We all know the wait for the iPad, at least in the U.S., will be over on April 3, right? Wrong. True connoisseurs know they need to wait until June 1, when Mervis Diamond Importers will unleash the hideous and despicable Diamond iPad on the world. It’s a bejeweled and bedazzled monstrosity boasting 11.43 carats [...]

100% brand new & high qualityEasy connection to Pioneer unitsFast and easy control of your iPodiPod charges at the same timePioneer head unit displays artist, album, song and playlist information

That's right, you can now reserve your place in line to be the first to record four HD cable shows at once on your Windows 7 Media Center. The bad news is that ship date for the InfiniTV 4 is now May 31st. Ceton wasn't willing to share a specific reason for the 60 day delay, but we suspect CableLabs is to blame -- Ceton refuted this and insisted CableLabs has been very helpful, but we don't buy it. The other big news -- for those that were concerned with noise or fitment options -- is that the latest version of the PCI-E card pictured above no longer includes a fan. The InfiniTV name was the result of over 1000 submissions to Ceton's naming contest, of which Gary Petro came up with winner -- the name is not to be confused with Comcast's XFINITY. Future tuners in the line will share a variation of the name, so the dual external tuner would be the InfiniTV ex2 -- for example. But Gary isn't the only one receiving a free tuner, as two more submitters were deemed worthy. Rus Sanchez submitted 94 different product names, while Charles Fraser earned his free card with the funniest submission; Wicked Super, Super Duper, and Super Duper Alleyoopder. The last bit of news out of the Kirkland startup is a littler clarification in regards to the network capabilities of the card. Although you can share the tuners with a small form factor PC on the network, the bad news is that it gets paired per CableCARD, so all four tuners have to go to the same PC. Ohh we almost forgot, the best news of all is that we received our review sample, so stay tunned for a full run down.

Ceton's quad CableCARD tuner for Media Center available for pre-order originally appeared on Engadget HD on Sat, 13 Mar 2010 10:23:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Once again, Lady Justice has struck a blow of freedom and equality for TV watchers everywhere, just the way our Founding Fathers intended (even though they never owned TVs). A U.S. Appeals Court in D.C. refused to change laws that required cable companies to provide channels they own to satellite carriers on equal terms. Comcast and Cablevision have been trying to overturn the law in open court. That means that thanks to Comcast's ownership of NBC-Universal, people who watch TV on satellites will have to endure marathons of 'To Catch a Predator' and Keith Olbermann's giant talking head like the rest of us.

Continue reading Court Rules Cable Owned Stations Have to Be Provided to Satellites

 

Filed under: Industry, Cable/Satellite, Reality-Free

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Politico - Eric Massa has provided a story line that's proven irresistible to right-wing media.

AP - THE DISPUTE: Cable TV providers challenged a five-year extension of federal regulations requiring them to make channels they own available to rivals such as satellite TV.

Reuters - A U.S. appeals court upheld on Friday a Federal Communications Commission ban that prevents cable companies like Comcast Corp from cutting exclusive deals for affiliated television programing.

AP - A federal court has upheld regulations that require cable TV companies to make channels they own available to satellite TV providers and other rivals on equal terms.

BusinessWeek - Once upon a time, not so long ago, a bunch of small companies in Silicon Valley thought the future of television was theirs. Soon, the thinking went, TV would be everywhere. Frequent fliers would tune in on laptops and vacationers on tablets from the beach. If so inclined, you'd be able to watch Glee on a cell phone in a tree house. The network suits and the cable guys just didn't have the digital chops to make it happen. ...

AP - Rankings for the top 15 programs on cable networks as compiled by the Nielsen Co. for the week of March 1-7. Day and start time (EST) are in parentheses:

For obvious reasons, we care about what goes on in various parts of the world, particularly New Zealand and other areas that are underserved in terms of Internet access.

So, we were quite excited to learn this evening of a new proposal that would give New Zealanders - including a couple RWW staff members - a better broadband experience. According to NZ website Stuff, a haldful of well-known innovators and entrepreneurs are teaming up on a $900 million dollar project that would give Kiwis (and their Ozzie neighbors) "virtually unlimited" broadband access via an international cable that would run across the Pacific Ocean. Just how much of a difference would this cable make compared to current Internet access?

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The difference would be significant, as Stuff's graphic shows:

The plan is to construct a 5.12 Terabits per second-capacity fiber cable to connect Australia and New Zealandto the U.S. - a cable that would deliver data at five times the speed of the current network.

This proposal puts Warehouse founder Stephen Tindall, TradeMe creator Sam Morgan, entrepreneur Rod Drury, and techies Mark Rushworth, John Humphrey and Lance Wiggs in competition head-to-head with Southern Cross Cable, a large network partially owned by Telecom New Zealand. The team, called Pacific Fibre, hopes to complete the project by 2013.

Of course, the next step is figuring out the exact cost of the proposed cable - the group thinks $900M might be a highball figure - and find investors. However, as Tindall eloquently noted, you have to spend money to make money - something anyone with an interest in NZ's economic future and global competitiveness must consider.

"The New Zealand Institute identified billions of dollars in economic potential by unleashing the Internet," he said, "and it is beyond time to address the issue. This is necessary and basic infrastructure - we must decrease the distance between New Zealand and the international markets.

"Doing so will be incredibly valuable for New Zealand and Australian businesses and consumers. If we are able to deliver on this cable this it could be as valuable to our NZ economy as the quantum leap refrigerated ships were to our export trade many years ago."

How feasible do you think this project will be? Is 2013 a realistic time table? And where do you think Pacific Fibre's investors will be found? Let us know your opinions in the comments.

Discuss

AP - In a March 8 story about a TV broadcasting dispute, The Associated Press reported erroneously that Cablevision Systems Corp. dropped the ABC station in New York before Sunday's Oscars telecast. It was ABC's decision to drop the signal.

AP - Cable, satellite TV and other video providers are seeking government intervention in ongoing disputes over the fees that they are charged by TV networks to carry local channels.

Reuters - On the heels of notching its best monthly ratings performance in 15 years, History showed no sign of slowing down as the calendar rolled over to March.

Dr. Goitom Mebrahtu, director of the communicable and non-communicable disease prevention branch in the Health Ministry, called on the general public to raise awareness and ensure their health in advance.

Manufacturer of Industrial Cables, Power Wires, XLPE Cables, PVC Power Control Cables, PVC Power Control Flexibles, XLPE Insulated Wires, PVC Insulated Wires, Armoured Wires

This week on the Digital City, we look at the ABC vs. Cablevision fight, check out some high-tech pizza that's hitting NYC, find out why it's taken so long for the

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Originally posted at Digital City Podcast

Wired broadband is all well and good, but significantly more high-speed internet access is going to come via wireless over the next several years, and everyone involved -- the carriers, the CTIA, and the FCC -- knows that it's going to be a technical challenge to meet that reality. Spectrum is one thing, but the bytes need somewhere to go once they hit the towers; that's where backhaul comes into play. AT&T and T-Mobile have both recently pimped fiber upgrades that should significantly widen the tubes connecting cell sites to the backbone, but they aren't going it alone: cable companies see the writing on the wall, too, and are looking to backhaul for a profitable new line of business. It turns out that Time Warner Cable tripled its backhaul revenue last year alone and is said to be making a heavy push to sign new deals with both AT&T and Verizon; AT&T, of course, has famously had trouble keeping its 3G network humming smoothly in Manhattan over the last 18 months as an endless barrage of iPhones slam it, so TWC probably sees this as a clutch opportunity since they basically own the cable market in New York. For its part, AT&T won't discuss its backhaul deals -- but it's told us in recent months that it has a backhaul advantage over some of its competitors since it operates a huge DSL business, so it's hard to gauge exactly how much benefit AT&T could reap by taking TWC up on its offer. Now, if Time Warner had some spectrum it wanted to offload, that'd be another matter altogether.

Time Warner Cable offering its tubes to AT&T, Verizon originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 08 Mar 2010 14:03:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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In a nick-of-time save that was worthy of a movie unto itself, ABC was restored to Cablevision just in time for the Academy Awards. Apparently both sides hammered out enough of a deal for the awards show to be broadcast. Cablevision customers -- 3.1 million in the New York City area -- got another treat on the same day. To accommodate those that lost their ABC, the company offered free On Demand movies all day. As a Cablevision customer, I was interested in the veracity of the claim and took advantage of that particular offer. Later this month, it will be determined how legitimate that offer was when I see my bill. So many people were using this freebie that the first few times a movie download was attempted, the system would return an error. This issue stopped once the Academy Awards started. It seems more likely that Cablevision acquiesced to the demands of ABC given the timing of the channel restoration rather than the other way around. What do you think?

 

Filed under: Industry, Programming, OpEd, Awards, Reality-Free

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AP - Cablevision and ABC were negotiating a deal Monday that tentatively ended a dispute over fees and restored millions of viewers' access to the Academy Awards telecast in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut shortly after the broadcast began.