WOW! has created a fun, interactive tool to learn how to program your WOW! remote. This new tool will walk you through programming your WOW! remote to your TV, DVD player, VCR, or audio equipment. The step-by-step walkthrough comes with nifty visuals as well as both audio and written instructions.

You can access the new tool on www.wowway.com by selecting the “Remote Control Support” option from the Customer Care drop down menu anytime you need help or click here. Even if you don’t need to program your remote, visit the “Get to Know Your Remote” section. It gives additional information on many of the buttons on your remote and provides some helpful hints.

So go ahead and give it a whirl today!

A relatively recent trend has been to weld remote functions to the ubiquitous smartphone/tablet paradigm.  I’ve had a Samsung remote application on my iPhone for some time, and it works great with my TV (via built in wi-fi).  As a practical matter, however, it tends to be the “backup” when I can’t put my hands on the hardware remote–a second choice not for any particular reason as it is a pretty good app with all of the basic remote functions available.

It was just a matter of time before a number of companies introduced a “universal” paradigm to the app-based remote, and it turns out that there are a number of good ones out there.  Certainly a number of ill-conceived, hastily executed ones as well.

Whether you go this route or the more conventional “Harmony” style hardware is mostly a matter of taste.  Some practical considerations intrude; i.e. Do you really want your 3 year old scaling a chair to the kitchen counter top, trying to grab your $500+ smartphone so he can watch QwickDraw McGraw on Saturday morning??? Probably not. The crash to a tiled floor is hard on both the smartphone and the kid.  Compared to an emergency room visit, dedicated universal remotes are relatively cheap.

But if your circumstances and preferences are such that an app-based universal remote is an option, I’d recommend that you check out the following:

Griffin Beacon–This one got an “editor’s pick” from Wired magazine, and appears to be well engineered and easy to set up.  The hardware IR (which communicates with the phone/tablet via Bluetooth) is good looking, battery powered (so it can be placed anywhere), and effective.  The software is very versatile, but arguably not as streamlined as it could be, although it does a nice job of integrating program search and channel functions for virtually every cable and satellite provider in the US.  It also manages to integrate your Netflix queue and preferences with the IPG of (dare I say it) your primary media provider.  The Griffin package runs $80 retail, but is widely available for 50 bucks.

L5 Universal Remote for iOS–This remote operates by use of a “dongle” which plugs into the Apple connector on the bottom of the iPad/iPod/iPhone.  The advantage here would be that the “remote” hardware is small and doesn’t require additional batteries to operate.  The disadvantage is that the hardware is small and easy to lose in the cushions of your couch.  The other salient point is that this particular package “learns” all the commands from your remotes that you use, and you have the flexibility to design only what you want and use from the various remotes you have.  Some would argue this is more difficult to set up, but is a great boon to those who have older or “limited run” hardware.  As an audiophile, I have an “optical switcher ” for digital audio which is not in any database for remotes, anywhere.  This unit is also a remote only, and does not integrate channel guides–again, a matter of personal preference.  The L5 is iOS only and retails for $65, but is available from Amazon for $45.

If any of our readers has had additional experience (positive or negative) with other packages in this genre, post a comment and we will share with our general readership.

Until next time….

It seems to me that we may be in such a “fallow time” with technology.  No real astounding news coming forth in terms of “gotta have” product introductions over the last several months.  Since CES (where technologies introduced were mostly iterative or “me too!”), there hasn’t been much (public) activity.

There is certainly technology news–Apple’s race with Google to the $1000/share mark, Google’s high profile legal troubles with the Android OS, 4G expansions, and the usual M & A activity.  But nothing showing up as the Next Big Thing.

I propose this is not necessarily a problem.  As the development community considers technologies which will change (hopefully enhance) the lives of people (and the corporate bottom line), some “increased fertility, extension of root systems, etc.” is appropriate, metaphorically speaking.  That will help “the next big thing” be that much better.

Until next time…

Full disclosure, I am a TiVo man, a “Fanboy” if you will.  I have purchased almost 10 TiVo units in the last 10 years.  I have even bought them for both of my parents.  I have preordered TiVos and waited patiently for its release date.  In fact, my wife is a huge Yankees fan, and a couple years ago DirectTV got the YES Network (for $4.99 a month upgrade), and I was willing to pay up to $200 a season to get the MLB package on my cable provider, rather than switch to DirectTV and not be able to use my TiVo.  Am I saying it loud enough… I love my TiVo.

And, why wouldn’t I?  We have been through so much together.  We made it through the whole run of Lost, and even when I was going to give up on it, TiVo still recorded the show for me, and when I finally barreled through that first season I was hooked.  We laughed together through all of Larry David’s agitations, we celebrated together as my beloved White Sox won their first World Series since the curse of the 1919 Black Sox… in fact we even watched the movie 8 Men Out together… about the Black Sox.  What I am trying to say is we have been through a lot.  I have known TiVo several years longer than I have even known my wife.

Before I owned a TiVo I really didn’t even watch TV.  TiVo put television back in my life, and it did that by being revolutionary.  What the iPod was to music, the TiVo was to television.  As the VCR was slowing dying out TiVo became a new way to record programs, not only could you set it like a VCR to record a specific show, it was smart.  You could set it to record a season pass (where it would record every episode of a show only having to set it up once.  You could also set it to record an actor, anytime that actor or actress would be on.  You could also record keywords.  I believe I have seen every documentary ever made about the Beatles.  TiVo changed the game.

By the time TiVo issued its “Series 2” TiVo it was several years ahead of the competition, and changed the game again when they offered the “Dual Turner” TiVo which could record 2 shows at once.  It would be years till any TV provider would start catching up to TiVo.  In fact years before Playstion or the iPad streamed your Netflix movies TiVo did.  TiVo also changed the game when they allowed you to record a show on one TiVo and transfer it to another TiVo (a good 5 years before any other DVR could do that. ) TiVo also partnered up with Amazon to stream purchased movies straight to your TiVo.  TiVo was the king of the digital television world.

What happened next changed everything.  Fast forward to 2012, WOW! releases Ultra TV, a DVR that seems to be years ahead of TiVo and any other DVR on the market.  Unlike TiVo’s 2 turners (or their newest $400 TiVo Premiere Elite, which has 4), Ultra TV has 6 tuners, that is right 6… you can record up to 6 shows at a single time, way ahead of everyone.  Not only can you record up to 6 shows at once, you can watch them in any room of the house.  With TiVo you can record on one and transfer to another TiVo.  This was fine when you recorded everything in standard definition.  When it comes to HD it could take several  hours to transfer a 30 min program  from one TiVo to another (and I have 50/5 internet speed).  With Ultra TV it is instantaneous.  Start a show down stairs, and finish it up stairs, no waiting time.

If having the ability to watch a show in any room wasn’t enough, Ultra TV can stream movies and photos and even music on your TV.  How this works is this… if you have a movie saved on a computer that is on the same network as your Ultra TV it will find the computer and scan for content and stream it off the computer, same thing with photographs and music.  Me personally, I have a wireless external hard drive that I have all my music and videos saved on, that I use to put on multiple computers… since  it is on the same wireless network as my Ultra TV those items can be streamed on my television.  Ultra TV will play almost any video type.

Ultra TV has tons of other advantages over TiVo.  When I had my TiVo I also rented a DVR so I could enjoy on-demand.  With TiVo you lose the on-demand feature.  Ultra TV also has a ton of games that you can play on your machine.  Games like Sudoku, bowling, slot machines and the crazily addictive tomato game, where you launch tomatoes at your favorite TV personalities, it may sound crazy, but just try throwing one tomato.

So when it comes down to it, Ultra TV is the next step in home entertainment.  It is now standing a good couple years ahead of any other DVR on the market.   I would be a fool to say that I there are not some features that TiVo has that I wouldn’t love to have with Ultra TV, but with so many more features, and the ability to watch On Demand, I think it is time to say good bye to yesterday.

That said, Edison made great strides in research “method” which many scientists use variations of today.  He was a determined researcher, knowing that the “answer was out there” somewhere.  Sometimes, though, he had answers right there staring him in the face, and professional pride (or a the closely related issue of emotional ownership) prevented him from embracing a better way.

Edison was the father of “electricity for the masses”, claiming at one point that his electrification projects would make candles so rare only the rich could afford to use them.  Power utilities from New York to Southern California still bear his name.  He was a proponent (naturally enough) of his own inventions in this area which both produced and utilized DC power for use in homes and businesses.

There was one problem:  DC was difficult to transmit over any distance at all, requiring lots of heavy copper wire to make it even a mile and a half.  Said another way, DC power plants had to be built every three miles or so to service customers to any reasonable level, and if you were in a suburban or rural area, “faegetaboudit”.

Enter Nikola Tesla, a talented electrical engineer, who had patented designs for alternating current electrical generation and transmission.  Unlike DC, AC could be stepped up to high voltage for purposes of transmission (over thinner, cheaper wires), then stepped down again for use in homes and businesses.  Nikola worked for Edison for a time, and the two did not get on.  Even with an obvious solution to solve the limitations of physics associated with the transmission of direct current, Edison stubbornly clung to the idea that his system was superior.  The “war of currents” ensued, with Edison propagandists outspending Tesla and his investors by a considerable margin.  In the end, though, Tesla sold his patents to George Westinghouse, and the modern electric grid was born.

The superior technology could not be suppressed.  That said, even with the advantages obvious to AC systems, there were still 1600 DC customers running off of Edison DC power generation in NYC well into the middle of the last decade.  Service was finally discontinued in 2007.  Near the end of his life, Edison remarked that the biggest mistake he ever made was to not respect Tesla and his work.

Here’s the thing:  Similar nonsense goes on in this, the 21st century.  You’d think we’d have learned by now that no one company or person has a lock on all the good ideas in any given area of endeavor. Several high profile cases of precisely the wrong kind of thinking here have surfaced recently in the news.

The idea of “serving with heart” (one of WOW’s core values) implies an intellectual and emotional humility that should foster learning, good ideas, and ultimately, success.  I hope that that kind of thinking will help us respond effectively to customer ideas and needs.

Until next time…

Fast forward 10 years, I believe that I have found the actor that might be the top of the list, Warwick Davis.  Who is Warrick Davis?  Most people simply know his from his role as the title character in Willow (mainly because it is one of the few movies that he isn’t wearing a mask or heavy makeup), but Davis has been in over 50 movies and TV shows and has been in some of the highest grossing films of all time including 2 of the 6 Star Wars films (including the Phantom Menace the highest grossing Star Wars film) and all of the Harry Potter films.  In fact of the 50 highest grossing films of all time, he is in 10 of them (not including Return of the Jedi which only grossed almost $500 million).

Why all the talk of Warwick Davis, because he is back in the HBO series “Life’s Too Short”, written and directed by Rickey Gervais and Stephen Merchant, the comedic genius team  behind the original Office and the much under rated Extras.  In Life’s Too Short Davis plays a fictitious version of himself, a dwarf actor who is going through a divorce and running a talent agency called dwarfs for hire, where he manages the careers of other little people.  Gervais and Merchant also appear on the show as jerky versions themselves who can’t stand Davis.

The show is absolutely brilliant, and Merchant and Gervais’s ability to “go there” puts this show on the same level as the before mentioned Extras or HBO’s other mega hit Curb Your Enthusiasm.  We laugh as Davis tries to get an award off the top shelf or is put in a garbage can because co-star Helena Bonham Carter finds him “creepy”, we laugh because it’s Warwick Davis, arguably the greatest and most famous actor of his ilk.  Only the Merchant, Gervais and Davis could take a touchy subject like this and turn it into pure gold.

Like Extras this series is filled with giant movie stars playing themselves, people like Carter, Johnny Depp, I’m too Sexy’s Right Said Fred and Liam Neeson showing off his comedic side.  Gervais and Merchant are also hilarious, and when they are on screen you know you are going to be seeing the funniest part of the episode, and you know you are seeing something that is special.

Life’s Too Short is currently running on HBO with new episodes running Sunday night.  You can also watch it anytime on-demand or on HBO GO right on your computer and select mobile devices, tablets, streaming players and connected TVs. (It’s all free with your HBO subscription with WOW!.)

Rated: 2 out of 5 stars

Rated: 3 out of 5 stars

First of all, I’d like to give you a peek at the product through this video:

Ultra TV Video Demo

Pretty Cool, yes?  That’s the feature sets in a (rather entertaining) nutshell.

I’d like to let you in on a bit of the “back room” process WOW! went through to get this product to our customers.

First, the problem:  We felt we needed to offer additional features (like whole house DVR, additional recording capability, recording capacity, etc.) to our product line, as well as transition to IP based video without a wholesale changeout of technology.  And, oh by the way, let’s streamline the programming guide and maybe combine functions such that we don’t need several pieces of equipment to offer the video, data, and phone bundle that our customers overwhelmingly opt for rather than single services. After shopping the typical sources for customer equipment (the Cisco/Scientific Atlanta and Motorola cable equipment duopoly), we came away disappointed and frustrated, both for reasons of cost and functionality.

Our intrepid team of Cash Hagen (CTO) and Gary Nilsen (Video Engineering VP), determined to work with Arris, one of our excellent equipment vendors, and design some gear from the “ground up”.  It turned out that Arris had some prototype equipment in development that would provide the underpinnings for all that we were looking for, so Gary and his team, as well as Cathy Kuo (CMO) and her marketing team, joined hands with Arris on the development of new hardware and software that would give our customers an “Ultra TV” experience.

Once the product was defined and “over the crest” of the development cycle, we deployed Alpha and Beta tests as the software and hardware matured toward a releasable product, learning a great deal along the way. In addition to fixing “bugs”, we learned what worked well and what worked less well for uers.  Those “betas” began in test homes back in June of last year, and there have been many code revisions and improvements over the course of eight months to get the product to this point. Arris has been a great partner in the development process, but any product development this complex takes time.

We hope and expect that it was worth the wait.  The product provides tremendous flexibility for users and allows for future enhancements on a largely “software driven” platform.  And because it embraces standards like DLNA  (See blog discussion here), it will be compatible with certain feature sets of other equipment which embrace those same standards.  More of a “computer home hub” than a set top box, it represents a significant departure from previous video offerings, and we hope that our valued customers will be pleased.

Until next time….

Gesture and Voice control of Electronic Devices–This seems to be a wave (ahem) of the future.  Samsung showed off a gorgeous TV that used gesture and voice control rather than the conventional remote.  Microsoft Kinect for Windows seems to be gaining some traction as well.  Apple is rumored to be developing a television with a “Siri-like” interface.  All of this actually makes sense.  If we can talk to our cars and our smartphones, it’s just a matter of time before this technology is commoditized to other devices as well.  I will give my personal “tech editor” award to the first company that makes a voice command driven remote that will translate to IR/RF and with older home theatre components.  Now that would be a “universal” remote!  And you wouldn’t have to search for the “light” button!

OLED Televisions–”Organic Light Emitting Diode” sets debuted in several booths this year.  This display technology is very power efficient and allows the design of very thin displays.  This technology has been used in smartphones and tablets for a number of years, and has found its way into the design of large displays.  In theory, display panels could be manufactured less than 1/4″ thick-certainly a conversation piece in anyone’s living room.  I question the practical advantages of such a thin display, in terms of shipping, set up, connectorization, etc.  There are no inherent quality advantages of OLED over currently available technologies, but that said, my sense is that we will see more of this technology in larger displays as manufacturing/logistical challenges are conquered.

Thunderbolt–The Intel “Thunderbolt” connectivity standard appears to be gaining mainstream acceptance.  Thunderbolt boasts incredibly fast data transfer rates, as well as the ability to connect multiple devices with different functions; i.e. an external disc drive and a display monitor in the same I/O port, for example.  Throughput is over 20 times faster than USB 2.0.  Apple’s new laptop line has had Thunderbolt connectivity for a while now, but peripherals and Wintel computers hosting the standard were pretty scarce.  Acer has embraced the standard with its new Aspire Ultrabook computer and both Seagate and Western Digital showed new external drives with the standard embedded. This particular technology becoming more ubiquitous  is a good thing IMHO as this is  a really, really good technology–very user friendly and highly capable.

A couple of notable points–3DTV was not generating the buzz that it did last year, although Samsung and LG, among others, still seem to be committed to the technology.  Most set companies appear to be pushing internet apps into their more mainstream (read: “cheaper”) televisions.  The show was again awash in tablets, just as it was last year.  But market penetration numbers have not changed much.

A great time to be alive, if you’re a gadget guy!

Until next time…