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	<title>The Mossberg Solution &#187; movie</title>
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		<title>The Swiss Army Knife of Portable Videos</title>
		<link>http://solution.allthingsd.com/20090630/the-swiss-army-knife-of-portable-videos/</link>
		<comments>http://solution.allthingsd.com/20090630/the-swiss-army-knife-of-portable-videos/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 30 Jun 2009 22:50:04 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Katherine Boehret</dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://solution.allthingsd.com/20090630/the-swiss-army-knife-of-portable-videos/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[RealPlayer SP grabs videos from the Web and converts and transfers them to over a dozen portable devices. While other software programs perform two or just one of these tasks, RealPlayer’s trio of talent make it like a digital Swiss army knife.]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Every once in a while I watch an online video that&#8217;s good enough to send to a friend, share on Twitter and Facebook or save its URL so I can watch it again later. The final piece of the puzzle would be moving the video onto a mobile device to have it with me wherever I went.</p>
<p>Enter RealPlayer SP beta (<a href="http://realplayer.com">realplayer.com</a>), the latest in RealNetworks Inc.&#8217;s (RNWK) long line of media players that the company has churned out since 1995. RealPlayer SP—the SP stands for social and portable—is a free download that, once installed, grabs videos from the Web, converts them to the right format and transfers them to over a dozen portable devices. While other software programs perform two or just one of these tasks, the RealPlayer SP&#8217;s trio of talent makes it like a digital Swiss army knife.</p>
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<p>After using the RealPlayer for moving several videos of all kinds to an iPhone, BlackBerry Curve 8900 and Palm Pre, I felt like I had more control over my portable devices and the media they held. And the freedom of knowing that this player is compatible with almost anything—including Apple (AAPL) and Palm (PALM) devices, Research in Motion&#8217;s (RIMM) BlackBerrys, T-Mobile&#8217;s G1 and Sidekick, Nokia&#8217;s (NOK) N97 and certain basic cellphones—is a major plus.</p>
<h5 class="subhed">Behavior Problem</h5>
<p>My biggest problem with using the RealPlayer SP has to do with my own behavior. Most of the videos I watch online and share with friends are less than five minutes long. This means that grabbing, converting and transferring videos to a portable device using the RealPlayer SP—albeit a relatively quick process—could easily take more time than the length of the video, itself. And many of the longer videos that I would want to move to a BlackBerry or iPhone are copyright-protected and thus can&#8217;t be downloaded by the RealPlayer SP.</p>
<p>Another factor is that more devices now have their own built-in app stores for downloading content to the device, without plugging into a computer for transfers like with the RealPlayer SP. The iPod touch, for example, can now download movies, music videos and TV shows over Wi-Fi thanks to a recent $10 software upgrade.</p>
<h5 class="subhed">Mac Version Coming Soon</h5>
<p>The RealPlayer SP works only on Windows PCs right now; a Mac version is due out by the end of this year. Likewise, it doesn&#8217;t work on Apple&#8217;s Safari browser but does work on Firefox, Internet Explorer and Google&#8217;s (GOOG) Chrome browser; I used all three with success.</p>
<p>If you&#8217;re not interested in using the RealPlayer SP for transferring videos to portable devices, you can still use it for downloading videos, saving them onto your computer and sharing them with friends via Twitter, Facebook or email. Tiny icons representing each of these sharing options appear in-line beside freshly downloaded videos. I shared videos of last week&#8217;s Congressional Luau at the White House via Facebook and Twitter, but the icon to share videos via Twitter doesn&#8217;t automatically shrink URLs to fit into a tweet. I shrunk the URLs myself, but this took an extra step<sup>1</sup>.</p>
<p>And though I&#8217;ve mostly focused on the RealPlayer SP&#8217;s ability to grab, convert and transfer (RealNetworks calls these tools the Downloader feature in the player), it also works as its own media player or helps you discover new content.</p>
<div class="media-CENTER" style="width:360px;"><a href="http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/images/PJ-AQ328_pjMOSS_G_20090630160058.jpg" rel="lightbox" title=""><img src="http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/images/PJ-AQ328_pjMOSS_G_20090630160058.jpg" width="360" height="240" style="float: none;" alt="" /></a><br />
<br />
RealPlayer SP Beta downloads, converts and transfers videos from the Web to a variety of portable devices.</div>
<p>A premium version called RealPlayer Plus SP is available for $40. Premium features include DVD burning, DVD playback (if your computer can&#8217;t play DVDs) and video conversion to a special format called h.264—though the free version performs these conversions for videos being moved to Apple devices.</p>
<p>I jumped around the Web visiting sites and playing videos, which prompted the RealPlayer SP to display a small &#8220;Download This Video&#8221; message above videos that aren&#8217;t copyright-protected. Downloading videos worked on most sites, including <a href="http://AllThingsD.com">AllThingsD.com</a>, <a href="http://Slate.com">Slate</a>, <a href="http://YouTube.com">YouTube</a>, Salon and CNET. As expected, I wasn&#8217;t so lucky with videos from the New York Times, BBC and Hulu, which hosts loads of TV shows and music videos. That&#8217;s because videos from these sites were copyright-protected and didn&#8217;t allow for downloading.</p>
<h5 class="subhed">A Glitch</h5>
<p>In one instance with a <a href="http://WSJ.com">WSJ.com </a>video, only the short ad that played before the video was downloaded, even though the download prompt indicated that the WSJ video was obtainable using RealPlayer SP. RealNetworks says this is a glitch it knows about and plans to correct.</p>
<p>The RealPlayer SP&#8217;s ability to download videos and transfer them to devices, rather than just copying them onto computers, forced me to be choosier about the videos that I downloaded due to the limited memory of the devices. Because of this, I wished the RealPlayer SP Downloader had a better built-in way to discover downloadable content. Currently, a link to something called the RealGuide pulls up suggestions, but I had a hard time finding clips there that I wanted to download. RealNetworks says it plans to improve the video-discovery process in the future, including adding things like YouTube keyword searches built right into the Downloader.</p>
<h5 class="subhed">The Downloader Window</h5>
<p>When I did find videos I liked, I clicked on the prompt to download the clip, found the clip in a tiny Downloader window, and chose to move the clip to a device (there&#8217;s a list of all available devices) or share it via Twitter, Facebook or email. Transfer times depend on the length of the video.</p>
<p>RealNetworks provides simple instructions on making sure your device is set to transfer when plugged in. For example, BlackBerrys must be set to mass-storage mode, Palm Pres should be set to USB mode and Apple devices synchronize with the iTunes library, where RealPlayer&#8217;s converted videos are sent for transferring to iPhones and iPods.</p>
<p>RealPlayer SP can be a real help when it comes to putting the content that you want on your portable device. Its ability to assist from start to finish—finding videos, converting and transferring them—saves time and avoids confusion. To succeed, RealPlayer SP needs to do a better job of helping people find worthwhile videos to transfer, or they&#8217;ll stop using it after just a few tries.</p>
<h5 class="subhed">Corrections and Amplifications</h5>
<p><sup>1</sup> Real Networks says its RealPlayer SP Beta&#8217;s Twitter video sharing capability has an automatic URL-shortening tool built in. This week&#8217;s Mossberg Solution product said the product lacked such a feature, because it never activated itself in our tests.</p>
<p class="tagline">Edited by Walter S. Mossberg</p>
<p><strong>Write to </strong> Katherine Boehret at <a href="mailto:mossbergsolution@wsj.com">mossbergsolution@wsj.com</a></p>
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		<title>Family Snapshots in the Splendor of HD</title>
		<link>http://solution.allthingsd.com/20081125/family-snapshots-in-the-splendor-of-hd/</link>
		<comments>http://solution.allthingsd.com/20081125/family-snapshots-in-the-splendor-of-hd/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 26 Nov 2008 01:28:02 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Katherine Boehret</dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://solution.allthingsd.com/20081125/family-snapshots-in-the-splendor-of-hd/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[This Thanksgiving, families across the country will gather around the television just as quickly as they gather around the turkey. And with good reason: Many people will be staring at beautiful high-definition TV sets.]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>This Thanksgiving, families across the country will gather around the television just as quickly as they gather around the turkey. And with good reason: Many people will be staring at beautiful high-definition TV sets. (According to the Consumer Electronics Association, 47% of U.S. households had HDTVs as of July, a percentage that&#8217;s likely to increase as the date for analog-to-digital conversion approaches.) But if <a href='http://online.wsj.com/quotes/main.html?type=djn&#038;symbol=ek'>Eastman Kodak</a> (EK) has its way, many people will be gathered round the TV this holiday season, gazing at family memories in full HD splendor.</p>
<div class="media-CENTER" style="width: 262px;"><img src="http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/images/PJ-AN732_MOSSBE_DV_20081125181301.jpg" alt="Family Snapshots in the Splendor of HD" height="394" width="262" /><br />The Kodak Theatre HD Player&#8217;s motion-sensing pointer remote works much like a mouse on a TV screen.</div>
<p>This week I tested the Kodak Theatre HD Player, the photo-centric company&#8217;s attempt to snag valuable real estate in the living room. This small, black box pulls photos and videos from computers around the house and displays them on an HDTV. It also enables the sending and receiving of photos via Kodak Gallery, and connects to Web-based photos stored on Flickr, Facebook, Picasa, .Mac and others. Podcasts, Internet Radio and updates from news feeds, weather forecasts and stock quotes are also accessible using the HD Player. And it has a terrifically simple motion-sensing remote that works like using a mouse on a TV screen.</p>
<p>But the HD Player isn&#8217;t all smiles. Its $299 price doesn&#8217;t include any built-in storage for keeping content directly on the device. It currently has no way of accessing HD movies or television shows, nor will it work with Macs. In comparison, Apple&#8217;s (AAPL) $229 Apple TV has 40 gigabytes of storage, can access HD television shows and movies via the iTunes Store, and works with Macs and Windows PCs. This is important because as budgets tighten in the current economy, gadgets have to prove their value and versatility more than ever.</p>
<p>After using the Kodak Theatre HD Player with Windows XP and Vista machines over the past week, I can conclude that this device&#8217;s interface shines in its simplicity and is a lot of fun to use. Kodak teamed with Hillcrest Labs to make the player&#8217;s motion-sensitive remote and corresponding software, which includes satisfying extra features like images that automatically magnify when the remote control&#8217;s cursor points at them and icons that make chirping sounds when selected. The remote itself is shaped to rest comfortably in a hand and has three simple buttons and a scroll wheel.</p>
<p>Quick-access memory-card slots for six types of memory cards appear on the box&#8217;s front, and two USB ports can connect to digital cameras or USB storage devices.</p>
<p>Currently, the player&#8217;s software works directly with Flickr, RadioTime (8,750 radio stations) and FrameChannel, which grants access to various &#8220;channels&#8221; like Facebook, .Mac, Picasa, People.com news and National Geographic. Kodak says it will incorporate YouTube access in January; I got a sneak peek at the interface for this and it looks well-organized.</p>
<p>Yet the HD Player&#8217;s smart combination of software and remote left me wishing it did a bit more. Photo sharing is enabled only via Kodak Gallery, so you can&#8217;t use another Web-based account to share photos directly from your TV. Likewise, a blue light on the box slowly blinks only when new Picture Mail (a message containing shared photos) is received on a Kodak Gallery account, not when new photos are added on other sources such as Flickr Photostreams or Facebook pages.</p>
<p>The Home screen of the HD Player shows four categories: Pictures &#038; Videos, Kodak Gallery, Music and Entertainment. Subcategories are where you might guess they would be, for example podcasts are listed under Entertainment. And a tiny Home icon appears in the top right corner of every screen so you can always get Home with one click. The Pictures &#038; Videos category holds photos and videos from a currently selected Windows PC.</p>
<p>An unlimited number of Windows PCs can wirelessly pair with the player as long as they have special Kodak software installed on them. But only one PC&#8217;s content can be accessed at a time. I toggled between two paired computers without a problem, but would&#8217;ve preferred accessing music and photos from both sources simultaneously.</p>
<p>The HD Player&#8217;s motion-sensing pointer remote works much like a Wii remote control. Wherever you move it, a tiny leaf-shaped cursor appears on-screen. A Hide button on the remote will hide the cursor while you watch slideshows. The remote&#8217;s Back button is helpful; when pressed, it backs you out of one screen using visual effects that make the screen shrink into the TV as if you were moving backward.</p>
<p>A play button appears on the first photo in a folder so users can select this icon to quickly start slideshows. Whenever the HD Player receives new Kodak Gallery Picture Mail, or a slideshow is created on a connected PC, yellow alert circles appear on the screen to notify users and a number in the middle of these yellow circles indicates how many new items are available for viewing.</p>
<p>Some content on my PCs took a little while to be recognized by the HD Player, including podcasts that I subscribe to on iTunes. When they did show up, both audio and video podcasts played without issue and on-screen playback buttons made them easy to control.</p>
<p>The HD Player uses your photos to create automatically generated slideshows, called Picture Chronicles, once a week. These Picture Chronicles use up to 50 photos from the same time of year in all of your folders, for instance grouping all Thanksgiving photos together from the past five years.</p>
<p>Kodak has plans to make its player Mac-compatible in the future and also hopes to add other partnerships with new types of content following its YouTube announcement early next year.</p>
<p>The Kodak Theatre HD Player does its job well, bringing photos and videos that might otherwise live only on your PC to your big screen HDTV. For the holidays, this device could be a real plus. But Kodak has some work to do to make this a more useful Web-connected tool.</p>
<p class="tagline">Edited by Walter S. Mossberg</p>
<ul>
<li>Email us at <a href="mailto:mossbergsolution@wsj.com" rel="external">mossbergsolution@wsj.com</a>. Find this and other columns and videos online free at the All Things Digital Web site: <a href="http://walt.allthingsd.com" rel="external">http://walt.allthingsd.com</a></li>
</ul>
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		<title>A Search Engine With a Real Eye for Videos</title>
		<link>http://solution.allthingsd.com/20081118/a-search-engine-with-a-real-eye-for-videos/</link>
		<comments>http://solution.allthingsd.com/20081118/a-search-engine-with-a-real-eye-for-videos/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 19 Nov 2008 01:52:03 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Katherine Boehret</dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://solution.allthingsd.com/20081118/a-search-engine-with-a-real-eye-for-videos/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Web video has transformed the way the Internet is used, but finding the exact clip you want can be incredibly hard. And it's no wonder, considering that sites like YouTube conduct their hunts by looking at a clip's "contextual metadata" -- tags, video title and description -- and thus can often be misled by false information.]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Web video has transformed the way the Internet is used, but finding the exact clip you want can be incredibly hard. And it&#8217;s no wonder, considering that sites like YouTube conduct their hunts by looking at a clip&#8217;s &#8220;contextual metadata&#8221; &#8212; tags, video title and description &#8212; and thus can often be misled by false information. For example, a homemade video about cooking might be inaccurately tagged with a popular search word like &#8220;Obama&#8221; so as to get more traction.</p>
<div class="media-CENTER" style="width: 380px;"><a href="http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/images/PJ-AN664_MOSSBE_G_20081118232623.jpg" rel="external" title="Click to enlarge graphic"><img src="http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/images/PJ-AN664_MOSSBE_G_20081118232623.jpg" alt="A Search Engine With a Real Eye for Videos" height="253" width="380" /></a><br />At the top of a VideoSurf results page for &#8216;Mad Men,&#8217; users can search for clips featuring specific characters.</div>
<p>This week I tested <a href="http://VideoSurf.com" rel="external">VideoSurf.com</a>, a site that claims to be the first to search videos by &#8220;seeing&#8221; images that appear in these videos. The company says its technology can analyze a clip&#8217;s visual content, as well as its metadata &#8212; especially when searching for people. VideoSurf has analyzed and categorized more than 12 billion visual moments on the Web to understand who the most important characters and scenes are in a video, and it uses this knowledge to sort clips according to relevancy.</p>
<p>Search results on VideoSurf spread out videos in a filmstrip-like format, distinguishing one scene from the next. Users can choose an option to show only faces, which helps if you&#8217;re looking for a specific person in a long video or movie. And when looking at videos from certain sources, you can select a scene from the filmstrip and jump ahead to that scene rather than sit through the entire clip.</p>
<p>When it works, VideoSurf is one of those technologies that make you wonder why someone didn&#8217;t think of it sooner. The site aggregates content from about 60 sources, including YouTube, CNN Video, Hulu, ESPN and Comedy Central, and a sorting tool weeds out unwanted results like the irksome slideshows that are labeled as videos. VideoSurf can find videos on all kinds of subjects, but it really shines when it finds well-known people.</p>
<p>But VideoSurf has some rough edges and doesn&#8217;t always work as it should. In its defense, the site is still in its public beta, or trial, stage, and plans to be full-blown by early next year. Right now, one of its best features, the ability to jump ahead to specific scenes, works with video from only a handful of sources including YouTube, MetaCafe, DailyMotion and Google (GOOG) Video. Videos from Hulu.com confusingly allow jumping ahead only from certain screens.</p>
<p>Additionally, I came across a couple of videos that were no longer available, though they were listed in search results. And a customizable VideoSurf home page for users with accounts on the site saves searches but not specific clips; VideoSurf plans to fix this next week by adding a favorites page where users can store and share favorite videos with others.</p>
<p>Still, I really grew to like VideoSurf&#8217;s clear way of displaying content that would be otherwise buried within videos. Rather than trying to guess a video&#8217;s contents by looking at a single representative image, VideoSurf&#8217;s filmstrip views showed me exactly what I&#8217;d be watching. In many cases, I viewed a video I might not have otherwise watched because its filmstrip showed shots of scenes that looked interesting.</p>
<p>On the left-hand side of the search-results page, VideoSurf users can narrow results according to Content Type, Categories and Video Sources to see just what they&#8217;re looking for &#8212; or, often more important, what they&#8217;re not looking for. Content Type, for example, includes slideshows, Web series, full television episodes and full movies; a search can include only videos in a particular category (say, slideshows) or exclude that category altogether by unmarking the box beside it.</p>
<p>Most search-results pages include tiled still images at the top representing the characters in the videos. By selecting one of these characters, users can refine search results to show only videos with that character. For example, I typed the title of a favorite television show, &#8220;Brothers and Sisters,&#8221; into the search box and saw the names and images of seven actors on the show at the top of the screen. I selected Sally Field and was redirected to results of videos featuring only the mother she plays on the show.</p>
<p>I used VideoSurf to search for Beyonce&#8217;s &#8220;Single Ladies&#8221; music video, and then changed the date parameters to find only videos posted this week. This retrieved a Saturday Night Live skit in which the pop singer spoofs her own video with help from three men in tights &#8212; including Justin Timberlake. While the SNL skit ran, a list of related videos appeared in a column on the right, including clips of J.T.&#8217;s past SNL skits.</p>
<p>Occasionally, annotations appear on videos, but these come from the source &#8212; not VideoSurf. If overlaid text appears on YouTube videos, it can be turned off using an icon in the bottom right of the YouTube screen. Video-sharing sites that use introductory pages such as pre-rolls before each video will still show those pages.</p>
<p>VideoSurf makes it easy to send specific clips of videos to friends. I did so by selecting a Share option and adjusting slide bars to trim the clip to start and end at scenes I preferred. Clips shared with friends via email are sent with the VideoSurf filmstrip, giving others the ability to also know what the video will include so that they, too, can discern whether or not they want to watch it.</p>
<p>Clips can be shared on social-networking sites like del.icio.us, MySpace and Facebook, though VideoSurf&#8217;s helpful filmstrip didn&#8217;t show up on these sites like it did in emails.</p>
<p>I also tested an add-on for the Mozilla Firefox browser called Greasemonkey that works with VideoSurf. When installed, this displays VideoSurf&#8217;s helpful filmstrip beneath search results from Google Video, YouTube, Yahoo (YHOO) or CBS.com (CBS). Once installed, filmstrips illustrating important scenes appear along with the normal text results for videos, and some of the filmstrips enable jumping ahead to specific scenes. This somewhat techie Greasemonkey extension can save people the extra step of making a separate visit to VideoSurf.com to watch a specific clip.</p>
<p>VideoSurf uses smart technology that can save people the aggravation of watching videos that aren&#8217;t what they appear to be. Since so much Web content now includes videos, a visual search tool that can better assess videos like VideoSurf is a good idea. When this site improves its now-flaky ability to jump ahead to specific scenes in videos, it will be even more valuable.</p>
<p class="tagline">Edited by Walter S. Mossberg</p>
<ul>
<li>Email us at <a href="mailto:mossbergsolution@wsj.com" rel="external">mossbergsolution@wsj.com</a>. Find this and other columns and videos online free at the All Things Digital Web site: <a href="http://walt.allthingsd.com" rel="external">http://walt.allthingsd.com</a></li>
</ul>
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		<title>Flip Camcorder Goes High-Def</title>
		<link>http://solution.allthingsd.com/20081111/flip-camcorder-goes-high-def/</link>
		<comments>http://solution.allthingsd.com/20081111/flip-camcorder-goes-high-def/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 12 Nov 2008 01:40:05 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Katherine Boehret</dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://solution.allthingsd.com/20081111/flip-camcorder-goes-high-def/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Katie reviews the Pure Digital Technologies Flip MinoHD, a handheld camcorder that is capable of capturing high-definition footage in 1280×720 pixel resolution, or 720p. (The regular Mino records at 640×480 pixels.)]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Over the past couple of years, Pure Digital Technologies has changed the way people think about video cameras by turning these heavy, expensive, intimidating devices into affordable, user-friendly gadgets that fit into a shirt pocket.</p>
<p>To keep the prices of its Flip camcorders affordable, Pure Digital always made some sacrifices in quality and style. And though the company improved on style in June by releasing the sleek $180 Flip Mino, it stuck with standard definition while other companies boasted high-definition capturing capabilities.</p>
<div class="media-CENTER" style="width: 380px;"><a href="http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/images/PJ-AN617_MOSSBE_G_20081111185248.jpg" rel="external" title="Click to enlarge graphic"><img src="http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/images/PJ-AN617_MOSSBE_G_20081111185248.jpg" alt=" Flip MinoHD" height="253" width="380" /></a><br />The $230 Flip MinoHD is the first camcorder from Pure Digital Technologies to use high definition.</div>
<p>Today, Pure Digital adds a high-def member to its family: the $230 Flip MinoHD. This handheld camcorder looks like the original Mino (more digital camera than video camera), but the MinoHD is capable of capturing high-definition footage in 1280&#215;720 pixel resolution, or 720p. (The regular Mino records at 640&#215;480 pixels.)</p>
<p>Both cameras can be personalized with colorful designs that people can either make themselves or select from <a href="http://TheFlip.com" rel="external">TheFlip.com</a>. It&#8217;s also possible to upload personal photos to decorate the camcorder. This personalization process is free on new Minos, but people who want to personalize Minos they already own are out of luck.</p>
<p>I brought my MinoHD along on a weekend trip to a lake in North Carolina and used it to capture beautiful images of leaves at their color-changing peak and games of charades among friends. Overall, I really liked the quality of the footage, which had rich hues and sharp details such as glistening ripples of waves on the lake&#8217;s surface. And the MinoHD&#8217;s improved sound even clearly picked up the voices of two guys paddling away from our dock in a canoe.</p>
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<p>But if you&#8217;re the type of person who likes to play back videos after capturing them, you might be disappointed that the MinoHD&#8217;s 1.5-inch screen is no larger than the previous models. This means you won&#8217;t get a good look at the high-definition footage until you play clips back on a computer.</p>
<p>Another downside is that high-definition footage is much too large to easily send to others in its original format, so it must be compressed to 480&#215;270-pixel resolution for sharing on Pure Digital&#8217;s software. Previous Flips also compressed videos for sharing (the Mino uses 360&#215;270), but I particularly missed the ability to easily show others my videos in HD quality via the camera&#8217;s software. Pure Digital says it&#8217;ll enable HD sharing through a partner company by early next year.</p>
<p>The Flip MinoHD weighs 3.3 ounces and has four gigabytes of internal memory, or twice that of its predecessor, yet both hold 60 minutes of video because the HD format takes up twice as much space. In true Pure Digital style, the camera&#8217;s seven buttons are easy to use: Press the red record button to start and stop, and press plus or minus buttons to zoom in or out with a 2x digital zoom while recording. A play/pause button plays back videos and a delete button gets rid of unwanted footage to free up memory; alternatively, videos can be offloaded to a PC.</p>
<p>The MinoHD comes loaded with new software called FlipShare. I found this worked much better than Pure Digital&#8217;s previous sharing software, which was rather straightforward but had its share of quirks and rough edges. FlipShare worked on Macs and PCs running Windows Vista and XP. I should note that the software crashed and insisted on changing the color scheme on my Vista laptop the first two times I plugged in my MinoHD, but I had no problems after that.</p>
<p>FlipShare&#8217;s use of drag-and-drop video organizing resembles the way that Apple (AAPL) iTunes songs can be dragged into playlists. And just as iTunes searches for music when it&#8217;s installed, FlipShare scoured my computers for other Flip videos, neatly arranging those clips into folders. I easily named videos, and clips not saved to the computer were clearly marked as &#8220;Unsaved.&#8221; Eight large icons at the bottom of the FlipShare software illustrate what can be done with the videos: save to computer; play full screen; share via email, greeting card or Web site (YouTube, AOL Video or MySpace &#8212; no Facebook as of yet); or create a movie, snapshot or DVD.</p>
<p>FlipShare works with other Pure Digital camcorders, and users of the older software will get a prompt to upgrade to FlipShare next week. It&#8217;s also fully compatible with Apple&#8217;s video applications, including iMovie and iDVD. And when I plugged in my MinoHD, iTunes opened and asked if I wanted to import my MinoHD footage.</p>
<p>Pure Digital says the MinoHD&#8217;s internal battery lasts for two hours of overall use (recording, playback, standby, etc.) or for 90 minutes of straight recording. Compared with other Flip video cameras, this battery life is half that of the Mino and on par with the older Flip Ultra, which runs on two double-A batteries.</p>
<p>After using the fully charged device to record 60 minutes of footage over a weekend, I still had about one hour remaining. It charges by plugging its pop-out USB connector into any computer&#8217;s USB port, and will also work with some USB chargers, though not Apple&#8217;s. Pure Digital will sell a standalone charger for $20 that should be available by the end of the year.</p>
<p>If you&#8217;re in the market for a simple camcorder that records high-quality video, the Flip MinoHD is definitely worth $50 more than the regular Flip Mino. But don&#8217;t say I didn&#8217;t warn you so when you&#8217;re bummed out by the screen&#8217;s still-small size and its inability to share true HD footage via the FlipShare software.</p>
<p>&#8211; <em>Edited by Walter S. Mossberg</em></p>
<ul>
<li>Email us at <a href="mailto:mossbergsolution@wsj.com" rel="external">mossbergsolution@wsj.com</a>. Find this and other columns and videos online free at the All Things Digital Web site: <a href="http://walt.allthingsd.com" rel="external">http://walt.allthingsd.com</a></li>
</ul>
<span class="fdPrintIncludeParentsPreviousSiblings"></span><span class="fdPrintIncludeParentsChildren"></span>]]></content:encoded>
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		<title>Tapping Your TiVo's Hidden Talents</title>
		<link>http://solution.allthingsd.com/20080305/tapping-your-tivos-hidden-talents/</link>
		<comments>http://solution.allthingsd.com/20080305/tapping-your-tivos-hidden-talents/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 05 Mar 2008 00:01:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Katherine Boehret</dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://solution.allthingsd.com/20080305/tapping-your-tivos-hidden-talents/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[TiVo has a few tricks up its sleeve that might surprise longtime users and new owners alike. This column includes just a handful of those tricks and highlights some features that may make TiVo more useful.]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>TiVo is well-known as a high-end DVR with a great user interface. Its bubble-popping sound effects and grinning, animated mascot help users forget how much it costs to use. (TiVo boxes range from $100 to $600, and TiVo service costs $129 for one year when prepaid.)</p>
<div class="media-LEFT" style="width: 245px;"><img src="http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/images/PJ-AL927_MOSSBE_20080304191857.jpg" alt="Tivo" height="300" width="245" /></div>
<p>A fondness for TiVo has encouraged users to refer to it with designated nicknames and/or genders. A teacher friend of mine was recently asked by a student if her husband&#8217;s name was TiVo after the child heard her say she would have to tell TiVo about a new TV show. But like any old friend &#8212; or spouse &#8212; who has been around for a while, TiVo has a few tricks up its sleeve that might surprise longtime users and new owners alike. This column includes just a handful of those tricks and highlights some features that may make TiVo more useful. These tips are for everyday users, not serious hackers, and many others exist.</p>
<h5 class="subhed">Remote-Control Codes</h5>
<p>Each of these codes is entered one time to enable an otherwise-hidden function, and three chimes signal the code is set. These functions can be disabled by entering the code a second time, or if TiVo is rebooted.</p>
<p>Clock: If you miss having a VCR nearby to tell you the time while you watch TV, TiVo can help. A digital clock can be programmed to show up in the lower right-hand corner of your television screen by pressing &#8220;SELECT-PLAY-SELECT-9-SELECT.&#8221;</p>
<p>While playing recorded shows, this clock displays the current time and the elapsed time of the program you&#8217;re watching. Personally, I check a show&#8217;s progress by pressing the remote&#8217;s Play button to see the progress bar, and the Info button shows the current time. But the on-screen clock might come in handy when you&#8217;re watching TV on a terrible date and you don&#8217;t want to get caught glancing at your watch.</p>
<p>30-second skip: One of the glorious functions of TiVo and other DVRs is their ability to fast-forward through commercials. But it takes practice to know when to press Play so as to completely miss commercials.</p>
<p>If you&#8217;re unsure about your fast-forwarding technique, TiVo can be permanently set to skip ahead in 30-second increments, by entering &#8220;SELECT-PLAY-SELECT-3-0-SELECT.&#8221; This code must be set while watching a recorded show. After that, the 30-second skipping works whenever you press the &#8220;Skip To Tick&#8221; button, which looks like an arrow pointing right to a straight line.</p>
<p>TiVo says this code won&#8217;t work for longer time increments, like 90 seconds, and I tried using various increments, to no avail. Still, pressing this button about five or seven times in a row (depending on the show) gets you through commercials with less guesswork.</p>
<p>Disappearing progress bar: TiVo&#8217;s progress bar, which shows how far along a program has progressed in terms of the entire show&#8217;s duration, appears at various moments, such as when you first play a recorded show or unpause. This indicator lingers on the screen for just about three seconds, but if this seems too long, you can enter &#8220;SELECT-PLAY-SELECT-PAUSE-SELECT&#8221; to set the progress bar to disappear after less than a second.</p>
<p>I tried this setting on my TiVo, but one second showed only a quick blink of the progress bar, not enough time to see anything.</p>
<h5 class="subhed">Number Shortcuts</h5>
<p>From the TiVo Central menu, pressing each number on the remote control&#8217;s numeric keypad skips directly to a different tool. Some of the more useful shortcuts include pressing &#8220;1&#8243; to go to Season Pass Manager (a list of programs that are set to automatically record every episode), &#8220;4&#8243; to go to Search Title and &#8220;8&#8243; to go to TiVo Suggestions.</p>
<h5 class="subhed">Viewing Tips</h5>
<p>TiVo can display a programming guide in a TV-Guide-like grid, or as a two-columned TiVo Live Guide that can list future shows for hours or days out. The top of Live Guide gives a detailed description of each selected program, along with its duration and TV rating.</p>
<p>The Now Playing list shows content stored on a TiVo. By default, this list is organized in time sequential order with same-series TV shows grouped into folders. Remote-control shortcuts re-sort this list: pressing &#8220;1&#8243; switches from sequential to alphabetical order and vice versa; pressing &#8220;2&#8243; ungroups shows to display each title; shows are regrouped into folders when &#8220;2&#8243; is pressed again.</p>
<h5 class="subhed">Lesser-Known Features</h5>
<p>Universal Swivel Search is a way of seeing how TiVo&#8217;s various shows and movies are related to one another. It lists details about each program, including actors, directors, tags associated with a show (like love, dating and addiction) and suggestions of similar content. Swivel Search is accessed through the Find Programs menu or More Options while looking at a recorded show.</p>
<p>By selecting a Swivel Search detail about a particular show, such as one of its actors, you can see what else he or she starred in and whether or not that show or movie is available through TiVo or <a href="http://Amazon.com" rel="external">Amazon.com</a>&#8217;s Unbox. Unbox downloads movies directly to your TiVo ranging from $2 to $15 each depending on whether you rent or buy a movie.</p>
<p>Plenty of free Internet content can be downloaded from the Web to your TiVo. But TiVo confusingly places this content in two menus: Find Programs and Music, Photos, Products &amp; More. Under Find Programs, a Download TV &amp; Movies section offers Amazon Unbox movies and free TiVoCast content. The latter can be set to automatically download with Season Pass settings, such as The Onion&#8217;s weekly video or ExerciseTV&#8217;s twice weekly videos.</p>
<p>The Music, Photos, Products &amp; More menu holds content like photos and unprotected MP3s from a nearby computer, podcasts, Rhapsody music, Yahoo! Weather and Traffic and on-screen games. You can even buy movie tickets through Fandango.</p>
<p>TiVo takes up valuable space in a home entertainment center, so it&#8217;s important for the company to make sure its content is varied and useful. The codes and shortcuts mentioned can change the way you use this valuable device every day.</p>
<p class="tagline">Edited by Walter S. Mossberg</p>
<p><strong>Email</strong> <a href="mailto:mossbergsolution@wsj.com" rel="external">mossbergsolution@wsj.com</a></p>
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		<title>Downloadable Movies in a Box: Where's the Magic?</title>
		<link>http://solution.allthingsd.com/20071010/downloadable-movies-in-a-box-wheres-the-magic/</link>
		<comments>http://solution.allthingsd.com/20071010/downloadable-movies-in-a-box-wheres-the-magic/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 10 Oct 2007 00:01:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Katherine Boehret</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Internet]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Katherine Boehret]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[The Mossberg Solution]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Walt Mossberg]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[television]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Amazon]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[bandwidth]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[controls]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[download]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[DSL]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[DVD]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Fandango]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[movie]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[movies]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[MPAA]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Netflix]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Peapod]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[peer to peer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[price]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Vudu]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[Movie download service Vudu likes to think of itself as the instant-gratification alternative to running to the video store. But the device, which plugs into your TV and Internet connection, has a poor movie selection and slow downloads.]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>With help from the Web and a little extra cash, almost everything becomes more convenient. Groceries are delivered directly to homes using services like Peapod, rental cars are available in easier-to-reach locations using Zipcar and movie tickets are bought in advance through Fandango.</p>
<p>But how much is too much when it comes to shelling out a little more for convenience, and are you really getting what you pay for? This week, I tested what could be thought of as the ultimate convenience: a box that plugs into your television and Internet connection, letting you download movies whenever you want to watch them. The box costs $399 and doesn&#8217;t include the price of movies, which must be rented or purchased for fees as high as $4 or $20 each, respectively.</p>
<p>This box, called Vudu, comes from a Silicon Valley company of the same name (<a href="http://www.vudu.com" rel="external">www.vudu.com</a>). Vudu&#8217;s biggest strengths are its easy setup, good picture quality and simple user interface, easily navigated using a scroll-wheel remote control.</p>
<div class="media-LEFT" style="width: 245px;"><img src="http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/images/PJ-AL098_MOSSBE_20071009180632.jpg" alt="Mossberg" height="310" width="245" /><br />Vudu costs $399 plus prices to rent or own each movie title.</div>
<p>If the director yelled &#8220;Cut!&#8221; right here, Vudu would be a box-office smash. But actually using this device is just one problem after another. For starters, though Vudu says it has relationships with the major Hollywood studios, many of the 5,000 titles it offers don&#8217;t seem to be popular by mainstream standards. Lots of them are old or obscure. For instance, you won&#8217;t find any of the &#8220;Pirates of the Caribbean&#8221; movies, but how about a 1984 sci-fi/fantasy movie called &#8220;The Ice Pirates,&#8221; instead?</p>
<p>If you do find a movie that you&#8217;d like to watch, you must have a bandwidth speed of at least two megabits per second to download it instantly; millions of broadband homes have slower connections than that. Vudu offers to measure your bandwidth on its home page before you buy it. I tested Vudu for a week on a typical home-type DSL line, and my connection only clocks about 1.5 Mbps, so it took me about 45 minutes to download each movie.</p>
<p>While Vudu&#8217;s $399 price tag might take some getting used to, its fees for buying or renting each movie could be harder to swallow after a month&#8217;s worth of use: as much as $80 if you bought one top-tier movie a week. Worse, you have to pay in advance. Rather than charging your credit card on a pay-as-you-go basis, Vudu customers must choose a $20, $50 or $100 amount at setup from which movie fees are deducted. When your account hits $0, the amount selected at setup is charged and the debit process begins again.</p>
<p>On top of all this, Vudu relies on a peer-to-peer network system for faster downloading. So, essentially, this company is using your bandwidth to help it save money it would have otherwise spent on its own servers and bandwidth.</p>
<p>I set up Vudu in a snap, plugging it into three things: a wall outlet, the back of a high-definition Sony Bravia television and an Ethernet cord. Wireless connections won&#8217;t work with Vudu without a special &#8220;bridge&#8221; or a power-line adapter. Once Vudu turned on, a friendly voice guided me through setting it up, and I got started in minutes.</p>
<p>Vudu&#8217;s home screen is broken down into five menus: Find Movies, New Releases, My Movies, My Wish List and Info &amp; Settings. I used the tiny remote, which fits perfectly in a hand, and rolled through menus using its scroll wheel. This wheel can be pressed down to select something, saving me from glancing down at the buttons. Also, Vudu uses an RF (radio frequency) antenna so you don&#8217;t have to point the remote at it.</p>
<p>In Find Movies, I looked through 18 genres, including biography, romance, family and historical. A sorting feature can filter movies by release date, MPAA rating, critics&#8217; rating, studio, availability to rent and availability to own. An on-screen alphabet can be used to type in names of actors, directors or movie titles; the scroll wheel speeds up this process.</p>
<p>Parental controls, which are only accessible with a special code, can be set to block a child from buying or renting movies with certain ratings.</p>
<p>Vudu likes to think of itself as the instant-gratification alternative to running to the video store. But not many people I know still go to Blockbuster for a DVD; instead, they use mail-delivery services like Netflix. Compared with the 85,000 titles offered by Netflix, the selection at Vudu is pretty slim. A more similar comparison might be Amazon&#8217;s Unbox for TiVo, which has slightly less than 5,000 movies.</p>
<p>Though I couldn&#8217;t find numerous titles, I did discover plenty of movies I&#8217;d never heard of. A search for last year&#8217;s &#8220;Casino Royale&#8221; returned Robert DeNiro&#8217;s &#8220;Casino&#8221; from 1995, as well as two Asian films, &#8220;Casino Tycoon&#8221; and &#8220;Casino Tycoon II.&#8221; Since I never saw Helen Mirren&#8217;s &#8220;The Queen,&#8221; I tried to find her Oscar-winning performance on Vudu. But the closest I came to royalty were &#8220;Barbarella: Queen of the Galaxy,&#8221; an alternative name for the cheesy 1968 Jane Fonda sci-fi flick, and &#8220;Prom Queen,&#8221; which fell under the Gay and Lesbian category. I tried to laugh this off by watching Steve Carell&#8217;s &#8220;Evan Almighty.&#8221; But typing &#8220;E-V-A&#8230;&#8221; into a title search only returned &#8220;Deliver Us From Eva,&#8221; an R-rated 2003 comedy starring LL Cool J.</p>
<p>I searched and found the same three titles on Netflix, though Amazon Unbox only had &#8220;Evan Almighty.&#8221;</p>
<p>I downloaded two romantic comedies: &#8220;Music and Lyrics,&#8221; starring Hugh Grant, a $4 rental, and a Diane Keaton movie called &#8220;Because I Said So,&#8221; which I bought for $20. I also rented &#8220;Zodiac,&#8221; a suspense movie starring Jake Gyllenhaal, for $4. Movies that you own never expire, but rented flicks must be watched within 30 days and expire 24 hours after you start watching.</p>
<p>In the case of each movie, the original estimates for time to download were daunting; two started out by estimating &#8220;Available in a few hours&#8221; and one movie&#8217;s estimate read &#8220;Available in a few days.&#8221; But all three finished downloading in about 45 to 50 minutes. Only one movie can download at a time.</p>
<p>While watching movies, the remote&#8217;s scroll wheel can be used to fast forward or rewind scenes. Scrolling faster moves you farther ahead or back (the fastest jump moves you 30 minutes); the slowest scroll moves you ahead or back five seconds.</p>
<p>Vudu might cast a spell on users who don&#8217;t mind its poor selection and high-bandwidth requirement to deliver instant downloads. But for me, the convenience of Vudu is no convenience at all. As is, its lackluster selection, high prices and slow downloads make it more of a letdown than anything else.</p>
<p><signature>Edited by Walter S. Mossberg</signature>
<p><strong>Email</strong> <a href="mailto:mossbergsolution@wsj.com" rel="external">mossbergsolution@wsj.com</a></p>
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