AllThingsD » remote control

Four Weird Things the Internet Is Doing to Our Understanding of Television

Eric Spiegelman — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 23:21:36 +0000

People seem really intent these days on fusing television with the Internet. On one level this makes no sense. Television technology works just fine and we all understand how to use it. We’re also in the midst of a golden age when it comes to programming; I can’t remember another time when there were this many good shows on. Also, television advertising rates are enormous compared to the Internet. There are people on YouTube who have more subscribers than top network sitcoms have viewers, yet they earn a minuscule fraction of the revenue. Television, as an industry, is strong.

On another level, however, I understand the motivation. When it comes to delivering audio-visual content to a wide audience, the Internet has lowered the barriers to entry so far that anyone with even the dinkiest camera can become a major broadcaster. The television industry may face a crisis of overhead when a large number of scrappy upstarts deliver comparable value with almost no fixed costs. Also, there are some aspects of the television business that the Internet simply does better, specifically when it comes to reaching an audience.

So there is the scent of blood in the water, and out of the resulting frenzy a few lessons have appeared. Here are four of them.

There doesn’t have to be a difference between a “channel” and a “show.”

You probably have a clear understanding about what a television channel is. Comedy Central is a channel. Your local CBS affiliate is a channel. A channel is the thing you tune in to at a specific time to watch a particular show. A channel runs a lot of shows on it. Time Warner Cable offers 900 channels. This seems like too many. Bruce Springsteen wrote “57 channels and nothing on.” That sounds so quaint now.

But if you have a conversation about YouTube channels with this concept of a “channel” in your head you may experience some cognitive dissonance. There are “tens of millions” of channels on YouTube. One company, Machinima, operates 3,380 of them. That’s literally 100 times as many channels as are owned by NBC Universal, and it’s not enough. YouTube just launched 100 more channels with premium content. YouTube must be using the word “channel” differently. Except they’re not.

Both a YouTube channel and a television channel deliver a stream of content from a transmitting device to a receiving one. Viewers tune in to a television channel by selecting its number; they reach a YouTube channel via its URL. The main difference is that the cost of creating a television channel from scratch is incredibly high, while on YouTube it’s pretty close to zero. Unlike television, a YouTube channel can turn a profit with very little programming. The comedian Ray William Johnson, for example, has one of the most lucrative channels on YouTube. It plays one show. That show adds 12 minutes of new programming per week.

If a channel online costs next to nothing, and you can build one around a single show, then why do television shows need television channels at all? Every once in a while there’s a lot of fuss about getting cable channels à la carte. But who cares about that when you can have à la carte programming?

I like to think about this in the context of “The Daily Show.” On cable, you’re limited to 30 minutes of “The Daily Show” per day, and you have to tune in at 11 pm or set your DVR to watch it. There could easily just be a “Daily Show” channel, with all the extra programming that Comedy Central now reserves for the Web site, plus spinoffs for the various “Daily Show” correspondents. More content means more places to sell advertising, which means more profit. One challenge, of course, would be getting the audience to modify its behavior, but new technology seems to be inspiring this already.

Programming can now be delivered to your television set through a remote control.

Let’s define “remote control” as a handheld piece of electronics that tells your television set what to do while you’re sitting on the couch. Smartphones and tablets fit into this category, and before you argue that this definition is too broad, I submit that an iPhone is no less a remote control than it is a camera. It commands your television set far more profoundly than your traditional remote control. At least, if you have an Apple TV. Which you should.

The Apple TV comes with a technology called AirPlay, which allows you to throw videos wirelessly from your phone or tablet to your television set. Got a movie sitting in iTunes on your computer? You can watch it on TV via AirPlay. Find a video you want to watch embedded on a Web site you read? If AirPlay is available, a little button will pop up and you can stream the video to your TV. Need some good recommendations? Try one of the many “discovery” apps out there, like Shelby.tv or ShowYou or VHX. They skim your Twitter and Facebook feeds looking for videos your friends have posted. And you can throw those to your TV.

There are apps for ESPN and Discovery Channel and PBS and other traditional channels that allow you watch their shows, on demand, on your TV, via AirPlay. There are also a growing number of apps for channels that have never been included in a traditional cable provider’s lineup. The Wall Street Journal’s news channel, WSJ Live, is one of them. Time Warner Cable doesn’t carry it, but my iPad does.

I should note that WSJ Live is also available in the main Apple TV library, so you don’t actually need to use AirPlay to watch it. But the fact that you can illustrates my point. The remote control has become a very personal device, one that you carry around with you all day long, one that you use to store and index your favorite media. A viewer is just as likely to watch a channel she’s added to her home screen as anything available in the cable menu. The programming of her choice routes through her remote control.

Marketing and distribution are often the same thing.

Last month, IFC released the entire first episode of the second season of “Portlandia” online a week before its airdate. They used an embeddable video player, so that any online publication could feature the episode on its Web site. Individual sketches from the show were also made available in the same way. IFC didn’t just tease the show or talk it up, they let people actually see it for themselves. The result was an 81 percent increase in viewership among 18-49 year olds when the show returned to the network.

There are few examples of this sort of thing happening before the Internet. A movie poster hanging in a theater where that movie is playing, perhaps, or a DVD insert in a magazine ad. But this is something the Internet does really well. A single sentence can promote a film and deliver it to your computer at the same time. Allow me to demonstrate: “This video is amazing.”

That, of course, is the lifeblood of online publishing. Here’s something that resonated with me, I’m recommending it to you, my audience. They call it “curating” now. Somehow that word got separated from “blogging” recently, and I’m not entirely sure how or why. I think Tumblr and Pinterest had something to do with it. But curating, which is a thing bloggers do, is a distinct talent. It’s highly respected in other manifestations, such as museum curators or fashion buyers or television programmers. It was curators who spread that “Portlandia” preview around. And when you factor in the marketing power they brought to that show, and you consider how much a network pays to advertise a program in general, there’s only one conclusion to draw. Online curators are the most undervalued talent in the television industry.

A few of those new YouTube channels seem to recognize the power of the curatorial voice. Vice, Pitchfork, SB Nation and the Bleacher Report all received funding to create new YouTube programming. Presumably their editors will create shows that they’d want to watch themselves, and with that level of personal investment, they’d vouch for those shows to their readers.

Television is no longer that different from publishing.

Just last week, the Gawker Media site Kotaku announced a programming schedule similar to that of a television network. This strategy was conceived well over a year ago, and is designed to sell audience size to advertisers, the way television does, rather than pageviews, which have been dropping in value for years.

This is only the latest example of conceptual overlap. Video embedding took off after the launch of YouTube, turning online publications into versions of The Daily Prophet, that newspaper from Harry Potter with the magical moving pictures on the front page. Some Internet video hosting and streaming services are built on content management systems designed for online publishing. When you upload a video to Blip, the last thing you click to make it go live is “publish.” Awl Music, the music video channel launched by The Awl in January, is run entirely on Tumblr. You can watch it on a television set connected to Google TV.

Both traditional and online publishers are producing original video series with increasing frequency. Reuters, Slate and The Wall Street Journal all have news and documentary programming on the new YouTube channel lineup. The New York Times and New York Magazine have been doing their own video programming for years. It’s only a matter of time before some of these compete with the cable news channels.

Eric Spiegelman produces the Web series “Old Jews Telling Jokes,” which is about to launch its fifth season. He helped bring the hit Japanese television show “Retro Game Master” to Kotaku.com, and he helped launch AwlMusic.tv in partnership with TheAwl.com.

With Siri TV, Apple Will Dismantle the TV Networks

Ben Elowitz — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 23:15:01 +0000

Steve Jobs died without fully transforming television, but the day ~~after~~ before he passed away, Apple unveiled Siri, its natural language interface. Though it’s currently only embedded in the new iPhone 4S, Siri could eventually change the face of the TV industry.

Notice I said “TV industry.”

Most observers and analysts believe that Siri’s voice commands could eliminate the need for those clunky TV remote controls. With the blurring and exponential proliferation of television and Web content, telling your TV what you’d like to watch, instead of scrolling through a nearly infinite number of program possibilities, makes a lot more sense.

But from my perspective, Siri’s greatest impact won’t ultimately be on users, or on device manufacturers (though they certainly risk losing market share to Apple). It will be on the TV industry’s content creators and packagers. Why? Because a voice-controlled television interface will fundamentally disrupt the six-decade-old legacy structure of networks, channels and programs. And that’s a legacy that — until now, at least — has been carried forward from analog to digital.

There’s an important underlying precedent here.

If the Internet can be generalized to have one effect across every industry that moves online, that effect would be disaggregation. Choices go from finite to infinite. Navigation goes from sequential to random access. And audiences choose content by the item far more than by the collection. We’ve gone from the packaged and channelized to the unbound and itemized. Autonomous albums are fragmented into songs; series into clips; and magazines and newspapers into articles and individual photos.

As much as we may think that has already happened with video, it is nothing compared to the great leveling that will occur in the voice-controlled living room. Voice-controlled TV means direct navigation to individual episodes, programs and clips. And it will almost certainly lead to a discernible deconstruction of the network and channel structure — not to mention the decomposition of even the aggregated marketplaces like Netflix, Hulu and YouTube.

Here’s the simple reason: No one is going to sit on their couch and say, “Siri, show me NBC’s ‘Community.’” In a voice-activated world, monikers like “NBC” become useless. They don’t stand for anything meaningful to the consumer. They’re just remnants of a decrepit channel structure that’s unraveling. And, in the end, they’ll simply connote the fast-fading allure of mid-20th century mass appeal.

To be sure, the TV majors will lose much of their ability to realize network effects. Already, you’re hearing less about “lead in” and “lead out.” What you are hearing more about, however, is disconnected videos. A program on YouTube, for instance, will sit on a level voice-controlled playing field with an NBC show, and that field will soon become even more level, because Siri will eliminate the menus that structure the artificial hierarchies of content collections.

So how will we be able to get network effects back in video? Let’s look at four possible ways:

Branded Content — Players can build a strong brand that stands for something with their audiences. Break.com, Discovery and Oprah are all meaningful and build long-term customer loyalty. (“Siri, show me new TED Talks.”)
Curation — Brand the collection with a curation strategy so that the curator’s name and stamp of approval means something to the audience. (“Siri, show me Jason Hirschhorn’s latest movie suggestions.”)
Social — In the fully social world that we expect to see, focusing on the virality of content means you tap the human distribution network and social operating system. (“Siri, show me what videos my friends are watching.”)
Personal — We’ve already seen the extraordinary value of well-tuned personalized recommendations, with Netflix’s notable prize and other famed stories of the benefits of great recommendations. Increasingly, our own patterns of individual videos and the brands we affiliate with, along with recommendations from friends, will be combined into personalized recommendations we won’t even have to ask for. I have no doubt that Siri will be as good a “Genius” as iTunes is at recommending what else to watch. Ultimately, in the age of data, whoever knows the most about us will be able to give us the best experience.

Beyond disaggregation, personalization is ultimately the most powerful consumer value of digital media. My mother’s TV experience was to walk over to her TV set and turn a dial to select among three channels to satisfy her individuality. But in the next generation, no two people will receive the same recommendations from the millions of content choices available.

Before he died, Jobs now famously told Walter Isaacson, his biographer, that he had finally cracked the TV code. It’s unclear what Jobs meant, what this entailed or what he thought it would lead to in the years to come. So, barring further posthumous disclosure, Jobs’s own predictions of his ripple effects will be a media mystery for now.

One thing that’s clear, though, is that Jobs’s Siri will start the dismantling — or creative destruction — of the TV industry as we’ve known it for the last 60 years.

This post originally stated that Siri was unveiled the day after Steve Jobs passed away. It’s been corrected to reflect that the announcement actually occurred the day before.

Ben Elowitz (@elowitz) is co-founder and CEO of Wetpaint, a next-generation media company that is reinventing the media model on the social web. Ben is also author of Digital Quarters, a blog about the future of digital media. Prior to Wetpaint, Elowitz co-founded Blue Nile (NILE).

Meet Kid Robot, Kibot: The Full AsiaD Demo (Video)

Kara Swisher — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 21:05:20 +0000

We are now posting the full videos from the recent AsiaD conference, which took place in Hong Kong in October.

Over the next two weeks, we’re going to follow the schedule of the actual event. Up now: Kibot, a robot for kids.

Besides playing educational games, Kibot from Korea Telecom gives parents another pair of eyes, too, with videochat and remote control.

Kibot — available only in South Korea for now — is aimed at children from three to seven years old. It looks like a monkey, whose nose is an RFID reader, stomach is a control panel and ears are the navigational buttons.

Would that my kids were that easy to control.

[ See post to watch video ]

Converting Cassettes to CDs

Walter S. Mossberg — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 01:02:25 +0000

Is there a way to convert cassette tapes to CDs through the computer?

Yes, there are a variety of hardware gadgets, that, with accompanying software, can plug into computers to convert the contents of cassettes to digital files, which can then be burned to CDs.

I can’t recommend any specific products, since I haven’t tested any. But you can find some by searching for “cassette to CD.”

Note that such conversions, like conversions of records, can be very time-consuming.

I will be on the road this summer and I don’t want a large laptop. I’m wondering what your opinion is on a tablet vs. netbook. My main purpose is to retrieve/send email, access the Internet and download important files. If I bought a tablet, it’d be an iPad.

Most of what you want to do is easy on the iPad. But downloading of files is a bit trickier.

The iPad makes it easy to view — and with extra apps, to edit — files received as email attachments. And it has some apps that allow file retrieval from the cloud.

But a straight download from a website usually doesn’t work well. So you might prefer a laptop. In that case, I recommend a full-sized, but thin, light laptop over the generally cramped netbooks.

I live in the U.S. and have a mother living on her own in Montreal. I would like to video chat with her on a daily basis. She is elderly and has some memory/dementia issues. I’d like it set up so I control the whole process from my end, leaving her to do little more than turn on a monitor. How can I do this?

By taking remote control of her computer. There are a number of simplified remote-control software programs that would allow this, and I have no reason to think they wouldn’t work across a national border.

Two I have tested are LogMeIn and CrossLoop.

But you would first have to install these on your mother’s computer and make sure her machine is turned on and connected to the Internet when you want to initiate a video-chat session.

You can find Mossberg’s Mailbox, and Walt’s other columns at the All Things Digital website, http://walt.allthingsd.com. Email mossberg@wsj.com

NEC's New Remote Control: The Human Arm

Juro Osawa — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 18:09:40 +0000

Many stressed workers and maybe even one or two looking for marriage partners, pound the well-trod circuit around Toyko’s Imperial Palace Gardens each day with earphones funneling music to match the mood. But as any jogger can tell you, reaching for the portable music player to press pause, or fast forward to the next track mid-stride can be tricky, or even embarrassingly uncool.

Now a product developed by Japan’s NEC Corp. could allow image-conscious joggers to operate their music machinery without risking mishap: The electronics maker’s new technology uses the human arm as a remote control for electronic devices, and while NEC is still figuring out what to use the technology for exactly, the most obvious application would be music players, a spokesman said, though it may also work well with videogame systems. All the runner would need to do would be to tap the left arm with the right hand, or vice versa, and the music could be played, paused or skipped.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Cisco Drops Price of Home Video-Calling System

Cari Tuna — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 08:00:21 +0000

Cisco Systems has cut the price of its umi video-calling system for consumers, a flashy offering released in October to great fanfare–and widespread criticism about how much it cost.

The network-equipment giant on Monday said it is reducing the price of the existing umi system to $499 from $599, and introduced a $399 version with reduced high-definition resolution that requires a slower Internet connection. The San Jose, Calif., also slashed the price of the monthly service fee for umi to $9.95 a month from $24.99.

Cisco’s system is a home version of its high-end conferencing gear for businesses, which it calls “telepresence” in order to indicate the lifelike quality of the connection. The consumer system includes a camera, set-top device and remote control and connects high-definition TVs to a user’s broadband Internet connection.

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A 'Pear' Gives Apple Devices an Easy Way to Control TVs

Walter S. Mossberg — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 02:12:22 +0000

Watching television in the digital home today too often becomes a process of juggling multiple remote controls, trying to remember which “input” on the TV matches which set-top box you use, and peering at a long listing of channels that resembles a spreadsheet.

There are universal remotes, some with built-in touch screens, like Logitech’s successful Harmony line, but these can get costly and complicated. And there are various apps that turn your iPhone into a universal remote, but they require plugging into the phone small hardware modules that are easy to lose.

[ See post to watch video ]

This week, I’ve been testing a different approach to solving the complex TV-remote problem. Like some competitors, the Peel universal control uses a device you may already own—an iPhone or iPod Touch (even older models). But it doesn’t require plugging any hardware into the device, or cables into the TV.

Instead of lists of channels, it presents you with pictures and summaries of the shows that are on, grouped by genre. You don’t have to know what channel they’re on—you just click “Watch on TV” and it takes you to the show. While it can control various devices—like DVD players or Apple TVs—it doesn’t require you to recall which input each is on. It switches TV inputs automatically and presents an appropriate virtual remote for each device, controlled by touch and gesture on your iPhone’s or iPod Touch’s screen.

Peel’s battery-powered ‘fruit’ transmitter

The Peel universal control is from a small Silicon Valley company of the same name. It consists of a free app, plus a small, $100 battery-powered wireless hardware transmitter that’s vaguely shaped like a pear and called a “fruit.” It is meant to sit on a coffee table or bookshelf within sight of your TV. When you send commands from the app on your iPhone or Touch, this transmitter relays those commands to the TV or set-top boxes.

The app itself has been available for months, mainly as a resource for finding out what’s on TV. It allows you to customize genres and channels you care about, and gradually learns your preferences so it can present the best choices. It even lets you share what you’re watching on Facebook and Twitter. The hardware that allows it to actually control your TV goes on sale at Apple stores March 8.

In my tests, I found the Peel worked as advertised with our Pioneer TV, our TiVo digital recorder (which we use instead of a standard cable box), our Samsung DVD player, and our Apple TV. I tested it on an iPod Touch the company lent me.

But the Peel isn’t perfect. For instance, positioning the transmitter gadget, and a special Wi-Fi accessory that must be plugged into your home router, took some trial and error and might not work well in all homes. The app currently lacks a mute button if you use a DVR, though the company is planning on adding one by the March 8 launch date. It can’t use the iPhone’s keyboard to spare you from hunt-and-peck entering of words in the search screens of a TiVo or Apple TV. And if you switch apps on the iPhone or iPod Touch, and then return to Peel, the app doesn’t resume where you left off.

A small, $100 battery-powered transmitter (upper left) vaguely shaped like a pear relays commands from the app on an iPhone or iPod Touch to the TV. It is meant to sit within sight of the TV. Instead of lists of channels, the Peel app presents you with pictures and summaries of the shows that are on, grouped by genre. It also allows you to customize genres and channels you care about, such as on the iPhone, at right.

Also, like all systems that try to turn smartphones into TV remotes, the Peel suffers from two problems. First, if somebody removes the iPhone or iPod Touch from the house to use it for other things, you’ve lost your remote. Second, unlike most regular remotes, smartphones go to sleep and need to be recharged fairly often, which means they aren’t constantly available as a remote.

In addition to working on iPhones, Peel works on iPads, although an enhanced iPad version won’t be ready until June. The company also plans an Android version this spring.

I found it easy to locate shows using the big, descriptive icons the app provides. Peel even suggested some shows that weren’t visible on my normal cable grid because I had eliminated from the grid many networks we rarely watch.

Actually controlling the TV, cable box, and other devices was pretty easy after a bit of practice using the Peel’s “Gesture screen.” This consists of a set of touch controls for each device, split into two panes: one for navigation and one for common playback functions like adjusting volume, or, on DVRs, rewinding and fast-forwarding. You can do the latter by swiping anywhere on the screen either vertically or horizontally. Tapping the screen pauses the show on a DVR.

The iPhone’s remote look.

For some functions, like controlling the built-in menus on a cable box or Apple TV, you just swipe on the Peel’s screen to move from item to item on the TV screen and press an OK button to select things. It takes a while to get the hang of how much of a swipe will move from item to item on a TV menu.

Setup, often the bane of such gadgets, was fairly easy on the Peel. The trickiest part is plugging that Wi-Fi accessory into your home Internet router. If the router is too far from the room with the TV, it won’t work. The company recommends a distance of 25 feet, though it says it can work at up to 50 feet.

I found I had to move the fruit transmitter around a bit to get it work, as it must be closer to the TV and within line of sight. The company says it will work at up to 15 feet from the TV, but I could only get it to do so up to about 12 feet and, even at 6 feet, I had to move it a couple of times at first to get it to work right.

Overall, Peel is a very nicely designed product that can work well for people with too many remotes who own an iPhone or iPod Touch. But it isn’t a silver bullet for solving TV complexity.

Find all of Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos at the All Things Digital website, walt.allthingsd.com. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.

The iPad Now Can Take Command of Computers

Walter S. Mossberg — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 02:03:08 +0000

It has long been possible to control one PC or Mac from another, legally and with permission. Though the process can be tricky to set up, companies often use it as a maintenance and training tool, and some consumers use it to help others solve computer problems, or to reach back to their home or office machines while on the road to access information.

But what about remotely controlling a PC or Mac from the newest category of digital device, a multitouch tablet? Well, it turns out there are apps for that.

[ See post to watch video ]

Such apps have been around on super-smart phones like the iPhone for years, but phone screens are so small that using them to open and operate programs and folders on a Mac or PC is very frustrating, at least to me. The iPad, with its roomy 10-inch screen, is a different story. It actually has the real estate to make the process much more practical.

I’ve been testing a couple of these apps on my iPad, using them to remotely control Windows PCs and Macs at my home and office. In fact, I’m typing this paragraph in Microsoft Word on a Mac remotely from the iPad.

My conclusion is that these apps do work, but even on the large iPad screen, they’re too clumsy and confusing to use on a regular basis, mostly because touch-screen tablets aren’t a great match for the way traditional computers—designed for a mouse and a physical keyboard—work. Also, the apps have some functional limitations, and they are heavily dependent on the speed of the network or Internet connection, which can make them slow at demanding things like video.

A view of a Windows PC on an iPad via LogMeIn Ignition.

For my tests, I selected two apps squarely aimed at average consumers. One is called LogMeIn Ignition, and is the iPad and iPhone incarnation of a longstanding computer-to-computer remote-control product called LogMeIn. The other is called iTeleport. It has been around, under various names, since the early days of the iPhone, and now comes in an iPad edition as well.

Both apps get around the complexity of setup by installing a special free program on the computer you wish to control that talks to the iPad app. The apps can see and control all the computers on which you have installed companion programs. I found setup easy and the connections generally reliable and fast enough, except for video.

But the big drawback to these products is that they are clumsy in controlling the target computer. Each allows two basic methods for this. In one, your finger moves the computer’s mouse cursor and you click the virtual mouse by tapping. In the other, you can directly tap on things on the remote screen. In my view, LogMeIn was better at the first method and iTeleport was better at the second. But I found both clumsy and tedious in both programs, especially when I tried to combine controlling the remote computer with the frequent need to use touch to move the image of the screen around the iPad’s display.

LogMeIn Ignition costs a one-time fee of $29.99. The iTeleport app can be used free for 30 days, after which it costs either $2.99 a month or a $24.99 one-time fee. For the next seven days, iTeleport is running a sale that cuts the price to $1 a month, or $10 for the one-time fee.

Both apps can control multiple Windows or Mac computers, at no extra cost. For my tests, I used each to remotely access the same two Windows PCs and two Macs, both desktops and laptops. One limitation: neither app allows you to transfer a file from a computer to the iPad.

While there are some differences between the products, they are fundamentally similar. Once you log in, you see the remote computer’s screen on your iPad screen. In my tests, with both products, I was able to open Web pages, check email, view photos and use productivity apps. I also was able to print documents from the computers on my home printer, even while I was miles away.

In both apps, you pinch and zoom to enlarge or reduce the view of the target computer screen, and can rotate the image of the screen.

The iPad can’t play Flash videos, but these apps allow you to view such videos from your PC or Mac on the iPad. But there are catches. For one thing, neither program lets you hear audio from the computer through the iPad, so the videos (and music you play remotely) are mute. Also, in my tests, even over a fast connection, I could never get a video from the remote computer to play smoothly over either app.

LogMeIn also offers a version for Android, unlike iTeleport, and that allows audio to be transmitted. I tested this on a Samsung Galaxy Tab, and it worked.

One big difference is in the level of security or privacy the two apps offer. Both encrypt the remote connection, but LogMeIn requires you to sign in twice: once to its own service and once to the computer itself. iTeleport skips the computer login, so it feels less secure. In addition, iTeleport outsources its authentication to Google. You sign into the product using your Google credentials. This is simpler, but requires you to trust Google with the privacy of the contents of your computer.

Each program has special keyboards and shortcuts to add things to the iPad that computers use but the tablet lacks, such as function keys. Each also has various gestures you can use as shortcuts. But the overall effect is confusing.

Bottom line: You can control a PC or a Mac from an iPad, without any complex setup, using these two apps. But, unless you spend a lot of time learning to get good at it, the process is clunky and best used only when you absolutely must.

Find all Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos at the All Things Digital website, walt.allthingsd.com.

Write to Walter S. Mossberg at mossberg@wsj.com

Netflix Button Coming to Remote Controls

Jennifer Valentino-DeVries — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 19:55:29 +0000

As televisions go the way of smartphones and get loaded up with apps, Netflix Inc. is staking its claim on an important place–the remote control.

The movie-rental company has struck deals with makers of TVs and DVD players to put a one-click “Netflix” button on remotes starting this spring, Netflix said Tuesday. Such a button would make it easier for people to go straight to their Netflix account, rather than clicking through other menus, which take time and could potentially distract the viewer.

“We’ve always regarded ubiquity on devices as our strategy, and we want to be present there as simply and visibly as possible,” said Netflix spokesman Steve Swasey in an interview with Digits.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

YouTube Adds Personalized Channels to Lengthen Living Room Sessions

Liz Gannes — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 01:30:01 +0000

YouTube today is launching a personalization update to its Leanback viewing mode, which is meant to be played on televisions. The new “Personalized Channels”–which is honestly a feature I assumed Leanback already had, given the Google-owned site has been experimenting in this area for a while–will queue up videos for any keyword to play continuously.

Leanback users can give feedback on whether or not they like recommendations, and the channel will refine future suggestions automatically. It seems very similar to streaming music on Pandora. The idea is to offer users a never-ending stream of videos they like, so they’ll watch YouTube longer.

Leanback is not a platform-specific app, but rather a full-screen version of YouTube accessible through any browser. It’s intended for Web-connected televisions.

The “user base [of such devices] is small by YouTube standards,” said YouTube Group Product Manager Shiva Rajaraman, but he added that YouTube users who watch through Leanback already spend 30 minutes per session on average, two times longer than sessions on the Web.

Of course, 30 minutes happens to be the length of many traditional television programs.

Leanback at present doesn’t have much in the way of social features, and it doesn’t include specialized ad formats for the living room. It is also not the default YouTube option on Google TV. Rajaraman said all these things are likely to be added in the future. YouTube has recently been doing all sorts of launches around Leanback, including adding overlay and pre-roll advertisements, showing more premium videos from partners and providing a remote control app for Android.

Video: BoomTown Gets a Taste of Umi and Chomps into Cisco Execs Too!

Kara Swisher — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 12:16:20 +0000

Yesterday, BoomTown dragged my weary bag of bones to downtown San Francisco for the unboxing of a new consumer telepresence product from Cisco called Umi.

The networking giant is making yet another big foray into the competitive space for, well, space in the living room with the device, which will cost $599 with a $24.99 monthly fee.

The Cisco (CSCO) brand name Umi is a variation on “you-me.”

The Umi unit works with your existing high-definition television and high-speed broadband. It’s in three parts: A camera, a remote control and a set-top box. It will work with Google (GOOG) Voice Chat–but not Skype and Apple (AAPL) iChat yet.

Here’s a video I did–using Cisco’s Flip video camera, natch!–to capture the proceedings at the launch event and demo, as well as to interview Umi head honcho Gina Clark about the effort, competition and more:

[ See post to watch video ]

Like BoomTown Said: Cisco Announces "Umi" Consumer Telepresence

Kara Swisher — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 16:37:34 +0000

In a post last week, BoomTown wrote that Cisco would introduce a consumer telepresence product.

It did today in San Francisco at a press event. It is called, inexplicably, “Umi” telepresence.

I’ll be honest, it sounds like the kind of sushi I typically refuse to eat, because I am not as adventurous as I like to pretend I am.

Actually, it seems to be a variation on you-me.

Get it? You and me and telepresence. As in “Star Trek” for non-geeks.

According to Wikipedia, here are some other definitions for the word:

“Umi may refer to: Umi, ‘sea’ in Japanese language; UMI, Universal Mobile Interface; Umi, Fukuoka, a town in Japan; Umi-a-Liloa, the king of the island of Hawaii; Umi Ryuzaki, a character in the fictional manga series ‘Magic Knight Rayearth’ by CLAMP.”

“Connect with a touch of the button,” is the motto for the giant Silicon Valley networking company for Umi.

And, frankly, I wish I could have telepresenced from my bed at home with it.

You can, using Umi with your existing high-definition television and high-speed broadband. It’s in three parts: A camera, a remote control and, ugh, yet another set-top box to pile on the rest on the shelf in your home living room, as you can see below.

Cisco said the device is scheduled to be available to consumers on November 14 in Best Buy (BBY) Magnolia Home Theater stores, as well as at bestbuy.com and umi.cisco.com “for the suggested retail price of $599 with a monthly fee of $24.99 for unlimited ?mi calls, video messaging and video storage.”

At the short and sweet event, Cisco execs touted their entry into the crowded consumer video-conferencing arena.

“It’s all about tasting the chocolate,” said Cisco exec Gina Clark about her box of Umi, which will work with Google Voice Chat–but not Skype and Apple (AAPL) iChat yet.

It also has the seal of approval from Oprah Winfrey, who will doubtlessly use it in some Oprah manner on her talk show.

Clark mentions tasting the chocolate several more times to knock the point home that if you try it, you’ll like it.

I can’t believe I ate the whole Umi!

Now, Cisco–which really is obsessed with the chocolate metaphor today–is making me have a chomp in a demo.

And, while I am no reviewer, it is pretty sweet, and looks great, well beyond what is available via Internet video chat.

Until the inevitable shaky video appears, here is the full press release from Cisco (CSCO):

Cisco umi Press Release

The All-In-One Remote

Katherine Boehret — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 02:09:27 +0000

One of the first technology products I tested for my job here at the Journal was a universal remote. It was a giant eyesore and its dense instruction book had about as many pages as the remote had buttons. It controlled most anything from lights to automatic shades to entertainment systems.

[ See post to watch video ]

My, how times have changed. This week, almost exactly eight years later, I tested two different infrared sensors that plug into your iPhone or iPod touch and turn it into a universal remote that controls a myriad of devices. The setup for these took just a few minutes and was so intuitive I didn’t need to consult any directions.

I tried the $50 L5 Remote (www.L5remote.com) from L5 Technology and the $80 FLPR (www.newpotatotech.com) from New Potato Technologies; both work with hundreds of thousands of electronic devices. I plugged each of these infrared sensors into the dock connector of an iPhone 4 and downloaded free apps to remotely control two TVs, including an old Sony in my office as well as a TiVo Series 2. Other devices can also be controlled, like MP3 docks, speakers or DVD players.

The FLPR costs more but automatically creates a customized remote control screen with pre-coded buttons for each of your devices; you simply enter the device type and brand. The L5 Remote requires manually training each button to match the function of a button on the physical remote.

The L5 Remote

The new devices offer an obvious convenience: An iPhone or iPod touch that doubles as a universal remote means you’ll often have it with you. But that could be a problem if you want the remote and someone else has left home with the iPhone or iPod touch. And if someone wants to use one of your remotely-controlled electronics while you’re on the phone, you’ll have to interrupt your conversation to switch between apps (on the new iOS 4 operating system).

These infrared dongles are tiny and could easily be misplaced, yet aren’t small enough to keep on your iPhone or iPod touch all day.

Another problem is that the touch screens on the iPhone and iPod touch don’t give tactile feedback like remote controls with physical buttons, forcing you to look down while pressing buttons.

To get started with the L5 and FLPR, I plugged each into an iPhone 4 and a shortcut message appeared, sending me to a screen for installing each gadget’s free app. Since the infrared remote plugs into the bottom of the iPhone, each app’s screen automatically flipped upside down, forcing me to also flip the iPhone and point it at my devices.

The FLPR

The FLPR’s simple setup made it a breeze to use, and each electronic device’s coded buttons appeared on the screen seconds after I selected the type of device and brand name. I chose icons to represent each device, like a TiVo-looking icon for my TiVo remote. FLPR used fun backgrounds (called skins) for each remote, including tie-dyed designs.

Though the L5 Remote is a bit more tedious to set up because each button must be manually assigned, the app does a great job of showing you what’s happening on the screen, using green progress bars to display when each button is assigned a task.

Both companies’ products will work with—but aren’t optimized for—the iPad. I successfully tried the L5 Remote’s iPhone app with my iPad and it worked without a hitch. An L5 representative said an iPad app is due out by the end of the year. FLPR says it will release its iPad app in August.

If you don’t share a remote control with many other people and want a simple way to control your electronics on a gadget you already carry all the time, FLPR will be your best bet. But the infrared pieces needed to work both the FLPR and L5 Remote are a pain to take on and off.

Edited by Walter S. Mossberg

Write to Katherine Boehret at mossbergsolution@wsj.com

Kylo and Loop Advance Viewing Web Video on TV

Walter S. Mossberg — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 01:03:56 +0000

More consumers are watching TV shows over the Internet using computers hooked up to their sets. But this can be a hassle. The major Web browsers were made for close-up use, so they have icons, toolbars and menus that can be too small to see from an optimal TV-viewing distance. And they are meant to be used with mouses, or laptop touch pads, and keyboards.

So, many people wind up sitting on the couch with a laptop and a long cord, or with a wireless keyboard and mouse on a coffee table.

[ See post to watch video ]

There are various workarounds, such as using the browsers’ zoom controls, fiddling with screen resolutions, and using wireless adapters to eliminate cords. But now, a small company from Rockville, Md., Hillcrest Labs, thinks it has a simpler, better idea. It has invented a new kind of Web browser and a new kind of wireless remote control explicitly designed for using TV-connected computers from the couch.

One product is a free browser called Kylo, available at kylo.tv, which came out in beta form a few weeks ago. Hillcrest calls it “the Web browser for television,” and it runs on both Windows and Mac. It has huge icons, and a large on-screen keyboard for pecking out Web addresses and search terms with your cursor.

Kylo has an easy zooming control and a home page with a scrollable display of big tiles that link to 128 popular Web video sites.

The other is an unusual remote called the Loop, which controls the computer, not the TV. It’s a $99 bagel-shaped gadget with four buttons and a wheel. You wave the Loop in the air to move the cursor, to scroll and to select items. It came out last summer and works on Windows and Mac.

The Loop feels comfortable in the hand, and is designed to move the cursor with small wrist or arm movements. Your thumb controls the scroll wheel and buttons—the two largest correspond to the left and right mouse buttons.

Each product can be used separately, but the company sees them as a perfect combination for using a TV-connected computer.

I’ve been testing Kylo and the Loop, and they do work well together. Using an Apple (AAPL) Mac Mini and a Toshiba Satellite laptop plugged into my large flat-panel TV, I was able to sit across my family room and wield the two Hillcrest products to watch videos from all over the Web. I also used the Loop by itself to run other computer programs on the TV screen, including Firefox, Safari and Internet Explorer.

Hillcrest’s Loop remote control

But both products have enough rough edges and missing features that I consider them promising advances in solving computer-to-TV issues, rather than polished solutions.

I’ll get to some of these downsides in a bit, but I want to mention one right away. Hulu, one of the most popular video sites on the Web, blocks Kylo users from viewing its content. This isn’t Hillcrest’s fault, but it does reduce Kylo’s usefulness.

Kylo is fully capable of displaying Hulu’s TV shows and movies. But, just as little Hillcrest was about to unveil the new browser, Hulu cut off access for Kylo users. Hulu explains that it did this because under its agreements with its media-company partners and investors (including News Corp., which owns The Wall Street Journal and its Web sites) it is intended for streaming TV shows and movies to computer screens, not TV screens. This is because the media companies don’t want free computer-to-TV streaming to compete too much with cable and satellite providers, which are major sources of revenue for them.

Ironically, I was able to watch Hulu videos just fine on my TV using the Loop and the same computers, by merely switching from Kylo to other browsers. It seems Hillcrest’s crime was openly declaring that Kylo was explicitly meant for use on TV screens.

So, what are the other downsides of Kylo and the Loop? For one, depending on your TV-computer combination, setting the screen resolution to optimize Kylo might cut off menus and window controls when using other software. And Kylo lacks some common browser features, like the ability to email links to a site.

As for the Loop, because it is radically different from a standard mouse or TV remote, it takes time to master. Also, since the Loop only controls the computer, it can’t turn the TV on or off. It also doesn’t have volume and mute buttons. You still need your TV remote for some tasks. Further, once you’re at a Web site using Kylo, it can be hard to see the tiny controls often used for playing videos in full screen. And the Loop lacks an Escape button, which is the typical way to exit full-screen video mode.

But, for people who love using their computers with their TVs, these two works in progress are worth a try.

Find Walt’s columns online at the All Things Digital site, walt.allthingsd.com. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.

How to Watch Video, Wirelessly, on Your TV Set

Walter S. Mossberg — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 02:03:34 +0000

An increasing number of people are watching video, including TV shows and movies, on their computers, instead of via traditional TV sets.

Many young people don’t even bother with a cable or satellite subscription and just use their PCs or Macs to get their video fix.

[ See post to watch video ]

But computer screens are small, so some folks hook the computer up to the TV for their viewing sessions. The problem with this is that it can be complicated for the technically challenged. And it can involve long cables stretching across the floor, or leaving a computer you might want for other tasks permanently connected to the TV. So companies have been working on ways to beam Internet video wirelessly from your computer to your TV.

I’ve been testing two of these wireless PC-to-TV solutions. Both require a secondary device that remains connected to the TV to receive the wireless signal from the computer.

One product is a new system from Intel (INTC), several major laptop makers and the networking equipment company Netgear (NTGR). It’s called Intel Wireless Display, or Wi-Di for short. The other is a software product called PlayOn, from a company called MediaMall. It beams video to your TV through popular game consoles such as Microsoft’s (MSFT) Xbox 360, Sony’s (SNE) PlayStation 3 and Nintendo’s Wii. Both of these products only work on Windows computers.

In my tests, both systems mostly worked as advertised, but each had some downsides. The Intel system works with any video from any site you can play on the computer, but the video disappears from the TV if you are playing it in full-screen mode and get the impulse to use the computer for any other purpose while it is playing. And it only works on a handful of new, specially equipped PCs.

The PlayOn system will work on an existing computer, and it keeps showing a video even if you choose to use the PC for some other task. But it can’t beam just any old video to the TV, only those from services PlayOn has enabled. For instance, you can watch TV shows and movies from Hulu (partly owned by News Corp., which also owns The Wall Street Journal and its Web sites) but not from your favorite random Web site.

Intel’s new Wi-Di system is so far only available on three specific laptop models, one each from Toshiba, Sony and Dell (DELL), that range from $900 to $1,050. And these laptops are so far only available from Best Buy (BBY). It also requires a small $100 adapter called Push2TV from Netgear, which comes free with these laptops.

Wi-Di requires computers equipped with Intel’s brand new 2010 Core processors, Intel’s graphics chips and Intel’s wireless chips. Netgear and Intel say the feature will be available on other PC models later in the year.

I tested Wi-Di with the $900 Toshiba E205, a capable laptop with a 14-inch screen. Setup was a breeze. I just plugged the Netgear box into my TV and pushed a special Wi-Di button on the Toshiba. I typed in a code number the first time I used it, and I was in business.

Instantly, anything showing on the Toshiba’s screen was wirelessly replicated on the TV screen, even though I was eight feet away.

I tested the system with YouTube, Hulu and many other Web sites with no hitches or glitches. I also played videos stored on the PC’s hard disk.

Video mostly played smoothly over Wi-Di, though the quality on the TV was a bit degraded from that on the laptop screen, and HD videos didn’t look nearly as good as normal HD TV broadcasts. Also, the system isn’t satisfying unless you are streaming a video that can be viewed in full-screen mode on the PC.

I tested PlayOn with a Lenovo ThinkPad laptop and a PlayStation 3. After hooking up the PS3, I installed the $40 PlayOn software, which runs in the background. I then navigated to the Video section of the Sony’s menu, found PlayOn listed and used the Sony’s remote control to select from supported services, which include YouTube, Hulu, Netflix (NFLX), CBS.com (CBS), Amazon (AMZN) Video on Demand, CNN.com,and ESPN.com.

PlayOn also allows third-party plug-ins to add other Web video sources, such as NBC.com, but the company admits that the plug-in process can be clunky.

Video quality was about the same on PlayOn as on Wi-Di, and most programs played smoothly. With PlayOn, you don’t see the actual Web site, and you’re limited to the navigation system and options of the game console you’re using. So, I had to tediously find shows on the Sony by trolling through long lists.

PlayOn failed to display videos and photos stored on my PC, though to be fair the company lists this as a beta feature. And it displayed brief error messages frequently, even when it proceeded to play my chosen video properly.

PlayOn costs $40, and can be downloaded from www.playon.tv. You also must own or buy a game console, or one of a smattering of less- well-known TV adapters that the system supports.

Watching Internet video is a better experience with no wires to get in the way. But it can cost a lot, and needs some work.

Find all of Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos online, free, at the All Things Digital Web site, walt.allthingsd.com. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.

Easy Digital Listening: Sonos ZonePlayer S5

Katherine Boehret — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 23:15:05 +0000

Installing a multiroom stereo system can involve drilling holes in walls, running wires throughout the house and spending a lot of money. And after all that, the stereo still won’t have access to as much music as your computer. This week, I tested an alternative to the traditional stereo system that lets you control digitally delivered music in multiple rooms without spending a lot of money.

[ See post to watch video ]

I tested Sonos Inc.’s $399 ZonePlayer S5 (Sonos.com/S5), an all-in-one system that plays music off of your Windows PC or Mac, including music files on the computer, content from Internet radio sites Pandora and Last.fm, local radio stations, Sirius Internet radio, Napster and Rhapsody. The S5 plugs directly into your router and a wall outlet, and a simple software program installs on your computer, working as a desktop remote control. It can work in concert with other S5s or other Sonos products to create a multiroom system around your house. And a free iPhone or iPod Touch app facilitates full remote control of multiple systems.

Since 2005, Sonos has offered high-end audio systems that permit people to listen to their digital music in multiple rooms on stereo systems with straightforward setups and simple remote controls. But its past products were relatively costly and required users to provide an existing stereo setup, powered speakers or a device (like a Bose Wave Radio) that allowed adding components via an auxiliary line-in.

Streamlined Setup

The ZonePlayer S5 is Sonos’s first product that works right out of the box and doesn’t require additional pieces. It took me very little time to set up and, once set up, sounded great. Music fans will want to know that it has five speakers powered by five dedicated digital amplifiers, two tweeters, two midrange drivers and a subwoofer. Discreet buttons on the top of the S5 can be pressed to mute, raise or lower volume.

The Sonos ZonePlayer S5 can be part of a multiroom digital sound system controlled by a free iPhone app.

Sonos’s $99 ZoneBridge accessory frees the ZonePlayer S5 from being wired to a router. Most people will need to buy one of these because they don’t have their routers set up in the same rooms where they want to keep their ZonePlayer S5s. The ZoneBridge is what it sounds like: It can bridge a connection between your home network and one or multiple ZonePlayer S5s—or other Sonos products. There’s no limit to the number of Sonos products that can work with one ZoneBridge.

Last year, Sonos created a free app for Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone and iPod Touch that, as of a recent release last month, works just like the standalone $349 Sonos Controller 200, a touch-screen remote control. Using either the free app or the Sonos Controller, people can control music on multiple ZonePlayers and on other Sonos devices. For example, from my iPod Touch, I can mute one ZonePlayer and crank up the volume on another; I can skim through and play a list of Billboard Chart hits from Napster or listen to one of my personalized stations on Pandora.

If you’re like me, you don’t like bothering with plugs as you move electronics around your house. Even though the ZonePlayer S5 has a built-in handle and can easily be moved around (it weighs only about nine pounds), it will need its AC adapter cord wherever it goes. And the ZonePlayer S5 doesn’t have a dedicated iPod dock. Sure, you could buy a cord to plug an iPod into the auxiliary port on the back of the ZonePlayer, but that’s not the same as a dock.

Competition Report

Competitors, such as Bose Corp.’s $270 SoundDock Series II, work as speakers and iPod docks. The Bose can’t sync with other SoundDocks, as Sonos products are made to do, nor can it wirelessly play music from the hard drive of a nearby Windows PC or Mac. But as long as an iPod Touch or iPhone is loaded with free apps from Pandora or Last.fm, it can be placed in the SoundDock to play Internet radio through this system. And Bose’s $360 SoundDock Portable works plugged in or for over three hours on rechargeable batteries, making it easier to move around the house.

It took me less than 10 minutes to set up two ZonePlayer S5s, one ZoneBridge and a Sonos Controller 200 remote control in three different rooms. The ZoneBridge is just 1½ inches tall and its surface measures about the area of a piece of toast. It plugs directly into a router so the S5s can work anywhere within the Wi-Fi network, though they still must each be plugged into a power outlet.

I installed Sonos’s setup software, which came on a disc with the ZonePlayer S5, on a Dell (DELL) XPS One running Windows 7. When prompted, I followed on-screen instructions that explained how to press a button on each ZonePlayer S5, the ZoneBridge and the remote to wirelessly link them to my system. An indicator light on the S5 and ZoneBridge changed from blinking to solid to signify the connection.

Listen Up

Free 30-day trials of Sirius Internet Radio, Napster and Rhapsody come with the ZonePlayer S5, and the software is smart enough to set everything up in one step so users can start listening without first filling out any forms (like email address, name etc.). If users don’t have accounts with Internet radio sites Pandora and Last.fm, they must go to those sites to create accounts online.

I entered my Pandora Internet radio user name and password on the computer, and my saved radio stations appeared on the computer screen. These personalized stations also showed up on the Sonos Controller’s colorful touch screen, as well as in the Sonos Controller app on the iPhone. And Pandora’s thumbs-up and thumbs-down buttons also work on these portable remotes, so my musical preferences were saved in my account as I selected each to indicate whether or not I liked a song.

I played all sorts of content from the Web directly on my ZonePlayer S5s: hip-hop from Jay-Z, Ella Fitzgerald jazz, classical Christmas songs sung by the York Minster Choir, my local NPR station and tracks from Shakira’s new “She Wolf” album. I also listened to music from my computer’s hard drive.

The Sonos ZonePlayer S5 lets you build a stereo system that can be wirelessly spread around with help from the company’s $99 ZoneBridge. And, as is the case with all Sonos products, the setup process is fantastically simple. Now that the iPhone and iPod Touch can use a free remote-control app that works just as well as the Sonos Controller 200, these players are even more accessible.

Edited by Walter S. Mossberg

Write to Katherine Boehret at mossbergsolution@wsj.com

The ABCs of Wii, Xbox and PlayStation 3

Katherine Boehret — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 00:47:12 +0000

With holiday shopping comes anxiety about getting the right gifts. Does Dad already own a copy of “Frank Sinatra’s Greatest Hits”? Was Mom expecting a new pepper mill, or was that Aunt Carol? It’s even worse for people shopping for the video gamers in their lives: Understanding the technical specifications of each console can seem as difficult as getting to the highest level in a game of Halo.

This week, I’ve done the dirty work for you: I’ve amassed a collection of vital details about the three most popular systems—Microsoft’s (MSFT) Xbox 360, Sony’s (SNE) PlayStation 3 and Nintendo’s Wii—so that you can get a handle on what each offers and what it will cost you.

Nintendo Wii

Nintendo recently dropped the Wii’s price, for the first time, to $200 from $250. The Wii Console comes with a controller, an additional controller called a Nunchuk, and the Wii Sports game, which includes baseball, tennis, golf, bowling and boxing. It holds 512 megabytes of flash memory, but you can increase this by inserting SecureDigital memory cards. It also accepts high-capacity SD cards, or SDHCs, of up to 32 gigabytes.

The couch-potato world of videogamers was shaken up when the Wii, with its motion-sensitive remote control, was introduced about three years ago. Users can play Wii Golf, for instance, by swinging the remote like a golf club. In September, Nintendo added to its lineup a $20 remote-control accessory called Wii MotionPlus that was designed to add more precision to game motions. I tested this snap-on piece and found that it did make the Wii’s motions feel more realistic. But it works only with Wii MotionPlus games—and there are only six of them; 10 more are planned for 2010.

Wii encourages users to move around in more ways than just waving a remote: Its Wii Balance Board, which comes with the Wii Fit Plus game in a $100 bundle, works like a digital exercise step. It records the body’s weight shifts and movements for activities from yoga to wake-boarding.

The Wii accesses the Internet and lets users compete online against others. About 655 packaged games are available for between $30 and $50. Also, you can use pre-purchased Nintendo Points to buy and download about 150 WiiWare games and over 325 titles from the older Virtual Console library. Each game costs between 300 and 1,500 points, or between about $3 and $15.

WiiConnect24 can send messages from one Wii to another over the Internet, as long the two users exchange “Wii numbers.” Users can also surf the Web with Wii’s Opera browser. But beyond this, no other Web features—like downloadable movies, social-networking applications or streaming music—will work on this system.

Parental controls can be set on the Wii to restrict kids from using the Web browser, playing games that have a certain rating or communicating online.

Microsoft Xbox 360

Microsoft recently stepped up its game by adding features to its $200 Xbox 360 that make it well-rounded rather than strictly geared toward serious gamers. People who buy the Xbox LIVE Gold membership, for $50 a year, get applications for Facebook, Twitter, the Last.fm music-streaming service, online multiplayer game play, video chat, Netflix (Netflix subscription required), photo sharing via the Xbox, and movie or photo “parties” that allow users to watch a movie simultaneously with seven other friends.

Xbox LIVE Silver membership is free and includes basic features like voice and text chat, as well as access to the Zune video library’s 20,000 TV shows and movies to buy or rent. The Xbox also allows media-streaming over a home network. To wirelessly connect to the Internet on your Xbox, you’ll need to buy a $100 Wi-Fi adapter. By contrast, the Wii and PlayStation 3 have built-in Wi-Fi.

Anyone who owns a Microsoft Zune media player can buy a TV show or movie and download it to an Xbox or PC as well as the Zune. Zunes can be plugged into the Xbox to play music, as can Apple (AAPL) iPods.

The base Xbox comes with a wireless controller and 512 megabytes of memory. For $100 more, the Elite Holiday Bundle includes a 120-gigabyte hard drive, headset, wireless controller, and two games: “LEGO Batman: The Videogame” and “Pure.” More than 1,200 games are available for the Xbox, mostly costing between $29 and $60. About 350 of the games can be downloaded from the Xbox LIVE Arcade (costing 400 to 1,600 points, or $5 to $20) or the Games on Demand library.

Microsoft confirmed plans to introduce Project Natal, a system that lets people operate games with gestures and body movements rather than remote controls. Natal will work with all Xbox 360 consoles. Microsoft won’t confirm a date.

Family settings let parents control whether their kids play games online and with whom they play, as well as the ratings of the games. A Family Timer regulates how long kids play.

Sony PlayStation 3

Sony’s PlayStation, like the Xbox 360, is designed with serious gamers in mind. Its base version costs $300 and includes a 120-gigabyte hard drive and a DualShock 3 wireless controller; $50 more buys a version with a 250-gigabyte hard drive. Both systems can be upgraded with any standard 2.5-inch hard drive. The PlayStation is also a Blu-ray disc player.

Like the Xbox, the PlayStation 3, or PS3, now offers extra features, but these features are all included in the PlayStation Network, which is free (not $50 yearly like Xbox LIVE Gold). These PlayStation Network extras include Netflix (NFLX) instant streaming, a Web browser, photo slide shows, the ability to stream media over a home network to the PS3, a Facebook application that shares game information with friends and the PlayStation Network video-delivery service, where users can purchase 2,400 high- and standard-definition movies and 15,000 TV episodes.

The PS3 and the PlayStation Portable, Sony’s portable gaming device, are married in many ways. A new feature called Blu-ray Portable Copy lets users make a free standard-definition copy of some Blu-ray movies for transfer to a PlayStation Portable. Remote Play lets people stream media files from the PS3 to the PlayStation Portable in Wi-Fi hot spots or remotely turn the PS3 on or off using the PlayStation Portable. Movies and TV shows from the PlayStation Network can be transferred to either system, so you can start a movie on a big-screen TV and finish it on the PlayStation Portable; the same can be done for games.

About 400 games are available on Blu-ray for the PS3; these cost between $30 and $60. More than 150 titles, costing between $3 and $40, can be downloaded directly to the PS3. Sony confirmed that it will release a motion-sensing controller, but it hasn’t set a date.

Parental restrictions for the PS3 include the ability to restrict games, DVDs and Blu-ray discs with certain ratings. Parents can also limit monthly spending or Web browsing.

Games: A Cheat Sheet

Here are some of the key differences among three popular videogame systems.

	NINTENDO WII	XBOX 360	PLAYSTATION 3
Price	$200	200 or $300*	$300, $350
Includes	Wireless controller, Nunchuk, Wii Sports	Wireless controller/ Wireless controller, headset, 2 games	DualShock 3 wireless controller
Additional remotes	$40 wireless; Nunchuk is $20	$50 wireless, $40 wired, $20 headset	$55 DualShock 3 wireless controller, $50 Bluetooth headset, $40 PlayStation Eye, $25 Blu-ray disc remote control, $50 wireless keypad
Memory	512 MB, can be increased with SD cards	512 MB, $300 Xbox comes with 120 GB	120 GB or 250 GB
Built-in Wi-Fi?	Yes	No. $100 Wireless adapter sold separately	Yes
Games	1,100	1,200	550
Cost of Games	30-$50; $3-$15 for downloads	Most are $29-$60; $5-$20 for downloads	$30-$60; $3-$40 for downloads
Other features	Web browser, ability to message other Wii consoles	Netflix, Last.fm, movie parties, MSN Messenger, Facebook, Twitter, photo sharing, online multiplayer gaming	Netflix, Facebook integration, photo slide shows, PlayStation Network videos, online multiplayer gaming
Extras	$100 Wii Balance Board and Wii FitPlus, $20 Wii MotionPlus	Xbox LIVE Silver is free, Xbox LIVE Gold is $50/year	Blu-ray disc playing, multiple tie-ins with Playstation Portable
Family Settings	Restrict online browsing, communication, game ratings	Restrict online play, with whom users can play, game ratings, time spent playing	Restrict online play, games or movies with certain ratings, monthly expenses, Web browsing
Relationship w/portable device	Wireless, free demo downloads from Wii Channel onto DS or DSi	Play videos bought anywhere on Zune, PC or Xbox 360	Blu-ray Portable Copy gives free copy of some movies for transferring to PlayStation Portable
Media streamed to console over home network?	No	Yes	Yes
* for Elite Holiday Bundle

Email: mossbergsolution@wsj.com

Write to Katherine Boehret at mossbergsolution@wsj.com

Corrections & Amplifications

Xbox LIVE Gold costs $50 a year. A previous version of this story incorrectly stated in the second reference to the price that it costs $50 monthly. Also, the Xbox 360 can be connected to the Internet via an ethernet cable for free, as well as via Wi-Fi. A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that connecting your Xbox to the Internet would require the purchase of a Wi-Fi adapter.

Freaky Geek Bear, Nooks, 3-D Cameras, Head Massages and a Facial for BoomTown: The Churchill Club GadgetFest Video!

Kara Swisher — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 16:05:10 +0000

Last night, Walt Mossberg and I hosted our seventh annual “What’s Hot and What’s Not in Personal Technology” program for the Churchill Club in Silicon Valley.

Every year, we show off a range of new tech toys to the crowd, helped by our regular gadget freak, Greg Harper, and by guest “tech geek” celebs.

This year, they were Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and Mike Schroepfer, the social networking site’s VP of Engineering.

They brought a range of old and new favorite and innovative gadgets, including a Squeezebox Wi-Fi music player, a bizarre plush bear with GPS and other such tech features, and a facial brush that Sandberg tested on BoomTown’s flawless skin.

Also on the bill: A tie that takes pictures, a camera that stalks smiley people, a 3-D camera and digital photo frame, an Android netbook, a Nook e-reader, a bizarre head massager and a “Harry Potter”-like remote-control wand.

Here’s a video I did at the event, including interviews with Sandberg, Schroepfer, Mossberg, Harper, the bear and my son, Louie, who manned the digital hand vacuum from Dyson:

[ See post to watch video ]

Videos on TV With a Flip of a Channel

Katherine Boehret — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 23:08:43 +0000

Remember when families used to gather around the television to watch home videos? The process sounds old fashioned now that we spend so much time watching videos on our computer screens. The company that introduced the popular Flip hand-held video cameras, now owned by Cisco Systems Inc. (CSCO), wants to send you and your home videos back to the living room.

This week, I tested the device that hopes to do that: FlipShare TV (www.theflip.com). This is a $150 box that’s available as of Wednesday at Amazon.com (AMZN). It plugs into any TV and receives videos that are wirelessly shared. These videos can come directly from the hard drive of a nearby Windows PC or Mac, or via “channels” that you create so you or anyone else can post and share videos via the Internet by simply entering an email address.

The $150 FlipShare TV consists of a box (top), remote and USB key.

FlipShare TV would be a useful gift for friends or family members who don’t want to bother with logging onto a site to watch shared videos or photos. It takes just minutes to set up, thanks to straightforward plug-and-play software, which originally made the Flip video cameras so popular.

I tried FlipShare TV using Windows PCs and Macs, on an analog TV (using the included red, white and yellow audio-video cable to connect the box to the TV) and on a high-definition TV (using an HDMI cable, which is sold separately, usually for between $10 and $20). Included with FlipShare TV are a simple white remote control and a USB key that plugs into the computer to communicate with the box.

My FlipShare TV box occasionally dropped the signal of a computer that was just 10 feet away, forcing me to unplug and re-plug its power cord to get it to work. Cisco said this was a problem in the pre-production unit that I tested and that this issue was fixed in final-production boxes. The company recommends that the FlipShare TV box be within 200 feet of the computer with the plugged-in USB key. When it worked, I enjoyed watching videos, like those from a friend’s Thanksgiving charades tournament, on the big screen with such little effort.

A few obstacles stand between you and the nostalgia of once again watching home videos from the couch. For starters, only videos that are captured with a Flip video camera (the least expensive model costs $150) definitely can be shared via the FlipShare TV box. (A techie workaround may be used to convert some other videos into a different format for viewing, but the company isn’t advertising this.)

Another problem is that to receive new videos on the FlipShare TV box, your corresponding computer must be on, its USB key must be plugged into it, and the FlipShare software must be running.

But the most irritating issue with the FlipShare TV is that this box lacks an indicator to notify users when new videos are available for viewing. Instead, people must rely on text messages, emails, or Facebook notifications to know when someone has shared a new video. There is nothing wrong with these kinds of notifications—at least not for frequent users of email, Facebook and text messaging. But I imagine my grandparents or my parents using FlipShare TV, and none of them would want to be told about new videos via text message or Facebook. My parents would likely be checking email on a different floor of our house, not near the main TV where this box would sit.

Assuming all systems are go, you need only to hit the “Input” button on your regular TV remote to switch over to FlipShare TV. The box creates its own point-to-point wireless network linking it to the USB key on the computer, so it doesn’t depend on the quality of your home Wi-Fi network, or even require that you have one.

FlipShare software, which installs on a Mac or Windows PC as soon as the USB key is plugged in, is easy to learn if you’ve never used it. If you own a Flip video camera, this software was automatically installed when you first plugged the camera into a computer, offering to save the camera’s videos. It even auto-sorts video clips in folders like “September 2009″ according to when they were captured.

A category called Flip Channels creates a private place online where you can drag and drop any video for instant sharing with selected people, who receive notifications that a video is available for viewing on the channel. Those people can revisit the channel online whenever they want, unlike the traditional method of sharing videos via email, which requires digging up the original email to locate a video link again. And if the original “sharer” allows it, you can “re-share” a video via the Flip Channels with other people. Flip Channels also serve as a Web-based storage place for your videos, so you don’t have to worry about your hard drive crashing and losing all of the Flip videos you’ve off-loaded onto a computer.

A menu button on the FlipShare TV box remote displays a simple list on the TV screen with the option to view favorites (like a special video you saved), videos stored on the computer or videos shared via channels.

As soon as a new video is posted to a channel you have acces to, it appears on the TV menu in a section labeled “New Items.” Two friends shared several videos with me and thumbnail images representing each clip appeared instantly in New Items on my TV screen. After I watched a new video, it no longer appeared in that section but instead was placed into a section with the channel name given by the person who shared it. Along with videos, I also imported some JPEG photos to my personal channel.

After 10 minutes of sitting idle, the screen of the TV connected to your FlipShare TV box will fill with still images representing each video, like an ever-changing collage.

So as it is now, this box helps people circumvent the computer and go straight to the living room—but only as long as they are aware that someone shared a new video with them; their computer is on with its USB key plugged in; and the FlipShare software is running on a computer within range. Cisco says it will introduce a version of the FlipShare TV next year with an indicator so people will know exactly when someone has shared a video with them.

FlipShare TV makes a lot of sense as a simple way to watch videos and look at photos in the living room. But it needs to be more intuitive for all users before family and friends can really sit back and enjoy the show.

Email mossbergsolution@wsj.com

Apple’s New iMac, MacBook Grow Better, Brighter

Walter S. Mossberg — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 02:02:03 +0000

This is the week when Microsoft finally starts selling Windows 7, its much-improved successor to the disappointing Vista version of Windows. PC makers, who have suffered from Vista’s poor reputation, will begin touting models that come with Windows 7, which I praised in a detailed review earlier this month.

But Microsoft’s (MSFT) historic rival, Apple (AAPL), isn’t sitting still. After releasing its own new operating system, Snow Leopard, in August, Apple this week is rolling out new versions of two of the best- known Macs: its iconic all-in-one iMac desktop, and its least-expensive laptop, the MacBook.

[ See post to watch video ]

Though both new Macs sport important improvements, they are evolutionary, not revolutionary, and neither follows the industry trend toward bargain-basement prices. The MacBook is still $999, and the iMac still starts at $1,199, though the company is giving users more power and features at those same price points. You can pay much less for laptops and desktops from competitors like Dell (DELL) and Hewlett-Packard (HPQ).

Apple is, however, introducing one revolutionary product this week: a $69 mouse called the Magic Mouse. It’s the first mouse I’ve seen whose entire surface acts like a laptop trackpad, and allows fingertip multitouch gestures for scrolling and flipping through lists, photos and Web pages on the screen, while still performing traditional cursor movements and clicking. This mouse comes with the new iMac and will be usable on most other Macs as well, once Apple offers a software update for them. It worked well for me.

I’ve been testing these new computers for a few days, and I can recommend both. The new iMacs have spectacular screens that are larger and sport much higher resolutions than those on their predecessors. They also add more memory capacity, bigger hard disks and faster processors.

The new $999, 13″ MacBook now includes most of the key features of the similar-sized MacBook Pro, which costs $200 more. These include a large multitouch trackpad, significantly enhanced battery life, and a brighter screen. Despite its lower price, the lowly MacBook comes with a 56% larger hard disk (250 gigabytes versus 160) than the Pro model.

The New iMacs

Apple has kept the basic design of the iMac, which looks like a stand-alone monitor but has a powerful computer built in. But the new models have larger, wider screens that have been re-sized to match up with high-definition video. The $1,199 base model has a 21.5″ screen, compared to the old 20″ screen, and has 17% higher resolution.

The highest-priced models, at $1,699 and $1,999, have huge 27″ screens, versus 24 inches for the older models, and they have a 60% increase in resolution.

The $1,199 base iMac has 4 gigabytes of memory, double the amount in the prior base model, and a 500 gigabyte hard disk, up from 320 gigabytes. The costlier editions have a one terabyte hard disk, which is roughly 1,000 gigabytes. The top model has a more powerful graphics card and a heavy-duty processor.

All the iMacs now have slots for SD flash memory cards, and the large-screen models can act as external monitors.

In my tests, using a 27″ model, the machine was fast and the screen was brilliant at displaying hi-res photos and high-definition video. Its width allowed me to treat it like two monitors, with, say a Microsoft Word document on the left and a Web page on the right.

One downside: the $1,499 model now has a smaller screen—21.5″ versus 24″—though it has a larger hard disk and better graphics card.

The New MacBook

This 13″ laptop, like its predecessor, is shiny white plastic, but has been redesigned to have more-rounded edges and a rubbery non-slip bottom. It now has the Pro’s large Apple trackpad, which acts as both a huge mouse button and a surface for fingertip gestures like two-finger scrolling, and resizing and rotating photos. It’s still 1.08″ thick—but is a bit longer and wider than the older model, though it weighs less: 4.7 pounds versus 5 pounds.

Apple has dropped the FireWire port from this machine, as well as its ability to be run via a remote control. And it still lacks an SD card slot. But it now has a large sealed battery that Apple claims can last up to 7 hours between charges. On my tough battery test, where I turn off all power-saving features and play music constantly, the MacBook lasted just over five hours. In normal use, I estimate it could easily top six hours.

In my tests, this MacBook was fast and reliable using a wide variety of programs. It started up cold in a mere 22 seconds, and was ready to go after a restart, with several programs running, in 44 seconds. For anyone on a budget, it’s a better deal than the 13″ MacBook Pro, especially considering its larger hard disk.

These new models now round out a full line of refreshed Macs, but they will face stiff new competition from a horde of PCs running the new and better version of Windows.

Find all of Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos online, free, at the All Things Digital Web site, walt.allthingsd.com. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.

Sonos All-In-One Music System: There's an App for That

John Paczkowski — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 10:00:33 +0000

Well, this is a first. Sonos, the company responsible for the wireless multiroom audio system of the same name, is today debuting a new piece of hardware designed for an iPhone app.

Last year around this time, Sonos introduced its Controller for iPhone, a free application that essentially turns the device into a remote control for any Sonos system. The software performed nearly all of the tasks of the $399 Sonos remote and drastically lowered the price of entry for the otherwise spendy wireless system.

A year later, Sonos is building on the success of that app, launching an all-in-one wireless music system specifically designed for it. The ZonePlayer S5, as the company calls it, encapsulates Sonos’s multi-component system in a single device that can be controlled by an Apple (AAPL) iPhone, iPod touch or computer.

It’s a sort of iPodless iPod speaker dock or, rather, an iPod speaker dock where the iPod can be carried with you. The S5 can stream music from the iTunes library of any computer or networked hard drive. And with five speakers–two tweeters, two three-inch midrange drivers and one 3.5-inch woofer–and a 5 Class-D digital amplifier, the sound is likely to fill a room pretty well. Priced at $399, the S5 is expected at market on Oct. 27.

Sonos All-In-One Music System: There's an App for That

John Paczkowski — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 10:00:33 +0000

Well, this is a first. Sonos, the company responsible for the wireless multiroom audio system of the same name, is today debuting a new piece of hardware designed for an iPhone app.

Playing With a More Sensitive Wii

Katherine Boehret — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 22:18:02 +0000

Nintendo’s Wii gaming system motivates first-graders, senior citizens and everyone in between to get off their couches and play video games by swinging a motion-sensing remote control. These motions are similar enough to those used in real-life games that people find the Wii less intimidating than other video games with confusing controls.

After almost three years of Wii success, Nintendo recently reported it sold in its first quarter less than half the Wii consoles it sold a year earlier. The Wii needs a shot in the arm, and Nintendo thinks it has just the solution: the Wii MotionPlus remote accessory.

[ See post to watch video ]

This small piece plugs into the bottom of Wii remotes and costs $20 by itself or $50 when bundled with the Wii Sports Resort game, which includes 12 sports that take advantage of Wii MotionPlus. The Wii console costs $250 and comes with a remote and a Nunchuk. The Wii MotionPlus has a gyroscope that helps the remote detect slight twists or rotations made by one’s wrist and/or arm and reflects these movements on the screen. It adds more precision to games like bowling and golf, so you don’t feel like you accidentally made a good—or bad—shot. And it lets you add spin to a ball while swinging a golf club or ping-pong racket or while bowling.

I’ve been playing games with the Wii MotionPlus, and this small accessory adds a much more satisfying, realistic element to Wii games. In some cases, this meant that I played a game with less success than with the original Wii remote because the MotionPlus add-on is more responsive and sensitive. But I eventually got used to it and liked it more than the plain remote.

However enjoyable, the Wii MotionPlus is more of an evolutionary change than a revolutionary change. If you’ve never played video games on a Wii before, you wouldn’t know what you were missing if you used the remote without MotionPlus.

The real excitement in video gaming and general broadcast TV controlling will come when we don’t need any remote controls at all and cameras will sense our movements, reflecting them on-screen. In June, Microsoft (MSFT) announced its Project Natal, which would potentially work with all Xbox 360 consoles to directly sense movements and sounds, and to recognize faces. This would encourage users to swing, throw, run and jump in a completely natural way without the need to learn anything about how to hold a remote control or operate its buttons.

On a similar note, Sunnyvale-Calif.-based Canesta Inc. wants you to use your hands as remote controls for your TV. The idea with Canesta is that users could, for example, walk into a family room and wave at the TV to turn it on, move a hand in a rightward circle to turn up the volume and flip through channels using motions like those used to page through a large book. I tried Canesta in a demonstration and can testify that doing things like turning the channel with your hands is a powerful and somewhat magical experience. But of these, Nintendo currently has the only product on the market to use technology that echoes natural movements, albeit with a remote control. Project Natal is still just a research project that isn’t used in any products, and it won’t be coming out any time this year.

[ See post to watch video ]

Canesta has a partnership with Hitachi (HIT) so that it will be used in the company’s TV sets, though Hitachi says these TVs won’t be available until 2010 at the earliest and would likely show up in Japan first. Canesta is also building other partnerships, or it could work as a standalone product for TVs, computers, set-top boxes or other devices.

Wii MotionPlus makes the remote smart enough not to require as much button pressing. For example, shooting basketballs in a three-point shootout only required holding the remote in my right hand so it followed my shooting motion. Bowling no longer requires letting go of a button just in time to release the ball, a former menace to Wii’s beginner bowlers. And I threw a Frisbee by moving the remote with the same motion as if I were tossing one in real life. At first, my friend and I found ourselves trying to make stiff motions that seemed more video-game-like, but when the on-screen instructions encouraged us to move naturally, we did so and had much more success.

Wii Sports Resort includes 12 different sports but omits some of the old favorites from the original Wii Sports. Tennis has been replaced with table tennis, boxing has been replaced by sword fighting, and though bowling and golf remain, baseball is gone. New sports include wakeboarding, Frisbee, archery, basketball, power cruising (jet skis), canoeing, cycling and air sports like parachuting.

I bowled and put a little extra spin on the ball by twisting my wrist just before letting go. The ball was surprisingly reactive, so much so that I had to tone down my spin before I got the hang of it. Wakeboarding works by holding the remote horizontally like it’s the cross bar you hold onto and use for steering in the water. The Wii MotionPlus works with the Nunchuk attachment, and my friend and I attached this piece to the remote to compete against one another in several rounds of archery (he won by seven points). With the Nunchuk attached to the remote, we held the remote like it was the bow and slowly pulled the Nunchuk attachment back as if it were the arrow—stretching sound-effects and all.

The MotionPlus can stay attached to the remote while playing games that aren’t made specifically for its use; those games won’t be affected. However, a regular remote can’t be used with games made for the MotionPlus. Along with Wii Sports Resort, three other games are made to use the Wii MotionPlus: Sega’s Virtua Tennis 2009, EA Sports’ (ERTS) Grand Slam Tennis and Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10.

If you’re hoping to give your tired Wii a boost, you’ll like what the relatively inexpensive Wii MotionPlus accessory brings to your game—though you’ll also need to buy new games that work with it. Generally speaking, it’s exciting to know that technology is almost advanced enough that we could very soon stop letting our remotes have all the control and take some of it back with just the wave of a hand.

Email mossbergsolution@wsj.com

Canesta: The Full D7 Demo

Kara Swisher — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 08:35:18 +0000

The search for the perfect remote control continues, this time from Canesta, a San Jose-based company specializing in 3-D “natural interfaces.”

That means controlling your television via a series of gestures–including a wave and more.

Canesta demoed the innovative technology to control TV functions, from changing channels to navigating more complex menus, for Walt Mossberg and me at the seventh D: All Things Digital conference.

Here’s a video of the D7 demo:

[ See post to watch video ]

Canesta: The Full D7 Demo

Kara Swisher — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 08:32:44 +0000

The search for the perfect remote control continues, this time from Canesta, a San Jose-based company specializing in 3-D “natural interfaces.”

That means controlling your television via a series of gestures–including a wave and more.

Here’s a video of the D7 demo:

[ See post to watch video ]