A new extension to TiVo Inc.’s portable video service will let mobile subscribers watch prerecorded television shows on Windows-based hand-held devices.
Until now, owners of the TiVo Series2 digital video recorder with the company’s $12.95 monthly service could transfer their TiVo shows to Windows-based computers including laptops.
With the change, they can watch recordings on Windows Mobile-based Portable Media Centers, smart phones and Pocket PCs as well.
“By extending the TiVoToGo service to support multiple Windows Mobile-based devices, TiVo is enabling our subscribers to watch their favorite TV shows whenever and wherever they want,” said Matt Wisk, TiVo senior vice president and chief marketing officer.
TiVoToGo is still incompatible with portable devices running PalmOS or Linux, said Jim Denney, TiVo’s director of product marketing. He said the company may make those systems compatible at some point.
Video cameras go disposable: For years, disposable cameras have been a magnet for last-minute photographic whimsy, encouraging all manner of embarrassing pictures from weddings and other social events.
Watch out: There’s now a disposable video camera.
The $29.99 pocket-sized digital video cameras are able to capture up to 20 minutes of video and sound.
CVS Corp. stores, which has exclusive rights to sell them, will process the camera for $12.99 and return a DVD; users also can e-mail video and video greeting cards.
Pure Digital Technologies Inc. developed and designed the camera with just three buttons. One starts and stops recording, another is used to play back video and the third deletes recorded segments.
Grant Pill, director of photography and imaging at CVS, said the camera is ideal for people who don’t want to spend hundreds of dollars or fuss with too many controls.
Available now in the Northeast and elsewhere by the end of the month, the video camera looks similar to a point-and-shoot disposable camera, except it’s held vertically to film.
The camcorder weighs 5.5 ounces, Pill said, and is about the size of an MP3 player.
Users watch what they’re filming through a rectangular, 1.4-inch wide color display. There are no zoom features. After filming a segment, the user can review what’s been recorded and choose to delete the segment at any time during playback.
“George Lucas isn’t going to use this to shoot ‘Star Wars IV,’ ” Pill said, “but a budding George Lucas may use this to shoot something in his back yard.”
U.N. humanitarian game is a hit: The United Nations says it has a surprise hit with a video game meant to show just how cool humanitarian aid work can be.
“Food Force” puts gamers in command of a crack team from the World Food Program out to help the people of the fictitious island of Sheylan. Over six missions, gamers pilot a helicopter, negotiate a dangerous road and distribute food rations.
“The story we want people to go away with is that there are hungry people in the world and feeding them is more than a full-time job, and it’s groups like WFP that do it,” food program spokesman Justin Roche said.
The free game, which cost about $300,000 and took three years to make, has been downloaded more than 1 million times in the six weeks since it first appeared in mid-April at food-force.com, the World Food Program said.
Language spoken by 35,000 has Google: Not many people have heard of Romansch. But in the future, those looking for Web sites in Switzerland may find themselves trying to decipher this Latin-linked language.
That’s because Google Inc., the Internet’s leading search engine provider, is now offering its service in Romansch, a language spoken by just 35,000 people in the mountains of southeastern Switzerland, the company said Wednesday.
The Swiss government has passed laws to protect the minority Romansch language, such as requiring its use in schools and on bank notes, but speakers will now have the opportunity to “tschertgar il Web” – or search the Web – in their native language.
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