dvr

Yarrr! MP3 players for pirates

Let's get real. You know you've got some music and movies on your computer you can't exactly vouch for. Maybe you feel guilty about it, maybe you don't, but clearly there are plenty of folks out there who play a little fast and loose when it comes to ripping and sharing music and videos. For example, recent estimates show that 48 percent of the average teenager's iPod is made up of illegally obtained music.

There's at least a hundred different ways to find yourself on the wrong side of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. … Read more

Low-tech TV recording secrets of 'The Daily Show'

You might not think about it, but putting together The Daily Show requires sifting through a lot of television, then breaking it up into bite-size clips of funny. If you're like us, you probably figured The Daily Show had some professional-grade digital recording suite that put your rent-a-DVR from the cable company to shame--and you'd be completely wrong.

Instead, try 15 rack-mounted TiVos, many of which predate the Series2 era.

Thanks to a former Daily Show employee who commented on PVRBlog, we get an inside look at the technology that powers the show. Here are some choice snippets:

Nope, it's literally 15 rack-mounted TiVos of various models, many from the pre-Series 2 era. Some Philips boxes, some Sonys. And because there's a limited number of remote codes, when a staffer operates one, he has to hold the remote directly against that box's IR receiver so that the beam doesn't hit any of the other boxes (i.e., so he's not inadvertently controlling multiple boxes at once). No joke! It's pretty primitive.… Read more

Cablevision wins DVR appeal

A U.S. appeals court has sided with cable provider Cablevision in allowing the company to offer its network-based DVR service despite arguments from the movie and TV industry that it infringes on their copyrights.

On Monday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York, ruled that Cablevision's proposed new service that allows movies and TV shows to be recorded on remote storage servers in Cablevision's network "would not directly infringe plaintiffs' exclusive rights to reproduce and publicly perform their copyrighted works." The appeals court overturned a lower court's decision … Read more

Bouncing around with a ball-shaped camcorder

Another day, another ball-shaped device. But this time, it's not a digital still camera. It's a camcorder that's smaller than a ping-pong ball.

The DVR CamBall hails from Korea, and housed within the tiny physique are all the necessary components for capturing 320x240- or 640x480-pixel video clips. It has an SD memory slot to expand the capacity to 8GB.

All in all, it is a fully functional digital camcorder minus the LCD screen for framing or playback.

It doesn't help that we don't understand Hangul (the Korean writing system) and the page doesn't have … Read more

CNET Live - Episode 65

Mike Hudack and Justin Day from Blip.TV join us to talk about their company and the future of video on the Web.

Watch the show on CNET TV.

Things we Crave

Miguel Caballero bulletproof high fashion

Auto performance app for iPhone

First look

T-Mobile Sidekick.

Download of the week

CDBurnerXP.

Insider Secrets

Tether your phone to your laptop

Best of the Web

12 Seconds.TV

Your calls

Here's a list of direct links to iPhone firmware.

Mojopac is an excellent portable apps creator that can does virtualization. Also check out PortableApps.com.

Here are several good tips for … Read more

Flashlight DVR brings us closer to living out our 007 fantasies

Well, maybe not quite 007. I mean, for one thing, could you imagine James Bond walking around with a huge flashlight sticking out of his back pocket? Well, maybe the Timothy Dalton 007, but he was never that cool to begin with. Dalton did redeem himself in my eyes with Hot Fuzz, however.

Anyway, before this becomes a huge diatribe about how Daniel Craig is second only to Sean Connery as the best Bond, let's get back to the issue at hand. Swann Communications, a company that specializes in security monitoring devices, today announced a covert surveillance tool, the … Read more

My Comcast + TiVo box may soon become Comcast - TiVo

It's being hailed as the greatest Wimbledon final in history. This is a tennis tournament that has been played since 1877, and supposedly yesterday's five-set match between Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal topped them all. I say supposedly because my Comcast + TiVo box decided that midway through the fifth set was a good time to stop recording the match. This is merely the latest but--since I'm one of the 12 tennis fans left in this country--certainly the most annoying of the bugs I've encountered with Comcast + TiVo service over the past month. If the promised software … Read more

Buzz Out Loud 741: 3Gasm

All the iPhone and App Store news you can shake a stick at. Plus, RIM and Palm say they're thrilled about the new iPhone. Huh. Us, too! But it's a delayed, uh, 3Gasm, since the phone won't be coming out until July 11. In other news, Amazon broke itself, the MPAA wants to break your movie recording, and SanDisk kills the TakeTV and Fanfare less than a year after it was born. Listen now: Download today's podcast EPISODE 741

Live blog: Steve Jobs at WWDC 2008 http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-9960064-37.html

What’s good for … Read more

My first 24 hours with Comcast + TiVo

As a New Englander, I live in Comcast country. Comcast has been slowly rolling out TiVo service, and yesterday I upgraded my Comcast DVR for Comcast + TiVo service. Though it should be as simple as Comcast pushing the new software to your existing cable box, the company dispatches a tech to your home for the installation. The tech will check your cable signal to ensure a trouble-free TiVo installation and subsequent user experience. And in my case, since I was using a two-year old Scientific Atlanta box, Comcast replaced it with a Motorola 3416 box.

The installation went smoothly. My … Read more

NBC says it inadvertently flagged 'American Gladiators'

A week after some users of Vista Media Centers were prevented from recording two NBC Universal shows, the network acknowledged Monday that it inadvertently blocked some people from recording the shows.

The owners of Windows Vista Media Centers were prevented from recording American Gladiators and Medium last Monday. At the message board The Green Button, Vista users gathered to complain about receiving a prompt that informed them that the broadcaster had "prohibited recording of this program."

"We made an inadvertent mistake," an NBC spokeswoman said in an interview with CNET News.com. "We're not … Read more