Pioneer's GPS products don't make huge waves in the Stateside navigation market, but it's actually got some fairly broad patents on route guidance and mapping, and apparently Garmin's infringing them. That's at least the story Pioneer's telling to the US International Trade Commission, where it's filed a complaint against Garmin and asked for a ban on sales of GPS products that infringe the patents. Obviously that would shake things up in a big way, but we clearly don't have the whole story here -- Pioneer and Garmin have apparently been negotiating for some time, and the two companies are currently fighting it out in the German court system as well. We'll see how this one shakes out -- stay tuned.

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As a sophomore in college I wrote a presentation on "the next generation home" wherein I discussed topics I had researched, ranging from "the information superhighway" (this was 1992, before Mosaic was even in beta) to home automation to interactive television. The thinking was we'd have amazing, automagically working technology controlling our home and our media, it would all come soon and cheap, and work, for lack of a better term, like magic.

Here we are in 2008, and while technology's come a long way, only the rich have home automation and most of the time they spend using it involves rebooting their house. When it comes to interactive television, however, the vision of watching TV and doing cool things like seeing real-time sports statistics, selecting alternate viewpoints, or playing an interactive game just hasn't come to any home I know of. The only major improvements to TV technologies in the past 15 years are: the mainstream availability of HDTV sets and programming, on-demand movie watching, and DVRs. And these improvements are all evolutionary ones, not a single bit revolutionary.

If you haven't noticed, China's going all out to improve itself before the world fixes its eyes upon Beijing in just over a week. Rather than plunking down license fees to use a protocol that's widely accepted, China has chosen to create its own digital TV standard: CMMB. Amazingly, RAmos has actually churned out a PMP to take advantage of said standard, and just in time for the 2008 Olympics. Unfortunately, we really know nothing about the iTV except that it can understand CMMB, so screen size, internal storage and everything else remains unknown. Heck, we don't even know how expensive it is -- but hey, it supports CMMB (for the three weeks you're in China, after which it's partially worthless)!

[Via iTech News Net]

We knew it was coming, and after waiting for quite some time for FreeSat to go from concept to reality, television viewers across the UK can finally indulge. If you'll recall, a recent survey found that just 5-percent of Europe's HDTV owners actually bothered to tune into HD programming, but now that number is likely to change. Effective today, 98-percent of the UK can fork out a one-time fee of £49 ($96) to £120 ($234) in order to acquire a FreeSat set-top-box, and after an £80 ($156) installation, users will have subscription-free access to BBC HD, ITV HD (coming soon), Channel 4's digital service and around 70 other TV / radio channels. Better still, that number is slated to rise to 200 before the year's end, and unsurprisingly, the launch is expected to boost available high-def offerings in the region. Anyone across the pond have their equipment set up already? How's the service?

[Thanks, Ivan]

Don't look now, but it seems that three rivals in the UK have found enough love in their hearts (or promise for profitability) to team up for the good of the consumer. Reportedly, the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 will be joining hands in order to deliver an on-demand service that hopes to "bring together hundreds of hours of television programs in one place" -- a collaborative effort once known as Project Kangaroo. Of course, the grand idea still has to be approved by the BBC Trust and other broadcasters' boards, and an official name for the service still has to be thought up, but at least the wheels are apparently turning, right? We're hearing that content from the trio will be available for "free download, streaming, rental and purchase via the internet, with expansion onto other platforms planned," and just in case you were curious, the iPlayer, ITV's catch-up service and Channel 4oD will indeed coexist with the new aggregator. Hang tight UK, the to-be-named service is set to go live sometime next year should things pan out nicely.

[Via Yahoo / Reuters]

Although there's a lot of grumbling in the UK about that £135 ($270) yearly television license fee (only $87 for a black and white set!), it's hard to complain that the BBC doesn't try to use all that money in cool ways. Adding to their already-ambitious plans to distribute HDTV through torrent, datacasting, and IPTV, the Beeb announced today that, after years of delays, they've been approved to pair up with ITV and launch a free 200-channel HD-capable satellite service called Freesat in the spring of 2008. The move is designed to provide digital service to the estimated 25% of the British public that can't get the successful Freeview DVB-T service, but it'll also be free to any license payer who ponys up for one of the several available interactive receivers. Hmm, that's an interesting version of "free," must be the British spelling.

[Via TechDigest]

Think of the Addlogix PC2TV EchoView FM as an iTV -- Apple's tentatively titled set-top box -- except that it doesn't come in white ... and it has a DVI output. The "codex agnostic" device will wirelessly receive video (up to 720p they claim) at 30 frames per second over 802.11g from any WiFi-enabled computer. Anything you can view on your computer you can stream to a display wirelessly (or wired, if that's your thing), so long as it accepts composite, component, or DVI input. We're not sure when Apple's going to launch the iTV or what they're going to charge, but expect the EchoView FM to hit in February for $199.99.

Take it for what you will, but the latest AppleInsider rumor to chew on is that at MacWorld next week Stevie J will not be officially introducing the iTV. It's been kind of a given that since last year's "It's Showtime" event when the iTV was informally announced, that Macworld 2007 would be when we all got to have a looksee at the final product. According to AI, however, Apple is still working the kinks out of the device software, and will delay its launch until late January or early February. Whether it'll make it through the fog of development still dubbed "iTV" no one yet knows, but we'll be honest, it's what we don't know is coming down Apple's product pipeline that we're most interested in right now.

So, the word on the street is that the monochrome-display sportin' Ruwido VEXO remote depicted above is a dead ringer for Apple's upcoming iTV remote. While we're all about minimalism, this strange combination of sexy scroll wheel and ugly, complicated monochrome display just really isn't doing it for us. And we know you're taking notes, Apple -- say it ain't so! Peep another pic of the not-an-iTV-remote after the break.

[Via Digg]

Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about technology, multimedia, and digital entertainment:

Both Microsoft's Windows Media Center and Apple's Front Row provide a "ten-foot" interface for music, DVDs and photos. But, when used with a compatible video card, Media Center includes the ability to record television shows. In fact, small USB ATSC tuners now available or coming soon from the likes of Pinnacle are recognized by Windows Media Center.

Apple has eschewed such a feature, probably for a variety of technological and business reasons. Modern Macs don't include TV tuners and adding them would increase cost. Setting up DVRs to work with set-top boxes via infrared blasters can be cumbersome and unreliable. Much of the complexity of Windows Media Center remotes that Apple has chided is due to their more comprehensive control and recording of television. And CableCARD – the ailing standard in which Microsoft and TiVo (to name a couple) have placed great faith for simplifying tuning by bypassing the cable set-top box -- is far from a universal solution. Meanwhile, the increased distribution of subsidized and well-integrated (if sometimes impaired) DVRs from cable and satellite providers makes the market a challenging one.

Apple's omission of DVR functionality has also been relatively easy to understand or justify until now because of the iTunes store. Apple's novel channel for selling video has facilitated bringing television shows to PCs and iPods, emerging platforms for video. Despite Windows Media Center and other PC-based DVR products including Windows pioneer Beyond TV from Snapstream, Linux favorite MythTV, and consumer electronics crossover ReplayTV, DVRs remain overwhelmingly in the living room. And so it has stood -- iTunes-purchased shows local on the PC and recorded shows local to the TV.

For Apple, though, that wall will melt like the transition effect in a sitcom flashback next year when the company releases the product known for now as iTV. The digital media adapter, which resembles a slice of Mac mini, will bring a Front Row-like interface to televisions.

As a natural followup to their Wireless Audio Gateway AD-42W (pictured), it looks like Nokia might be getting into the video streaming game with a new WiFi device for streaming video from your phone. The rumor comes courtesy of T3, and deets are slim, but we're sure Nokia can figure out some nifty functionality for such a device if it does turn out to be real. We'd love to see such a unit act as a DVR and prep videos for your phone, but blurry and pointless camphone vids streamed from your Nokia onto the big screen will be nice too. We're not quite sure we'd be naming this thing a direct iTV competitor, but between this, a Slingbox, a Media Extender, an iPod video loader and an iTV, our TV setup is starting to look more device-laden than our desktop, so we're thinking something's gotta give.

[Via atmaspheric]

There's nothing confirmed yet, but the New York Post is reporting that Amazon and TiVo are currently in talks regarding a feature that would allow the playback of Amazon Unbox videos on TiVo's set-top boxes. If something like this works out, it would give Amazon a substantial advantage in arena of getting online video to the living room, since Apple's "iTV" device is still in prototype mode. Amazon already has a bit of a leg up on Apple in the online movie space, since they've got rights to films from a lot more studios, but Apple's iPod ensures a substantial customer base that won't be downloading PlaysForSure files anytime soon, so studios will have to cave sooner or later. TiVo really seems like a natural fit for Amazon, and hopefully they can get this functionality in the hands of consumers before iTV steamrolls the market, but we'll have to wait and see how legit this rumor turns out to be.

[Via Tech Gadgets]

As everyone well knows, LL Cool Stevie J is so secretive that it inevitably leads to reams of rumors before any big Apple event. The problem is the companies Apple works with sometimes seem to be confused by the three letters: N, D and A -- we're lookin' at you, Lionsgate. This time, however, it looks like they're taking a slightly different approach; Disney's CEO, Bob Iger (whom we last spotted sharing the stage with Steve Jobs at the most recent Apple event), recently revealed at a Goldman Sachs conference that the iTV would, in fact, have a hard drive. According to a transcript of the conference purportedly obtained by iPodObserver.com, Iger said: "It can also stream it live through the box to the TV or it has a small hard drive on it so they can download what you put on the device on your computer, on your iTunes, through the television set." So much for keeping cards close to the vest, huh Steve? We understand maybe this is their way of making sure people buying their movies on iTunes feel secure about their purchases knowing a whole Apple entertainment platform awaits them in the future, but Steve, we hope that should you reconsider that fleeting thought of duct taping an iTV across Bob Iger's mouth, you just send it our way instead, cool?

It's the stuff fanboy dreams are made of: Google and Apple, sittin' in a tree. In fact, if you nearly passed out when Stevie J. walked onto the stage the other day sans mock turtleneck, or started into hysterics when Larry Page rode into CES on the back of that SUV, you might want to sit down for this one. Google and Apple are supposedly, maybe, possibly talking up video interoperability with Google Video and Apple's forthcoming iTV device. All we've got to go on so far is a quote from Google's consumer product chief, Marissa Mayer, who has confirmed the two companies are "engaged in talks." What level of iTV integration this indicates, if any, is yet to be seen, and with the usual amount of tight-lipped action we normal get out of Apple and Google, we don't expect to know much more until the feature is upon us, but the addition of Eric Schmidt to Apple's board of directors is a good sign of things to come. Plus, we're sure good, video-ey things can happen with these two companies putting their heads together, and a bit of internet video can't hurt a device that so far doesn't look to have much more than DRM interoperability to set it apart.

[Via BBC News]

We're as surprised as you, but Apple actually put their iTV units on display right after the show! Really, there isn't a whole lot here that we didn't already see in the keynote and up on their site, but it's definitely Mac mini sized in terms of footprint, and is a sexy little bugger. Click on for lots more pics!