TiVo and Netflix are both announcing today that they’ve partnered up to provide TiVo Series 3, HD, and HD XL owners the ability to stream more than 12,000 movies and TV episodes on-demand from Netflix via their set-top. Of course, this also means you’ll have to have a subscription to both TiVo and Netflix in order for this to work. Initially, the service will be distributed to “several thousand U.S. Households” but will be broadly available by early December 2008. Unfortunately, the attached press release below makes no mention of Netflix HD streaming support, which we’ve been hearing quite a bit about recently (but no doubt it will be available on this platform as well in the near future). MORE »

CoolIris may be the best kept secret of plug-ins on the web. Evolving out of the PicLens plug-in, CoolIris uses a 3D-esque interface to browse pictures and video across the web. There are many cool features for your iris with this app, pun intended. Users can “window shop” through Macy’s, Wal-Mart, Land’s End, and other supported retailers. TV shows, movies, pictures, and videos can be found instantly as CoolIris interfaces with supported sites like Hulu, YouTube, MySpace, Flickr, and others. There is a Discover feature that helps you find specific content by category. There’s even RSS support so you can stay abreast with the latest news from your favorite tech blog. Of course you can always use a simple search to find what you want. The results are displayed graphically on a “3D wall” that takes some getting used to when scrolling. It is a free download that works with Mac or Windows on Firefox or IE; and the company seems to be adding new features consistently. Definitely something to check out. [via]

Sweet! It looks like HD video content is very much going to be a reality from Netflix; and the Xbox 360 is going to be the first to bring it to users. According to Engadget, who’ve just published a hands-on impression article on the New Xbox Experience (NXE), state that the “quality was stunning.” Darren Murph at Engadget followed up on this new feature and discovered that HD Netflix Streaming is currently in a “soft launch” with about 300 titles available for viewing. Interestingly, neither Netflix’s Watch Instantly for PC, Netflix Playber by Roku, LG BD300 or Samsung P2500/P2550 Blu-ray players will be able to access or play any of the new HD content — at least for now.

UPDATE 1: It appears that “full” Netflix HD video will only be playable on HDCP compliant HDMI / DVI TVs & computer monitors, according to Format War Central and Gizmodo. Component connections also seem to work, but some belive that it may become limited to 480p resolution. Engadget currently has a post up claiming that 1080i via Component is working just fine with Netflix HD.

UPDATE 2: Gizmodo is reporting that the Neflix Player by Roku will begin supporting Netflix HD Streaming in December 2008.

Sonos has some interesting news today. The company is announcing that owners of their Sonos multi-room audio systems can download a free iPhone/iPod Touch app called the Sonos Controller for iPhone at Apple’s App Store. In essence, it’s a soft version of the standard hardware controller providing users a new interface to quickly link and unlink rooms, select / play / pause / skip music tracks in any room, search for their favorite artists and songs via the touchsceen keypad, multi-room volume control, browse collections by “pointing and flicking,” and more. Full press release below. MORE »

Mvix, primarily known for their media servers, has announced a new network attached server called the MvixBOX. This high end device can function as a NAS, a media server, or a web server. It can hold two 1.5 TB drives for a 3 TB total capacity and comes preinstalled with several applications (Apache, MySQL, PHP) to make your web server setup easy. The unit also comes pre-configured for dynamic DNS capabilities and a program called “RapidBox” that allows file sharing using simple URLs. The beauty however, may be the price, coming in under $250 on most sites. MORE »

There’s some interesting developments happening with Netflix of late. First, the company announced last week that they’ve partnered with Samsung to provide streaming video to Netflix subscribers directly through their BD player set-top (FYI, Samsung has also added Pandora music streaming support as well). And today Netflix is out saying that Mac OS X users running computers with Intel’s architecture will be able to tap into the streaming service via Microsoft’s Silverlight web browser plugin for Apple Safari and Firefox. While all these steps forward are all well and good, ABI Research analyst Steve Wilson has some good commentary on the announcements and believes that Netflix will soon be hitting a snag with their present model if they don’t begin delivering HD video (as well as more streaming content in general) to users, especially those who’ve got their media streamers and Blu-ray players connected to their HDTVs. However, more HD video may soon be on the horizon now that the company is leveraging Microsoft’s PlayReady DRM for Silverlight. PlayReady Details: “Silverlight with PlayReady offers a powerful and secure toolkit for delivery of dynamic streaming, which offers faster start-up, and higher quality video, adapted in real time to users’ connection speeds,” states Netflix Chief Product Officer Neil Hunt. MORE »

The holy grail of home automation and technology is to have every device in the home integrated together. Unfortunately, the cost to do that still remains too high for the average consumer, especially now. It is with those ideas in mind that Engadget has reviewed Embedded Automation’s mPanel; a seven-inch, in-wall, touch panel that can integrate the entire home, and retails for $999. While it is not the only device needed for full home automation, as the hub, it is the most important. MORE »

ZeeVee, the creators of the remote PC viewer device ZvBox, are now introducing a new way to watch PC accessible content on your TV. Unlike the ZvBox, Zviewer is a stand-alone PC application that one installs on a TV connected Windows XP/Vista PC (Mac support coming soon). The idea here is to provide pretty much the same exact 10-foot interface as the ZvBox offers, including its content channels from popular video portals (free and for pay like Amazon’s Video on Demand). In addition, Zviewer gives users access to stored media for playback (FYI, it will launch the file type’s corresponding system app) and allows one to customize which channels are displayed. Oh yeah… and it can be used with the kick-butt ZvRemote (with built-in trackpad) or a designed for Windows universal remote to browse the screen.  [via / via]

Cisco is announcing their revamped Powerline adapters for the Linksys brand. The changes to the devices are mostly cosmetic. The new adapters are sleeker, black, and are redesigned to not impede on the second port in a standard wall socket. The new line comes in two forms, the Turbo and AV. Powerline Turbo is built to the HomePlug Turbo standard and is used to connect traditional data devices like computers and printers. Powerline AV uses the HomePlug AV standard and opens the bandwidth for gaming and media transfers. Both versions become available in November and each is available as the adapter alone, the adapter with a built in four-port switch, or as a kit with one adapter and one adapter/switch. MORE »

Got to love it. Just a couple weeks ago Brian Binnerup unveiled My Movies for Windows Home Server. Essentially, it enabled the Windows Home Server platform (with a built-in or external disc player) the ability to rip and manage DVD, Blu-ray, and HD DVD movies directly to the system without the need of a separate PC. Now, Brian is adding CD ripping to the list of features, according to the 1.0.0.7 announcement of My Movies for Windows Home Server. Brian also comments to We Got Served that the CD ripper will encode music tracks to MP3 or WAV copy and gather its corresponding metadata from FreeDB.org.