Smart Home Blog

Toshiba announced a new line of its LCD TVs. The top of the line ZH500 series measures in at 52- and 46-inches with 120Hz VA panels, 4x HDMI (1080/60p, 24p) inputs, 3x Ethernet (with DLNA support), 2x USB, Bluetooth, Firewire, SD slot and a DVR to record TV shows to the built-in 300GB HDD. If I understand clearly Toshiba added three Ethernet interfaces to have possibility use three external HDD via an I-O Data REGZA drive wrapped in DTCP-IP DRM. Because actually TV cannot be added to home network similar way as PC.

The new Toshiba TVs should be available for buying in May and June with price range from $1580 to $5580 according to their size and specification.

[via Engadget]

According to LinuxDevices.com Neugent Technologies, a Philippines-based video capture card vendor, lunched its LX8000 SmartDetect DVR. It’s based on Linux and has “built-in object detection video analytics” which allows to watch for left, abandoned, missing or stolen objects. The LX8000 is built from standard PC components and offers remote management, live views, recording and playback functions, and support for JPEG and MPEG4 streaming.

The rest features of that DVR include:

• Tailored alarm generation
• When an object is left in a busy scene (such as a bag in an airport or subway station)
• When an object is suddenly removed from its place (such as thefts in art galleries, schools, and museums)
• Illegal parking violations and roadblocks
• Motion detection can be constrained to areas or zones on the screen
• Alarms via email or SMS (text messaging)
• Live view on 3G mobile phones (optional)

Functionality of Neuros OSD – open source DVR, recently was enlarged by YouTube browser. It allows browse and play the entire YouTube video collection on any TV, both standard and high definition. It’s possible to use keyword searching and browse by category and rating. Future releases will bring user interface improvements and added functionality such as sharing, subscriptions, and much more.

The new functionality was developed by open source community, which works closely with Neuros internal team, and their contributions are quickly incorporated into the company’s releases. This is another good example of advantage of open source development for all producers who stake on proprietary closed technologies.

[via eHomeUpgrade]

Here is an interesting A/V device – HDHomeRun Networked Digital TV Tuner. It allows to you watch over-the-air digital TV from all computers in your home. HDHomeRun has two tuners. So you’ll able to record/watch multiple channels at once.

HDHomeRun supports major DVR features:

• Pause, rewind, fast-forward live TV.
• Record all your favorite TV shows by name.
• Fully integrated 14-day TV guide.

Additionally, HDHomeRun can be integrated with Windows Media Center, MythTV – DVR for Linux, SnapStream BeyondTV – DVR for Windows, SageTV – DVR for Windows, MediaPortal – DVR for Windows, GB-PVR – DVR for Windows, Pluto – Home automation & media system, VLC – Multi-platform media viewer, TSReader – MPEG-2 transport stream analysis.

The HDHomeRun Networked Digital TV Tuner is tagged at $169.95 and available on DVRupgrade.

UK retailer Evesham introduced iPlayer, an 80GB DVR that can not only pump out HD resolution pictures but can be connected to the internet ready for IPTV-based video-on-demand services. The set-top box incorporates an HDMI port, a pair of SCART connectors, a six-pin Firewire port, a 3.5mm earphone socket and a digital optical output. It’s also got a Freeview digital TV tuner on board.

It’s implied that the unit can talk to Media Center PCs to grab content, and it will be able to take it from online sources too.

[via Reg Hardware]