The Consumer Electronics Show has been for many years the place to see a preview of the new gadgets coming out in the coming year. Thanks to Leo Laporte and his TWIT Network as well as Revision3 I was able to see everything that was going on at CES without having to go all the way out to Las Vegas! One thing about CES is that there is a lot of weird or gimmicky stuff but, along all that, there are some really cool gadgets and I would like t share them with you.

One of the biggest things of CES this year were tablet PCs, although I have in the past not been much of a fan of Tablet PCs, but these new ones are really cool. The one that I liked the most was the Lenovo U1, this is a truley innovative device because it has a base that when it’s docked, it looks like a normal latop computer and runs Windows 7! However, you can pull the monitor part off the base and allow it to work as a slate and once it is off the base, it instantly switches over to Linux and goes right back to Windows 7 when you re-dock it.  This device is the best tablet computer I have ever seen, but, I have a feeling Apple will one-up Lenovo at there even at the end of the month.

One of the biggest gimmicks of CES, was 3D TVs, personally I don’t want to watch TV in 3D and definitly not if I have to wear 3D glasses. I think this will be a passing trend and won’t catch on.

Something, I found interesting is the Boxee Box which allows you to watch internet content both from television networks and web content on your TV using an internet connection and is a competitor to the very popular Roku box. Between these two boxes, I think I won’t need a Mac Mini for my media center in the future and I can use either a Roku or Boxee box and save over $300!

Another big thing was smartphones, Google’s Nexus One was released just before the show adn was there on display. The other big announcment is that the Palm Pre and Palm Pixi will be coming to Verizon in the first quarter of this year!

There were many other smaller gadgets that you may want to look at but, these are just my thoughts and what stuck out to me!

As I mentioned in my previous post, I am going to put together a full Media center solution that will be 100% cable free and will let you access all your web content online on your big TV and be without cable. I will jsut get into it

TV:

LG – 47″ Class / 1080p / 240Hz / LCD-LED HDTV: $1,800

If you need to save some money then you could find a cheaper TV instead of this one. This is a very nice TV and I really like the 4 HDMI inputs!

Computer:

Base Mac Mini: $600

You could, if you want to save money you could buy a used or old Mac Mini or any other computer although, this solution is designed for a Mac. You could also use your old computer as a Media center like I do on my desk and save money here!

Software:

Firefox: FREE

VLC Media Player: FREE

Flash Player: FREE

Miro Podcatcher:FREE

iTunes: FREE

Game Console: (Optional)

Nintento Wii: $250

I mentioned in a previous post about why I love the Wii and it is a great machine to add some more entertainment to the media center! this is not necessary.

Accessories:

Display Adapter: Mini Display to VGA: $30

VGA to HDMI Cable: $10

Total: $2,690 (Plus applicable taxes and fees)

For less than $2,700 you can have a full media center with everything you need. The great part of this system is that you don’t need to subscribe to cable or aything and you can just buy the content you want and other free web content like video podcasts as you need it! This is much betteer than having to pay a small fortune monthly for extra content you don’t want or care about. As I said you could modify this to make it more expensive or less to meet your needs but, this a good all around system that you can use. In fact, I left a sound system out of my solution but, if you want to you can add this. I hope to use a similar plan in my future home!

You know the old saying “There is nothing good on TV”, well it is sadly is true anymore. When I was on vacation last week and had no Internet and just cable TV it was really hard to find something to watch. Watching TV has become so difficult especially for people who have become accustomed to watching video and TV shows on the Internet.

The first problem is that unless you have digital cable or Verizon Fios you have to blindly flip through channels trying to find a show you are interested in. Even if you find a station you are interested it may be on a commercial break and you don’t know what is on until it comes back from break. I know I am being picky but, it is a major nuisance and I am grateful that it has become possible to watch TV on the Internet with few commercial interruptions.

Speaking of commercials that is the second problem that I have is that commercial breaks go on for so long it seems as though there is an equal amount of time spent on commercials as the actual show. I much prefer the 15-second breaks that are used in online television or the option to watch a two-minute commercial in the beginning and watch the rest of the video commercial-free. But, these long two-and-a-half minute breaks are to long to keep the viewers interested in the show.

The final problem I have with cable TV is that there are times when there is nothing of interest on TV and if there is nothing else to do and this is the only source of entertainment then you could be out of luck. I know there are other forms of entertainment but, I think that for me, TV is usually my last resort and if nothing is on TV then I am bored.

The solution as I alluded to earlier is to watch content online and just cut the cable all together. The one problem is that archive or off-the-air shows are not all available online which is a shame because they are produced and all and if they are put online, they will produce revenue for the company without too much extra work! I will post my home-theater plan that will be fully cable-free and will rely mostly on the Internet.  I hope to inspire you all to use my plan and realize that cable TV has seen it’s hay-day come and pass and to see that the internet is the source of all future entertainment.

Anymore, more and more people are watching television shows on their computer instead of watching live on cable. Viewing on a computer provides the viewer with a higher resolution image and lets them view their shows whenever they want. The notion of watching television shows online began when people began torrenting shows and more recently major Television studios like CBS, NBC and ABC provide a stream of shows the day after they are broadcasted on TV.

Third-party sites as began appearing like Hulu that let you to watch shows when you want online in a flash player. The studios make money off of them by inserting brief 30 second ads in the video and making money that way. The other model is selling episode like Amazon Unbox and iTunes and sell them either by the episode or by the season and allow the customer to download and watch them anywhere. Both models have their advantages and disadvantages: the stream model is free but, you have to sit through ads, need to be connected to the Internet and shows are usually only available for a limited amount of time. Meanwhile, the download model allows you to watch your video anytime, anywhere  but, it cost money and can be seen when ever you want, but the down side is that you need to pay $2/episode. The one disadvantage for both models is that shows are usually not distributed online until the day after it is broadcasted and sometimes, it takes even longer.

I believe to preventing people from stealing content, television networks need to improve their online distribution models. First, they need to provide a larger archive online for streaming to promote their shows and stop people from pirating. Next, they need to decrease the cost for buying shows online in order to make people more likely to buy instead of streaming or pirating. Finally, and what I think is most important is that they need to release web versions on the same time the broadcast is released so that they can  get people to watch online and not be behind just because they didn’t watch the show on cable.

Two weeks ago, Internet Television pioneer, Revision3, laid off nine of their workers much to the up roar of their fans.  They also let go of five of their shows, two of which were a syndication of already popular shows.  The reason given for these drastic actions was because there was not enough of an audience for these shows and because of the current economic crisis, money is tight and they wanted to make sure Revision3 could last and continue to produce high quality videos for their fans.

Due to those circumstances, the following shows met their end: Pop Siren, Pixel Perfect, and Internet Superstar, in addition, the two syndicated shows, Epic Fu and Wine Library TV were also removed from the network line-up. In my opinion the cancellation of some of theses shows were warranted, like Internet Superstar which I though had very little value especially after the reformatting. Pop Siren was in it’s earlier days a great show that  thoroughly enjoyed but, when they moved to the 2.0 format it lost it’s value and lost my viewership. Pixel Perfect in my opinion was at the core of what Revision3 was supposed to be, a Internet version of what Tech TV was, which was high quality, technology programming. By cutting Pixel Perfect, Revision3 took one more step closer to becoming another G4. As for the syndicated shows, it was really unwise to begin the syndication in the first place and they put money in it  that they really should have used that money to invest in developing more high quality shows. Gary Vaynerchuk, host of Wine Library TV, even said that he totally agreed with cutting the shows because it was not the right move for Revision3 to spend resources on shows they do not produce.

With all that said, I think that there are still shows on the network that are not worth continuing and should have been canceled instead of Pixel Perfect. The one show I would cancel is The Digg Reel, although it is easy to produce because it is mostly video off of the Digg Video section, mixed with the host commenting on and introducing the videos. That provides very little value to the viewer and really does not deserve to be produced while Pixel Perfect got the axe.

It is unfortunate that these shows had to be canceled and talented people like Sarah Lane and Martin Sargent lost their jobs however. my hope is that Revision3 uses these cancelations as a refresh of the network. I hope they will go back to their roots and go back to informative shows instead of some of the junk they have been producing in recent times.

Anymore, I seldom watch my favorite television shows when they actually air on cable for the first time. This is for two reasons: first, I have recently cut back on how many shows that I watch but also,  I have began watching the shows over the internet from the network’s websites and other joint ventures like the one I am going to talk about today. As I mentioned in a prior post,  I love for buying shows off the Unbox On-Demand Video Store from Amazon, but, I also like save money watching by watching TV shows from Hulu, which is a joint-venture between several production companies. This service allows people to stream TV shows and movies for free with only brief advertisements. This is a great service,  because no one wants to pay for every single episode they want to watch in most cases just once, plus the shows can be watched anytime they want, although shows do “expire” at some point but, for the most part shows usually stay up for the whole season. Another advantage of watching shows on Hulu is you actually save time, a 30 minute show is only 23 minutes on Hulu and allows you to enjoy your shows more together instead of having four  2-minute commercial breaks breakingup the show making it more much more disjointed and harder to follow.

This is a great way to try out new shows that you might be interested in or are unable to sit down and watch because of your busy schdule. Hulu allows the viewers to pick the time that is best to watch and enjoy the show at their lesiure. Also, by watching on your own computer screen, you get a better quality image because it is usually higher resolution than a television. I believe that as more and more networks put their shows online, the new generation will begin to not pay for a cable television subscription and will instead watch as many free shows on Hulu as possible and then buy shows their either really like or cannot get on Hulu. I believe that this is the future of Television and between the shift of regular networks putting their content online and the further development of Internet-based video networks cable will cease to exist