Tivo’s been selling data about people’s viewing habits—what shows and commercials they watch (or skip), when they pause, fast-forward, rewind and so on—to advertisers for around a year. Now they’re adding personal info to the Chex Mix of ratings data they sell: age, income, marital status and ethnicity.
The sample size will be 20,000 homes, which for now is comprised of volunteers enticed into letting loose their persona details by a raffle offering the chance to win a free Tivo. The group is six times larger than Nielsen’s sample of 3,000. It’s also one-upping Nielsen in that it “will offer marketers the opportunity to survey some of its users via an online poll to ask deeper questions about their viewing habits and their feelings about both the ads and the marketers.”
Though the info brigade is all-volunteer for now, Tivo’s considering allowing advertisers to compare their customer database’s with Tivo’s, “which [...]

Original post by Matt Buchanan

Filed under: Digital Cameras, HDTV

We’ve come to expect flaws in gizmos these days, particularly in first generation products, but judging by CamcorderInfo’s review of Hitachi’s “world’s first Blu-ray camcorder,” this thing should be sent straight back to R&D. Truth be told, it’s not that often that we see a review this harsh, but we understand the need to be particularly critical when pondering a $1,600 purchase. Nevertheless, the DZ-BD7HA was essentially thrashed from top to bottom save for its stylish design and satisfactory outdoor shooting performance.. Testing revealed abysmal results when it was used in even the brightest of low-light situations, and the lackluster manual controls, omitted optical image stabilization (it opts for electronic IS) and a dreadful auto response system pretty much eliminated any shot at redemption. Honestly, repeatedly hearing about its “terrible image quality” throughout the review would be enough to scare away most, but if you just [...]

Original post by Darren Murph