SLEEK, THIN-BEZEL DESIGN AND REDUCED POWER CONSUMPTION

Technology to be offered in two screen sizes

WAYNE, NJ, June 17, 2008 -Establishing a new benchmark in flat panel TV design, JVC in July will market the world's thinnest LCD TVs with built-in tuners*. The new line of super-slim Full HD TVs also weigh less and consume less power than conventional LCD TVs.

JVC's new slim LCD TVs, part of the company's Procision series, feature a cabinet that across most of its width measures a mere 1.5 inches (39mm) deep, with a maximum depth of just 2.9-inches (74mm) at the panel's center. The design ensures that from nearly any angle, the sets present a super-slim appearance. Complementing the slim design is a thinner bezel, further minimizing the presence of the cabinet.

The new super-slim design will be available in two screen sizes in the U.S., the 42-inch LT-42SL89 and the 46-inch LT-46SL89. Both offer 1920 x 1080p resolution.

The slim design was made possible through the use of a new JVC-developed slim panel backlight unit and power supply substrate, or chassis. The new slim LCD panel backlight unit is 40 percent smaller in depth and bezel width compared to a conventional LCD backlight, measuring just 0.79 inches (20mm) deep and 0.51 inches (13mm) wide. In addition, the unit weighs only 26.4 lbs (12kg) and consumes a mere 145W (see diagram 1).

*with built-in tuners as of January 6, 2008, according to a JVC survey

Efforts to reduce the depth of an LCD panel backlight result in uneven hot spots appearing on the LCD screen surfaces because CCFL light sources are brought closer to the liquid crystal panel (see diagram 2). To overcome this problem, either light-diffusing plates are applied or more CCFL tubes are used. But the former approach can result in lower brightness, while the latter approach can be costly and increases power consumption.

JVC's display engineering team succeeded in developing a new, slimmer backlight unit by optimizing the light-diffusing plates and light-reflection sheets, as well as improving its overall composition. This provided uniform light-diffusion at all the corners and edges without the addition of more CCFL tubes, while maintaining adequate luminance to ensure that the screen always remains bright (see diagrams 3 and 4).

JVC also developed a slimmer yet efficient power-supply substrate and employed a direct-mount configuration for it on the LCD panel backlight unit with a fan-less heat dissipation system to further reduce power consumption.

Both models will be VESA compliant for easy wall mounting, but JVC will also offer its own mounting solution - a wall mount designed to position the slim TV closer to the wall than does a standard mount.

Both sets include a full complement of connections, including three HDMI inputs, two component inputs, one S-Video in and a PC input. Other features include front touch sensor controls, a headphone jack, USB picture viewer and an illuminated universal remote control.

The new JVC super-slim LT-42SL89 and LT-46SL89 will be available in July with approximate retail prices of $1,899.99 and $2,399.99, respectively.

In the end, Sound & Vision found that all three boxes worked well, but the RCA's comfy remote, "On Next" feature and decent audio performance gave it a slight edge. Currently, the box will run you about $50 or $10 after you cash in your voucher—which is chump change compared to what you get with a digital upgrade. However, if you are still hoping for a $40 "freebie" like the EchoStar TR-40, keep in mind that Sound & Vision believes that the EchoStar is a "dicey buy" given the fact that it has no front panel controls. In this case, it still might be a good idea to hold onto that voucher for a little while longer to see what comes available. [Sound & Vision; NOTE: S&V Having Broken Link Issue]

History & Design
By the spring of 1998, TiVo was developing what we all know now as the DVR. During the design stages, their designers knew they would not only need to create a DVR that was extremely functional, but also a corresponding remote control that would allow seamless and intuitive use.

This is where Paul Newby enters.

“I came to TiVo when we were still called Teleworld, and when we started off we grabbed off-the-shelf remotes. These remotes had multiple rows and columns of keys, and it was clear this wasn’t going to work. What we decided to do early on was make a remote that grabbed attention off the coffee table.”

When Newby pushed his designers to create a remote that would stand out, he was shocked by the initial designs. The reasonable ones resembled items like a bread-stick or a spatula, but there were few that were so crazy they looked more like a toad.

There was one designed that was nicknamed the Peanut. Once a few foam prototypes were made, the designers called the shape a success.

“It became obvious early on that to achieve the seamless trick play and control we were after for our new PVR/DVR creation, the remote must be comfortable for long periods of in-hand use. This and an iconic look, were motivations for the more distinctive, organic, peanut shape.”

This peanut shape saw slight variations from mold to mold, with some that were wafer thin to others that were more like a thick slab. With the final prototype, designers and the TiVo team felt that a medium amount of curve was the best for a remote.

Once the shape had been finalized, the designers and engineers began tackling other details to the remote. Aspects like button layout and electronics were now on the drawing board. But throughout the tedious work of refining, the designers began to poke fun at the decision they made.

“There were a lot of jokes about the shape. Not just the obvious ones,” said Newby. “I can remember some referencing to an earlobe, or the shape of the lower back/butt area."

Like any remote, the designers were adamant about keeping the remote’s button layout as simple as possible. But with the DVR’s numerous features, the designers needed to create lots of extra buttons. To keep things straight, each button needed to have a distinctive feel, giving the ability to control the remote without even looking at it, which Newby described as a “key Braille-ability" surprisingly helped by the "blank finger parking spots between keys" that were equally important.

Eight and a half months after the team started in July 1998, the first remote was done.

Throughout the whole design process, Newby continually told his design team to try anything, but to always keep two things in mind.

“Number one, get up from the desk, and number two, be ready to endure someone telling you in less than an ideal way that your baby stinks.”

Without knowing it, Newby’s last bit of advice was crucial when TiVo started to work with other manufacturers who were reluctant to use this strange Peanut remote.

Dealing With Manufacturers
At this point, TiVo's designers felt that they had developed one of the most ingenious remotes on the market. Sadly, when TiVo began working with manufacturers such as Sony and Hughes (Direct TV), they did not feel the same.

“The process was very very very, frustrating and quite frankly, I was surprised.”

Because some of the manufacturers didn’t want to use the Peanut shape at all, the TiVo decided that if a different remote was going to be supplemented, it had to have some core requirements.

A big yellow pause button and characterize thumb buttons were a necessity. But as hard as TiVo pushed, these were the exact type of buttons that the manufactures insisted against.

“Using a bright color on remotes was not something that these companies did. Anything thing with character images on it, the companies didn't want to use.”

In the end there was consensus, but it wasn't easy getting there.

Series Updates
With each Series update the Peanut saw a slight change in design.

“We’ve toyed with other shapes in the background but always come back to the peanut. The subtle shift from Series 1 to Series 2 allowed more free space between keys, space for partner branding, and improvements for manufacturability. The shift to Series 3 made refinements in key snap, backlight, fore/aft directionality, and balance.”

During the change from Series 1 to Series 2 there was an interesting internal change that many users never knew about.

“We set the IR emitter power fairly high on the early Series 1 production remotes. This had the effect of being able to control TiVo from any number of off angle positions. It also turned out that, in some cases, a user could even drape themselves and the remote completely in a blanket, yet still blast through the blanket to control TiVo.”

Among designing and updating the remote, this concern for battery life would stay as a major concern for adding features. For example, Newby's team has a Series 2 remote that was back-lit, but backed off because of power concerns.

With a back-light feature finally being added to the Series 3 remote, the team decided to use 4 AAA batteries rather than 2 AAs. (As a bonus, the heavier remote had a better center of gravity.) The batteries offset some of the power drain, but there is also a slight decrease in life, even with the light sensor selectively enabling the remote's illumination.

Even within the Series 3's lifetime the Peanut remote has seen some changes. When the first Series 3 remote shipped with the Series 3 TiVo, it had a painted gray bezel. Now that the Series 3 TiVo is being killed off for TiVo HD, TiVo’s flagship remote is the Glo remote. The major different between the original Series 3 remote and the new Glo remote is the bezel, which is now a shiny chrome which is cheaper to make.

Rare Remotes
Among the various colors of remotes that were produced, there are a few that were far less common.

For the first version of the remote, TiVo made a translucent array of colors that mimicked their logo's color. Sadly though, these remotes never actually made into the public's hands.

The rarest of them all is a rubberized blue five-year remote. This remote is only given to employees who have worked with TiVo for more than five years. More of an award than actual remote, it even has its own stand that displays it proudly. This remote was originally made in a rubberized Series 2 form, but has now been updated to the non-rubberized Glo form.

In the same vein as the five-year remote, there is now a 10-year.

“My team is working on a 10 year remote, and we're right on the cusp.”
“It will be a permutation of the Glo in a steel blue color.”

Future
With TiVo continually adding features to their DVRs, there is a growing need for a remote that will complement new features. The TiVo design team has acknowledged this, and Newby assures that they are are always working on improvements.

"There's probably about two and half of us at any given time designing the next remote."

With the next generation TiVo remote on the drawing board, I wondered what the possible additions could be.

When I asked if adding a small QWERTY keyboard was a possibility for the next generation, I was surprised by Newby’s answer.

"Let me just say we're ping-ponging the idea. You wouldn't be disappointed."

If they had given the idea of adding a keyboard though, then I figured I had to ask if there was possibility of incorporating a touchscreen for future use. Once again Newby’s response sparked my interest.

"We've either given it thought or were in the process of prototyping it. I'd say it's a healthy combination of both never been done, done before and what's been done well elsewhere."

"So you name it, were thinking about. But we are carefully at what we throw at it."

Also, thanks go to Danny.

On the plus side, the inherent ESPN-ness of the remote will undoubtedly appeal to hardcore fans. It even goes so far as to play the ESPN theme song in Tim The "Tool Man" Talyor's famous grunt when you turn on the TV. Convenient features like a "learning mode" to customize functions and a programing setting that will allow you to perform multiple tasks in a single keystroke were also nice touches. However, for $300, you will be getting a device that is fairly difficult to set up, uncomfortable to hold, and includes an underwhelming W-Fi experience with a small screen and plain old WAP browsing.

All in all, PC Mag felt that you would be better off with a Logitech Harmony One as an "ultimate remote control." Not a bad idea when you consider that it can be had for at least $50 less than ESPN's remote. [PC Mag]

Today, as new boxes and services are announced, there has yet to appear one that can give you every movie, let alone a single format you can use on your various everyday devices. Thankfully, what we're hearing now is that while this infinite format war may not go on forever, the state of video will suck for the next five years until every service has the same baseline catalog. If you believe the studios. In the meantime, you'll be looking for the set-top box with the best catalog, and the one that can deliver you your films in the best way possible.

If you thought the HD DVD/Blu-ray split was bad, at least there was an easy order to it, an alignment by studios. Warner, Universal and Paramount were on HD DVD, everyone else (plus Warner) put their movies on Blu-ray. Sure, no Big Lebowski on Blu-ray, but at least you knew why. There is nothing even approaching logic when it comes to the movie options from VOD set-top box to the next, at least not from the user perspective. Warner Bros. put out Ocean's Thirteen. You can watch it on Vudu and Amazon Unbox, but not iTunes. Warner also put out I Am Legend, which is on all three, and Xbox Live Marketplace. Paramount's Shooter is on all three, but only for purchase, not rental (and totally MIA from Xbox). And you could rent Disney/Pixar's Ratatouille a few months ago, but now it's only for purchase. "WTF?" is a natural response. (On a side note, it's a bitch to really search or go through any of the catalogs, so it's even harder to tell if it's an accidental or intentional roadblock.)

To explain our current clusterfuck, you need a quick trip back to 1999. Remember the state of digital music back then? It was messy and ugly. The music industry had no idea what to do with this whole internet thing, and they were involved in assorted, competing ventures. Then along came iTunes, which basically organized the music universe and, to the chagrin of the RIAA, set up a sane pricing structure, too. It's not a complete catalog of all music ever (Beatles, hello?), but it's the closest thing there is, and it's pretty damn good. It brought order to the chaos, and now claims 85 percent of the legal download market. So it has the music industry by the balls, enough to speed their efforts to fortify a worthy number 2—Amazon, which was the first store to boast a catalog exclusively made up of DRM-free music from all four majors as a result, a perk deliberately withheld from iTunes to curb its power.

We're basically at that same, nebulous 1999 point with video, though Hollywood has learned from the music industry's mistakes—and iTunes is not the guaranteed champion in the case of online movie sales. The industry is eagerly putting stuff out there, and on as many services as it can—we're at the point now that most of the major studios release movies on online services on the same day they release them on disc.

A problem gumming up our dream of the one box is that each service requires a different format—one studio told us that a big issue is digitizing and formatting a film to meet each service's specs. It just takes time, though they're going as fast as they can. And new releases are gonna take priority, obviously. We are at least a little skeptical of this claim—we don't think it takes that long to digitize a flick

From what we were told, there's surprisingly little worry of a single company dominating digital distribution. A studio we talked to said that it's all so new, the fear of a monopoly (by Apple or otherwise) is at worst simply a thought skulking around in the back of their mind, not an actual concern. So no service is getting any favors to promote one over the other, or keep another in check. (At least not yet, though Blu-ray-happy Sony may well have the most incentive to keep the online space anemic.) Again, here, we're a little suspicious—obviously they wouldn't come right out and tell us they're afraid of iTunes, but when you look at the measly catalog and consider the studios' close study of how the music industry complete botched online music, the idea of Apple becoming the single biggest distributor of most digital media and holding serious sway over the entire entertainment industry has to weigh on their minds.

I mean, if you were in their shoes, and could prevent making iTunes into the all-powerful Walmart of the digital video generation, wouldn't you?

The one bit of protectionism going on that was copped to is the push to purchase, rather than rent. It makes sense that a studio gets more money when you buy a movie than rent it, since it's the same set of bits headed to your hard drive, and both are guaranteed you'll watch the movie at least once, but one costs three to four times as much as the other. So you are going to see a lot of them not open a flick up to online rentals until a month after it's available for purchase, and even see rental options disappear, as recently happened across the board with Pixar movies.

Ultimately, and somewhat shockingly, Hollywood does have the same vision we do—a single god box that'll deliver the entire catalogs of all the studios. Only, unlike in the iTunes hegemony, every home could have a different god box, be it Xbox, TiVo, Vudu or Roku.

Forgive the buried service journalism. Enough of this theoretical talk. So, what does it take to get a decent download collection? Until the god box, you will need several, two at least. Right now, Vudu is good for latest and greatest plus some older favorites; Netflix Roku has better TV options and some interesting deep cuts (plus a $99 box price and unlimited streaming for 10,000 so-so titles for any plan over $9 with discs by mail as a backup); Xbox 360 has a surprisingly large amount of HD movies, and a nice catalog geared towards the gaming demographic; Apple TV has its own legion of fans for its ability to move movies to iPods and computers, though it still has a lot to prove in the catalog section. That's not even counting the TiVo with Amazon Unbox or the cable box you likely already have, each with their own assorted VOD options. Even if you owned all of 'em, you still might not find what you want, even if it's something that should be slapping you in the face. Take Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, for instance. We could not legally find it on any service, even though the sequel hit theaters just a few weeks ago—and got a surprisingly good buzz from usually snooty critics. Did Warner miss the perfect opportunity? They wouldn't say.

The other major issue is the state of broadband and the guys controlling the pipes. For the online video revolution to fully take off in HD, we need bigger pipes. For most people, that's years away. This is deeply threatening to the cable companies, and they're pretty clear that they're not happy about content moving online—you can see the fear in the recent moves to limit all kinds of data consumption (most of which is already video), not just the supposed protocol of pirates. What if limits or overage charges were put in place for people who were simply doing their best to buy copyrighted video? Why would someone give up DVD and Blu-ray rentals from Netflix in order to pay twice—for both the bandwidth and the content—and have to wait somewhat impatiently for the download, too?

So friends, while all of this gets ironed out, the infinite format war rages on: Lots of boxes, lots of online services, none of them complete, none of them that'll fully satisfy your wife's desire to rid the shelves of DVDs. Hollywood just can't move fast enough for this revolution, as arguably eager as it is, and the ISPs may not clear the way when the show does get on the road. From what we can tell, the stuff will all get sorted out in time. How much time? Give it five more years. If you believe the studios. [Insert groan of impatience here.]

Aside from housing the plasma screen, the walnut hardwood console even incorporates room for a built-in center speaker. Made from "Fender amp screen material," the front facing speaker grill is in a perfect location to complete the surround-sound speaker layout.

This design to house electronics in a clean modern look is a complete throwback to the entertainment consoles that emerged in the 1950s. Back then it was very common to find a TV housed completely in a wood console, or a record player hidden inside a teak credenza. With entertainment technology becoming such an integral part of every household, it's nice to know that there is someone out there trying to put it it all together again.

Since the console was only on display to "test the waters of public interest," there is no word on specific specs, pricing or availability. Apartment Therapy did get a few words from the designer, and found out that his furniture company, Wilkerson Furniture, is still unsure if they should offer the console and the screen as a package. I'm glad this is a concern, because with plasma TVs currently on the way out, it could mean this console is just old stuff. [Wilkerson Furniture via Apartment Therapy]

They have teamed up with Triad speakers to offer units that incorporate the front left, center and right channel speakers underneath your flat-panel television. When you turn on the unit, the artwork retracts to reveal the screen but leaves the speakers masked from view behind a black matte material. Custom sizes and speaker setups are available, but I'm sure that regardless of the configuration you choose, installing VisionArt in your home will not come cheap. Still, it may be a small price to pay for such a seamless solution. [VisionArt via Electronic House]