channels

Clear Channel Communications is one of the companies taking a serious look at the assets of Playlist.com, the once promising digital music service that filed for bankruptcy protection last summer, according to a source with knowledge of the negotiations.

Details are few, but apparently Clear Channel, the media conglomerate with a large stake in broadcast radio, concert promotion, and billboard advertising, is interested in the user interface and other technology belonging to the defunct Playlist.com, once known as Project Playlist.

Playlist.com, which enabled users to create and share music playlists with friends, filed for bankruptcy protection in … Read more

This is it. No, really. I know you might have been temporarily fooled two years ago when it seemed as if the Lost City of Atlantis had turned up on Google Earth.

But this time it's serious. Really serious. How do I know? Well, it's on the National Geographic Channel.

According to Reuters, tomorrow night the channel will reveal the work of Richard Freund, a professor at the University of Hartford, Conn., and his international team of Atlantis-seekers.

You will be wondering where Atlantis truly is. Throughout history there has been speculation that it was somewhere near Southern … Read more

Ever wished real life could be more like a Pixar movie? It was for a little while on Saturday, as a team of awesomizers managed to successfully lift a house into the air, "Up" style, using a cluster of brightly colored balloons.

The adorable 2,000-pound, 16x16-foot yellow house took to the skies with the aid of 300 weather balloons that grow to 8 feet tall when inflated. From top to bottom, the entire aircraft measured 10 stories high and reached an altitude of 10,000 feet. It flew for about an hour at dawn from a private airfield east of Los Angeles. Oh, and there were people (of the non-animated variety) aboard.

The floating feat sets a world record for the largest balloon cluster flight ever attempted, according to the National Geographic Channel. It filmed the flight as part of a new series called "How Hard Can It Be?" that's set to debut in the fall.

And if you're wondering how hard it can be to set a balloon-supported house aloft, well, "it was pretty hard," Paul Carson, the show's host, notes in the behind-the-scenes video below. "It was very difficult actually." … Read more

Comcast is ushering in the launch of a 24-hour 3D channel by enlisting the help of Kings of Leon and the National Hockey League.

The cable provider said yesterday that starting at 3 p.m. PT on Sunday, its new Xfinity 3D channel will begin broadcasting. The channel will start with an airing of the 2011 Tim Hortons NHL Heritage Classic, pitting the Montreal Canadiens against the Calgary Flames outdoors at McMahon Stadium in Calgary. After the game is over, Comcast plans to broadcast a Kings of Leon concert from Hamburg, Germany.

From there, the channel will broadcast 3D programming … Read more

Multichannel movie sound dates back to Disney's "Fantasia." When the film was first released in 1940, the number of speakers used was scaled to the size of the individual theater; 30 to 80 speakers were installed behind the screen and around the perimeter of the ceiling.

Home theater multichannel sound arrived many decades later, and quickly settled on a 5.1 channel system, which is just a scaled-down version of the current movie theater system. The home system uses three front speakers--left, center, right--and two surround speakers placed on the sides of the room. The subwoofer supplies … Read more

Apple is being sued for allegedly letting mobile apps on the iPhone and iPad send personal information to ad networks without the consent of users.

Jonathan Lalo, who filed the lawsuit on Thursday in U.S. District Court in San Jose, Calif., alleges that Apple's iPhones and iPads let ad networks track which applications people download, how often they're used, and for how long, according to a Bloomberg article published today.

Specifically, the suit alleges that the ad networks are able to trace an iPhone or iPad using the unique device identifier, or UDID, which is a number … Read more

Toyota announced that it is working with Clear Channel to integrate the latter's mobile app, iheart radio, into some of its vehicles next year.

The iheart radio app is currently available for iPhone, Blackberry, Android, and Windows Phone 7. It lets you listen to more than 750 Clear Channel radio stations, the majority from specific cities with a few genre-oriented stations not tied to a particular market. Music streams over the phone's data connection.

Toyota offered no details on exactly how it will integrate the app. If it takes a similar route as Ford's Sync Applink, an … Read more

Attention all history buffs. The History Channel, which is now simply called "History," has made its entry into the Windows Phone marketplace with History Here, a location-based app that combines GPS with historical content to a "mobile guidebook."

If you've got a new Windows Phone 7 phone, the app costs $2.99 and currently has information on more than 7,000 locations nationwide, but according to the folks at AETN Digital, which made the app, thousands more historical points of interest will be added in the coming months.

As you might expect from an app … Read more

Sports fans can easily find the live stadium experience to be paradoxically out of touch compared with the instant stats, superior commentary, and HD replays available to home viewers. DVRs, HDTVs, and smartphones can't follow you to the live game. At stadiums, it's hard to get any smartphone to work properly. Streaming radio apps black out live game broadcasts, unless you're using Sirius. As for video, unless you've got some portable TV with an HDTV antenna converter box, you're out of luck.

This is the promise that NFL FanVision offers to a seasoned fan. At first glance, the device--a dedicated ruggedized handheld with a 4.3-inch screen formerly used at Nascar events--looks like a castoff from the early '00s, some idea of a personal media player from the early age of iPods. Purportedly waterproof (though we didn't test it) and boasting a 6-hour battery life for streaming, it's a bit too big to pocket and hangs from a lanyard around one's neck. Sure, it's not nearly as elegant as an iPhone. What it does, however, bears consideration. A live TV feed of the current game (plus audio commentary), multiple viewing angles, instant multi-angle replay after every play, plus live video of other games around the league, the NFL Red Zone channel, and stats...it's compelling for a hard-core fan.

How it works Others might ask, why not just watch the real live game in front of you? That's a valid point, but not for me. I'm a New York Jets fan, and my dad has been one for 45 years. We know the players, and we like to know what's happening down to the fine details. FanVision's audio commentary and stats offer more than what's given via the minimalist PA system and the infrequently updated HD megascreens. And instant replay, the killer app for the home user, is offered up at the press of a button.

Even better, FanVision seems to be set up to be overload-proof. FanVision works via a dedicated local UHF channel that's licensed to broadcast in the stadium and the parking lot area. The device is really a higher-tech TV, one that can receive up to 10 channels of digitally compressed video and stat data and cache highlight videos for replays. Once booted up via a small power button, the device locates the nearby broadcast tower and downloads team-specific data and channel programming. After a few minutes of initialization, the device is up and running. By avoiding Wi-Fi or 3G, FanVision's broadcast concept shouldn't suffer from slowdown.

It all sounds great on paper, but we wanted to test it for ourselves.… Read more