TVSquad

I was one of those thousands of geeks who lined up for a shiny new iPhone 3G last month. But I had a good reason! My boss told me to get it before I went on a trip, so I could test it out. Man, what a slave driver.

Anyway, if you yourself have an iPhone or iPod Touch, all of the blogs in our network have been given an iPhone-friendly look, via a specific URL: http://i.tvsquad.com/. As you can see from the image to the right, it's got that familiar iPhone-styled look for diving down into articles to read. Proceed on, and you can also read and leave comments.

Check it out and let us know what you think!

(S04E01) Kathy Griffin is back, or as I choose to call her now Emmy Girl. Yes, the Emmy is on full display. In your face, everyone, Kathy's got an Emmy! Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List won the Emmy last year and if this first episode is a sample of what season four has in store, that Emmy is going to get a companion. This show is riotous. And irreverent and a perfect blend of comedy and celebrity reality which is really unreality because how many of us interact with Anderson Cooper and Michael Moore?

Kathy Griffin has found the perfect genre for her particular brand of comedy. A sitcom wouldn't capture her true character, strict stand-up is not her best venue (although she's gotten very good at it), and a talk show would force her to chat with others and appear interested. The My Life on the D-List format works for her and she's found a way to incorporate stand up, situation comedy and guests into a reality hour that highlights her being funny. She has supporting players -- Team Griffin, Jessica, Tiffany, Tom and Kathy's adorable mom, Maggie -- as her comic foils and partners in crime.

Sling Media offers SlingPlayer clients for PC, Mac, and a variety of cellphone models. But so far there's been no support for one of the most obvious mobile devices: the iPhone. It looks like that could all change soon. Sling Media will be showing off a proof of concept version of SlingPlayer Mobile for the iPhone at WWDC.

There are no plans to make this version of SlingPlayer Mobile available to customers... yet. You need a jailbroken iPhone or iPod touch to use the player at the moment. But the company does plan to use the iPhone SDK to release a commercial version in the future.

If you want to check out the proof of concept version, and if you happen to be in San Francisco tomorrow, stop by the Starbucks at 120 4th St between 10am and 4pm and look for product manager Vicky Shum who will be demonstrating the application.

Product placement is everywhere, inescapable. According to Dr. Jean Kilbourne, author of Can't Buy My Love: How Advertising Changes the Way We Think and Feel, Americans are exposed to approximately 3000 advertisements every single day. Kilbourne has a compelling video called Killing Us Softly that reveals how insidious advertisements are. Ads tell us that women should be thinner, quieter, nicer, want to have cleaner houses. They tell us that men are boarish, lust after women while drinking cheap beers, and order endless rounds of pizza without ever developing a gut. Advertisements not only tell us what we should buy: They tell us how we should think and feel about things and who we should be.

Unfortunately, the price of our entertainment is advertisements. Even when you go to the movies these days, before you have seen any previews, you have seen six commercials for new phones from Verizon and Sprint; and you have paid handsomely for the privilege. This TV Squad Award is amusing, but it is also a testament to how ubiquitous ads are: They have now found their way into the very scripts of some of our very best shows. The only advantage shows like Lost and Battlestar Galactica have is that they mostly take place anachronistically, so advertising would stand out too ridiculously. However, sadly, other outstanding shows have succumbed. And one of the finest is TV Squad's choice to win this award.

I was honestly surprised by the number of responses we got to the call for nominees for The Brought to You by TV Squad Awards. It turns out that a LOT of people are as irritated by blatant product placement as I am. Hurray! Is this the wave of the future? And if it is, can we get advertisers to eliminate commercials? Because if I have to endure ads tucked within my shows, then I don't want even to have to speed past them with my TiVo. Let's have one or the other, shall we? Because I'd hate to start boycotting Krispy Kreme and Stride gum just because I've been bombarded.

As it turns out, there were four stand-out nominees; I will tell you who they are after the jump, and then you will have a chance to vote for the Reader's Choice winner (which, in this case, is actually an obnoxious loser). But I did want to mention two runners up: 30 Rock gets an honorable mention for its mention of Verizon, but it doesn't quite make the cut because of the humorous way it handles the mention, and the show's ability to poke fun at itself. The other honorable mention goes to Ugly Betty for its hour-long ad for Wicked, but it still didn't quite make the cut.

So, the nominees for the most obnoxious abuse of product placement within their episodes are ...

Last summer, I was reviewing an-hour long commercial for Visa for TV Squad. It was slightly more interesting than an infomercial, though. There was this guy named Johnny Smith who could see the future or the past when he touched people, and he always made sure to use his Visa card in sticky situations that would arise from this ability. Oh wait... What's that you say? That wasn't a commercial? That was an actual show? Then why did Johnny Smith make such a big deal of showing off his Visa card REPEATEDLY?

Oh, product placement. We love you so. It's not enough that we all got Tivos so we didn't have to watch the commercials that interrupt our favorite shows. Oh no. The sneaky advertisers don't need us to watch the commercials at all anymore. They just stick their products into the shows and let the actors use them. TV Squad. Simple. Inescapable, unless you plan to give up television entirely (and I don't.).

Of course, some products are necessary. Most people eat or drink something during the day, and it would be weird in today's world if television characters didn't have cell phones. TV Squad. But it's a little distracting when you are in the middle of watching a riveting episode of Moonlight, and you are distracted because Hey! There's a picture of Mick on Beth's iPhone! I wish I had an iPhone. Mick has an iPhone too! I wonder who programmed their pictures into the phones -- was it the actors, or some props person? Do you think the actors get to keep those iPhones? Oh wait, somebody just got killed.

So, in honor (not!) of the blatant use of product placement in our favorite shows (those darn Oceanic 815 survivors and their Dharma mayonnaise!), we bring to you The Brought to You by TV Squad Award. What are your nominees for the show who should receive this award, and what product are they pimping? Please nominate your favorites in the comments.

A little while back, TiVo teamed up with home automation software maker Crestron to allow TiVo users to control their light switches, thermostat, and other information through their Series3 and TiVo HD set top boxes. But it appears that a side effect is that anyone can now connect to their TiVo units via telnet, and blogger Dave Zatz figured out that means you can use simple command line codes to replicate TiVo remote control functions from pretty much any internet connected device. In other words, you can use an iPhone as a TiVo remote control.

The easy part is that all you have to do is figure out your TiVo's IP address, use Port 31339, and you can start entering commands. The complicated part is that you have to type out commands like "ircode pause," and "ircode thumbsup," instead of, you know, using your TiVo remote control and just pressing those buttons.

But now that we know this is possible, it's probably just a matter of time before we see third party developers writing TiVo remote control applications with pretty interfaces for the iPhone, Windows Mobile devices, and other internet connected gizmos.

Chris Carey has released a MythTV FrontEnd for the iPhone. What that means is you can use an iPhone to watch live and recorded television programs recorded on your Linux computer running the MythTV BackEnd software. In other words, this just might be the coolest third party application for the iPhone. Ever.

Users can browse recorded shows, check out program information, and stream videos to your iPhone. I'm guessing you'll need to have a WiFi connection, as the iPhone's cellular connection probably won't be fast enough to stream high quality video.

While Sling Media is considering developing a version of its SlingPlayer software for the iPhone that will let Slingbox owners stream content from their home TV or PVR to a handset, Carey's MythTV FrontEnd application is the first tool I'm aware of that actually lets you stream live and recorded TV to an iPhone.

Update: Dave Zatz reminds me that Elgato's EyeTV software also supports streaming recorded programs from a Mac to the iPhone.

[via Automated Home]

TiVo finally released a TiVoToGo package for Mac this year that allows Mac users to download recorded programs from their TiVo to their computer. And when we say TiVo released this application, we mean TiVo partnered with Roxio to include the feature in their commercial applications, which means there's no official free version available.

Fortunately for cheapskates out there, TiVoDecode Manager gives you some of the same features for free. And this week, Alex at TiVo Blog spotted another free application called SeasonPassGetter. The program takes content from your TiVo, moves it over to your computer, and automatically adds it to iTunes.

The best part is that is regularly transfered scheduled recordings. In other words, if you have a season pass for Lost, SeasonPassGetter will transfer every episode to iTunes, which can then export every episode to your iPod, AppleTV, or iPhone.

Beyond TV 4.7 is officially out. The latest version of the popular Windows-based PVR software has been in beta for most of the last month.

So what's new? A couple of big new features since BeyondTV 4.6 and a few enhancements since we last told you about Beyond TV 4.7.

Updates since Beyond TV 4.6

• Optional plug-in that automatically transcodes recordings to H.264 and syncs them with your iPod, iPhone, or Apple TV using an iTunes RSS feed
• New drive pooling feature lets you make use of multiple hard drives by recording to whichever drive has free space
• Use any web-connected portable device (iPhone, PDA, laptop) as a remote control
• Automatically record top picks from other Beyond TV users
• Optional plug-in for burning DVDs from PCs running Beyond TV Link software.

Improvements to Beyond TV 4.7

• Play H.264 videos
• Extend recording time while a job is currently being recorded by hitting the record button and adding the amount of time
• Recover recordings that were interrupted due to power outage or reboot
• Beyond TV Link can now stream live TV for multiple days without stopping, so you never have to stop watching TV. Ever.

BeyondTV 4.7 is a free upgrade for existing BeyondTV 4 users. A full version will cost you $80 if you need a retail package and DVD, or $70 if you download the software from Snapstream's web site.

NBC is certainly giving their new comedy Chuck a good PR push, and it's now headed off on something of an unconventional path. The latest bit of Chuck pseudo-PR is a top ten list over at The Bachelor Guy. It's a post reportedly from our hero, Chuck Bartowski, running down the top ten things you'll need when running from assassins.

It's not what I would deem comedy gold or anything, but he manages to get a dig in at the iPhone keyboard, sing the praises of the Wii, and use the word spork, which you just don't see every day. You can also follow along with Chuck on twitter, if you've jumped on that bandwagon.

I give the whole thing extra points just for being different. Maybe it's because I've watched too much TV (is that possible?) over the summer, but at this point in the new season game, I've grown awfully tired of the same promos for the same shows over and over. It's time for premieres, and week after week with new episodes. Until then, the goofy web hijinks are a welcome distraction.

The Apple iPhone looks like the coolest damn thing since...well, the last thing Apple introduced. But did you know there were mobile/cell phones before it? It's true! I looked it up on Wikipedia.

After the jump is a TV commercial for the Centel, a mobile phone from 1989 (the company was bought by Sprint in the early 90s). Sure, the phone is the size of a two liter bottle of Pepsi, but it's still pretty cool. Notice that there isn't one word of dialogue in the commercial, which is rather remarkable, considering the ad is for something you communicate with. If they made the commercial now, there would be lots of talking and texting and rap music in the background.

"You Don't Know Dick": Wow, TDS is just full of Dick Cheney fun facts. This one was also a good one... Cheney invented his own secret classification "TREATED AS SECRET/SCI", which is so much better than "TOP SECRET" or "CLASSIFIED". He likes to use it on things that aren't really secret, like press talking points.

"Mexican Standoff": Resident Expert John Hodgman, author of My Grandparents Were Slov or Something (heh), talked about how illegal aliens are bringing over scary diseases like tuberculosis and leprosy. Beautiful choices of footage! I especially liked the Leprechaun goodness from Ellis Island.

No, Apple still isn't working on a personal video recorder to rival Windows Media Center. But it looks like Apple has filed a patent for a different kind of media center.

Essentially the patent describes a system that inludes a module controller and a series of modules that could include devices like the AppleTV, iPhone, and Macintosh computers. You'd be able to control each device through the central media hub. So you could stream content stored on your PC to any device on the system.

But you'd also be able to control the system using one of the modules. So imagine pulling out your iPhone, pushing a button, and having access to your entire media library.

Keep in mind, these patents only tell you so much. Some patents are for concepts that never get turned into products. And in other cases, they're just not very explicit. The patents that cover the product now called the iPhone were widely interpreted in the blogosphere to be a touchscreen iPod or a PDA.

[via Gizmodo]

iPhone Shmi-phone. There might be another way to watch iTunes videos on your cellphone. Stream them from an AppleTV using Slingbox.

Yeah, you can pretty much plug a Slingbox into anything with a video output and stream media to a PC, Mac, or mobile phone. But Sling Media is testing remote control codes to make sure the Slingbox can control an AppleTV remotely.

When all is said and done, you'll probably see a client that lets you flip through an AppleTV interface on your laptop, PDA, or mobile phone using a virtual AppleTV remote control.

Of course, it's possible that Apple will announce support for streaming audio and video directly from an AppleTV to the iPhone, due out in June. But if you've already dropped the money on an AppleTV and a Slingbox, wouldn't it be nice to be able to stream media to your existing cellphone without having to buy a new one for $500?