Blackarrow Consulting

When Gmail rolled out its chat sidebar back in 2006, it seemed like a pretty wild curve ball for a company that’s made such things their bread and butter.

Network hardware company Netgear has taken the wraps off of a new set-top media player called the NeoTV 550 Ultimate HD, which will go on sale in North America this October for $220.

Residents of Alviso, California have reported hearing a strange "swishing" sound for several weeks. That sound has now been identified as TiVo circling the drain.

We can't say there's a real shortage of streaming, set-top boxes on the market, but that doesn't mean we won't welcome Sony's addition with open arms.

A diminutive black box with an equally quiet announcement, Sony's netbox is their take on the Roku box: It streams Bravia Internet Video (read: Netflix and Amazon), is DLNA-compatible and plays MKV and DivX files streamed across your local network.

Controversy has erupted in the past few months regarding the future of video over the Internet, in particular the refusal of Apple to authorize deployment of an Adobe Flash decoder for their iPad and the iPhone product lines.

With the first 3DTVs not long having hit the market, it seems like they aren’t set to make much of an impact on the British public.

NEWS BRIEF: Liberty Global president and CEO Mike Fries will be interviewed by CNN's Richard Quest at the cable TV marketing event CTAM EuroSummit 2010 next month.

Rumours that Apple is planning to launch its new iTV box at an event on 1 September are now believed to be false.

Ioko will be showing off its work on the Sky Player and SeeSaw platforms giving broadcasters and aggregators outside of the UK a chance to see the two TV over PC portals in action.

Paris-based httv is launching a new DSM-CC Object Carousel solution for the HbbTV standard.

TiVo, which already has contracts in place with Virgin Media and Spain’s ONO, says it is continuing to concentrate on the larger markets of Western Europe as operators plan the upgrade of their services to next generation solutions. In addition the company is tracking Latin America as well as India and China.

Watch Video: The BBC has developed a prototype application that combines relevant web content with a live TV stream. The implementation gives a glimpse of some of the possibilities likely to emerge as web-enabled set-top boxes become commonplace. Canvas is clearly a potential destination for the work, though in the commercial market it might just be possible to purchase that little black dress from Sex in the City.

MPEG LA is announcing today that it will continue to offer a royalty-free license for the H.264 video codec for video sites that offer free video streams to consumers “during the entire life of this (l)icense.” In other words: Web sites like YouTube will be free to use H.264 for its streams without having to fear they’re eventually going to have to pay massive royalties to MPEG LA.

TiVo has racked up notable wins with cable operators recently, but the DVR pioneer continues to bleed subscribers — losing 125,000 in the three months ended July 31 — and the company expects to post another net loss for the current quarter.