Nokia Enters PVR Market

Daaelar writes "Nokia has just recently announced their entrance into the PVR market with the realease of their Mediamaster 260 S. It apparently has PVR capabilities as well as the ability to receive small images via Bluetooth for viewing on a larger screen, i.e. your television. It also includes some built-in games, as well as a feature to record from a digital camera or camcorder."

Comments

Bluetooth mobile phone cameras

[prisen]

Wow, if the pictures taken on a mobile phone didn't look bad enough..wait until they get transmitted to a 36" TV...yikes!

Re:Bluetooth mobile phone cameras

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, they seem like a perfect match:

Your 36" TV resolution 640x480

Your mobile phone camera - same 640x480

Link to non-flash and much more informative page-

[ultrapenguin]

here. The flash intro linked in the article doesnt even provide any specifications.

Games! Rarr.

[Valar]

Screw the PVR capabilities. IT PLAYS GAMES!

Only partially kidding...

no no no

[rbolkey]

this was supposed to be a microsoft article. It's sco, riaa, microsoft, not sco, riaa, nokia.

"My fellow Americans--"

[Faust7]

With the Nokia Mediamaster 260 S, you can pause live TV, answer the door, and continue watching right from where you left off.

Ah, the satisfaction of putting the Commander in Chief on hold.

Re:"My fellow Americans--"

[mhesseltine]

Ah, the satisfaction of putting the Commander in Chief on hold.

Followed up by instant replay, for those "did he really just say what I think he said?" moments.

Re:"My fellow Americans--"

[akudoi]

With the Nokia Mediamaster 260 S, you can pause live TV, answer the door, and continue watching right from where you left off.

What I want to know is how it answers the door? Thats pretty impressive!

(And yes, I am joking...)

Re:Do one thing, do it well

[Dog and Pony]

Bah. Nokia was a tire (yes, those rubber thingys that goes on car wheels) company from the beginning. Their willing to expand into new markets and doing reasonably well is what has made it a succesful company. This is a much shorter leap.

From the brochure

[Faust7]

Why not play between programs? The Nokia Mediamaster 260 S has games built-in so you and your family can play

Man, what would my family do without those built-in games? Interact?

Nokia classics, such as Snake, Tic-Tac-Toe, and Card Deck

Dude! Nokia invented Tic-Tac-Toe? I have all sorts of overdue kudos to give them!

Convergance again?

[mhesseltine]

Wasn't this one of the problems in the dot-bomb? Haven't companies learned that it's better to be really good at one thing, and stay out of markets for which they are not suited, rather than be mediocre and lose money hand over fist? Not that I have a problem with companies trying to innovate, but I just wonder how wise this move is for them.

What's a PVR?

[Makarakalax]

Ok, so I could probably find out what a PVR was easily by googling, but instead I'm going to make a suggestion and see what people say.

Why don't Slashdot stories have abbreviations surrounded by ABBR or ACRONYM tags? This way you can insert a title="Expanded form of Acronynm" inside the ABBR/ACRONYM tag and when you hover your mouse over the acronym (in browsers other than MSIE) a little tooltip will pop with the fully expanded acronym displayed!

In Mozilla ABBR/ACRONYMs are even highlighted with a special dashed underline to alert the user that this particular acronym can be decoded without the use of ones imagination.

Here's an example or two.

Re:The important info - how many tuners?

[molarmass192]

Sounds alot like the guts of a Tivo system. As for being weak, all the heavy lifting (encoding/decoding video) is done in hardware, not software, so you don't need a huge amount of processing power. However, that would explain the exciting selection of games including tic-tac-toe and snakes, yeehaw. I'm throwing out my PS2 as we speak!

DTV set-top boxes

[Nexus Seven]

Actually, Nokia has been making Digital TV decoder set-top boxes for a while in the UK - probably Europe, too.

I can't imagine it's much of a stretch, therefore, to move into the PVR market.

European TV rules.

[JonMartin]

Not what is on TV, but how you get it. In Europe there is a standard that all digital (cable and satellite) signals use. There is a standard for decryption units/cards. When you sign up for service with FooTelly(tm) they give you a card. You can then stick that card in any third party decoder box (like this Nokia) and it will work. Great for competition and do-it-yourself-ers (check this project out).

But not here in North America. Nope, everything here has to be proprietary. We have to "let the market decide" (translation: "let the corps screw us over"). The result less competition and little innovation. I am guessing Europe is at least three years ahead on TV tech and they are pulling away because they picked ONE standard and ran with it.