netflix

Radio Shack, as we mentioned yesterday, is changing to The Shack. But a good restaurant in Connecticut is also called The Shack and has pie. Radio Shack does not have pie. They lose. We also talk about Google dropping search share and the rumored new PS3.

Buzz Out Loud interviews Aneesh Chopra, Obama's Chief Technology Officer http://www.cnet.com/8301-19709_1-10302978-10.html

Google search share drops as Bing gains momentum http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2009/08/bing-continues-to-chip-away-at-googles-search-share.ars

Misunderstandings abound … Read more

As Internet-connected TVs become more popular, set makers are looking for ways to stand out from each other. Vizio, which made its name by undercutting much larger names in electronics on LCD sets, is no longer just looking to attract buyers at Costco. It's now trying to compete directly on the number of bells and whistles with the likes of Samsung, Panasonic, and Sony.

Announced in late June, Vizio's Via HDTV has some things going for it that its competitors' sets do not: integrated 802.11(n) Wi-Fi--which means no separate dongle for connecting to the Web--2GB of flash memory, and a well thought-out remote control.

The remote design is almost a no-brainer in retrospect, and makes you wonder why it hasn't been done before. It looks like a standard model, but with this one, Vizio took into account what the user would be doing with it: interacting with Web applications like Twitter, Facebook, Yahoo Sports, and Flickr. The TV maker put a slideout QWERTY keyboard on the back of the Bluetooth remote, so users can type as they would on some smartphones, instead of keying in letters one at a time. And, it doesn't seem to add much to the price of the Via HDTV: the 42-inch version will begin at $999 when it starts selling in stores in November.

Vizio is also looking to differentiate itself with developers who will create more applications for the TV. Yahoo developed its TV widget engine last year, which brings a range of preselected applications like Twitter, eBay, Flickr, Yahoo Sports, Showtime, and many others right onto the TV screen. Samsung, Sony, Panasonic, and Vizio each offer it. But Vizio says it wants to appeal to application developers, so it integrated Adobe Flash directly into its Via HDTV.… Read more

Several of ABC's top shows will soon be available to watch via Netflix's "Watch Instantly" online streaming service. The first four seasons of "Lost" are already available, and they'll be joined in September by "Desperate Housewives" (seasons four and five), "Grey's Anatomy" (season five), and "Legend of the Seeker" (seasons one and two). The deal builds on an earlier agreement to make Disney Channel content available on Netflix (ABC is a division of Disney.)

While most of these programs are already available for viewing online on … Read more

Sprint on Tuesday announced it was planning to snatch up Virgin Mobile in the U.S. The buy puts Sprint in a good position to compete with prepaid offerings from other carriers. We talk to CNET News writer Maggie Reardon to hear what kind of money Sprint is making off customers of these prepaid programs, and what it's planning to do with Boost Mobile, the prepaid mobile phone service it already owns.

We also cover Tuesday's billion-dollar acquisition by IBM, and a new study that's found that text messaging while driving can take away enough concentration to … Read more

On today's episode, we invent a new word that we hope will show up on a show like "The Hills" sometime soon. Plus, we get fired up, make terrible jokes about monkeys controlling computers with their brains, and actually work in a tiny bit of news. For example, Apple's doing a tablet and music labels are trying to sell some new weird digital album thing. You might like the "fired up" part better.

As first outlined at the E3 video game industry trade show in June, Microsoft is readying an update to the dashboard software that runs on Xbox 360 game consoles, as well as the Xbox Live online service.

While it's not as radical a change as the fall 2008 dashboard update that added avatars and Netflix streaming, there are a lot of improvements to current features, as well as a few new ones. The dashboard update will be available for 360 owners on August 11th, but we were able to download an early version for a test drive.

Included were … Read more

If the Internet is the future of television, then LG's LH50 series hails from the day after tomorrow. This flat-panel LCD is the first to offer Netflix streaming, which allows instant, free-to-subscribers access to an all-you-can watch menu of thousands of movies and TV shows without having to connect another box. Sure, Sony has already announced the service for its own compatible TVs later this fall, and we expect Netflix to make its way to Yahoo widget-equipped TVs from Samsung (and perhaps others) sometime later this year, but for now the LH50 holds exclusive claim to Netflix. Speaking of … Read more

Netflix reported strong earnings after the bell on Thursday that outpaced analyst expectations, proving once again that a down economy can't slow the Web's top movie rental service.

For the company's second quarter ended June 30, Netflix saw net income of $32 million on revenue of $408.4 million, a 21 percent increase in revenue from the same quarter last year.

The Los Gatos, Calif.,-based company paid investors 54 cents per diluted share compared to 42 cents a diluted share a year ago. Analysts on average had expected the company to report 50 cents a share … Read more

Mediafly is coming to the Roku Digital Media Player later this year. The Mediafly channel will aggregate free-of-charge audio and video podcasts from a variety of providers, including Comedy Central, CNN, ESPN, and NBC. While these programs are easily available on a PC, the Mediafly channel should provide a quick and easy way to enjoy them on a TV or living room audio system as well.

Currently, Mediafly allows users to organize podcasts into customized feeds that are then available on a variety of Web-connected devices, including the iPhone, Zune, and Blackberry. (Check out CNET's coverage of the recently … Read more