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Bella Catapult enables camcorder-to-iPod recording
Camcorder accessory manufacturer Bella has just announced a new device that will let you toss those MiniDV cassettes straight out of your bag and replace them with your iPod or nearly any other USB 2.0-compliant storage system. The Catapult, as it's known, is a paperback-sized digital encoder that plugs into any standard or HD camcorder with a FireWire port and processes the video as you're recording, eliminating the need to convert your footage later on. Besides saving time and offering access to higher storage capacities, the Catapult also enables your cam with a number of features not available out of the box, such as time-lapse recording, remote trigger capabilities, and both pre- and post-recording ability. Pre-recording is an especially attractive option, as it seems to buffer whatever your CCD is capturing for a preset timeframe, allowing you to essentially "turn back the clock" and preserve events that already happened once you hit the record button. Bella tells us to expect their new product sometime during the second half of the year, for some amount of money less than $300.[Via T3]
Yahoo buys Meedio, but not Meedio TV
Yahoo swallowed another company this morning, one to flesh out that Go TV home digital media effort of theirs. Just not the DVR company we'd all kind of hoped and idly thought it would be, TiVo. Nope, Yahoo now owns Meedio, whose IP, technology, and staff are being folded into their Digital Home team. If you're a Meedio TV fan, steel yourself: according to Meedio, your EPG will be updated until July 1st, their support center is shuttering, and downloading Meedio will no longer be possible. Which, we'd postulate, means it'll be a little while before you'll be able to get your Yahoo Go TV DVR on download. And since Yahoo bought the company and not the Meedio product line, what comes out the other end could wind up looking, feeling, and working completely differently, totally ready and able to leverage all kinds of Yahoo media from ten feet away. In the mean time, for those not wanting to run Windows (Media Center) or sign up for TiVo, you've still got options, like MythTV, BeyondTV, SageTV, ChrisTV, Freevo, ShowShifter, WinDVR, and so, so many others.[Via Zatz Not Funny, thanks Richard B]
Cringely: Apple/Blockbuster Speculation
Since today seems to be Speculation Day™, here's another one for you, this time a little more grounded in reality than Dvorak's column about Apple dumping Mac OS X in favor of Windows. Robert X. Cringely, who has a much better track record at examining the tech industry and then predicting what companies will do, has posted today a speculative and engaging article about the potential powerhouse partnership of Apple and Blockbuster."Apple's Blockbuster product strategy is simple. Start with a new iPod that has video- and audio-out capability. This iPod -- which will be just as good at playing songs as any iPod that preceded it - will be more than just a video storage device. It will be a video player. No make that plural - players - a whole family of video-out iPods, some with flash storage and others with little disk drives.Take your Video-out iPod to Blockbuster, drop it in a kiosk dock then download from the local xServe your choice of 50,000 movies. You can rent the movie or buy it and you can even choose the resolution, which may or may not affect the final price. Take the iPod home, drop it in the dock attached to your TV and watch the movie. H.264 decoding takes place in the iPod in hardware.For Apple the point here is to sell iPods to people who might not otherwise every buy one (my Mom, for example), to bring digital downloads to people who don't have broadband or even a computer, and to make it all incredibly easy. You don't even have to return the videos when you are done, since they will automatically time-out."Such a move would truly be a win-win for both Apple and Blockbuster. Apple could supply the back-end (X-Serves, X-Sans, etc.) to run such a system. They're already signing distribution deals with the movie studios entertainment distributors and it'd sell a significantly larger number of iPods to users. All Apple would need is the name recognition and physical locations of a chain like Blockbuster to make such a program work. Blockbuster would have a new revenue stream and enjoy the status of being aligned with a technically-savvy company like Apple. And let's not forget that Steve Jobs is now intimately aligned with Disney, a company that actually is somewhat clueful about emerging technology.Of course this is entirely speculation, but I think Cringely may be on to something. Apple's clearly been planning something (remember, Apple tends to plan things a least a year or two ahead of an actual release). Perhaps this is it; perhaps they're finally putting the "pod back into iPod."
Canon releases four consumer camcorders: ZR500, ZR600, ZR700, and Elura 100
Canon is throwing down four new consumer camcorders designed for DV beginners -- three models in the ZR series and the Elura 100. All four sport Canon's Widescreen high resolution feature allowing full-screen image viewing on widescreen TVs, and each uses a 2.7-inch Widescreen display planel. The ZR series features 25x optical zoom, with the ZR500 and 600 (pictured above left and right, respectively) doing an 800x digital zoom and an 1000x digital zoom available on the ZR700. All the ZRs also include a level shot control to avoid crooked shooting and digital photo capture to SD media, and are available for $299 (ZR500), $349 (ZR600) and $399 (ZR700), respectively, with the Elura coming in at $399. Look for availability on the ZRs at the end of this month, with the Elura making its appearance at the end of February.
Vodcast from DV Guru
We missed out on the Digital Video Expo last week, but that doesn't mean you have to. Head over to DV Guru to check out the video-podcast, vodcast, whatever it's called these days! Randall and company bring you the low-down on the latest digital and high-def cameras like the HVX. If that's not enough for you, tune in for their high-level look at the After Effects software package.The 'cast is under sixteen-and-a-half minutes long; surely you can spare that much time away from your high-def set, no?
