By Daniel Rubino, Wednesday, Oct 19, 2011 at 6:23 am
We received numerous tips that Windows Phone and SkyDrive were shown off, prominently, on Hawaii Five-0 recently. So we went ahead and found those clips for your viewing pleasure. Turns out they used it twice, with what looks to be the HTC HD7 and while the exact usage of Windows Phone is suspect, we suppose it can't hurt to show off some of those features, eh?
This is the third time, at least, that Windows Phone has appeared on Hawaii Five-0. See earlier last November here and here.
TNT is a forward-thinking network. First they picked up the sci-fi series Falling Skies, which comes from executive producer Stephen Spielberg. Science fiction can be expensive to produce so we don’t see nearly enough of it on television. Only a few episodes of the show have aired so far, but it’s already been picked up for a second season. Further showing support for the show, TNT has also released a companion app for Windows Phone. It comes to us from Chaotic Moon Studios, the developers of numerous official apps like Best Buy and FlightAware.
Before we talk about the app, let’s touch on the show itself. Falling Skies takes place six months after a malevolent alien race has conquered the earth, killing most of the human population. A group of freedom fighters, the Second Massachusetts, struggles to push back the invaders while protecting as many civilians as possible. These defenders include the protagonist Tom Mason, a former history professor (played by Noah Wyle); his teenage son Hal Mason (Drew Roy); Captain Weaver (Will Patton) – the military leader of the group; and Anne Glass (the always attractive Moon Bloodgood), a pediatrician-turned-medic. The show features plenty of action and intrigue. Occasional sappy moments, mostly involving Tom’s youngest son Matt (Maxim Knight) may induce groans, but they’re largely overshadowed by the better bits.
By Daniel Rubino, Wednesday, May 18, 2011 at 10:38 am
Looks like our favorite mobile OS has, once again, made a quite conspicuous appearance on that hit show 'Castle'. Flashing back, it was only like 2 weeks ago since the last sighting (and then way back in November). On the episode airing May 16th, Castle decides to use his Samsung Focus (though carrier and name are blocked) to snap a photo of some evidence for safe keeping. He then quickly creates an email and promptly sends it to his partners (nice use of Outlook there too).
Overall, we dig these little placements as hopefully it'll sink in eventually with the greater viewing public. Plus, Nathan Fillion rocks. Thanks, @benalewis, for the heads up!
Now that he's had more than 30 hours to work on the app, he's released 2.0 and wow, is it impressive. The UI has been modified, many more options added (including a customizable live tile), social networking, YouTube and even the ability to choose those awesome backgrounds from your favorite show:
Get a quick overview of the all the upcoming episodes for all of your favorite shows
Get synopsis, screen captures, rates, news, subtitles, youtube videos and recaps for each episodes
Mark seen and unseen episodes
be notified right before a new episode of your favorite TV Shows aired even if the app is not launched.
Share comments with friends on facebook/twitter and with other users
offline mode with cache feature for pictures
rate episodes
Use your phone as a remote screen for subtitles
translation feature for recaps and summaries
for U.S. residents only: adjust air date/times of U.S. tv shows to your local time zone
Check out the video above as we give a tour of the features. We're throwing this up there with '4th & Mayor', 'Rowi', 'Amazon.com' as must-have apps for your phone. Truly some exceptional development by Huyn. The app fetches for $0.99 in the Marketplace here that has a fully-functional trial e.g. it's like the old 'lite' version.
Windows Phone first made an appearance on the hit TV show 'Castle' way back in mid November (see here, including video). Since then, we guess he forgot he had it since we didn't see it much...until last night.
Not only was the Samsung Focus (with 'Samsung' blacked out) featured by the main start Nathan Fillion, but also his lovely side-kick Stana Katic (who plays Kate Beckett). In fact, we saw the phone either featured or in the background being used (including once as a speakerphone) no less than four times--and that was us just skimming the show.
Some are calling the "Netflix moment" a little gratuitous and yes, perhaps it is but on the other hand, haters gonna hate, amirite?
If you're lucky enough to have a developer unlocked device, you may be interested in this sweet little project happening over at XDA. Martin_S has create a very lite app that enables searching and streaming of most major TV shows. In short, the app pulls down user-uploaded videos, presumably from various video-hosting sites.
Of course such grey-area usage of streaming and copyright concerns means we'll never see this app in the Marketplace, but hey, till then you can continue to flaunt those laws and stream some mediocre quality TV to your phone on the go. The app is still kind of rough and barren--but it does work as you can see in the video above.
Follow the thread here and use the version in the above video here.
This is a pretty neat advertisement on the WindowsPhoneUK channel, hoping to see it aired on ITV every three seconds (notably the worst TV channel on the planet for the sheer volume adverts inbetween programmes). Throw in a British accent that sounds similar to some video game podcasters and you got yourself a winner.
We also seem to be travelling down the route in having WP7 adverts for each network like the iPhone - same advert, but the ending is edited to included o2, Orange, T-Mobile, Three, Vodafone etc. Have you seen this aired on the big screen?
For those who use Foursquare, Twitter and even Facebook (phew), you may have heard of the big "media checkin" apps like GetGlue and Miso. If so, you'll be glad to know we finally get an official version of the latter, Miso, for Windows Phone 7, right in the Marketplace:
Use Miso to check-in to what you're watching and earn points and badges! Add your Facebook and Twitter accounts to share and connect with your friends. See what shows and movies are currently trending and submit your comments.
Features:
Use Miso to check-in, track, and share all the TV shows and movies you watch.
Connect Miso with Facebook/Twitter to share and see what your friends watch.
Search for TV shows and movies from an extensive online database and see what hot new shows are trending.
See a list of your favorite shows and how many times you've watched them.
We took the app for a spin and...meh. Needs a bit of work. It looks swell but loading times are long and slow (we never finished downloading the artwork for the Rachel Maddow Show).Coupled with the fact you have to manually search for what you are watching and we're not that impressed...yet. With an update or two we're sure the developers can hammer out any performance issues and make it a little more appealing. Actually though, we're way more interested in IntoNow (see video demo)--it's like Shazam but for TV, meaning you just hold your phone out and it will ID the show/episode for you, then allow you to "share it" or "check in". That seems way cooler and is rumored to be coming to Windows Phone 7, but no ETA.
Streaming TV and Movies over 3G or Wi-Fi to your phone is without a doubt one of the cooler capabilities of a modern smart-phone. There are several well known applications for Windows Phones that provide this functionality through different methods. Netflix connects to the popular subscription service and streams video to your device while Sling Player streams video directly from your home TV connection.
A less well-known service that offers a Windows Phone application is BitBop. As an up-and-coming competitor to Hulu Plus BitBop offers streaming and downloadable content to your smart-phone. Our review of BitBop is after the jump.
Pros:
Option to stream or download content, current tv shows.
Cons:
Service cost is pretty high, app has some kinks to work out.
By Daniel Rubino, Thursday, Mar 17, 2011 at 12:25 pm
The other day we mentioned about Rudy Hyun and his TVShow app which was coded in 30 hours. That was the free "lite" version and we were anxiously awaiting his $0.99 paid one with a Live Tile and more features. Well, as you can guess it's here and it rocks.
As you can see in the above pic, I have 3 upcoming shows with the next one being 'Community' (aka the best show on TV right now). The Live Tile update is practically instant after you add your shows (remember to hold down/press to mark all previous episodes as "seen"). What can we say? We're impressed and we highly recommend it. Outstanding work by the developer.
Rudy also lets us know that he already submitted the next update, which should be out in a few days. That willll bring the following features:
support utf-8 subtitles
rate episodes
reorder tv show
speed up the launch
Fix the silverlight toolkit bug (the application may close when we added an tvshow)
'press and hold" on a tv show marks all episodes as seen.
and a feature requested by US citizen for US tv shows: the possibility to have first aired datetime (Eastern time) or your local aired time (+3 for pacific time zone, +1 for mountain time zone)
One month ago we covered the story of developer Rudy Huyn--he was looking for a challenge: code a Windows Phone 7 app in 30 hours (including sleep), all he needed was an idea. One idea came up and 'TVShow' was born.
TVShow is one of those TV scheduling apps of which there are plenty in the Marketplace. We know because we've tried a lot and sorry to say, have not been that impressed. However, TVShow Lite is what we wanted and we have to give it some high praise: nice, highly legible UI, fast load times and logical layout make this TV schedule app our new favorite.
The app is "lite" meaning free and lacking features of which the paid version will fulfill. We're not sure when that version will be released but we want it: push notifications to alert you your show is coming up, device caching of images to allow faster loading times, "...retrieve episode subtitles, use your phone as a remote screen for subtitles, translation feature for recaps and summaries". Yeah, we want that. So hurry up Rudy!
The whole point of owning a smartphone is to maintain a constant connection with the things that are important to you. Your calendar, email, pictures, documents, and music are all right at your fingertips with a Windows Phone.
We’ve talked about Slingboxes and their associated apps before; but with Windows Phone 7 our devices are much more media-centric and offer better performance, making something like Sling Player something worth considering.
Pros:
Works well with SlingBox, simple UI.
Cons:
Defaults to low quality video. Expensive app, expensive hardware.
We haven't seen any Windows Phone product placements in awhile, so it was nice to see it play a tiny, but humorous role the other night on "Human Target (Ep 11 of Season 2).
Not much else to say really except keep it up Microsoft, you need the exposure.
In what is becoming a regular occurrence these days, Windows Phone 7 got some major screen time on tonight's Hawaii Five-O (CBS).
Dano basically sneaks into the "bad guy's" house and breaks out his LG Optimus 7 to snap some photos as evidence. He then "shares" them with his partner (who looks to be using an iPhone; cat fight anyone?). Overall, a nice demonstration of the WP7 camera system, even if it annoyingly resets your settings after each launch.
Bonus/Hey that's no coincidence: Microsoft and AT&T premiered their new commercial tonight which also features the camera function of WP7. How odd! (New commercial after the break).
Yup, another week another product placement for Windows Phone 7. It's almost getting ridiculous at this point probably since we're documenting every instance. But we imagine for public perception, this will go a long way...
Last night on the show 'Castle', Richard Castle (the super awesome Nathan Fillion) pulls out his LG device in what has to be one of the more obvious product demos on TV. Ever. But still, it was a cool demo of Bing voice search, something we haven't seen yet on these ubiquitous TV spots. We also went the extra mile this time, getting the video clip you see above (you're welcome!).
Okay, not really. But WP7 did get another product placement last night when Dr. Temperance 'Bones' Brennan received an important text message during an interrogation.
Once again, it was LG that received the honor of placement, much like last week on The Vampire Diaries and earlier this week on Hawaii Five-0. We're not sure how they get all the promo spots, but hey, seems to work.
What show will our trusty new OS appear on next? Stay tuned!
So last night on CBS, the new series (of an old series) Hawaii Five-O had a snazzy Windows Phone 7 placement. At about 18 minutes in to the show, two of the characters are in a museum. The male character suggests that the art piece was an original Clifton Bowles, the female doesn't believe him (they never do, amirite?), so he tells her to "Bing it!".
The female lead then pulls out an LG Optimus 7 and proceeds to Bing the gentleman's name. After this the show evidently went to commercial, where not one but reportedly two ads appeared. Not bad Microsoft, not bad.
Things I learned: Hawaii Five-O has a lot of pretty girls in it and I'm glad I'm vegetarian.
Guess this isa big day, as Slingplayer is now available too in the Windows Phone Marketplace. The app, first demoed a few weeks ago (see the video after the break, if you need to convince yourself), promised resolution "4 times that of previous Windows Mobile devices" which sounds impressive.
The downside is the price, which we all knew was coming: $29.99. That's not unusual for Sling but it's still a bit pricey for an app for TV. But hey, you need it, you now got it. Hit us up in comments and let us know how it works!
SPB is a class act among Windows Mobile developers. Their applications such as SPB Mobile Shell and SPB Backup are some of the best selling and most well known applications available for Windows Mobile.
Originally released in March of 2009, SPB TV recently made the jump to version 2. For the rundown on new and improved features, hit the jump.
For those of you who like free things, especially when they used to cost money then SPB will make your day. They upgraded their SPB TV software to 2.0 and in turn, made it freeware (previously it was $14.99). See a review of the older version here.
Well, it does play a mini-ad before your program starts, so more like a Hulu-method sans the cool content. A lot of it is local stations and some web-based things, no major networks, so this isn't a Hulu/Slingbox replacement by any means.
Other additions to 2.0 include
Video-on-Demand channels added
High quality h264/AVC streams supported
Hardware video acceleration support improved
Advertising added into opening screen
Backlight supported for new devices
Other bugfixes
We can't say it doesn't work well and it that is serves as a great "I'm bored, need something to do while I wait for the dentist" program, so we say go for it, after all it won't cost you anything.
It's available in touchscreen and non-touchscreen versions and you can grab it right here; unfortunately it's not available yet in the Marketplace.
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