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Hulu Plus coming soon to Roku, TiVo Premiere

This post was updated with TiVo's announcement.

Potential cord cutters take note: the cheapest and arguably easiest and (for some) long-awaited way to bring Hulu to a TV is now a reality.

Roku today confirmed the murmurings of yesterday that Hulu Plus is coming to its trio of set-top boxes. Starting "later this fall," the $9.99-per-month service that brings on-demand movies and TV shows from NBC, Fox, ABC, and others will be available.

There is no extra fee beyond the standard Hulu Plus subscription.

This is, of course, not the only way to get Hulu on … Read more

Two simple ways to thwart Web spies

Some Web sites just won't take "no" for an answer. You tell them you don't want their tracking cookies, and they continue to figure out new methods for keeping tabs on your Web activities anyway.

CNET's Greg Sandoval reported last month that several big-name sites have been sued in the U.S. District Court for using Flash cookies to spy on adults and children. At the center of this and similar suits are ad networks Clearspring Technologies and Quantcast that track your online activities even if you set your browser to block standard Web cookies.… Read more

Analysts predict all-in-one Apple TV in 2012

Apple inked a deal with Rovi today that could potentially see the firm's TV listings guide make its way to future Apple products.

Rovi, which was formerly known as Macrovision before the company officially changed its name in 2009, provides TV guide listings to hardware vendors. The company's technology allows users to sift through programming, find shows, and record programs to a DVR.

Exact details of Rovi's deal with Apple are unknown, but analysts at Piper Jaffray believe the licensed services will be making their way to the Apple TV and eventually, an all-in-one Apple television.

According … Read more

Boxee Box now available for preorder

After several months of delay, the Boxee Box set-top box is now available for preorder.

It won't ship until November, and when it does it will have new chips inside: instead of the previously announced Nvidia Tegra 2 chipset, the oddly shaped set-top will feature Intel's Atom processor instead. The switchover was responsible for the delay, according to Boxee.

The device will sell for $200 through Boxee.tv or Amazon.com. Before it was a piece of hardware, Boxee was a software download that put Internet content on a TV screen. The Boxee Box, which was built by … Read more

Outlook calling

ClickYes Pro from ContextMagic lets you easily configure which applications can send e-mail automatically via Microsoft Outlook and which should be blocked. When you open a program that uses Outlook to send e-mail and receive a security warning, you can quickly add the application to ClickYes Pro's exceptions list, usually automatically. ClickYes Pro seems especially valuable for anyone who sends bulk e-mail to customers or clients or for third-party applications that use Outlook to send e-mail.

Unlike many add-ins and integrated utilities for Outlook, ClickYes Pro is a standalone app with its own interface, a tiny but efficient dialog … Read more

Boxee uses Apple TV to talk Box pricing

In an attempt to capitalize on the talk surrounding the Apple TV, Boxee revealed in a blog post earlier this week that it will start selling its anticipated Boxee Box in November for $200.

"We all watched the Apple announcement," Boxee CEO Avner Ronen wrote on his company's blog. "We walked away feeling confident about the space it left for Boxee to compete. We have a different view of what users want in their living rooms."

Ronen then said that the Boxee Box "is going to be $100 more expensive than the Apple TV, … Read more

Get a Roku HD player for $69.99 shipped

This is an update to a post from a couple months ago. It reflects some permanent price drops on the Roku line of set-top boxes!

Looking for an easy way to watch streaming Netflix movies and TV shows? Look no further than the Roku HD, a tiny set-top box that streams from not only Netflix, but also Major League Baseball, Amazon Video on Demand, Flickr, Pandora, and dozens more content providers.

Roku just dropped the price of this model to a very tempting $69.99, and if you buy it from Amazon, you'll get a $10 Video on Demand credit. … Read more

How Google TV will make money still up in the air

SAN JOSE, Calif.--Google made a big splash in May announcing its entrance to the TV business, but how the company plans to make money for Google TV and for its content partners is still a bit muddled.

Google TV is the search giant's platform that will allow people to search on their home television to find videos from anywhere on the Web or a channel service provider. At the DisplaySearch TV Ecosystem Conference here Wednesday, Shalini Govil-Pai, the group manager for partnerships at YouTube and Google TV, told attendees that "monetization models are still being discussed. Obviously … Read more

Vimeo gets Creative Commons, global settings

Video host Vimeo on Tuesday is rolling out a new feature that will users apply Creative Commons (CC) licenses to their uploaded videos.

In short, when a user applies one of the six standard licenses, which range from "attribution" to "attribution with noncommercial and no derivatives," it gives those who intend to use the video elsewhere a specific set of rules for what they can do with it--all without having to first contact the creator for explicit permission.

Creative Commons licensing has been available for some time on a growing number of video- and photo-sharing sites, … Read more