About a year ago I interviewed Jeremy Allaire Founder and CEO of an interesting new company called Brightcove that had ambitious plans for launching an internet television offering built around various ad supported and pay per view models for delivering both mainstream as well as lots of more successful niche long tail content to viewers via the PC. And since last April things certainly have been looking up for the company. Back in November of last year Brightcove announced that they had secured $16 million in funding through a partnership with AOL. MORE »

Hands-On First Impressions: Toshiba HD-A1 HD-DVD Player at The Man Room: Welcome to the most confusing mismarketed over-hyped and jumbled new technology in years. High Definition DVD! Ohhhh, ahhhhh, ohhhhh. MORE »

Tuesday afternoon I had an opportunity to spend a few hours with Alex Rowland, founder and CEO of TV Technology upstart CozmoTV to demo their latest TV technology package for TiVo and talk about where the future of TV is going in the next few year. MORE »

[OPINION] Crank up the old PR and spin machine. Apple today announced their one billionth iTunes download today. The song? “Speed of Sound” by Coldplay. MORE »

Brian Hoyt over at Infinite Abyss has a post out on a question he has about Media Center and its Extender technologies in the near future. Basically, Brian wonders if the satellite and cable providers will change their pricing models to reflect the fact that someone could use a Media Center PC in their home and then stream all of their content throughout the house without having to pay the cable or satellite provider for these extra viewing rooms. MORE »

Well as I reported earlier based on my dinner with Microsoft’s Jim Allchin in order for Vista Media Center PCs to include CableCARD support they will need to be certified as a final OEM product. Central to this certification is what Allchin referred to at our dinner as a “protective path.” At that meeting Jim shared in the frustration of this requirement that is certainly CableLabs mandate and not Microsoft’s. At the meeting Jim pledged that Microsoft would fight clawing and scratching for smaller OEMs to get certified boxes but did suggest that the first CableCARD Vista PCs out would most likely come from the big guys. MORE »

Previously I’ve blogged about the new Sony XL 1 Media Center PC. Perhaps the most exciting thing about this new PC is that it includes a 200 disc CD/DVD changer where you can load your discs and play them through your Media Center PC. While many will be interested in the unit as a place to hold all of their DVDs for easy retrieval on their Media Center PC, what holds the most interest for me is that allegedly this unit will allow you to load up 200 CDs, go to bed, and wake up with all 200 ripped in the morning in a nice convenient folder on your hard drive. MORE »

Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures has an interesting post out today on the fantasy of all media free any where at any time vs. the pragmatism of how it will most likely need to work for content owners. Below is an excerpt of his thoughts: MORE »

BetaNews reports: “Microsoft is currently testing a Slingbox-like add-on that would allow Windows Media Center users to watch programming on their PCs from anywhere using mobile devices and laptops…. MORE »

One thing I’d like to see improved in Vista in Media Center would be for the ability to maintain a television audio track while using “My Pictures.” At present DirecTV is offering a number of satellite radio broadcasts. The picture screen of course is blank but the music plays. It would be great to be able to keep the audio stream but let “my pictures” overlay on this audio. At present I’m doing this by using my DirecTV TiVo as the input on my home theater but switching my video input to MCE where I’ve got my photos going, but then I miss the nice titles and album art as the songs come up. Now that MSFT and DirecTV are working together, it would be great to tie the music channels in with album art, song titles, etc.