We spied Netgear’s latest home media streamer at a pre-CES event just the other day, but it seems like we missed a tasty little detail. The EVA9000 appears to be the first set-top box to fully support the very new YouTube HD streams. Plenty of devices can put YouTube on your main screen, but none of have been updated for the new YouTube format. It’s impressive and shows where living room content is eventually going.
JVC started selling the Everio GZ-MG880 [JP], a video camera that’s especially geared towards YouTube freaks in Japan on December 5. It costs around $800 and is available in black only.
Measuring 53×113x68mm (weight including battery: 350g), the device comes with a 120GB HDD, a 1/6’’ CCD sensor with a 32x optical zoom, 720×480 maximum resolution, a USB 2.0 port, microSD and microSDHC card support and a 2.7-inch LCD screen.
Apparently some sort of relatively aggressive virus is affecting certain embedded YouTube videos. Some are saying it affects IE and Firefox users, while others say it’s only going after IE. The virus is called Actns/Swif.T and seems to contain a redirect to a phishing website embedded within a SWF file.
The site apparently installs Antivirus 2009, which is malware. We’ll pull our most recent YouTube embeds, but be careful because this one appears to have just broken out today. If you find yourself being automatically redirected or experience other weird pop-ups, especially for something called Antivirus 2009, don’t click on anything.
[UPDATE: Spoke with Google/YouTube and apparently anti-spyware software from Computer Associates had been returning false positives, identifying certain files contained within YouTube embed codes as malware. The specific YouTube issue is apparently being corrected by Computer Associates and wasn’t actually harmful in the first place. If you’ve got CA software, you might want to check for any updates.]
Something’s wrong with YouTube, and it looks like Hulu stands to benefit. YouTube, as you’re all painfully aware, is primarily comprised of short videos of guys falling off their skateboards (embedded here), dudes playing video game songs on the piano and illegal Seinfeld clips. Those types of videos aren’t attractive to advertisers. That may explain why YouTube, which had 83 million unique hits in September, is only expected to generate $100 million for the year.
I enjoy any well-articulated, insightful, and/or hilarious comments left here on CrunchGear very much but I really, really get a kick out of the crazy-ass, aggressive, maniacal comments left on YouTube videos. Hit the jump to read some comments left about the probably-fake MacBook video that surfaced earlier this morning.
Just a warning that there’s some harsh language…
There isn’t another website out there that serves up more modern day myths than YouTube and so MythBusters is reaching out to the YouTube community for their ideas. Adam and Jamie are asking that ideas are submitted either by replying to the video above or posting it in the MythBusters forum. I vote for the cell phone popcorn thing. My mom stopped using her cell phone ’cause of that video. Me? I love popcorn.
Wow. Whoever came up with this new ad for Wario Land: Shake it deserves a raise and a paid vacation to Cancun or something. They’ve taken a basic concept of the game and managed to make it into creative and effective marketing on a platform where even the most humdrum viral campaigns tend to flourish. Screenshots don’t really do it justice, so be sure to check it out yourself.
(For extra awesome, play the video again without refreshing the page to watch things continue to bust apart.)
The real Office
Let’s all congratulate NBC for seemingly having figured out how to prevent its great content, like clips of Saturday Night Live, from appearing on the likes of YouTube and Dailymotion. Well done, chaps!
NBC told CNET that it’s gotten to the point that unauthorized video clips (like from the Olympics or The Office) are removed so quickly that there’s hardly a soul who sees them. NBC also says its own Web site and Hulu.com are now getting more traffic than ever.
As a closing note, I will be grabbing this week’s episode of The Office from BitTorrent. Not to be a jerk or anything, but because I can’t visit Hulu from Barcelona. You’ve made me a criminal, NBC!
AK47-touting and knife-wielding Brits are no longer going to be able to sound off on YouTube. More specifically, weapons shown intimidatingly will not be allowed as gang violence rises ‘cross the Pond. YouTube has enacted regional restrictions in the past such as banning Nazi-type videos in German but this marks this regions first restriction. The companies 24/7 content review teams are acting to monitor all new material and YouTube is asking viewers to flag previously uploaded videos that violate this new rule.
Now there’s a football manager who knows his stuff
Football (soccer) fans should keep their eyes on YouTube today as Sega and Sports Interactive will be showing off some of the new features you can expect in Football Manager 2009, both the console and handheld versions. The Sports Interactive folks promise a few “revolutionary” features, as well as the standard evolutionary ones; good to see they’ve got all their bases covered.
Admittedly, football management is a bit wonkish even for me—4-4-2 or Christmas tree, etc.—but there’s gotta be a few stat heads who enjoy the sport. This game is for them.
And yes, we’ll have the videos here after they’ve been uploaded. Till then, be sure to put on your Fabio Capello and Jose Mourinho hats.
Well! Sports Interactive, true to their word, uploaded the videos yesterday. You can find them on YouTube, or right here.
In addition to having TVs as far as they eye can see, Samsung has that YouTube camcorder, the SC-MX20, on display at IFA 2008. I understand that PR folks are there to tell you how great everything is, but if Robet Scoble’s producer can come away with the impression that it’s a useful little camera—we all walked the show floor a bit together, yay—, then I’m sure it’s good enough for most of us.
As you already know, the camcorder records video at 720×480, and is able to record in an optimized YouTube mode. Basically, it records at a native YouTube resolution and FPS, so nothing is “lost” when you upload the video. That’s useful for, well, people like us, grabbing quick video clips of odds and ends and then uploading them from the floor of an airport or something.
She uses H.264 compression, and everything is wrapped up in an AVI container. Samsung only wants $280 for this, which is more than reasonable, I think.
Panasonic announced today in Japan [JP] they will release three Viera PDP TVs in this country starting September 10.
All models (42, 46 and 50 inches) of the new PZR900 series will house a 1TB HDD for recording terrestrial and digital TV programs, which can then be copied on DVDs or Blu-ray discs. From September 30, Japanese customers will also be able to view YouTube videos on their Panasonic TVs.
Panasonic’s PZ850, on sale in America for quite some time now, features the YouTube function already. At this point, it’s unclear whether the PZR900 series will also find its way over the pond. The new TVs are Panasonic’s first plasmas with built-in hard drives.
All models are full HD (of course) and feature 3 HDMI, 2 i.LINK , 4 component and 2 S-Video ports each. Prices: $5,000 for the 50-inch TV, $4,300 for the 46-inch model and $3,800 for the 42-inch plasma.
Here’s an interesting Q and A session with a panel of experts in the rich media industry — mostly online video – that took place last Tuesday at the Pacific Crest Technology Leadership Forum in Vail, Colorado. The members of the panel:
This could well be the worst video ever uploaded to YouTube.
We know what he’s parodying and we know what he’s referring to, but it’s still horrendous.
Who remembers the cartoon Rocko’s Modern Life? Remember the episode when the guy’s like, we should take all sea mammals, put them in a big boat, and sink it half way? That’s what we should do to YouTube.
Besides, doesn’t Jobs have the reputation of being a gigantic jerk?
via Cult of Mac
Sprint recently launched a clever promotion campaign for their Instinct, calling for users to somehow place the cell phone in home videos and then post them on YouTube (official tagline: “Sell out your family, turn little Suzy into gas money”). First prize: $10,000.
I think this video above is quite a good start, probably because it somehow reminded me of Prodigy’s Smack my bitch up-video. And it’s interactive, meaning you have to click on the annotations to get directed to another YouTube video until the story is brought to an end.
The biggest buzz in camcorders over the last year and a half hasn’t been from any of the big manufacturers — Sony, Panasonic, JVC or Canon, et. al. Instead, it’s a little product from a little company called Flip Video. A tiny pocket camcorder that offers simplicity and style over power and performance, Flip Video cameras — the Mino, Ultra, and Original — have been hugely popular with the younger, so-called “YouTube” set. About a year or so ago, one of our Born Digital predecessors wrote a story about the Flip Ultra and found it to be “perfect for online video sharing,” noting she had captured a short video with the Ultra and uploaded it to YouTube in a matter of minutes. Soon after, Flip Video camcorders were everywhere, it seemed. (Even my mom was asking about them.)
With so much attention going to such a small product, it was only a matter of time before the big boys would want a piece of the burgeoning pocket video camera market. The first major company to weigh in with a potential Flip Video challenger was somewhat unexpected though. Instead of Sony, Panasonic, JVC etc., venerable point-and-shoot camera manufacturer Kodak announced this summer that it would introduce the Zi6 pocket video camera ($179) in early Fall. Though the Zi6 seems to be part of an overall strategy by Kodak to prove that it’s no longer a stodgy, old film-based company but an energetic, multi-media, digital imaging company, the message to Flip Video was clear. Watch your ass, buster. Big Yellow is coming after you.
Guest Writer Dan Havlik is Editor of DemystifyingDigital.com. For more product news and reviews, visit DemystifyingDigital.com.
Putting YouTube on something is like a gang initiation for Valley companies. “Sure,” the others say, “You’ve made a plastic robot dinosaur. But does it have YouTube?”
That said, Series 3 and HD TiVo owners will soon be able to stream YouTube content through the TiVo dashboard. Series 2 owners, however, are out of luck because the H.264 used in the service can’t be added to Series 2 hardware.
TiVo users should notice the update in the next few days as the 9.4 software update hits machines.
Today Casio Europe announced the release of a new digital camera, the Ex-Z150, from the company’s Exilim series. There is no word yet on price and availability but the camera should find its way outside Europe soon.
The EX-Z150 comes with the following features:
- 8.1 megapixel CCD sensor
- 4x optical Zoom
- wide-angle zoom lens (28mm)
- 3.0-Inch LCD Screen (the biggest in all Exilim models)
- 17.9MB built-in memory
- support of SDHC, SD, MultiMediacard and MultiMediaCardplus memory cards
- Youtube mode (recording of videos with 640×480 resolution at 30fps with a 10 minute-limit)
- face detection function
The EX-Z150 will be available in silver, black, red, pink and green. It measures 96.7×57.3×20.1mm (18.9 mm at the thinnest section) and weighs 126g.
The TV networks had better figure out how to make advertising work on things like Hulu, for it seems young people aren’t watching as much live TV as they used to. Recently released numbers show that, for the first time ever, the median age for the average live TV viewer was 50 last year. The four major networks all ticked up in age, with the exception of CBS, which has always been a network for old people. (Viacom, whose parent company has a controlling interest in CBS, does recognizes the need to shake things up, remember.)
Cable channels saw similar numbers.
DXG, “the digital camera company,” has thrown its Cowboy hat into the increasingly crowded direct-to-YouTube video cameras space. Its 567V shoots video at 30 frames per second with a 1280×720 resolution. Pretty sure that’s above and beyond (n. the trance DJs) YouTube’s requirements, but here we are.
All CMOS-captured, H.264-compressed video is recorded onto SDHC crds.
She’s only $180, so well within the reach of most cash-strapped Americans, yes?
Should be a nice competitor to the Flip.
via Akihabara News
