televisions

Apple could be gearing up for a late February event, according to a report out Thursday.

The Unofficial Apple Weblog reported that Mira Mobile Television, a West Coast television production firm, is hiring in preparation for an Apple event to be held at the end of February. TUAW notes that the listings aren't posted on Mira's site, and it calls its own report an "unconfirmed rumor" based on a single source.

So why give it any credence? For one, Apple's Greg Joswiak earlier this week reiterated the company's plans to introduce the iPhone software developer's kit … Read more

NEW YORK--Just how much will Mountain View invade Madison Avenue?

Several hundred New Yorkers involved in advertising and marketing packed a room in Google's Chelsea offices here Monday night to find out. A panel of Google advertising employees, moderated by sponsor Mimeo Vice President Jeff Grill individually addressed the crowd at the January installment of the New York Advertising Club's bimonthly meetup to talk about what they do and how they do it: New York ad sales director Tim Castelli; East Coast team manager for audio sales, Joe Anastasi; head of television sales Long Ellis; print ads account … Read more

Current Media, the youth-oriented cable channel founded by former U.S. Vice President Al Gore and Joel Hyatt, has filed for a $100 million initial public offering.

The company aims to trade under the Nasdaq symbol CRTM; neither share prices nor number of shares have been disclosed.

Acknowledging that it has "a history of losses," relies on an "unproven media model," and had an accumulated deficit of $31.9 million at the end of 2007, Current Media is nevertheless pushing forward in the hopes that it will be able to better cover expenses as a public … Read more

The Open Television Network launched today. Don't let the name fool you: If you go to the site you won't see a competitor to YouTube, Hulu, Joost, or the like. OTN is a behind-the-scenes platform that lets small-fry media publishers sell content that's distributed through RSS.

This is a neat trick. OTN lets you subscribe to an RSS feed with audio or video content so you can see the headlines of new articles in a media player like iTunes or Miro (see story, Miro Leaves Beta) or the Zune player. When you click on a particular item … Read more

Chances are that anyone who has visited Best Buy, Circuit City or Media Markt in the past few months saw a variety of flat screen technology options, including 720p, 1080i, and 1080p. Here at CES, it's clear that 1080p is here to stay and growing in dominance as THE screen resolution.

My guess is that 720p and 1080i days are numbered and that retailers will be purging their inventories of the technology (this could mean some great deals in the months to come, but keep in mind that you'll be buying antiquated technology). The one exception may be … Read more

The natural human interface has been a huge theme at this year's CES.

Bill Gates talked up the Surface Computer and voice recognition in the car, Paul Otellini talked up the gesture-based interface of Nintendo Wii, and there were plenty of new ideas around interfaces exhibited on the trade show floor.

Natural human interfaces, ones that involve human movement, for example, tend to be incredibly engaging. It's rarely more noticeable than at CES--the crowds nearly always gather around those exhibits that provide some kind of interactivity. One of the most popular has been the WAVEscape advertising platform, developed … Read more

MTV Networks announced Tuesday that it will distribute its video content across the Web through deals with a number of social-media sites and video portals: GoFish, Veoh, MeeVee, and Imeem. Through this initiative, users of the video sites will be able to view both short- and long-form content provided by MTV Network as well as embed them on blogs and social-networking sites.

The partnerships will start to go live over the next few weeks; representatives from Imeem, for example, said that MTV Networks video content will appear on the social network, which focuses on ad-supported streaming media, in February.

MTV … Read more

If you want Uncle Sam's help in bankrolling your household's switch to digital television before analog channels go dark next year, you can start filing your requests now.

As promised, the U.S. government on January 1 began accepting applications from American households for $40 coupons to defray the cost of a basic digital-to-analog converter box.

The gadgets, which are expected to cost between $50 and $70, are supposed to enable analog TVs to continue functioning when analog channels are evacuated on February 17, 2009, per Congress' orders. (About a dozen models have been cleared for use with the coupons … Read more

More than 50 percent of households in the U.S. own a digital television, according to preliminary report results released Friday by the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA).

The organization, known for its annual International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, predicted that digital television manufacturers will post an 11 percent growth totaling more than $25 billion for 2007. For 2008, the group expects 32 million more television units to ship, with 79 percent of those televisions being HDTVs.

CEA plans to release the full findings of its state-of-the-television-industry report at a presentation given by CEA analyst Steve Koenig on … Read more