television

Microsoft job posting hints at 'new cloud-based TV platform'

Does Microsoft have plans for the future of television?

The company has posted three job postings seeking engineers for its Interactive Entertainment Business that would work on a "new cloud-based TV platform." The job postings don't describe what the Cloud TV team will do, but the company entices candidates by urging them to "get in on the ground floor of an ambitious new project."

Microsoft's Careers site has been a valuable resource for Microsoft followers trying to see what the company has up its sleeve. Back in August, for example, a job posting looking … Read more

CBS library programming heads to Hulu Plus

CBS programming is coming to Hulu Plus.

The video-streaming site announced the news today, saying that the CBS library will be made available to Hulu Plus customers starting in January. More than 2,600 episodes from the CBS library will come to Hulu Plus, including those from series "Medium," "Numb3rs," and "CSI: Miami."

As part of the deal, Hulu will also get its hands on old shows, like "I Love Lucy" and "The Twilight Zone," the company said today in a blog post announcing the deal.

CBS, which owns CNET, … Read more

Wal-Mart to start selling Boxee TV set-top box

Boxee has just won a big one.

Wal-Mart tomorrow will start carrying the $99 Boxee TV set-top box at 3,000 locations nationwide. Bloomberg, which was first to report on the news, spoke with Boxee CEO Avner Ronen, who said that the Wal-Mart partnership could deliver "a big launch" for his set-top box.

Boxee announced the product earlier this month, calling it a "No Limits DVR." The device, which connects to a television set, has no onboard storage but acts as a DVR thanks to cloud storage. In addition, over-the-air television programming can be watched due … Read more

Mark Cuban: An Apple box designed for TV would be game-changer

Apple's plans for television will have nothing to do with killing cable companies and everything to do with playing nice with them, famed investor Mark Cuban believes.

Speaking to Adweek in an interview published today, Cuban said the idea that Apple would invest its bundles of cash in trying to "blow up cable companies" with its own deals with programmers is pure nonsense.

"I think there is zero chance of that happening," Cuban said. "Apple tries to do everything on commission. It's not big on upfront deals, and I don't see that … Read more

LG at work on WebOS-based HDTV, report says

The the slow pendulum swing toward the smart TV is about to hit WebOS.

LG has teamed up with Gram, the organization established by HP to handle the WebOS project, to create a television that will be running on the open-source operating system, according to a new report from WebOS Nation. That blog reports that LG and Gram have been working closely for several months on the project.

The road to Gram has been a long and hard one for HP. In 2010, the company made the ill-advised decision to acquire Palm for $1.2 billion. After a few product … Read more

How to record live TV on your computer

For years, DVRs (and the accompanying monthly fees) have allowed you to watch cable and satellite TV according to your schedule, not the networks'. The next logical step -- at least in my mind -- has always been to add the ability to move that content onto a computer or mobile device to be viewed elsewhere.

Well, cable providers haven't yet fulfilled this wish, but companies like Slingbox and SimpleTV have tackled this very solution, offering ways to stream live TV on the go.

However, if you want instead to save TV shows and movies as video files and … Read more

Consoles bridge gender gap on TV time

Gaming is helping men close the gender gap on how much time is spent in front of televisions.

According to new data from Nielsen, the average American woman between the ages of 18 and 34 spends 4 hours and 11 minutes watching television each day. The average man of the same age spends 37 minutes less time watching television, tallying 3 hours and 34 minutes per day.

However, when it comes to using consoles for everything from gaming to watching video, men spend 48 minutes with the hardware, more than doubling the average woman's 22 minutes of daily usage.… Read more

Pew study: News consumption up via mobile, social media

The Internet is continuing to erode TV, radio, and newspapers as the source of news for Americans. According to the latest Pew Research Center survey covering the changing news landscape, the proliferation of mobile devices and social networks is accelerating the shift to online news consumption. In the survey, 39 percent said that they got their news online, up from 33 percent two years ago. 

Only TV surpasses online as a news source today. Among 18- to 29-year-olds, one-third watched some TV news, down from 49 percent in 2006.  Among those under 30, … Read more

CNET Exclusives: A chance to win a PS3 and much more

Liza Maloy isn't a CNET editor, but she has a pretty fun job: she's the CNET Marketplace associate partnership manager, which means she hunts high and low for tech bargains to bring to the CNET audience. Each week, she blogs about deep discounts she brokers. Whenever she can, she gets discounts on products CNET editors love.

Picture this -- you are sitting down with a bowl of popcorn to watch your favorite movie on a home entertainment system, hand-selected for you by the CNET editors. I know it sounds too good to be true, but for one lucky … Read more