So Amazon was truly working on a console-slash-STB after all-- the online retailer turned hardware maker reveals a spearhead in the invasion of the world's living rooms with the Fire TV.

Rumours on the Amazon STB have been going on since April 2013, with Bloomberg first reporting of a Roku/Boxee-style device in development at the company's Lab126 hardware division.

The finished products looks like a small matte black box adorned with a simple Amazon logo. It runs on the latest version of Amazon's forked Android build (aka "Mojito") and carries a quad-core processor, Adreno 320 GPU, 2GB RAM and dual-band dual-antenna wifi. Pushing output are HDMI and optical audio ports.

Media content comes via Amazon's own Instant Video and Prime services, as well as Netflix, Hulu, YouTube, Pandora and iHeartRadio, among others. An interesting-sounding "ASAP" feature predicts the shows users are most likely to watch, pre-caching them for instant viewing.

Rumours on the supposed Amazon STB continues to trickle in-- "people familiar with the company's plans" tell the Wall Street Journal the long-awaited device ships on "early" April 2014 to retailers such as Best Buy and Staples.

According to the WSJ the STB carries a "forked" Android version allowing it to run not only Amazon streaming services but also the likes of Netflix, Hulu and even games.

TechCrunch also joins the Amazon STB rumour game, saying the device features a Chromecast-style dongle/stick design and OnLive-style PC game streaming capability. Reportedly "top-tier games" are to be streamed at 30fps-- a lofty goal, but one has to keep in mind Amazon is (probably) equipped to power such intensive cloud-based offerings.

Suitable Technologies’ latest telepresence robot platform is the Beam+, and it was created to be used at home.

Beam+ is similar to the Beam Pro. Both Beams have a big camera, big screen, big speakers, user friendly software interface, and the ability to drive. Beam+ is slightly shorter than the Beam Pro. Beam+ just doesn't include the dual radios that let the Beam Pro jump seamlessly between multiple access points required in enterprises.

There are no buttons on the system: it's all controlled via Continue reading...

TiVo co-founders Michael Ramsay and Jim Barton launch what they claim is a truly hassle-free way of viewing online video on HDTVs-- QPlay, a combination of cloud service, TV adapter and iPad app promising to be "like TV, but better."

At the heart of the QPlay concept is the cloud service. It provides what the company calls "Qs," video streams generated from a number of sources (YouTube, Vimeo and social networks, although the company says it is looking to include Hulu and Netflix). Users can create own Qs from channel subscriptions or browser bookmarklet, or simply watch auto-generated TV-style channels from sources such as CNN, MSNC and Al-Jazeera.