Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment

When we forced the TiVo HD and Series3 to go mano-a-mano back in October of last year, we had a sneaking suspicion that the latter was actually no longer being produced. Fast forward (har) three months, and sure enough, it seems that the end really is nigh for the Series3. According to TiVo Lovers (who heard directly from DVRupgrade), TiVo is accelerating the EOL (end of life) of the Series3 and "focusing all efforts on the recently launched, lower cost TiVo HD." Apparently, the firm managed to sell through oodles of Series3 boxes over the holidays (thanks in large part to a sizable rebate-based promotion), and rather than searching for creative ways to solve the "continued component shortage," TiVo is reportedly choosing to nudge potential customers in the direction of the TiVo HD. Granted, we'd still take this with a (light) dose of salt for the time being, but don't be shocked to see Series3 stock start dwindling in the coming weeks.

[Via TVSquad, thanks Brad L.]

 

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Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment

Alienware's Hangar 18:HD 1080p media server -- the rackmountable high end edition of the already impressive Hangar 18 -- has officially launched. The silver beast promises up to 4TB of hard drive space, Blu-ray read/write, 1080p output, CableCard support and Dolby Digital 7.1 sounds. We suggest you don't ask how much it costs, it just shows how woefully far we you are away from being able to afford it. Those ready to jump into the high priced media server market can contact their local authorized reseller and loose themselves of the Benjamins that can so uselessly clog ones bank account.

Read - Homes Fall Under Control of New Alienware High Definition Media Server
Read - Digital Home Channel Program Resellers

 

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According to Joyent’s corporate blog, the company stopped hosting Twitter late last night:

Twitter has been officially off Joyent since 10PM last night. This may come as a surprise to some after yesterday’s posts here and here regarding the two companies working together. Those of us at Joyent appreciate the opportunity we had to work with the talented folks at Twitter. It is a great service. We wish Twitter every continued success.

As I mentioned yesterday, Joyent is standing ready with excess free infrastructure to support Twitter through this transition in the event that they need it.

The news comes amidst frequent outage problems that have plagued Twitter. Just last night, Twitter went down again, this time for a “planned maintenance project” that went “far beyond [their] planned time window”. The service has also recently suffered downtime during the State of the Union and Steve Jobs’ keynote at Macworld.

Despite all of these problems, just yesterday both companies were showing strong support for each other on their respective blogs. Both wrote posts (here and here) describing how they were working together to prepare for the Super Bowl this coming Sunday.

When reached over the phone, Joyent’s CEO David Young preferred not to comment on Twitter’s stability issues in particular. He did emphasize that Joyent has free infrastructure on standby should Twitter want to use it again. He also wished Twitter the best of luck, saying the team is amazed at their “great service”.

Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter, responded to an email inquiry about the situation as such:

We’re still very much engaged in our efforts to bring solid reliability to Twitter. Achieving our goals is a sustained effort, not an overnight fix. Performance is our most important measure of success and we appreciate both the patience and frustration folks are sharing with us.

With regard to discussing technical specifics about last night’s efforts, we’ll be more keen to do that once we have a chance to come up for air and cover it with some perspective.

Given that both companies are reluctant to go into details about the break-up, we’ll just have to see whether more information comes out in time.

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Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Filed under: Storage

 

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[UPDATE - I put the chat room over on the side, just to see what, if anything, will happen if our readers can talk to each other. Lawsuits here we come!]

We talked about Meebo quite a while ago. They’re essentially a web-based IM client that supports a number of protocols including AIM and MSN. Well, they’ve just started offering embeddded rooms for websites like the one above. We’re going to hide this one here in case we need it for keynotes or breaking news but feel free to idle in it like it was 1998. While this isn’t very new or special, you can, potentially, place this same chatroom on your homepage and constantly be in contact with the CG team at any time, day or night. How about them apples?

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Filed under: Digital Cameras

There doesn't seem to be a lot of excitement when Pentax releases new cameras in its Optio range -- do you people only love them for their DSLRs? -- but nonetheless, we gave them the same hands-on treatment that everyone else gets. Below you'll find the new S12, E50, and M50 in all their seemingly-unpopular glory, despite the fact that they seemed like fairly stylish, solidly-built products to us. Still with us? Great, we've got a lot of multi-colored point-and-shoot action in store for you.

 

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Bad: A tornado comes and destroys your home. Worse: Comcast wants to charge you $2000 for the five, nine-year old cable boxes that got destroyed.

That’s what happened to a Wheatland, Wisconsin resident, and Comcast is standing its ground.

The cable operator says that the victim will have to get reimbursement from her insurance company to pay the bill. The insurers, however, are only willing to pay the depreciated value of the five boxes and cable modem, even though Comcast is asking for the original price.

I’ve had a similar situation with Comcast: an ancient cable box of mine was destroyed at a party, and they wanted me to pay $500 for it before I could get a new one. The thing wasn’t worth that much new. So, I went to the Goodwills and was able to replace it for about $10. Me, 1; Comcast, 0.

But really, should Comcast expect full value on equipment nearly a decade old? We think not.

Cable TV bills with a twist [Kenosha News]

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He could be looking up your info!

There’s a database out there with your name on it. (In it, but on it sounded better.) Intelius collects information like your cellphone number, how much your house worth and so forth and then stuffs it all into a database. This information is gathered from public records. The database can be used by anyone, provided they pony up at least $8, though the most in-depth report costs $50. Privacy advocates and the people who love them aren’t too keen on the database, saying it’s an invasion of privacy. Verizon Wireless doesn’t like it either and says it’s prepared to go to litigation to prevent its customers’ numbers from getting out.

I did a quick search on our well-muscled leader John Biggs and found out some interesting things. Did you know his middle name begins with a “D” and he once lived in Farifax, Virginia? I didn’t pay for the rest of the report because I’m poor and live in Queens, but you’re all more than welcome to try it out for yourself. Search for yourself, search for your friends, search for celebrities. Have fun!

Cell phone directory rings alarm bells [MSNBC]

Intelius

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In the last year, we've witnessed plenty of companies dig up VoIP patents with which to sue market innovator Vonage. Verizon, AT&T, Sprint and Nortel all were able to get Vonage to cough up some money, rather than continue to fight some questionable patents. The fact that there are so many overlapping patents, is exactly the "patent thicket" problem that our current patent system encourages. Of course, there are always more patents to choose from, and it appears that Net2Phone has dug out an old patent and decided not to sue Vonage, but to go after Skype instead. Unfortunately, there's very little in the way of detail. The ZDNet post just claims it happened, but doesn't give any details about the actual lawsuit (even where it's been filed). Also, the writer seems amazed that it's based on a patent filed in 2000, even though it's common enough to see old patents used in patent lawsuits. In this case, it's absolutely true that Net2Phone was an early pioneer in the VoIP space, but saw its business eclipsed when it had trouble coming up with a product people actually wanted to use (and then watched as providers like Skype passed them by). If anything, this seems like yet another example of those who lost in the marketplace punishing those who innovated better. Skype came up with a good product that people wanted to use. Net2Phone did not. It's hard to see why Skype should be punished for doing a better job serving the market.

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Filed under: Digital Cameras

 

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