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T-Mobile USA plans to announce Wednesday that its new @Home voice service will be available nationwide starting July 2.

The cell phone operator has been testing the new Internet telephony service since February in Dallas and Seattle. And now the new service, which is meant to replace traditional home phones, will be offered to any T-Mobile cell phone customer.

Subscribers will be able to connect any regular home telephone to a T-Mobile router that will send calls over the Internet much the same way as services like Vonage operate. The service costs $10 a month plus taxes and fees for unlimited domestic local and long-distance calls.

Only T-Mobile wireless customers who subscribe to at least a $39.99 individual calling plan or families subscribing to at least the $49.99 monthly T-Mobile calling plan can get the service. The @Home service also requires that users subscribe to a separate broadband service from a cable operator or telecom provider. And they are required to use a special T-Mobile router, which also provides Wi-Fi Internet access throughout the home.

This router can also be used to provide T-Mobile's HotSpot @Home phone service. This service, launched last year, allows T-Mobile subscribers to use dual-mode cellular and Wi-Fi phones that switch between both networks. When subscribers are near their home Wi-Fi hot spot, they use the broadband network to make unlimited domestic calls. And when they are outside the home, the phone seamlessly switches to T-Mobile's cellular network.

The service, which also costs $10 extra per month, serves two purposes. It helps provide better in-home cell phone coverage and also helps reduce the number of minutes used on the T-Mobile cellular network.

Britt Wehrman, director of product development for T-Mobile says the service, which launched a little over a year ago, has been a big success. The company hasn't disclosed subscriber numbers for the service, but Wehrman said that 45 percent of the hot-spot customers are leaving competitors to get the T-Mobile service. T-Mobile currently has eight dual-mode handsets that work with the service, two of which were announced earlier this week. And it has four more to announce by the end of the year, bringing the total to 12 dual-mode handsets.

The @Home VoIP (voice over Internet Protocol) service is meant to work with the hot-spot phone service, Wehrman said. When the hot-spot service was first introduced, the company found that families were interested in the plan. But they weren't willing to cut the cord on their home phones.

"The hot-spot service offers parents a good way to limit overage charges, because the kids can talk on their cell phones while they're at home without eating up minutes," he said. "But we found that many families didn't want to get rid of their traditional phones. They still wanted one phone in the house for the whole family."

So the @Home VoIP service was created to give families who don't want to get rid of their traditional landlines a low-cost option for retaining that line while still using the hot-spot service. To ensure that E911 service works with the VoIP service, T-Mobile is requiring all users to register their home address before service can be activated.

But because it is an Internet-based phone service that is dependent upon a broadband modem for connectivity, families will still have to consider the risks of power outages and Internet interruptions that will make the VoIP service and E911 unavailable during those outages. But Wehrman said that the fact that T-Mobile requires that subscribers of the @Home service also have a T-Mobile cell phone subscription limits the safety concerns.

Tom McInerney, the Web video-sharing pioneer who left the sector 18 months ago, is making a comeback.

Guba co-founder Tom McInerney

(Credit: Greg Sandoval/CNET News.com)

This time, however, the co-founder of video site Guba is an investor. He's one of the backers of Shopflick, a company trying to become the Web equivalent of the Home Shopping Network. The site enables apparel merchants to showcase the clothing they offer by uploading video clips. Many sellers use the opportunity to channel their inner Francis Ford Coppola.

For example, the style mavens at designer Ric Rac shot a scene of two women wearing nearly identical versions of the company's $145 Kangaroo Dress meeting on the street. The audience hears the trash talking going on in each woman's head.

McInerney, who spoke at the OnHollywood conference on Wednesday, said Shopflick's founders got the idea for the site by meeting a woman who had made jewelry and had appeared on the cable show the Home Shopping Network.

The three-minute appearance brought the woman more sales than in the prior seven years, according to McInerney. Shopflick's executives want to bring that same magic to the Web.

Helping merchants sell clothes online is a practical use for Web video, McInerney said. He added that enabling people to share homemade videos online may not be as practical--unless, of course, you're YouTube.

McInerney stepped down as Guba's CEO in December 2006. By then YouTube had already amassed a huge audience and lead in video sharing. Three months earlier, Google had acquired YouTube for $1.65 billion.

"I think we can all acknowledge that YouTube has won the big prize," McInerney said then. "The billion-dollar opportunity has kind of passed."

Before that, Guba was among the first video-sharing companies to sign licensing deals with Hollywood studios. McInerney said that Guba was too small to compete against some of the bigger players that entered not long after, such as Amazon.com and Apple. Guba no longer offers feature films for download.

"We pretty much lined up every studio," McInerney said. "Later, we couldn't justify paying the guarantees that all the studios asked for...frankly, movie downloads on the Web haven't really taken off."

McInerney predicted that consumers will one day soon watch movies downloaded from the Web and that a handful of distributors will prevail over the sector. But he doesn't plan to give it another try.

"I like being an investor," he said. "You can still be involved by just writing a check, but you don't have to work 22 hours a day."

Shopflick: Get this! | Get your own Store!

Harman Kardon AVR 354

While most audio manufacturers trot out a new line of AV receivers every year, Harman Kardon generally sits out of the "feature war" and lets its models stay in the product line longer. That's why it's a big deal that the company has announced three new receivers, bringing many cutting-edge features that were previously missing from the company's lineup. As always, these new receivers have Harman's typically refined look, and now that some of the models include updated features--like high-resolution audio decoding, a high-def graphical user interface, and video upconversion--you won't have to settle for beauty without brains. Let's take an in-depth look at the new line.

Harman Kardon 154

(Credit: Harman Kardon)

Key features of the Harman Kardon 154:

• 5.1 channels, 30 watts per channel
• Three HDMI 1.3a inputs
... Read more

The Panasonic DMR-EH75V still costs $1,000 on Amazon.com.

Last fall, we noticed that old DVD recorders with hard drives were selling for $1,900 on the Internet, because manufacturers basically stopped making them (with some exceptions) and people still want them. The continued demand for DVD recorders with hard drives isn't surprising--many people want a simple DVR they can own, without a monthly free, that can easy burn their favorite shows to DVDs. It's a killer product, but unless you're willing to set up a home theater PC, you can't have it.

We have noticed, however, that some electronics retailers have been offering foreign DVD recorders with hard drives in the U.S., potentially to meet this hidden demand. ... Read more

Tomoyasu Suzuki

(Credit: Plat'Home)

I had the chance to do a question-and-answer session with Tomoyasu Suzuki, president and co-founder of Plat'Home. Plat'Home makes a cool palm-sized Linux server, and is one of the early drivers of Japan's Linux market.

Suzuki, a graduate of Tokyo University, co-founded Plat'Home in 1993 and eventually took the reins as CEO in 2000, the same year it IPO'd in Japan. He has a wealth of experience pushing Linux into developing markets, making it a real treat to get some of his time for this Q&A:

Asay: After generating several billion dollars in value in two different satellite company IPOs in Japan in the early 1990s, you turned to energies to building a Linux company. Why?

Suzuki: Satellites and entertainment are certainly big business and continue to grow. Those were early days in the Japanese satellite industry, and it was exciting to be involved.

But, ultimately, I believe the opportunity for Linux expanding into a wide range of devices, including, of course, entertainment devices like set-top boxes, cell phones, and other mobile devices, radically dwarfs the opportunity for broadcast entertainment. Even today, when you search, when you make a phone call, when you do online banking, you're using Linux. And it's only the beginning. I wanted to be a part of that.

Despite the fact that competing DVRs from cable and satellite companies have made great headway in the past few years, we're still fans of TiVo's intuitive interface and constantly improving feature set. However, the knock against TiVo is that it's expensive--you have to buy the box and pay a $13 monthly fee, while a DVR from your cable company usually costs less than $10 a month with no up-front cost.

As of late, TiVo has been offering a lifetime subscription plan as a promotion that was slated to end in February, but the eagle-eyed TiVo fans over at Gizmo Lovers noticed that the offer has been extended to July 2, and Dave Zatz writes that he's received word that the lifetime subscription deal is here to stay. The lifetime subscription plan costs $400, plus the cost of the TiVo box itself.

The real question is whether the lifetime plan is a good deal. The key thing to remember is that TiVo's lifetime subscription plans are for the lifetime of the box, so if your TiVo dies or you want to upgrade to a new model, your lifetime subscription is tied to the device. (In some cases, TiVo has allowed customers to transfer their lifetime subscriptions for an additional fee.)

Acting as a new subscriber, we were able to get a TiVo HD plus a lifetime subscription for $700, and a TiVo HD plus a three-year subscription for $600 from the TiVo Web site. So unless you plan on using your TiVo HD box for more than three years you're probably better off skipping the lifetime subscription plan.

With switched digital video on the horizon and the possibility that TiVo will release a newer, SDV-compatible (without the dongle) DVR in the future, chances are you might feel some upgrade-itis around the three-year mark and won't want to feel obligated to stick to your old TiVo box. Still, the lifetime plan seems to be popular with TiVo fans and it's only giving buyers another option, so it's good news for TiVo lovers who want to lock into their service.

Victor and Kenwood said Monday that they plan to become one company by October 1 this year.

The two Japanese audio equipment makers will combine to form JVC Kenwood Holdings, which will be based in Yokohama, near Tokyo. Victor, a subsidiary of electronics giant Matsushita, is best known for its JVC brand. Under the agreement, Kenwood Chairman Haruho Kawahara will become the holding company's chairman, while Victor President Kunihiko Sato will become the new company's president.

It came in fits and starts, but the two have finally settled on a merger agreement. It was first discussed last year, and since then the two have agreed to develop future car and home audio systems together.

The new business will focus on car electronics, home electronics, and professional wireless systems, and will also explore new product segments. The two companies are combining in hopes of reducing costs and scaling their distribution in the already-crowded Japanese consumer electronics market. For the same reason, Victor said last month it would no longer make flat-panel TVs for the Japanese market.

Tivoli unveiled its NetWorks Go Wi-Fi radio in 2007, but it was subsequently delayed its release.

(Credit: dvice.com)

In June 2007, Tivoli Audio unveiled two Wi-Fi radios at a Manhattan event: the Tivoli Audio NetWorks tabletop radio and the portable NetWorks Go (pictured above). Both models were said to offer identical functionality: the capability to tune in any MP3, WMA, or RealAudio Internet radio station, network audio sources (PC-based digital music collections), and standard over-the-air FM radio. And it wasn't just vaporware, either: company founder and CEO Tom DeVesto used the prototype to quickly pull up two distant stations based on requests from the audience. Unfortunately, neither product was released. The fall 2007 release window came and went, and it wasn't until February that a brief notice on Tivoli's Web site officially rescheduled the release date to June 2008.

However, it looks as if later this week we'll be getting updates on these products. ... Read more

Samsung HT-BD2S: the "s" is for "smaller speakers".

(Credit: Samsung)

A second Blu-ray home theater system has joined Samsung's product lineup. The HT-BD2S is essentially identical to its predecessor, the Samsung HT-BD2T, but with two important distinctions: the BD2S has small satellite speakers (versus the four tallboy models that anchored the BD2T), and it's available for an even $1,000 (a 33 percent discount off the BD2T's asking price).

Does the downsized price and speaker size make the HT-BD2S more attractive than its big brother? ... Read more