One benefit is obvious: it has a built in keyboard. There are many other benefits and even some drawbacks to using a TiVo Slide remote with Media Center, so we’ll cover those first.

One benefit of using a TiVo Slide Remote with Media Center is obvious...it has a built in keyboard!

Advantages

• Bluetooth. No need to point the remote towards the TV when pressing buttons (except power and volume, unless you blast the volume codes with an IR Blaster)
• Speed. Compared to my old Logitech Harmony 650,  the TiVo Slide is extremely fast. There is pretty much no lag between button presses unlike the Harmony’s pause between IR blasts.
• Keyboard. This one is obvious. Any time you need to type something in to either search for something or jump down the list of recordings, movies, etc., you can just start typing it in instead of pretending you are using a cell phone from the 90s.
• Reprogramming buttons is very flexible using the step-by-step guide below.
• Good Range. The range is approximately 30 feet.
• Buttons are pretty well laid out and you should be able to distinguish them without looking.
• Buttons are back-lit when it is dark and you press a button.
• Price. At the time of writing this article, the TiVo Slide remote is around $40 on Amazon.

Disadvantages

If you’re an HBO subscriber, and your provider will authenticate you to access HBO GO online at hbogo.com, you can now watch HBO GO through PlayOn. This may help alleviate some of the concern some cable customers have had accessing HBO GO on the big screen, since many connected TVs, boxes, and game consoles support PlayOn or DLNA in one form or another. MediaMall, the makers of PlayOn, state that HBO GO is available for free to PlayOn Lite users for a “limited time,” suggesting that continued use will eventually require a paid subscription to PlayOn Premium.

Another interesting update is PlayOn’s My Media feature, which lets you stream content from your own local or network folders through PlayOn. This feature has been in beta for quite some time now, and it gives users a way of viewing their own videos on devices that otherwise don’t natively support DLNA, like Roku boxes.

Source: Media Mall Press Release

Betting on a Better User Experience

The digerati, tech media and pundits will all gleefully admit that ‘nobody has figured out the home entertainment interface yet’ when discussing, for instance, the latest update to AppleTV, or GoogleTV.  Of course, they’re wrong.  Hovering under the radar for years is Windows Media Center, which absolutely nails the home entertainment graphical user interface (GUI).  And, no, not just for tech-geeks; women, men and children alike can grasp — and even enjoy — Media Center’s GUI.  It’s so good, in fact, that Microsoft is betting the farm on the new “Metro” UI design, which is derivative of Windows Media Center’s groundbreaking design introduced nearly a decade ago.

So why are we talking about GUIs?  Because if you’re a company that’s not Apple and you beat Apple in the GUI game for a potentially huge consumer market, you know you have something special.  And that something special needs to be packaged for various audiences to fulfill various needs and desires in the market.  To date, I’d argue that this marketing and packaging element has been severely lacking.

Perhaps a brief look at the history of Media Center marketing and packaging might teach us lessons around prior failures, and provide us with clues that could lead to a brighter future:

Marketing Media Center – Take 1

The first three versions of Media Center were marketed as distinct editions of Windows — Windows XP Media Center Edition.  This approach had the advantage of creating a unique edition (a.k.a. “SKU”) that Microsoft could market, sell and track uptake on.  The name of the OS in these cases indicated that this was specifically for Media Center PCs, and some OEMs even went and designed special encasements for this edition of Windows.  Unfortunately, the OEM-only license model severely limited power users from easily purchasing and getting support for this version of Windows.  The strategy was clearly that of Microsoft-to-OEM to ensure a solid user experience… not so different than Apple’s tight integration model it’s famous for today.

Marketing Media Center – Take 2

Starting with Windows Vista and extending through Windows 7, Microsoft’s marketing and segmentation strategy for Media Center has been largely laughable.  Included in the Windows Vista and 7 Home Premium and Ultimate editions, hopes were high that simply including Media Center “for free” in mainstream versions of the Operating System would somehow substantially increase the install base of this magnificent software. Of course, this couldn’t be further from reality. People don’t buy PC OS’s for Media Center functionality, so by combining the two, Microsoft actually diminished Media Center’s value by devaluing it as “free,” and hiding it in a huge PC Operating System that is primarily designed to, well, operate a PC.  Yes, this approach did get Media Center into people’s homes at a far more rapid rate in theory, but the fallout has been almost catastrophic: Steven Sinofsky himself essentially scolded the Media Center community by telling us that merely 6% of Windows installations who have Media Center have ever used it.  Talk about being set up for failure.

Marketing Media Center – Take 3

The conventional wisdom is that due to Sinofsky’s remarks like the above in conjunction with Microsoft’s huge push to get Media Center-like functionality in the newly Metro-fied Xbox 360 experience, Windows Media Center may not have such a bright future. Perhaps. However, the “ProfessionalWMC” SKU rumor can paint a more optimistic future.

With Media Center Edition possibly returning to the mix, this could lead to a targeted, two-tiered home entertainment marketing strategy for late 2012 and beyond:

Tier 1: Consumer media consumption.

Packaged within the Xbox ecosystem for the masses.  Fully set-top box driven, linked to Xbox Live services and its recurring revenue model, complete with a centrally controlled, curated content experience that Microsoft is increasingly investing in.  In two-to-three years, the next generation Xbox may finally live up to its “XBox” moniker where it’s a box that truly does “x” — where “x” is whatever you want it to do, ranging from music, video, movies and games.

Tier 2: Professional media consumption.

Packaged for A/V installers and professionals, as well as OEMs as “Windows 8 Professional – Media Center Edition”.  PC-driven, creating flexibility and customizations required to serve the needs of high-end home A/V systems, professional multimedia installations, and other applications that require specific experiences tailored for more discerning clientele.

While “Take 3” looks a lot like “Take 1” from the Media Center perspective, the big difference between then and now is the recent evolution of Xbox.  With Xbox media delivery services picking up steam in the mass market, it does become clear that Media Center is for more advanced configurers and installers, and for more discerning and demanding users.

Importantly, if Media Center is once again limited to a single edition of Windows 8, Microsoft will have the ability to consider bundling higher-end A/V services into the package and pass those costs along to the licensee. This kind of packaging and segmentation makes a lot of sense because the people who desire Media Center services such as Blu-ray playback and high-end audio decoding will be more than happy to pay extra for a no-compromise media-focused operating system.

This segmented, two-tiered future may very well not be on the horizon, but it should be.   As a Media Center enthusiast and optimist, I for one hope that this recent rumor is a hint of a future where Media Center becomes the high-end offering in Microsoft’s expansive, multi-pronged suite  of digital media management offerings.

With waning market share and increasing competition from providers and newer streaming devices, TiVo has announced price decreases for its lineup of Series 4 DVRs and corresponding monthly service fees.

The Premier XL is now $50 cheaper at $249.99, and the Primer Elite is $100 cheaper than before, coming in now at $399.99. The entry-level TiVo Premier has been upgraded to record up to 75 hours of HD programming, now at $149.99. While TiVo certainly isn’t highlighting this, it’s worth noting that this price is $50 higher than it was last spring.

As before, all boxes require a one-year service agreement—a practice TiVo instituted a while back to subsidize their box prices. But since many people found the nearly $20 monthly fee unreasonable, consumers should be happy to learn that this monthly fee has now been reduced to $14.99, or $12.99/month for customers with multiple active units. This price brings TiVo’s service more in line with the cost of renting a DVR from your cable provider. TiVo still offers so-called lifetime service at $499.99 for the first device and $399.99 for each additional device. No-commitment pricing is also still available, but you have to dig pretty deep into the fine print to find it.

The physical dimensions of the remote are now smaller. The new remote is about half as thick, and about an inch shorter with a smooth glossy flat face. Unfortunately, the backlight has been removed. While the buttons are still rubber, they have been improved with a tactile click similar to an arcade button. The response to pressing a button can be both felt and heard. The new remote now takes a pair of AAA batteries, instead of the AA batteries of the old remote.

Several buttons have been removed from the new remote. The Open/Close, Title, Clear, Stop, TV, and “Green” buttons have all been completely removed. The Play and Pause buttons have been combined into a single button.

The removal of the TV button greatly simplifies the remote. It is no longer possible to accidentally change the channels on the TV, or power the TV off because the TV button was lit orange instead of green. It also means that somebody with a green/red color blindness will not have as much trouble turning on the TV and the Xbox.

Guide, Live TV, and Input buttons have been added to the remote. In truth, the Guide and Live TV buttons are just duplicates of the Y and A buttons. The two can be used interchangeably both inside Media Center and in the Xbox dashboard. The Input button used to be a function of the TV button but can now be used at any time to toggle the input of the TV.

The new locations of the buttons makes it easier to use the remote without looking. Playback control is located at the top of the remote with two horizontal rows of buttons. The directional pad is surrounded by the Guide, Record, Info, Live TV, and Back buttons. The new arrangement makes it easy to pull up the guide, select a program, record it, and then return to the previous task.

The volume, channel, and Mute buttons remain in the same place. The number pad remains the same, and T9 text input is still possible even though it is not labeled. A Last button does not seem to have any useful function in Media Center or in the Xbox dashboard.

Despite Microsoft’s complete lack of mention for Media Center in the remote’s documentation, this new remote makes using an Xbox as an extender much easier. The loss of the backlight is mitigated by the fact that the remote is so easy to use without looking at it, and sacrificing the “green” button for Media Center makes the overall experience more intuitive and consistent.

There’s been a lot of speculation and debate about Microsoft’s move to eliminate the green button, but in some ways, that decision improves the remote.

First off, the green button was a questionable universal start point. The logo, while familiar to Media Center users, is not widely recognized when compared to the common symbols for Play, Pause, and Stop. The color green can be difficult for someone with a color vision deficiency, and the green button on the old remote was tiny and reflective, so it could be hard to recognize in shape, color, and function.

With fewer feature-specific commands on the remote, users can expect a more consistent experience across features and services on the Xbox. Whether it’s a music service, a social app, or a video on demand service, hitting the back button several times will get you back to the main screen.  It also eliminates possibility of hitting the Green button by mistake and jumping out of the Xbox Dashboard into Media Center.

By eliminating the green button, Microsoft also limits the commands they need to support in the future. For example, if Media Center were to get Kinect support through the Xbox, the Green button wouldn’t have to be implemented. With fewer Kinect commands represented as distinct gestures, there’s less chance of misinterpreting users’ gestures and intent.

Microsoft has also moved the Back button from the more common upper-left corner of the direction pad to the bottom right corner. This change also makes sense to me. Upper left is where the eye goes to start reading something, and the lower right is where it ends and the page needs to be turned. And with the button on the lower right, a right-handed thumb has to bend and retreat in order to press it. This requires more thought and intentional movement.

My bottom line: While I can understand how Microsoft’s decision to change the Xbox remote might annoy some people, I highly recommend the new Xbox 360 Media Remote to anyone using an Xbox as a Media Center Extender.

The removal of the Start button in Windows 8 and the removal of the Green button might speak to a larger philosophical change at Microsoft. On Entertainment 2.0, Richard has suggested that removing the Start button from Windows 8 will mean training manuals and classes will have to be retooled in the corporate environment. Arguably, it’s better to make changes to Media Center while the user base is relatively small. Perhaps the elimination of the Green button might be a signal that Microsoft expects Media Center to grow!

Updated: Post edited to clarify that the fee waiver currently applies to new Dish Network customers only.

At CES, Dish Network unveiled its multi-room DVR solution, the Hopper and Joey. True to its word, Dish has announced pricing and availability of the Hopper multi-room HD DVR in the first quarter—and it’s available now! The Hopper is a 3-tuner HD DVR that acts as a hub for remote Joey receivers that can be deployed around the home, connected via Ethernet or MoCA. The Hopper features many of Dish’s signature services, including an innovative new feature, PrimeTime Anytime that records and retains the last eight days’ prime time content from the four major local network affiliates. We dove into the specifics of this feature earlier this year and posted a PrimeTime Anytime video demonstration on our YouTube channel.

The Hopper adds a multi-room service fee of $4 to the existing monthly $6 DVR charge, but this fee is waived for new customers who subscribe to Dish’s America’s Top 200 plan or any higher level plan. Similarly, each Joey will cost you $7 a month, but these, too, are free to new customers subscribed to those higher plans.

Dish is running an entertaining spot that pokes fun at the rather odd product name, and they’ve also posted a number of information videos to their YouTube channel. You can find more information about Hopper at Dish Network.

A Green or Green-like Button

Somewhere in the middle of the topside of the remote should appear a green (or green variant) button that brings you to the home screen on your TV. This also implies that you are running a home theater system that includes a PC or extender running Windows Media Center. There are many times when you just need to pull up the main screen of whatever home theater interface you have, the green button does this for you.

Customizeable LCD Buttons

Hard buttons are easy to find by touch and know you are hitting the function you want, but they are static. LCD buttons are awesome, because you can customize them to whatever you want. Sometimes you hit one button when you meant to hit another, or your hand bumps up against the LCD and suddenly you are watching something not appropriate for the kids. What if you could have the best of both worlds? You can have that, with a programmable LCD button like the ones you find on the Switchblde UI of the Razer Blade gaming laptop. Six clear hard buttons with small LCDs below them that depict any icon or phrase should be adequate to give you infinite control of your home theater.

Hard Buttons

While a hard button only provides one function, they can come in all different shapes and sizes. This makes them incredibly easy to find by touch when the room is dark or you just cannot bare to look away from the screen. Being that the room is usually dark, it would be nice if the visual identification on the hard buttons were back lit. That would make identifying the buttons in the dark, or with 3D glasses on, much easier.

A Keyboard

If you have ever tried to type out a sentence or even a word with the remote d-pad and the onscreen keyboard, you know it is a tedious and time consuming experience. It is also a pain to pull out a separate keyboard (no matter how small it is) to type on. However we all know the use of a keyboard is invaluable with a connected TV experience. A slide out keyboard in landscape position of the remote much like the Droid smartphone of yesteryear would be ideal. Just putting a keyboard on the bottom side of the remote would be easiest, but your fingers would inevitably hit one of the buttons and send your TV experience into a wild craze. A flip-up design, like on the Logitech Novo Mini, could also work well.

A Track-pad

Yes, a wireless mouse would solve this issue. But like the problem with a keyboard, who wants to get up and screw with the mouse? A small track-pad next to the keyboard that you can manipulate with your thumb is just what is in order for clearing that occasional AnyDVD trial pop-up or a windows update window. You may not be able to play Crisis with it, but you can at least get some basic functionality out of it. With the coming of Windows 8, taking advantage of gestures would definitely be mandatory.

An Easy to Use Programming Interface

Logitech’s programming software for its Harmony remotes (our favorite is the Harmony One) is close, but there are obvious reliability and functionality flaws. The software will need the ability to program the custom LCD buttons. So far I have only seen corded programming solutions, but I think wireless technologies like NFC, Bluetooth and Wifi are robust enough to program a remote.

Why no one in the past 10 years has gotten this right is beyond me. Its seems so simple to combine the features listed above into a small, compact dependable container. Let us know what other features you would include in your ideal remote. They can be practical or fictional.

Firmware upgrade for existing iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch devices. iOS 5.1 adds improved (read: changed) camera access from the lock screen, face recognition in the Camera app, Japanese support for Siri, podcast playback improvements (that had been previously removed), call quality improvements, and fixes for more bugs that were causing battery drain. It also adds the ability to remove individual photos from your photo stream. The update is available immediately.

Movies in the iCloud. Your iCloud account now lets you access movies you’ve purchased from the iTunes Store, rounding out Apple’s cloud services to give you access to nearly all of your media purchases from connected Apple devices.

1080p HD. Select movies and TV shows are now available in 1080p HD quality in the iTunes Store.

Updated Apple TV hardware and UI. The Apple TV streaming device has been updated with a faster processor—now capable of playing 1080p HD content—and a freshened UI that feels more app-centric. Online services like YouTube and Netflix are no longer buried in the Internet menu, but exposed as tiles on the screen. The UI update is now available to owners of current-generation Apple TV, and the new-generation device ships next week. It’s still just $99.

The new iPad.While Apple appears a bit flaky on the name of the new iPad, they were very clear about all of its new features. For the exact same price structure ($499 to $829, depending on capacity and connectivity), the new iPad has twice the resolution of the previous generation devices. At 2048 x 1536, that’s a higher resolution than most monitors, HDTVs, and projectors—all packed into a screen under 10″. A quad-core graphics processor drives the new display. The device also has a 5 megapixel rear camera with image stabilization and 1080p video recording capability, a new voice dictation feature, and 4G LTE support (including a personal hotspot feature, where supported by providers). Apple claims the new device still gets between 9 and 10 hours of battery life, depending on connectivity. All this capability comes with a little additional heft, as the new device is half a millimeter thicker and 50 grams heavier then the iPad 2. The new iPad ships on March 16.

The old iPad. The iPad 2 is now available in 16GB models only at $399 for WiFi only or $529 with 3G.

iWork and iLife for iOS. Apple has updated the current iWork and iLife (Garage Band and iMovie) apps for iOS, adding iPhoto to the suite to round out a complete iWork and iLife offering for their mobile platform. These apps are all available now in the iTunes Store.

Yet, in 2012, digital media management in the home is still in its infancy.  True, DVRs have now become commonplace thanks to leased boxes by cable companies, but they are by and large still not much more than fancy VCRs in terms of flexibility and functionality.  Beyond these cable-company leased DVR boxes, cable-ready DVRs are still slim pickings — there’s really just TiVo and Windows Media Center.  Both offer enhanced media management and streaming options, but go about solving the problem in vastly different ways.  Due in part to up-front costs and setup complexity, neither are close to mainstream when compared to cable-company DVR units.

Then there are the emerging and increasingly popular non-DVR set-top boxes, including AppleTV, Boxee, Roku, Google TV, and even Xbox 360 and Sony PlayStation.   These types of digital media add-ons are compelling for manufactuerer because they exist exclusively in the “internet media” space and therefore can avoid the complex, cumbersome and regulated CableCard certification and implementation process required to support digital cable content. (How cumbersome, you ask?  Consider that the federal government needed to get involved to help make things easier for the consumer.)  The relative simplicity of purpose of these add-on devices drives costs down to the point where they can become compelling mainstream products.  And their sealed box approach ensures security for high-value content (i.e., Netflix, Hulu, etc.), while eschewing the complexities of integrating with regional, regulated technologies like digital cable and satellite services.

Even with all of these options, there are serious gaps in addressing mainstream consumer needs:  DVR devices only tip-toe into the internet media/digital streaming space, and internet media add-on boxes generally ignore traditional, cable-based and satellite TV content.  For those who desire the best of both worlds—traditional cable and internet media in one, simple, unified experience—there are very few elegant, all-in-one solutions. (Note: I do recognize that Windows Media Center’s flexibility can get you quite close to having the best of both worlds, but getting there requires serious commitment and technical mojo that is simply out of the mainstream consumers’ grasp and/or interest.)

Which brings us to 2012. This year’s Consumer Electronics Show seemed to be ushering in the first generation of viable “Smart TVs” — based on technologies ranging from proprietary platforms like Samsung’s to more standards-based environments powered by Android.  If digital streaming technology successfully lodges itself inside the television set itself, it will significantly reduce a barrier to entry for the mainstream consumer.  Consumers notoriously don’t like set-top boxes, but they are already used to having them in their homes to enable digital cable or satellite TV feeds.  In other words, if all existing boxes stay as-is, yet the TV gets smarter in the process, then the average consumer will likely stick with their cable-based DVR box for traditional content, and look to their TVs alone to gain access to the growing volume of quality content available online.

Even Microsoft is sensing the trend.  All of the rumors and prognostications lead to Microsoft looking at their own set-top box, the Xbox 360, to be the new digital media master of the consumer’s family room.  While I am skeptical that the consumer’s existing mental model will actually enable them look at their Xbox’s as anything more than their game console, it’s quite feasible that the next generation Xbox will finally live up to its namesake and be the “box that does X,” where “X” is anything you want it to do — from gaming, to media, to communications, to education & training.  No matter how it plays out, the point is that the Xbox (as well as other gaming consoles, like Sony’s PS3) is an existing device that people have accepted in their homes, similar to the cable company’s set-top box.  Meaning, there is an opportunity for Microsoft and other console makers to leverage this “accepted box” and alter it’s purpose in the emerging smart family room.

A new wildcard entering the race for your TV is Google.  Google has proven that when it really wants to, it can dominate an industry (examples: internet search and smartphone OS’s).  Google’s own GoogleTV has so far been quite a flop, proving that a “launch in beta” culture might not be well-suited for the digital family room market.  But it looks like Google is not giving up so quickly — nor should they; after all, Google is in essence an advertising placement company, and to miss out on the TV consumer experience would be a strategic fail for such a company.

One of the most anticipated movers in this space is Apple, who seem to be planning to move beyond the “hobby” stage of AppleTV.  Apple will most likely raise the bar for the whole industry (as they are wont to do), bringing entirely new interaction models and content consumption features that have thus far evaded creative minds in the industry.

For power users (like me), all this “mainstreaming” gives me some worry warts, as I prefer to be on the bleeding edge, with technology power and flexibility (and, frankly, some hack-ability) to do virtually anything I want to meet my discerning digital desires.  Can the more esoteric and high-end solutions like Windows Media Center (and Ceton’s future “Q” product) exist in this increasingly mainstream future?  I’d argue, yes.  Any market that has a broadening appeal is good for all segments within that market.  In other words, a rising tide lifts all boats.

It’s been over a decade since the first DVR was launched, and almost a decade since the first Media Center software was introduced.  Digital media in the family room has experienced a relatively slow evolution, but I think 2012 may be remembered as a turning point — just like 2007 is now thought of as a turning point in smartphones.

Brad has included an advanced audio feature that deciphers between audio from the Media Center and audio from the user so audio commands cannot be interfered with.  Audio and gesture commands also can be temporarily disabled until the user opts to turn them on again.  There are a couple limiting factors to Kinect for Windows Media Center.  It does not work through extenders like Xbox360 and the Media Center add-in will only work with Kinect for Windows due to a Microsoft constraint.  While months of repetitive arm movements and screaming at the TV may drive you to see the masseuse more often, it really is good to see developers using new technology like Kinect for Windows to enhance our experience with Windows Media Center.

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

Consumers who did buy into Moxi typically raved about it. While TiVo was still stuck at standard definition menus cluttered with a patchwork of new features, the Moxi offered a complete HD experience with a unique, two-dimensional guide. Zatz Not Funny! shows a screen shot of the Moxi web site showing that service for existing consumer boxes will continue through the end of 2013.

Updated 3/5: Arris has clarified the confusion over continuing guide data support, stating “a few weeks ago we incorrectly posted a notice regarding discontinuation of our Moxi program guide data. We currently have no plans to discontinue service. Thank you for your support.”

Arris’s move to retire their consumer products is directly in line with what they discussed with us earlier this year at CES—a move toward updating and expanding their whole home solution distributed directly through providers. In fact, the Moxi name lives on in that product line with the Moxi Gateway and Moxi Player. The Moxi got its start as a provider-supplied DVR, and Arris’s current solution already has a foothold in a couple of Pacific Northwest providers.

A personal note: after discovering and covering the Moxi DVR for CNET years back, I purchased one once it was released. And while waiting for decent, affordable CableCARD tuners for Media Center, it became the primary DVR in my home. It still gets daily use, and frankly…I think I’m going to miss it.

Apple is streaming a concert special to iTunes users and Apple TV owners tonight, February 9, at 10:00  p.m. EST, 7:00 p.m. PST. The live content will appear on Apple TV under the brand iTunes Live in the Internet menu—an option that didn’t even exist on Apple TV just 24 hours ago. While some are questioning using Paul McCartney to premier such a feature, the choice aligns with Apple’s (an formerly Jobs’) affinity for all things Beatles.

Perhaps more importantly, this event demonstrates that Apple has the ability to deliver live video content and even introduce new programming options to the Apple TV on the fly, without a software update. Oh, the possibilities….

MoCA, or Multimedia over Coax, is a technology designed to support the growing networking needs of today’s connected homes, recognizing that many houses don’t have the networking infrastructure needed to connect the latest entertainment devices.

The idea behind MoCA is simple: while most houses today don’t have wired network connections in every room, many have Coax infrastructure that reaches most living spaces. MoCA technology uses that Coax infrastructure by piggy-backing network traffic on those wires without impacting the video signals they already carry.

Today’s MoCA carries network signals at about 175 Mbps with nominal signal loss, making it a better solution for home and Internet video streaming than, say, wireless. Plus, it can be set up to complement your existing network—wired or wireless.

Why you may not have heard about it is that consumers with MoCA in their homes don’t need to worry about it; in fact most don’t even know about it. Some cable and satellite providers rely on MoCA when setting up multi-room DVR and entertainment systems in a home. In many cases, the MoCA technology is built right into the boxes installed by your provider.

That’s starting to change with consumer-oriented MoCA bridges and routers starting to make their way into retailers. Devices like Channel Master’s Coax Adapter let consumers extend their wired networks into bedrooms, dens, and kitchens—locations often inaccessible by wired Ethernet.

MoCA is powered by a chipset created by Entropic Communications. At CES this year, Entropic’s booth showcased a large array of products that currently support or depend upon MoCA for connectivity. As one of the co-founders of the Multimedia over Coax Alliance (also, confusingly, abbreviated MoCA), Entropic continues to improve and expand upon MoCA’s impact in the home. Showcasing MoCA 2.0 at CES, they demonstrated next-generation MoCA networks pushing 400 Mbps over 16 nodes with a mode that supports up to 1Gbps performance under certain conditions.

MoCA’s future certainly seems bright at this point. Every provider of multi-room video solutions we spoke with at CES—TiVo, DISH Network, Arris, Ceton—is building MoCA into their solutions or testing with MoCA adapters. And with MoCA 2.0 rolling out to homes and consumer devices, wireless video stuttering and re-buffering could become a thing of the past.

UltraViolet à la Paramount

Let’s start with Paramount’s UltraViolet offering, in general. You may want to seriously consider those iTunes and Windows Media options, because Paramount’s flavor of UltraViolet doesn’t seem fully baked yet. You need to sign up for yet another account (just like at UVVU, Flixster, Sony, and Universal), so we’re up to five accounts now with only four of the majors in the pool. Once you’ve registered, linked, and logged in, you can redeem, view, and download your Paramount titles.

Paramount's proprietary download manager doubles as the only playback mechanism for their UltraViolet titles

You’ll need to install yet another retailer-specific program to download and play Paramount’s UltraViolet titles offline on your PC or Mac. That’s about where the similarities end.

Like the other studios, Paramount’s site is designed to show you not just their titles, but all of the titles in your UltraViolet locker. At release time and as of this writing, this feature doesn’t work properly. We reported the issue to Paramount’s UltraViolet help desk and promptly received a message from Zukor LLC explaining that “you will only be able to see your Paramount Ultra Violet digital copies.” Actually…not true. The page is there—it’s intended to show the other titles; Paramount’s FAQs clearly state that “you will be able to see your entire UltraViolet library;” oh…and UltraViolet is one word.

Your UltraViolet library on Paramount's site may appear slightly broken

Unlike with every other UltraViolet retailer, the only option for viewing UltraViolet titles on iOS devices is by streaming, over WiFi, from paramountmovies.com. You can’t watch them in Flixster, so you can’t watch them offline on your iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch. To clarify, they’ll show up in your collection in Flixster, but you can’t play or download them there. That also means you can’t watch them on your Google TV and you can’t watch them on your Android phone or tablet. In one test, we couldn’t even stream a title on a 4-month old Windows 7 PC with no explanation as to why.

Paramount’s Digital Store

Paramount is the first retailer to offer direct sales of UltraViolet digital titles. No discs—just the digital copy. They’ve rolled out an initial offering of about sixty titles, ranging from catalog titles Chinatown and the Beverly Hills Cop series to newer releases like Super 8 and the Paranormal Activity trilogy [please let this end as a trilogy]. Purchasing a title couldn’t be easier—select a title to buy, provide your credit card or PayPal account information, and the movie appears in your UltraViolet library. No shopping carts, no redemptions codes. It’s simple.

That’s about the end of the good news. First, let’s talk pricing. While we all might like to think that digital copies should be priced notably less than their packaged equivalents, we know from services like Amazon, iTunes, and VUDU that this is not usually the case. Most digital movies from these retailers cost between 7 and 15 dollars, or 15 to 20 dollars for HD. On iTunes, many of these digital movies do come with extras, like those included with packaged discs.

Paramount’s UltraViolet pricing is higher. Much higher. All catalog titles—whether two years old or fifty years old—are $12.99 in standard definition and $19.99 in HD. Newer titles are $16.99 in standard definition and $22.99 in HD. Many [why not all?] titles are also available to rent by streaming with the usual 30 day/48 hour limitations.

To put this pricing model in perspective, the guys on Seen in HD used this week’s Paranormal Activity 3 release as an example. For the UltraViolet movie in HD (with no extras), Paramount is charging $22.99. On Amazon, you can buy the Blu-ray combo pack with Blu-ray, DVD, and standard definition iTunes, Windows Media, and UltraViolet digital copies for $21.99.

For catalog titles, it’s even worse. Paramount is selling a standard definition UltraViolet copy of Airplane—a thirty year old film—for $12.99. A digital copy of the same movie costs $9.99 on iTunes or $6.49 on Amazon Instant Video. Or you can get a Zucker/Zucker/Abrahams Double Feature DVD including Airplane at Amazon for $9.99.

So there’s that. Then there’s the issue of playback. We already established that you can’t play Paramount’s UltraViolet titles on any disconnected device except for computers running their proprietary player. And since there aren’t any connected TVs or Blu-ray players available yet that support UltraViolet (and even those recently announced depend on Flixster), you probably can’t play these digital purchases on your TV. You can, of course, if you have a home theater PC, but even then you have to play them using Paramount’s custom desktop software, so forget about using your remote control.

HD playback is even more limited. To play Paramount’s HD UltraViolet videos, you must have an HDCP-compliant PC. Forget the Mac—it’s not supported. Your only hope of enjoying HD-quality video is on a Windows Vista or Windows 7 laptop or HTPC connected to an HDCP-compliant monitor with a DisplayPort, DVI-D or HDMI cable. Get all that?

And finally, while the other retailers download UltraViolet movies to your Videos folder as MP4 videos so they’re easily identifiable and transportable, Paramount instead plops thousands of tiny data files on your computer. The video we used for testing comprised 6,630 separate files with clever names like 00a4db57-7774-4907-b155-f054bc12981c. And now all of the other video programs that depend on your Videos folder get to parse through all of that crap.

Paramount clutters your Videos folder with thousands of data files

High Hopes Dashed

It’s widely recognized that UltraViolet has had a rocky start, and we’ve certainly hedged on recommending this technology, but we had high expectations for Paramount. These are the folks with some of the best movie franchises in their catalog, including, The Godfather, Indiana Jones, and Star Trek. Surely they’d want to make a big, successful splash at launch, right?

Instead, this launch is a big mess. It’s buggy, it’s extremely limited, and their digital titles are ridiculously expensive. Perhaps the only redeeming quality here is that Paramount is giving us an out as they continue to include iTunes and Windows Media digital copies in their combo packs. Our recommendation here should be obvious: save your money.

Meanwhile, Fox, a member of the consortium behind UltraViolet, revealed at CES that they do not expect to release titles with UltraViolet until late 2012. According to a report by the Las Angeles Times, Fox executives want to see more retail outlets, more compatible devices, and a common downloadable format.

Accounts of UltraViolet’s success are varied, with representatives from the Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem (DECE), the consortium of vendors behind UltraViolet, lauding it’s success to date and downplaying consumers’ initial frustrations. The president of Warner Home Video, Ron Sanders, states that “consumers are excited about the prospects for streaming and mobile device use with [UltraViolet]” while the press continues to report consumers’ complaints. Meanwhile, Warner’s Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2—the most successful movie of the year—continues to receive nearly as many one-star ratings as five at Amazon.com…largely in response to UltraViolet.