Hi everyone,

Some of you might remember me as the beta program manager for Rio and ReplayTV. I am currently working for a start-up consumer electronics company and we are looking for excellent beta testers who meet the following criteria:

1 - Loves watching movies
2 - Has HDTV with HDMI connection
3 - Has high speed broadband connection (minimum of 2mbps down / 256kpbs up)
4 - Willingness to commit a minimum of 5 hours per week for about four months to beta testing our product and provide feedback in the form of usability feedback, enhancement requests, and, of course, bug reporting. Active participation necessary.
5 - Resides inside the United States. Should we survive long enough, we do hope to expand to other parts of the world .
6 - Not be a current employee or affiliated any of our competitors.

If you meet the above criteria and are interested, please email me at [Email]Nong.Vang@marquee.net.[/Email] Please reference this post (on empeg forum) in your email.

Thanks!

Nong
Nong.Vang@marquee.net

Lest anyone worry about this for any reason:

Nong is who the Rio beta testers were working with on the Karma/Carbon/etc projects back in their heyday. I've already signed my NDA for this project, looking forward to it.

Now I just have to figure out where I'm going to find the TIME for it.

Thanks for the post Tony.

Looking forward to some more good times

Sadly, I miss out only on the HDMI part.

I assume the NDA has to apply to all members of the household, but would each member have to put in the 5 hours, or just the primary tester, or some combination?

I'm interested, but I don't know I'd want to commit to 5hrs/week for a product I know so little about. I'd be willing to sign the NDA in order to make an informed decision about participation. Is that possible?

Apparently only foreign films, though. The closest thing to not-foreign is "Barbarella", and it was produced by the DeLaurentiis company.

I have to admit, there were visions of some form of HSN dancing in my head.

http://www.thealarmclock.com/mt/archives/2006/12/prelaunch_movie.html

I'm in (if you'll take me), sounds like fun. I sure hope fragile plastic discs aren't the future.

Matthew

Matthew and I seem to be Beta testing brothers! We both participated in the Beta for Mobile Crossing's Waypoint GPS device too!

I just sent Nong a note also!!! This one sounds exciting, and right up my alley too!

- Jon

Email sent - I have an optoma hd projector with an open HDMI port. I also have a timewarner road runner broadband connection. Please let me know if you would need any more information to consider me as a canidate. Thanks, -Doug

Sounds fun. I'm in.

Unfortunately I only have a DVI connection on my TV.

Of course, there's a catch. I just googled the topic, and one site tells me that even some sets that claim to support HDCP don't implement it properly, and certain HDCP-required devices won't work on those sets. I'm going to search and see if there's a comprehensive chart somewhere. (Update: found only one so far and it's not comprehensive.)

If you read Peter Gutmann's analysis of the costs and complexity of Vista's DRM mechanisms, you can appreciate why anybody else building a box in this particular space might find themselves needing a lot of beta testing.

Umm.

Wow.

Looks like this might be the device:

http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/gizmodo-exclu...-box-256044.php

I ended up passing on the beta, due to lack of time. Didn't want to simply sign up for possible free stuff without being able to provide proper testing and feedback.

Looks like a cool box, and if the article is correct, sounds like it will have a lot of movies out of the gate.

Looking at the original site and the Vudu content, I have my doubts they're related...

Digging deeper, I agree. Looks like this may be competition then. I was thrown by the codename they used being identical to the company name Nong has in her e-mail address.