Hands-on review- Rhapsody on TiVo

Hands-on review: Rhapsody on TiVo
A few weeks ago, TiVo announced that the subscription music service Rhapsody is now available on Series2, Series3, and TiVo HD boxes. As a Rhapsody subscriber and owner of a TiVo Series2 box, this was pretty exciting. For me, being able to browse Rhapsody's entire music library (million of tracks) from my living room is, in many ways, more exciting than being able to access purchased songs from iTunes, which is one of the main features of the much-hyped Apple TV. (Sonos already offers full Rhapsody access, but it's much more expensive.) I've lived with Rhapsody on TiVo for a few days now, so here are my initial impressions.As you might expect with TiVo, the user interface certainly looks appropriately slick. From the main menu, you can search, browse the Rhapsody music guide, browse your own library of songs, listen to Internet-radio-like Rhapsody channels, or see what Rhapsody recommends based on your preferences.CNET NetworksI jumped right into my favorite part of the Rhapsody experience: searching for new music. The search interface is as good as you can expect, with an onscreen keyboard on the left side and a column on the right that suggests artists based on what you've typed in already--it's actually very similar to Apple TV. While I would love the ability to use a wireless keyboard, using the remote isn't too bad--it took me about 15 seconds to get some music by Charles Mingus playing, starting from the search screen. While that's not fast enough to handle someone on a browsing frenzy (which I'm prone to do on my PC), it's a perfectly acceptable sit-on-the-couch experience.CNET NetworksBrowsing your own library seems like a good idea, but heavy Rhapsody users will want to skip it completely. The user interface only allows you to view three albums at a time, so if you have a healthy library--like I do--you'll spend all day trying to find what you want. You can switch to browse by artist names, but then you can only choose from alphabetized track names instead of albums, and again, you can only view three artists at a time.Once you're playing your music, Rhapsody on TiVo has some additional graphical pizzazz to offer up. Once you stop pressing remote buttons for about a minute, the screen changes to a "Now Playing" mode, which offers of a large album art image and artist, album and track name information. After a little while longer, it goes into a screensaver mode that shows you album art from your Rhapsody library. The look is nice, but Apple TV offers a whole lot more in the eye candy department.CNET NetworksAnother major disappointment Rhapsody fans might have is the lack of editorial content. Part of the fun of searching for new music on Rhapsody is the well-integrated album reviews, which give you some guidance as to whether you should give an album a listen or not. If you know what you're looking for there's no loss, but browsers will miss the info.The most frustrating issue we ran into was instability. After playing with it for a few days, I've seen the program crash, hang, and get stuck in a mode where it wouldn't actually load any music. Most times I could just exit out of the program and go back in, but I actually had to restart my TiVo to fix the problem with it loading music--and then it still cropped up again. The errors were frequent enough to be pretty frustrating, especially since part of the TiVo experience is supposed to be never running into glitches. On the upside, posts on theand Rhapsodymessage boards seem to indicate both companies are aware of the issues. (The next imminent TiVo upgrade--version 9.2--is said to fix many of these problems.)Finally, the fact that both TiVo and Rhapsody require monthly fees is going to turn a lot of people off. TiVo carries a $17 monthy fee, although if you prepay for three years you can bring that all the way down to $8.31 per month. Rhapsody costs $13 to use the software on your PC, or $15 if you want to transfer music to a compatible MP3 player. That might seem like a lot, but if you fully take advantage of the Rhapsody service it makes a lot more sense--I can now listen to Rhapsody on three separate PCs, two portable music players, my TiVo, and even use the Web interface in a pinch.Despite all these gripes, Rhapsody on TiVo shows a lot lot of promise. When it was working smoothly, it was great to extend the Rhapsody experience to my living room and the service certainly has the TiVo "touch." While Apple TV is great for bringing your purchased iTunes music collection to your home theater, Rhapsody on TiVo effectively brings millions of songs to your home theater. I'm definitely not ready to give it my full recommendation--it's much too glitchy in its current state--but if TiVo and Rhapsody can smooth the kinks out, they might have a killer service on their hands.

The 404 581- Where we try to eat the meat off the chicken feet (podcast)

The 404 581: Where we try to eat the meat off the chicken feet (podcast)
Warning: Today's episode of CNET's The 404 Podcast is not for the faint of stomach. Please take a moment to scoot that trash can closer to your person prior to viewing.404 listeners Derrick the Unofficial 404 Photographer and Henry the Unofficial 404 Uncle surprise us in the office today with breakfast! Well, kind of. Chicken feet, anyone?Apparently, fear is not a factor for you, Wilson G. Tang.The 404/CNETThat's right, the boys were kind enough to make a stop in Chinatown to pick up a few select dim sum dishes for us to try on the air, and by "us" I actually mean "Wilson," because Jeff can barely even handle the sight of the food, and let's face it: there are some foods that even this Chinese guy won't touch.The tasting menu includes har gow (shrimp dumplings), siu mai (pork dumpling), and char siu baau (BBQ pork bun). Of course, no Chinese meal would be complete without the traditional chicken feet, and Wilson can't seem to keep hands off the stuff. Perhaps it's this type of Chinese cuisine that enables Wilson to see into the future! More on that later.While we're on the topic of disgusting foods, remember the KFC Double Down monstrosity we talked about a few ago? If you needed any more reasons to stay away, a man in North Carolina bit into a secret ingredient in his Double Down that gives new meaning to the phrase "brain food."According to his statement on The Consumerist, John in N.C. describes the mystery meat as "a solid-looking piece, a little more than 1/4th of an inch thick at the widest part, and it had the unmistakable "lines" that you see in the brain organ." Click through to the article for a series of gruesome close-ups that might have you skipping a few meals today. Again, not for the squeamish!We're also unwrapping a brand new weekly segment today in which the omniscient Wilson G. Tang will attempt to predict the future with his own brand of "The Big Tang Theory." We're eliciting questions from our listeners on what they want to know about the future, so today we're asking if the iPhone will ever come to Verizon, how Project Natal will be received, who will be the next GOP candidate, and how humans will use bathrooms in the distant future. Tune in to hear Wilson's predictions!We'll be doing this every Friday, so send all your questions for our resident soothsayer to the404(at)cnet.com or you can leave a voicemail with your question to 1-866-404-CNET. Have a great weekend everyone!EPISODE 581PodcastYour browser does not support the audio element. Subscribe in iTunes audio | Suscribe to iTunes (video) |Subscribe in RSS Audio |Subscribe in RSS Video This content is rated TV-MA, and is for viewers 18 years or older. Are you of age?YesNoSorry, you are not old enough to view this content.PlayFollow us on Twitter!The 404Jeff BakalarJustin YuWilson TangAdd us on Facebook!The 404 Fan PageThe 404 GroupJustin YuJeff BakalarWilson Tang