TVSquad

Hauppauge has released beta software that adds ClearQAM support to several of its HDTV television tuner cards. If you've got an HVR-1250, HVR-1600, HVR-1800, or HVR-2250, right now you can tune into analog NTSC broadcasts or over the air ATSC signals. But no matter how many times you plug in the cable that runs to your digital cable box, you're not going to pick anything up without the new beta driver.

Once the new drivers are installed on a Windows Vista computer (sorry, Windows XP and Mac OS X are not supported), you should be able to access Hauppauge's ClearQAM scanner in the programs section of Vista Media Center. Using this tool, you can find any unencrypted digital cable channels available in your area. Typically broadcast networks like ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, and the CW don't encrypt their signals while premium cable channels like HBO and Showtime do.

[via Chris Lanier]

If you're in the market for a cheap HDTV tuner, you might want to check out Woot today. The web retailer is offering the Pinnacle PCTV HD Pro Stick for $40, which is less than half its regular price.

This USB tuner plugs into your PC via a USB 2.0 port and lets you watch or record NTSC or ATSC broadcasts. That means you can plug in an analog or digital antenna, or connect an analog cable, vcr, dvd player, or other device. The tuner comes with a remote control, a portable antenna, and a USB extender cable.

It also comes with the Pinnacle MediaCenter software for PC. But by all reports this software stinks and you should probably find your own PVR software like Windows Media Center, BeyondTV, SageTV, Media Portal, or GB-PVR.

TiVo's on-again, off-again love affair with lifetime service plans seems to be back on again. Once upon a time, the company let customers pay for service one month at a time, by the year, or shell out a few hundred bucks to get unlimited service for as long as they keep the same set top box.

A while back, the company stopped offering the product lifetime service option, but brought it back as a limited time deal right around the time TiVo launched the Series3 HD recorder. At the time, the company was only allowing customers with existing lifetime service plans transfer their plans to new boxes -- for a fee. But over the past year and a half, the company has occasionally offered new or existing customers a chance to pay for product lifetime services, with the understanding that this was always a special one-time promotion. Act now while the offer's still good!

But now it looks like lifetime service is back for good. Or at least until someone at TiVo changes their mind. But as blogger Dave Zatz has discovered, TiVo has added lifetime subscription pricing to the official payment plan descriptions. That takes the lifetime service plan out of the realm of promotion and into the world of everyday pricing.

So here's the deal. If you're a new TiVo customer, you can shell out $399 to get unlimited service for as long as you keep your set top box. If you're an existing customer, you can get the same deal on a new box for $299. But keep in mind, if TiVo comes out with a new box in 2 years that you really, really want and doesn't offer to let you transfer your lifetime service, you probably would have been better off paying by the month or year.

Sling Media first announced the SlingModem in January, and we haven't heard much about the product since. Now it looks like Sling will be showing off the device at The Cable Show next week.

The box will basically have most of the features you'd expect from a Slingbox (ie: you connect it to your TiVo, cable box, or other device to stream live or recorded TV over the internet) plus a built in cable modem. The SlingModem is targeted at cable service providers who might want to offer the box to customers. Odds are you won't be able to pick up a SlingModem at your local Best Buy anytime soon.

The continued development of the cable-only SlingModem shows that Sling's parent company EchoStar was serious when it spun off the DISH Network satellite network as a separate division.

[via Gizmo Lovers]

Embedded Automation has released a beta plugin for their budget home automation software that lets you control your lights, home security system, and personal video recorder all at once. The company's mControl software is basically a cheap version of the Life|ware software from Exceptional Innovation. While EI charges thousands of dollars for their software, you can get mControl for under $100.

So what exactly does the new mControl Vista Media Center Controller driver do? It lets you send and receive messages to your Windows Vista Media Center machine. That means you can have your TV playback pause any time the phone or doorbell rings. Or if you leave the lights on in another room, you can have a message pop up periodically reminding you to turn them off.

Currently it doesn't look like you can use the software to automatically dim your lights when you're watching a video and bring them back up when you hit pause. But that sort of functionality should be available in a future release.

[via EngadgetHD]

Ever since it was first demonstrated that you could control the Netflix "watch now" interface from Windows Media Center, MCE plugins for Netflix have been populating like bunnies. There are now three different plugins that let you browse or search your Netflix queue and watch movies all from the comfort of your couch.

Missing Remote has an in-depth look at vmcNetflix, MyNetflix, and NetflixMC. And it turns out that not all Netflix plugins are not created equal. Some are Vista only, while others will run on Windows XP Media Center Edition. Al three have attractive interfaces and most of the features that you'd expect. But only one vmcNetflix supports Windows Media Center Extenders like the Xbox 360.

If you're looking for Windows XP MCE support, NetflixMC is pretty much your only option for now. And if you're looking for support for media extenders, vmcNetflix is the way to go. But if you're looking for a more detailed overview, you should check out the full article at Missing Remote.

Snapstream has released a new beta version of BeyondTV, the company's PC-based personal video recording software. BeyondTV 4.8.2 includes a bunch of bug fixes, and a few new features that I've been looking for for a while:

• You can configure automatic Showsqueezing (WMV or DiVX compression) of HD, SD, or all videos
• Improved performance when recording overlapping shows. If one recording is scheduled to end at 10:02, and another begins at 9:58, the program with the highest priority will win.
• Set permissions for library folders (block your kids from watching Dora The Explorer as a prank -- or you know, programs they actually shouldn't be watching).

The feature I'm most excited about is integration of a Couchville-style program guide with the web admin. Snapstream launched Couchville to much fanfare last year and then shut it down a few months ago. The TV listing site is simple, easy to use, and apparently cost the company more money than it was worth to maintain. It's good to see Snapstream salvage the technology for use in its core product: BeyondTV.

Amazon Unbox is probably one of the simplest non-Apple services for renting and buying downloaded TV shows and movies on a PC. The service is also compatible with TiVo, but I know a few folks who refuse to pay for any video unless it comes in high definition. And so far, HD video has not been available via Amazon Unbox.

Bu it looks like that could be changing. TiVo Vice President Jim Denney tells TV Week that HD capabilities are coming to Amazon "in the not too distant future." And judging from the source, I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that means you'll be able to download and watch HD video using a TiVo HD or TiVo Series. As MegaZone at Gizmo Lovers suggests, it's likely that Amazon will use the H.264 codec, which would let the company distribute high definition videos with relatively small file sizes (relative being the key word here).

[via Zatz Not Funny]

The BBC may be porting its iPlayer internet television service to the Nintendo Wii and other video game consoles and set top boxes, but for some reason the BBC has ignored the mos obvious way to get web content onto a TV: Windows Media Center.

Most computers sold today come with Windows Vista Home Premium or Windows Vista Ultimate, which means that they already have Windows Media Center software designed for displaying video and web content on a TV screen. Taking an application like the iPlayer, which is designed for keyboard and mouse navigation, and integrating it with Windows Media Center for remote control navigation should be a breeze. And it turns out, it kind of is. Since the BBC hasn't designed a MCE plugin, developer Martin Millmore made his own.

The plugin isn't perfect yet. While you can navigate iPlayer content with a remote control, Millmore hasn't been able to get programs to play or switch to full screen mode without using a mouse. And of course, the iPlayer service won't work if you don't live in the UK. But that's a feature, not a bug.

[via Ian Dixon]

It seems like just last week that member of the TiVo community figured out that you can control a TiVo from an iPhone (or pretty much any other internet capable device for that matter), via a simple telnet connection. Oh right, it was. In order to actually flip channels or perform other functions, you had to enter IR codes like "ircode thumbsup" by hand, but now a member of the TiVo hacking community has released a graphical utility for the iPhone that lets you press a series of buttons, just as God intended.

TiVoRemote isn't going to win a beauty pageant anytime soon. The interface looks more like a crossword puzzle than a TiVo remote control. But it gets the job done. Because the utility connects to your TiVo over an internet connection, you'll need to know the IP address of your TiVo. And the program will not be able to control your television set or other A/V equipment. Just your TiVo. In other words, this software is pretty cool and could come in handy if you misplace your remote control. But I wouldn't recommend replacing your TIVo or universal remote control with TiVoRemote just yet.

[via Gizmodo]

There are dozens of ways to find out what's on TV tonight. You could check the TV listings in your local paper, or in TV Guide. But honestly, I don't know anybody who actually does that anymore. There are hundreds of web sites with TV listings as well. But mytvrss provides one of the simplest web-based solutions for keeping track of new episodes.

When you visit the mytvrss web page, you're presented with a list of a few dozen popular TV shows. If a show you watch isn't listed, just contact the site and they might add your show to the list. All you have to do is click the check boxes next to the shows you want to follow and mytvrss will create a custom RSS feed for yu. Pop it into your RSS reader, and you'll receive an update every time there's a new episode of one of your shows.

You don't get a ton of information in your RSS reader, just the series and episode titles and an episode number. But there's also a link on each item that you can click to receive episode summaries.

[via MakeUseOf]

I'm starting to feel like Hulu was designed specifically for people who don't have cable or satellite television. Well, people who only need a handful of cable channels including Sci-Fi, FX, and Bravo, anyway. I've been using Hulu to keep up with a couple of shows that I can't pick up with my terrestrial digita antenna, like Battlestar Galactica and The Riches. But Hulu only keeps new episodes of each show online for a limited time, so if you forget to watch for a few weeks you could miss a show.

Now Hulu has added a subscription feature that helps ensure you never miss a show. Hulu already let you add programs to a queue for later viewing. But now the site has two new features which make the queue more useful. First, when you subscribe to a show, new episodes will automatically be added to your queue. Second, you can set your queue properties so that Hulu will shoot you an email any time a new item is added to your queue.

You know how Apple's iTunes store was once music only, and then the company added TV and movies? Yeah, replace the word Apple with Microsoft and you've pretty much got today's news. Well most of it, anyway. Microsoft has rolled out an updated version of its Zune Marketplace software. And while movies are nowhere to be seen, there are about 800 episodes from popular TV shows available for purchase at $1.99 a pop.

Titles include South Park, The Office, Heroes, 30 Rock, Battlestar Galactica, Eureka, Robot Chicken, and Rock of Love. All of the shows are from NBC Universal, MTV, or Turner. While the pricing in competitive with Apple's iTunes Store, it'd be nice to see a slightly larger content library. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that if the networks currently on board sell a decent number of TV episodes, we'll see other networks join soon enough.

Lycos Cinema is a pretty nifty concept. Registered users can login to the site, find a movie they want to watch, and then invite friends to watch on their own computers. The movie plays almost simultaneously on each computer, which lets users chat in real-time about the movie they're all watching. The site featurs a combination of free movies and TV shows and videos available for rental. You can pay to watch a movie yourself, or pay a bit more for a 5 or 10 person rental.

But there's one major problem. The content is absolutely horrid. There are no contemporary movies or TV shows. And the older titles are pretty much B-list material. If you like Godzilla films, Lyco Cinema might be the site for you. But if you're looking for the latest summer blockbusters, you might want to try Netflix.

Dvico has released the FusionHDTV7 PCI express card, which is a dual HD TV tuner. Dvico claims that this is the first PCIe card capable of recording two HDTV channels (either digital or QAM) at the same time, and I can't think of any others off the top of my head, so I'm going to agree that this is at least one of the first. Like most HDTV tuner cards these days, the FusionHDTV7 can tune into either digital ATSC broadcats or analog NTSC signals.

The card allows you to record two shows at once, record one show while watching a live program on anothr channel, or view Picture-in-picture videos. Of course, you can get all of the same features by buying two cards, but at about $140, the FusionHDTV is probably cheaper than picking up two other cards. And it takes up less space in your PC.

[via The Green Button]