Looks like the guys working on porting the Linux version of XBMC to OS X have been making some great progress. According to the release notes for version 0.5.0b1, XMBC on OS X has added support for Apple Remote, Universal Remotes, the Xbox 360 Controller and has included new features like display “sleep” mode and SSA subtitles. MORE »

Popularity: 1% [?]

Perceptive Automation, the leading provider of Mac-based home automation software, today announced the immediate availability of Indigo version 3.0, a major update to the company’s intelligent home control and automation server for Mac OS X. With Indigo, users can easily control lights, appliances, thermostats, lawn sprinklers, hot tubs and dozens of other items found in the home, literally from anywhere in the world using Indigo’s built-in Web server. MORE »

Popularity: 2% [?]

Apple® today announced that new movie releases from major film studios and premier independent studios are available for purchase on the iTunes® Store on the same day as their DVD release. New releases and catalog titles will be available from 20th Century Fox, The Walt Disney Studios, Warner Bros., Paramount Pictures, Universal Studios Home Entertainment, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Lionsgate, Image Entertainment and First Look Studios. Movies purchased from iTunes can be viewed on an iPod® with video, iPhone™, Mac® or PC or on a widescreen TV with Apple TV®, with new releases priced at $14.99 and most catalog titles at $9.99. MORE »

Popularity: 31% [?]

SuperSync today shipped SuperSync 2.3, an application for iTunes and iPod users to keep their music libraries synchronized across multiple Mac and Windows computers. Version 2.3 adds a basic TiVo Media Server to allow users to browse and play their MP3 music collection over their home theater. MORE »

Popularity: 4% [?]

MacWireless announces the release of a new ultra-fast powerline network adapter for Macintosh. Powerline networking allows you to route your network through the electrical lines that are already built into your home or office. With speeds up to 200 Mbps, this is a great way to get your Ethernet network to other floors or rooms in your building, without the need to run wires. Powerline Network Adapters are particularly useful when concrete, metal, or other obstructions in the walls of your home or office block your wireless signals. MORE »

Popularity: 2% [?]

Streaming Networks and NXP Semiconductors, the independent semiconductor company founded by Philips, today announced at the National Association of Broadcasters Show (NAB 2008), the availability of Streaming Networks iRecord® Pro, an innovative personal media recorder that records video and music content onto portable media players (PMP) such as the Apple iPod®, Sony PSP®, Sony video walkman® and iPhone®. The iRecord Pro builds on the functionality of the first-generation iRecord by adding full D1 video resolution, direct recording to computer hard disk, and the ability to convert existing content to PMP format without a computer. MORE »

Popularity: 3% [?]

Iomega Corporation, a global leader in data protection and security, today announced the new Iomega® Media Xporter™ Drive, a game-oriented portable hard drive that provides cross-platform media storage for Xbox™ 360 and PlayStation® 3 consoles, making it easier than ever to utilize today’s popular game consoles and high definition televisions and other large screen TVs to share photos, videos, and music collections with family and friends. MORE »

Popularity: 4% [?]

fring® today became the world’s first mobile VoIP application to be made publicly available for the iconic apple iPhone™, enabling users to talk, chat and interact with other fring users (“fringsters”) and all of their online communities, using their iPhone’s™ WiFi connection. MORE »

Popularity: 4% [?]

While it’s still a work-in-progress, the developer behind the Open Media Library add-in for Windows Media Center has posted his C# source code to Google Code for community development. The project takes obvious design cues from Niveus’ recently unveiled Movie Library for navigating ones DVD collection and it also mimics Apple TV, to an extent, for its movie detail page. According to the developer’s post on The Green Button forum (member: dbldown768), Open Media Library, in order to operate, requires the XML file produced by Collectorz.com’s Movie Collector application to provide all the metadata of one’s movie collection.

Note: at the time of this posting no .msi file was available on the Google Code project page, however, you can download the Open Media Library .msi here and follow the instruction here on how to set it up.

Popularity: 3% [?]

This Ars article states the obvious, that we don’t need another proprietary STB for a single service online video provider. If you haven’t seen the gravestones littering the proprietary STB service graveyard, some of the names of the dearly departed include Akimbo’s box and Moviebeam’s among others. And while I think Apple TV and Vudu still have a good shot, they are succeed or fail because I think their visions do go beyond a movie service in a box, and also because their solutions are either best of class (Vudu) or leveraging a dominant digital media brand name/ service combo (Apple TV/iTunes). MORE »

Popularity: 4% [?]