Zoran is working on a new OEM portable media player designed to work with CinemaNow and other movie download services. I believe this is the first PMP designed to work with CinemaNow. While the company's been around longer than Apple's been selling videos through iTunes, it'll be tough for anyone to compete with Apple when it comes to selling videos that you can download and sync to a portable player.
MSI Media Live is showcasing a new Media Center PC featuring AMD64 dual-core processors, a 12-in-1 card reader, and support for AMD LIVE!, HDMI, and NVIDIA PureVideo, among other buzzwords.
While the Addlogix PC2TV EchoView FM may not have a catchy name like Apple's iTV, Apple's said they'll probably change the name anyway. So if Steve Jobs announces they'll be calling the new device "Apple's audio visual component for transferring video downloaded from iTunes through your home network to a television set," then Addlogix may actually have a chance in the marketing game.
Anyway, the PC2TV has a DVI output, and supports streaming of up to 720p video at 30 frames per second over an 802.11g network. It'll hit shelves in February for about $200.
Oh yeah, and Netgear showed off own iTV competitor, the EVA800 during a keynote this morning. It's a networked Digital Entertainer HD device that streams 1080p content from a PC. You can stream video stored on your hard drive or online content including YouTube videos.If you've got multiple boxes, you can hit pause on a recording in one room, walk into another room and pick up where you left off.
Cyberlink is showing off its latest version of PowerDVD, which includes a plugin for Vista Media Center.Unlike most video formats, you don't simply install a new CODEC. Instead Cyberlink integrates directly into Media Center so that when you choose to play a Blu-Ray or HD-DVD movie, the Media Center application closes and Cyberlink PowerDVD opens.
It'd be nice to be able to watch your hi-def movies in the same user interface as the rest of your multimedia content. But at this point it's just nice to see an easy way to watch next generation optical discs on a Media Center machine.
LG's got a new combo Blu-Ray/HD-DVD drive that you can plug into a PC or a television set. The GGW-H10N will set you back about $1200, but for that price you get to not just watch hi-def videos, but you can also burn Blu-Ray discs (although not HD-DVD).
Lest you think Matsunichi has only got digital picture frames on display at CES, check out this iPS 70 docking station for the iPod. It lets you watch video from your iPod on a nice 7-inch display. It's got a 16:9 aspect ratio, built in speakers, including a subwoofer, and a headphone jack. You can either watch at home, or carry it with you, where you'll get four hours of battery life.Philips also has their DCP portable media player on display. The PMP handles a variety of video formats, including DivX and MP4. You can watch content from the included flash card recorder, or from an iPod with the included iPod dock. You only get 2.5 hours of battery life on a 7-inch or 8.5-inch screen.
And on the mobile TV front, GigaOM is reporting that Verizon Wireless and Qualcomm will be announcing the launch of MediaFLO mobile TV this week. This follows news that Modeo and Samsung are each working on their own TV distribution systems for mobile phone customers.
Sprint, MobiTV, Intel, Samsung, and Motorola also plan to demonstrate mobile TV over WiMax, and Cingular will demonstrate a service letting customers share a live video stream with other users during a voice phone call.
