Microsoft rewards long-term Xbox Live subscribers with new 360s

A custom-designed, 250 GB console is on its way to veteran subscribers, says XBL Director of Programming.

Some veteran subscribers to Microsoft’s Xbox Live service will receive a nice piece of recognition for their loyalty in the form of a free, custom-designed Xbox 360.

Xbox Live Director of Programming Larry Hryb announced the giveaway on Twitter, and included an image of the specialty consoles that will be sent to the service’s long-term subscribers.

“I can confirm we’re surprising some of the #Xbox LIVE members that have been with us the longest with one of these,” he wrote.

Over at All Games Beta, there are photos of the 250 GB console and the XBL-themed box it will arrive in, as well as a letter from the Xbox Live team that will accompany it. The letter indicates that the console will be sent to subscribers who have been with the service for more than ten years, and the console will also come with a free year of Xbox Live.

Given many of the recent updates to Xbox Live that have pushed it further away from standalone gaming console and toward the realm of all-purpose media center, there’s a good chance that the number of subscribers over the next ten years might make a similar console giveaway impossible — though we’re probably not alone in hoping it happens.

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com

DirecTV Genie HD DVR records up to five shows at once

Definitely a great idea for large families with differing tastes in programming, DirecTV's five-tuner Genie will record a ton of content.

Detailed on DirecTV today, the company announced the addition of the DirecTV Genie HD DVR as a competitor to Dish Network’s Hopper DVR system. The DirecTV Genie set-top box offers the consumer the ability to record up to five different shows in high definition at the same time. According to DirecTV management, the Genie should be able to store up to 200 hours of high definition content on the one terabyte drive within the device. In addition, the Genie can play up to four different live or recorded shows on other televisions within the home.

In order to connect to the other televisions in the home, the DirecTV subscriber must have a RVU-enabled television or connect a small receiver called the Genie Mini to the television set. Currently, only a handful of Samsung LED televisions are RVU certified.

For those unfamiliar with RVU, it’s a communications protocol that facilitates access to high-definition programming, media and other applications between two devices. Besides DirecTV and Samsung, other members of the RVU alliance include Verizon, Cisco and Broadcom. It’s possible that more television manufacturers will roll out RVU-enabled televisions during CES 2013.

In addition to allowing subscribers to record a large amount of content, the Genie also has a recommendations engine similar to a TiVo. Called “Genie Recommends” within the user interface, the software will suggest television shows and movies based on your viewing habits. However, this is an opt-in feature that has to be turned on and will authorize DirecTV to analyze the type of shows that are being watched on the Genie.

The user interface allows the subscriber to record shows up to two weeks in advance in addition to catching up on shows that are no more than five weeks old. The Genie also comes with standard applications within the user interface such as Facebook, Twitter, ScoreGuide and Pandora. 

According to DirecTV’s site, the Genie has a MSRP of $299 and the Genie Mini clients are priced at $99. However, new customers will be able to acquire the Genie and up to three Genie Mini’s for free assuming they sign up for an extended service contract. Two additional Genie Mini clients can be purchased at a discounted price of $49 each. In addition to the new hardware, the subscriber will have to pay an additional $20 monthly fee for “Advanced Receiver Service.” However, that fee can be cut in half  by signing up for automatic bill pay.

Different from Dish Network’s Hopper system, the DirecTV Genie set-top box does not allow the user to automatically skip past annoying commercials. Identical to other DVR systems, the user has to fast forward to get past the commercials during a typical television show. However, the Hopper has three tuners compared to DirecTV’s Genie. When it comes to tuners, TiVo also lags behind the Genie with the recently released TiVo Premiere 4 DVR. The standard TiVo Premiere 4 utilizes four tuners and can record up to 75 hours of high definition programming. However, the TiVo Premiere XL4 can record up to 300 hours of high definition programming compared to the Genie’s 200 hour limit.

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com

YouTube silently rolls out episode listings for original programming

YouTube has released a new episode guide feature that will simplify the process of watching subsequent episodes.

YouTube is undoubtedly showing signs of heeding the needs of its original programming channels. Digital Trends has noticed a notable change on the video pages for episodic series that should make browsing YouTube that much more convenient.

The silently introduced feature, known to YouTube’s source code as “watch context,” enables users to browse through a list of the episodes in a series. The feature can be found within a box on the top right corner, above “Suggestions” on a video’s page. In the example above, only two subsequent episodes are listed, with a header identifying the show’s season number. The bottom of the box displays a link that leads to the show’s main page, listing all episodes available.

Before the introduction of this feature, content creators have been adding URLs of other episodes in the body of the video’s description, or including annotations at the end of each video typically through an in-video link. Otherwise, if a link to the next episode was not included, viewers would have to manually search for relevant episodes or hope they appear under recommended videos.

From what we can tell, the “watch context” box only accompanies an episodic series. Of course, this feature was built for the specific purpose of navigating one series at a time, but the decision to add a new feature exclusively for web series begs us to wonder if it’s foreshadowing the future of YouTube. How many other native features made just for original programming channels and relevant videos are currently in the works?

It isn’t news that YouTube is cautiously evolving into an original programming hub. But in our opinion, it’s seems Google has been reluctant to design an interface that would be devoted to the needs of its channel partners — at least not in one fell swoop. YouTube’s existing interface can be best described as a jack-o- all-trades; it meets the basic needs for viewing original programming and non-Web series videos. The design is made to ensure all content creators and their products are visible on YouTube. New features such as playlists and episode guides are just some of what YouTube has introduced to benefit both viewers and creators.

While the “watch context” box should come as a blessing to YouTube users, at the end of the day, it’s still about revenue for Google. Advertisers are generally more attracted to premium content, and will pay premium dollars for placement within episodes. With these motivations, new features like the episode guide will contribute to maximizing time spent on continuously watching premium content. We will expect more add-ons that will keep users hooked on YouTube to pop up in the near future.

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com