Crave

Boxee Box: More fun than kittens?

(Credit: daveyp.com)

Even though Hulu Desktop and other software have stolen its thunder a little, we love Boxee. It was one of the first and best ways to browse streaming media from multiple outlets on a big screen, and we like its indie spirit, even though some content providers have given it a hard time.

Rumors of a Boxee Box--an actual piece of hardware to free the software from a PC--have been floating for a while, but it's becoming real very soon, according to the Boxee blog. Boxee's first hardware partner has been found, and we are already guessing as to what the Boxee Box will have inside. More importantly, how will it compare with Roku? Or, could it possibly be...

A launch event on December 7 in Brooklyn will give a lot more details including mock-ups, and CNET will be there. Look for more then. Until that day, enjoy the kittens.

If you haven't heard of The Wooden Birds, maybe you know Andrew Kenny from his other band The American Analog Set. Or perhaps Matt Pond from Matt Pond PA?

If you haven't heard of any of these guys, well, you have some catching up to do on your indie rock. The new quartet stopped by the CBS Interactive studios to share some thoughts and tunes from their new LP "Magnolia." The lineup features Andrew Kenny on lead vocals and guitar; Leslie Sisson on vocals; Sean Haskins on drums; and, unexpectedly, Matt Pond on guitar.

Check out the exclusive interview and performance, then visit the band's artist page on Last.fm if you'd like to hear more.

The new FreeAgent Theater+ from Seagate.

(Credit: Seagate)

Seagate on Tuesday announced the FreeAgent Theater+ HD media player. The device enables users to take digital-media content from their PCs and play it on their televisions. All the content is controlled with an included remote.

The FreeAgent Theater+ connects to USB-attached storage drives through two USB ports. Once Seagate's device is connected to a PC, users can load the attached drive with movies, videos, music, and pictures. The FreeAgent Theater+ sports both HDMI and Component output, allowing users to watch up to 1080p content on their HDTV. It also has composite inputs for those with standard-definition televisions.

Although it works with any drive, the FreeAgent Theater+ is designed to work with Seagate's FreeAgent Go portable drives. Those drives can be slid into the device's dock, making it a bit more convenient to transfer the device.

To make it easier to transfer files, the FreeAgent Theater+ can connect to a home network via its Ethernet port. According to Seagate, it intends to release a USB wireless adapter in October to enable users to connect to their home networks wirelessly. The adapter will support 802.11n connectivity and cost $69.99.

Seagate's new player features several video formats, including H.264, MPEG-1, MPEG-4, DivX HD, and Xvid HD. It accepts AAC, MP3, FLAC, WMA, OGG, and more on the audio side.

Whether or not Seagate's new product can fix some of its past mistakes is still unknown. The company's previous device, the Seagate FreeAgent Theater, was the lowest-rated USB-ready digital-media player in a CNET Reviews roundup from April. Competing products from Iomega and Western Digital scored higher.

The Seagate FreeAgent Theater+ is available now for preorder at $149.99. For $289.99, consumers can pick up the FreeAgent Theater+ and a 500GB FreeAgent Go drive.

CNET plans to have an official review of the FreeAgent Theater+ later this month.

Though unlocked phones offer you the freedom of switching carriers on a whim, they can require a bit of tinkering before you can roam around the world. In most cases, you'll have to program the phone with the necessary multimedia settings to browse the Internet and send an e-mail or multimedia message.

The settings are available from your carrier, but if you prefer not to talk to a person, there are options available online. Sony Ericsson offers a very handy tool on its Web site that lets you configure your phone in a just a few minutes. After entering your handset model number, carrier, and phone number, Sony Ericsson will send you a text message with the appropriate settings. It then takes just the additional step of installing the settings on your device. To find the tool, look for the "Support" section on Sony Ericsson's Web site.

Nokia had a similar tool on its site, but it seems to have passed into oblivion. The only replacement information that I could find was a rather unhelpful list of instructions for downloading the settings directly onto your phone. If you've found a more helpful tool on Nokia's Web site, please let me know.

As an alternative, I found a site called ConfigureMyPhone that promises to deliver settings for your mobile browser, messaging, e-mail, and Java. It supports carriers in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. The tool is intuitive and will be familiar to users of Sony Ericsson's service, though each setting delivered to your phone costs $2.50 each.

Have you found other third-party sites for getting your multimedia settings? Let me know in the comments.

The TiVo: close, but no cigar.

(Credit: TiVo)

Roku announced this week that it signed on with Major League Baseball to deliver MLB.tv Premium to its set-top box. It's the first live content that the device, which is best known for its Netflix streaming, will offer.

But like many other set-top boxes on the market, the services the Roku box offers aren't unique to that device. Netflix streaming is available on a large and growing number of devices, including TiVo DVRs, the Xbox 360, and all newer LG and Samsung Blu-ray players and home theater systems. In addition to the Roku, MLB programming is available on the PC, through Boxee, and through various cable and satellite TV packages.

Indeed, many TVs, Blu-ray players, DVRs, and home theater systems now have a baseline configuration that makes it relatively easy to add streaming services via postpurchase firmware upgrades. At this point, adding content seems almost as simple as calling the content provider and having lawyers work up an agreement between the parties.

The problem is, those partners are not necessarily working together. The hardware providers want those streaming or download services to be exclusive to their boxes. The content providers want their entertainment to be made available on as many devices (STBs or otherwise) as possible. Those very different goals are causing set-top boxes to provide most, but not all, the services that consumers want.

LG's user menu is more-detailed than the service menus of most TVs.

(Credit: Sarah Tew/LG)

Q: As an AVS forum member, I have to tell you we really look forward to your reviews. They are often cited when discussing the various brands and models. I am writing to you however to make a suggestion on how to make your reviews even more effective for the videophiles and those thoroughly researching new TVs. I understand you at one time included service menu calibrations, but now you do not. There are those of us who would like you to access the service menu during reviews, enabling you (and us) to gauge what the real potential of what the TV being reviewed is capable of. Why don't you?

--Dean from Oregon

A: Thanks for writing Dean. I appreciate the suggestion, I understand your reasoning, and I agree that calibrating the service menu is often, depending on the model and its available user-menu controls, the only way to fully realize the potential of the TV.

For the uninitiated, the service menu contained on most TVs is typically only accessible by inputting a string of specific button-presses that aren't described in the manual. It usually contains advanced settings that control all aspects of the TV, from color points to grayscale controls to noise filter thresholds to bulb life countdowns. Some of these controls can be tweaked to improve the picture beyond the controls available in the TV's user menu. But for people unfamiliar with service menus, they can be a minefield of potential screw-ups, and in some cases an incorrect adjustment can completely disable a TV. Moreover, most service menus lack a "reset" button to take everything back to the default values.

A couple of years ago, I decided to stop using the service menu for calibrations of TVs I review. I did so for what I consider a few very good reasons.

The box is jam-packed with stuff, but is a little short on unreleased musical content.

It's pricey. The "Neil Young Archives, Vol. 1: 1963-1972" Blu ray box goes for $349; the DVD is $250; and the CD set a mere $100. The Blu-ray box contains a sprawling 11-disc collection. Young's been working on this set for what feels like decades; was it worth the wait?

There's a beautifully bound, embossed-"leather," covered book with tons of cool pictures. Hard-core fans will love it, everyone else will look through it once and be done with it.

There's only one unreleased live disc, "Live at the Riverboat 1969." The Blu ray box also includes "Live at Canterbury House" (not a Blu-ray, just a DVD and CD), "Live at the Fillmore East 1970," and "Live at Massey Hall 1971," which have been individually released over the past couple of years. I already bought them, as I'm sure many fans have. What a rip off to make us buy them again.

Most discs have music running times of under 60 minutes, so why oh why didn't Neil fill up more of the discs' capacity, or did he just need to justify an exorbitant MSRP? $350 for 11 discs? Strange, Hollywood movies that cost hundreds of millions of dollars to make retail for under 20 bucks a pop, so why does Neil charge $31 for a disc for music he made nearly 40 years ago? Rip off.

The Blu-ray features ultrahigh resolution 24-bit /192 kHz stereo sound, which you can play over some newer AV receivers, but I'm not so sure that any high-end electronics can access the superduper-sounding PCM tracks. Surround sound? Only one disc has surround. Blu-ray sound quality is about the same as the previously released 24 bit/96 kHz sound on the DVDs that came out years ago. Don't buy the Blu-ray box for the sound; the DVDs are fine.

I had a rough time navigating the Blu-rays' stupidly designed menus and accessing some of the "bonus" material and "hidden" tracks. Hey, I paid my money, why do I have to go round and round to find the music I paid for?

As for video "content," I don't know about you, but watching an LP playing on a turntable or reel-to-reel tapes spinning gets old really fast. Reading pages of text off my TV is also less than entertaining. The photo galleries are nice.

Motorola says that the new set-top box it is developing for Japanese carrier KDDI will not use Google's Android operating system.

Last week, CNET News referenced a report from the Web site Android Guys that said Motorola is building a TV set-top box for Japanese telephone and broadband service provider KDDI.

The Web site reported that Masataka Miura, chairman of Open Embedded Software Foundation (OESF), had said Motorola was making the Android powered set-top box for KDDI. The OESF is a group that consists of several Japanese companies that plan to use Android in embedded devices. ARM, KDDI, Japan Cable Laboratories, Alpine Electronics, and Fujitsu Software technologies are among the group's members.

But Motorola says the device that it will deliver to KDDI, called the "au BOX," is not based on Android. Motorola said that the box uses an operating system developed by Motorola called KreaTV. This platform is based on the open operating system Linux . The company said there are no plans to produce an Android-based version.

The "au Box" will allow users to take their music and video content with them on the go. The box lets users play or rip a CD and either store the music or transfer it to a mobile handset or portable media player via a USB cable, Android Guys reported. The music files can then be played by the device through the integrated stereo speakers.

The set-top box also allows users to upload video to the device and then transfer it to a mobile device. And the device also plays DVDs.

Motorola said its KreaTV open software platform for set-top devices is designed to enable operator customers to easily add new functionality and services.

Android is also an open-source operating system, which is also built on Linux. It was originally designed by Google for mobile phones. But there has increasingly been more talk of the software being used in other devices like Netbooks, as well as on set-top boxes, TVs, voice over IP phones, digital picture frames, and even karaoke machines.

Editors' note: The original story incorrectly stated that Motorola is planning to build an Android set-top box for KDDI in Japan, based on reports from the Web site Android Guys. To avoid confusion, the story has been removed. Please click here to see the appropriate information regarding Motorola's set-top box.