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Blockbuster has finally got into the game of online movie delivery direct to the TV with the MediaPoint set top box, made by 2Wire. It’s clearly an attempt to claw back some market share from Netflix, which will let you stream movies to your Mac, PC, Xbox 360 or TiVo and, most importantly, the Roku box.

Rather than just copy Netflix, though, Blockbuster has an interesting take on the service. First, the box is "free". You buy 25 movie rentals for $100 and Blockbuster gives you yet another box to perch on the tower atop your television. Second, there’s no subscription fee — movies will start $2 a pop, and you’ll have 30 days to watch them. Once you start watching, you have to finish up within 24 hours. This is similar to the model Apple uses for iTunes movie rentals.

What about the hardware? The MediaPoint has Wi-Fi (b and g), ethernet, HDMI out along with composite and optical and it will work with Hi-Def movies.

Of course, Blockbuster’s online offering is much smaller than that of Netflix, but as Ars Technica points out, the movies it does have are truly outstanding. Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2, anyone?

Still, the unit is essentially free, so why not grab one? Those who really don’t want any more living room clutter should hold out a little longer. Blockbuster is planning on another Netflix-a-like move soon: The company wants to get this service inside Blu-ray players, the PS3 and the Xbox 360.

Blockbuster takes on Netflix with new set-top box [Reuters]

Blockbuster releases set-top box with à la carte rentals [Ars]

Scott Forman’s ShutterVoice brings your Canon DSLR a little closer to Star Trek. The Windows-only application provides a voice-control front-end to Canon’s own EOS utility, which allows remote control of many Canon DSLR functions.

Shuttervoice let’s you switch on live view, focus the camera, take a shot — in short, pretty much everything you can do with the EOS utility itself, only you can do it without lifting a finger. In the video, it looks pretty accurate, although Forman has told photographer and blogger Rob Galbraith that he’s still tweaking it to play nice with Vista.

The best part? First, you need to say "computer" to get it to listen for a command — just like Jean-Luc Picard! Second, it speaks back to you.

Mac users should be able to cobble something like this together themselves using the built-in Speech Commands, the Image Capture utility and some Applescript, but given my experience with the Mac’s speech recognition features, this is likely to leave you screaming abuse at your machine instead of issuing relaxed commands.

ShutterVoice will be available in early December for $30.

Sign up page [ShutterVoice via Rob Galbraith]

If you have $2700 lying around, an hour or so to spare and a visceral need to do something, anything other than eat turkey and – gasp – talk to your family this weekend, you could pop to your local camera store and grab the hot new Canon 5D MkII.

The camera is now shipping, body only or in kit form (Amazon has it bundled with the EF 24-105mm ƒ4 L IS USM Lens for $4000), but we expect this first batch to sell out fast, given the anticipation we have seen for Canon’s first video-capable DSLR.

Photography Bay has a rundown of online dealers, but if you haven’t pre-ordered, you might try the brick and mortar stores instead. And if you think that your spousal unit might not be too happy, hey, it shoots home videos, right?

Me? Nope. First, here in Spain we don’t do Thanksgiving. Second, I’ll be taking my new Nikon D700 out for an extended run. But that video looks good…

Canon 5D Mark II - The Arrival [Photography Bay]

See Also:

 
• Canon 5D MkII: HD Movies and Higher ISO

 

• More Stunning Video Shot With Canon 5D MKII DSLR

 

• HD Video Shot With Canon 5D MKII Looks Stellar

After the fuss over the baked-in DRM of the new unibody MacBook, Apple has updated QuickTime to re-enable standard definition playback on many external monitors, including some of Apple’s own.

The new Mini DisplayPort connector on both the new MacBook and MacBook Pro supports HDCP, a "feature" which stops people playing tagged video content on non-compliant monitors or projectors. The heavy handed implementation meant that some people couldn’t watch certain (seemingly random) movies from the iTunes Store itself except on the notebook’s built in display.

An update to QuickTime (7.5.7) is now available to fix this. While HD content is often protected this way, standard-def usually isn’t, and that’s what the update corrects. You should be able to play any of your SD movies and TV shows on a regular VGA monitor and likely on DVI displays.

This is good news for teachers wanting to watch Hellboy 2 during the lunch break (advice: don’t bother — it’s terrible), but clearly shows that Apple has opened the "bag of hurt" that is movie copy protection. So, either get used to watching HD movies on a small screen, buy a brand new monitor or pay a visit to the Pirate Bay. Like most people, I expect you’ll be driven the the last option. The fix will show up in unibody Mac’s Software Update.

QuickTime 7.5.7 for DisplayPort Allows Standard Definition Playback [MacRumors]

Lenny Engelhardt, N-trig's VP of Business Development

(Credit: N-trig)

Wanting to know more about N-trig’s multitouch technology, now that it has reached the consumer market with the HP TouchSmart tx2 tablet, I spoke with N-trig’s VP of Business Development, Lenny Engelhardt, earlier today. Here’s what I learned.

The HP TouchSmart tx2 tablet features similar multitouch functionality as the enterprise-focused Dell Latitude XT with a few differences. Both tablets provide multitouch gestures such as dragging and dropping, flicking, and pinching. If you make an M gesture with your finger on the TouchSmart’s screen, however, you’ll launch HP’s MediaSmart application. For its part, the Dell Latitude XT includes two gestures not found on the HP: two-finger scrolling and a double-tap gesture that turns off the display and touch sensitivity. The scenario for the double-tap is this: you have the tablet in slate mode and want to pick up it up and move to another room. You can carry it with your palm or fingers gripping part of the screen without worrying about moving the cursor. Simply tap the touch pad, mouse button, a key, or remove the stylus from its garage, and the screen and touch sensitivity return.

…

We heard that Blockbuster’s very own movie set-top-box would be on sale shortly, and for couch potatoes and cube dwellers alike, you can order yours right now from the comfort of your dilapidated sofa / Aeron, respectively. As we’d heard, you’ll be asked to rent 25 On Demand movies for $99, after which you’ll get the MediaPoint player for free. Not quite sure if that’s really pulling the wool over anyone’s eyes, but color us completely unsurprised that a company in such dire straights would risk embarrassment to give it a shot. So, is anyone going to buy in here, or is that “Order Now!” button going to sit unclicked forever?

[Thanks, Robert]

Filed under: Home Entertainment

2Wire-built MediaPoint Blockbuster movie set-top-box now on sale originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 25 Nov 2008 12:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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(Credit: Blockbuster/2Wire)

When 2Wire introduced its MediaPoint set-top box just two weeks ago, we told you that “it’ll be a matter of weeks–if not days–before you see a yet-to-be-named service provider offering its own version of the MediaPoint, possibly at a sub-$100 price point.” The curtain has been pulled back, and that initial provider turns out to be Blockbuster Video. For a limited time, the once-dominant movie rental chain is offering its version of the MediaPoint box for just $99, which includes a credit for 25 movies–effectively making it free.

…

(Credit: New Line Cinema)

We remember James Kim. Just a couple minutes of remembrance. James is still missed to this day.

Then, the unsung heroes of CNET Edit finally get their song. Well not really a song, but just some props.

After that it’s the obligatory “gadgets we’re …

Originally posted at Inside CNET Labs Podcast

Some good news for iPod touch owners: one enterprising individual going by the nom de mod timmyj9 has figured out how to enable the Street View functionality in the media player’s version 2.2 firmware — albeit with some glitches. If your iPod touch is jailbroken, and if you enjoy this sort of illegitimate activity, feel free to hit the link below for some thrilling step-by-step directions. And if that wasn’t exciting enough for you, we’ve just espied a video that pits the original iPhone and the iPhone 3G against both a first and a second generation iPod touch in a fight to the death (or more accurately, TouchSport Tennis). Admittedly, this is not the most scientific of benchmarks, but the clip (after the break) clearly shows the 532MHz second generation iPod touch rocking the 3D graphics faster than its 412MHz iPhone 3G counterpart. As expected, neither the original iPhone nor the first generation iPod fare nearly as well as their siblings.

Read - Modification Enables Street View on iPod touch
Read - Second Generation iPod touch Faster than iPhone

Continue reading iPod touch gets Street View, beats iPhone 3G at tennis

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

iPod touch gets Street View, beats iPhone 3G at tennis originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 24 Nov 2008 06:03:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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