“We’ve gotten used to it,” Netflix’s chief executive, Reed Hastings, said of the doomsday predictions. But Mr. Hastings also said he understood why questions about his business kept coming up. “Because DVD is not a hundred-year format, people wonder what will Netflix’s second act be.

“On Tuesday, Mr. Hastings will begin to answer that question. Netflix is introducing a service to deliver movies and television shows directly to users’ PCs, not as downloads but as streaming video, which is not retained in computer memory. The service, which is free to Netflix subscribers, is meant to give the company a toehold in the embryonic world of Internet movie distribution.

I just checked my Netflix account and was disappointed to find out that wasn’t one of “a select number” of Netflix’s 6 million subscribers will have access to a new Watch Now tab. But no worries, the system requirements are: Windows XP SP2 or Vista. If you got picked in the Netflix “Watch Now” lottery, chime in in the comments.

Netflix to Deliver Movies to the PC – New York Times

technorati tags:netflix, movie, streaming

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One of the most indispensable consumer electronic devices in my arsenal is a GPS receiver. Since I got turned onto the wonders of GPS about a year ago, I have come to rely on it so much that it’s hard to get around without it.
Granted, if you’ve been living in the same place your whole life and mostly travel back and forth to the same job each day, you probably don’t need a GPS. But if you’ve moved to a new location, travel for work or just happen to be bad with directions, then a GPS is for you.
Read more for the complete 2100-word review including 18 pictures…

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Following many prototype mock-ups, here is the first working model of the One Laptop Per Child project, unveiled at the Seven Countries Task Force Meeting yesterday in all its ‘Fisher Price, My First Laptop Computer’ glory, along with a number of ‘nearly finished’ prototypes.
Nicholas Negroponte (co-founder of MIT Media Lab, writer of Being Digital) heads up the OLPC organisation whose vision is to provide every child in developing countries with a laptop computer.
The proposed $100 machine will be a Linux-based, with a dual-mode display – both a full-color, transmissive DVD mode, and a second display option that is black and white reflective and sunlight-readable at 3x the resolution. The laptop will have a 500MHz processor and 128MB of DRAM, with 500MB of Flash memory; it will not have a hard disk, but it will have four USB ports (that’s what the cute ‘ears’ cover when in the ‘down’ position.
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Contributed By: Brett Jordan

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As an unabashed gadget geek, there’s one toy that I’ve managed to resist for years: GPS. You see, I have this weird thing about commuting – I don’t like it. No, let me make that clearer, I detest it. Sitting in traffic or spending a lot of time driving across creation is one of my least favorite things to do. So much so that I’d rather move closer to the office than commute.
Because of my short commutes (usually between 10 and 20 minutes) I’ve never really had the need for a GPS system. I know where I’m going because I drive the same route every day. But reading Rob Parker’s review of the Quest 2 from Garmin on 14 November got me thinking that maybe there’s something to this whole GPS thing after all.
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I drove around a little this morning and checked out the xbox 360 launch hype. BJ’s gave out 5 standard units – I congratulated a few leaving with their boxes – probably could have snagged one If I’d been there 30 minutes earlier. Best Buy was more hardcore. The point man had been there since 9PM the night before and watched the 50 some leaders get on the board.
Those waiting organized their own list and kept careful records of who got in line and when. The store didn’t open until 9AM, but at 6AM a Best Buy rep came by and handed out about 50-60 vouchers. Apparently there were about 20 premium and 30 standard units to be had. Some people fell asleep in their cars and missed out. It was cold and windy all night with a light misty rain that chills to the bone! (Contributed by z0inks)

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Apple’s first steps into home media management don’t have to be yours too. There are a variety of methods out there to watch your videos, view your photos, and listen to your music.
Front Row. Center Stage. Elgato’s EyeHome. All are mac-centric ways to get media into your living room.
My leap into home theater integration with my iLife has led me to an unlikely place – the Microsoft XBox. Before you get too squeamish, keep in mind that Microsoft loses money on hardware sales, and if you’re buying an Xbox for a project like I’m recommending, and you aren’t especially interested in playing games, building an XBox Media Center is a great way to stick it to the man.
Apple’s Front Row isn’t a bad first try. The downsides are that it doesn’t support many formats for content you come into contact with every day, and you can’t buy it without getting an iMac included. While the iMac is a swell computer, and a lot of people are going to love Front Row, if you weren’t in the market for a new iMac, you’re probably not going to think of getting one just because it has Front Row.
Good for you.
Click the headline for the rest of Emory’s story…

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Back in April I was highly critical of Motorola’s new DCT6412 DVR (being distributed by Comcast in my area). I had a lot of problems with my first and second DCT6412 units (freezing, audio dropouts and missed recordings) but after swapping the second out for the third I couldn’t be happier.
Some background is in order here. I used to be a die-hard TiVO loyalist until my trusty 35-inch Mitsubishi cabinet television blew a picture tube. Like most families that enjoy TV this was both a curse and a blessing. It was a curse because TVs are expensive, a blessing because we got to have the “HDTV discussion.” Since it was December and the Eagles were on their way to the Super Bowl, it wasn’t much of a discussion, really – we were going HDTV. Ok, so it was again a curse because HDTV brings up a whole other debate – tube, DLP, or plasma. We decided on a Sammy DLP (a Samsung HLP4674W) but that’s a discussion for another time.
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The Comcast DVR (a Motorola DCT 6412) has more bugs in it than a picnic basket left out on a summer day. And I left TiVo for this?!

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John from OziMac has posted a review of the Elgato EyeHome Media Centre:

As I’ve now come to expect from Elgato, the out of box experience was great. The product has the same industrial design as the EyeTV, which is great. I was a little disappointed that Elgato chose not to include the standard Yellow, White and Red cables to hook the unit up to my TV, but I guess it’s excusable given they also offer other connections like SCART and Optical Audio. They do give you an ethernet cable and the power adapter obviously! There is also a similar remote to the EyeTV comes with.

Read the full review at Ozimac.com.au.

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Apple is not the only source of white wires that identify the PodPeople roaming the streets. Several manufactures offer iPod specific earphones in white, and I will be looking at three that are of the in-ear variety. Opus phones are bargain priced and the perfect compliment to the iPod shuffle. They are white, inexpensive and do not benefit from equalization while the shuffle is white, inexpensive and does not offer equalization. Perfect match! Sony has long made white earphones that have been a favorite among iPodders but they NEED equalization to be enjoyed and therefore are not so good for the shuffle. They are comfortable, beautifully designed and sound fine if your iPod is set to Treble Boost. Etymotic Research pioneered this genre of earphones and have now come out with the ER 6i model which are tailor made for the iPod. They are more efficient than the plain ER 6 and are white. They sound stunning right out of the box and they can go a touch louder and have more bass emphasis than their black counterpart at Etymotic Research.

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