A great new buzz word has turned up. You’ve heard about “time shifting,” in which you use a video-recording device – a VCR or a TIVO – to delay the viewing of live content, such as TV shows.
This year will see the introduction of a wealth of portable video devices. Microsoft previewed Media2Go yesterday , a handheld multimedia device that plays videos, music, and photo slideshows. Media2Go is the size of a thick paperback book, with a 320 x 240 color screen and a 20GB hard disk. The interface, which is based on Windows XP Media Center Edition, allows simple navigation with menu choices such as My Music, My Videos, My TV Shows, and My Pictures. Microsoft claims that the devices provide 12 hours of battery life while playing audio content and 6 hours while playing video – and that it can hold up to 175 hours of 320 x 240 video.
So watch for a new term – space shifting, in which you not only delay the viewing of live content but watch that content away from the device that recorded it – moving TV broadcasts around the way we move music around on .mp3 players today. Coming soon!
