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We're caught in the middle between Microsoft and Apple announcements this week, but we'll try and make the best of it. The Windows 8 Consumer Preview has hit the streets and word is Media Center is present and accounted, so of course we have to take a look. Afterwards, we dig into the latest digital movie news and the least surprising lawsuit of the week. We've also got an interesting Android dongle and the much-anticipated arrival of the Indiana Jones movies on Blu-ray. Our final question this week: Is Ben the only person in America who still listens to the radio?

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Hosts: Ben Drawbaugh (@bjdraw), Richard Lawler (@rjcc)

Producer: Trent Wolbe

00:10:15 - Microsoft Windows 8 Consumer Preview detailed impressions
00:20:09 - HBO Go coming to Xbox 360 on April 1st
00:23:15 - WSJ: Walmart to offer in-store disc to digital UltraViolet service
00:27:12 - Fox, Warner, SanDisk and Western Digital's Project Phenix: promotes DRM, misspelling
00:29:58 - TV stations predictably sue Aereo over antenna-to-internet streaming plans
00:37:10 - Netflix Watch Instantly's life after Starz includes Academy Award winners, more captions
00:41:03 - Always Innovating HDMI Android dongle gets an ICS update, we swing by for a taste (video)
00:46:33 - FCC puts Dish Network's LTE plans on hold, opts for a longer review
00:48:06 - Redbox deal with Universal keeps DVDs, Blu-rays on 28-day delay through 2014
00:53:46 - The Complete Indiana Jones Blu-ray Collection finally brings the entire set home in HD this fall
00:57:05 - Must See HDTV (March 5th - 11th)

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After CEO Reed Hastings recently hinted at the possibility of Netflix's Watch Instantly service coming bundled with cable services, Reuters is reporting the company has met with "some of the largest US cable companies" to discuss partnerships. The report goes on to mention it could stream through cable set-top boxes and appear as another line item on customer's bills, however for that, Netflix would have to rework content licensing agreements that bar its service from cable boxes, which has kept it off of TiVo Premieres offered by companies like Suddenlink and RCN. We've also spoken to the infamous people with knowledge of the discussions and are hearing that while deals are being discussed, what's initiated the talks is the increasing bandwidth load that Watch Instantly is placing on networks -- see the Comcast vs. Level 3 dustup from 2010.

What the deals being discussed could bring is a setup where your cable company offers bundled services (TV, internet, etc.) that include premium access to Netflix -- higher quality audio and video streams that don't count against bandwidth caps, and maybe even a discount from the standard rate. Cable companies could obtain revenue from Netflix under the deal, and also keep customers around thanks to the advantages of the bundled offerings, while Netflix could have more reliable distribution for its video, and a leg up on competition from Amazon and Redbox / Verizon FiOS. We'll wait and see what happens, but in an interesting twist, Netflix could quickly join sports as a tool for providers to keep customers from cutting the cord, instead of a reason for it.

Along with announcing the official release details for its 2012 Plasma and Smart Interaction TV lineup today, Samsung also introduced its Smart Touch Remote and Wireless Keyboard. Essentially serving as the replacement for its 2011 Qwerty remote, the new Touch variant will come included with the ES7500 and ES8000 LED models and E8000 Plasma display. The retro-looking slab features tactile controls for channel switching and adjusting volume on its edges, while the middle section is dedicated to gesture controls for interacting with services like Smart Hub. Notably, the remote also features a built-in microphone which will assist with voice controls if ya happen to be far away from your TV. Moving along for those who like to type, the Wireless Keyboard will be available separately and features most of what you'll find on the remote cleanly affixed on its right side. We're also told that it's compatible with both models of the Galaxy Tab 2. We haven't heard any word on pricing or availability, but check out the gallery below and a cameo of the remote in the video past the break for further details.

Update: Sammy reached out and let us know that its new Wireless Keyboard will be priced at $99 once it hits shelves.

Edgar Alvarez contributed to this post.

We've already seen pricing leak out for some models, but Samsung has today gotten official with the pricing and availability for its complete Smart TV lineup for 2012 (which includes more TVs than we can mention this post). On the LED side of things, those start out with the 26-inch EH4000 on the low-end, which runs $329.99, and top out with the company's 65-inch ES8000, which will set you back a hefty $5,099.99, although it's one of the few models that remains TBA in terms of availability. The company's plasma TV offerings for the year are comparatively fewer (but still include 16 different sets), and range from the 43-inch PN43E450 at $549.99 to the 64-inch PN64E8000 at $3,949.99. Those looking for a particular model can find the full rundown of prices and dates at the links below.

The Android Market has morphed significantly since its inception, which now allows users to purchase books, music and rent movies, all from within a hub that was originally designed for just apps. To recognize this fundamental shift -- and emphasize the availability of content for sale -- Google is launching a new platform known as Google Play. The move hints at a strategy shift from just Android to the cloud as a whole, and establishes an umbrella brand for the diverse content sold by Google. For example, its Books, Music and Videos apps will now become Play Books, Play Music and Play Movies, while the Android Market itself will take on the moniker of Play Store. Users of Android 2.2 (and above) should notice the software update within the next few days, although other than the new name, initial changes should be minimal. We're also to be on the lookout for a new "Play" tab within the top toolbar of Google's website. To mark the occasion, the company has announced a promotional "Seven Days to Play" sale, which will tease would-be shoppers with discounted apps, books, movies and music throughout the week. For an additional peek at what's in store, you'll find the gallery below and a video after the break.

Big East Championship
One of the 3D early adopters and looking for something to watch? While there are many conference championships taking place in the run up to March Madness this week, ESPN 3D's cameras are set to catch all the action at the Big East Championship, meaning several games each day, leading up to the final game Saturday night. Last year it was Kemba Walker and UCONN lighting up the stage on their way to an NCAA Championship, now we'll see which team makes a run in 2012.
(All week, ESPN 3D)

Game of Thrones
Assuming you haven't been forced at gunpoint into piracy, the first season of HBO's acclaimed series finally comes home on Blu-ray this month. Whether you're just reliving your trip to the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros or visiting for the first time, if fantasy , intrigue and drama is your thing, this should be a good fit. Winter is coming.
($34.99 on Amazon, March 6th)

Mass Effect 3
The final chapter of Bioware's epic trilogy finally arrives on Xbox 360 and PS3 this week. If you haven't caught on to the series blend of action and RPG elements yet it may be too late, but for fans this final battle to protect the universe should be yet another incredible battle. Now featuring multiplayer, if you see a sudden dropoff in post count over the next few days then this game is probably the reason why.
($59.99 on Amazon, March 6th)

It's Monday, and almost as regular an occurrence as the day itself, we're here to help by letting you listen into the recording booth when the Engadget HD podcast goes to mp3 at 5:30PM. Please be a part of it by reviewing the list of topics after the break, then participating in the live chat as you listen in.

Vizio snuck mention of its $150 XCV100 Skype-enabled webcam into its CES 2012 accessories announcements, and now the two companies have announced its compatibility with "most" Vizio Internet App TVs. There's no list of which models specifically support it, and which can manage up to 720p streams, but owners can check the capabilities of their model on Vizio's website. The webcam itself features an HD camera and four built in mics, and clips directly on the top of Vizio's flatscreens. Assuming you're into videoconferencing from your living room, have one of the HDTVs and are ready to drop a benjamin and a half for the privilege, all that's left is to find one of the cameras, currently marked as sold out on Vizio and Amazon. Now, if we could just get an update on that $99 ARM-powered Google TV set-top box...

Last year, DirecTV temporarily added TruTV HD to its lineup just during March Madness so its fans could catch all of the games, and it's bringing Turner-owned network back again this year. This time however, the satellite company has promised on Facebook (if a relationship is Facebook official, you know it's real) it's sticking around this time. This means not only can customers get all the college hoops this month, they can also later tune into all manner of reality TV programming. You're welcome (c) Kobe Bryant.

Hollywood's latest digital ecosystem offers lots of promise, but in the five months since its release, it couldn't be further from delivering on it. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Walmart will finally make use of its membership to the Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem by offering in-store disc to digital UltraViolet upgrade opportunities, for a small price of course. No doubt UltraViolet can use all the help it can get, but this is far from what we were hoping for when we learned Walmart would be in the mix -- we were hoping for the ability to buy and watch UltraViolet movies via Walmart's Vudu. Beyond our personal wishes, this no where near the big revelation that most consumers would actually find interesting: the release of the Common File Format which promises universal offline playback of our movie collection.

In a bit of bad news for Dish Network, the FCC has decided against issuing a waiver for it to start using the spectrum it's acquired from DBSD and Terrestar over the last year or so right away. Company chairman Charlie Ergen that waiting might make it too risky for the company to try and roll out wireless services at all. We'll see if that is truly the case, as the FCC's decision is to opt for a longer "rule-making" process that could take until the end of the year to wrap up before Dish can get started on delivering LTE services. While it seems unlikely Dish is going to get the LightSquared treatment, what exactly this means for its wireless broadband plans, or even the potential of a rumored purchase by AT&T, is unclear at this point.

Looking to get some unblocked Hulu or other Flash streaming action on your Sony Google TV hardware? It may be in your best interest to grab the cracked software right away The folks at GTVHacker warned an update blocking the security hole exploited by their downgrader tool would be on the way, and now it has appeared, sporting an ambiguous "operating system stability" reason for existing. Hit the source link to find out everything that can be achieved with a modified kernel and what it will take to get things running on your TV or Blu-ray player.

While there's no doubt that Virgin Media customers have taken well to the company's TiVo HD DVR offering, so far switching has meant giving up certain interactive TV services supported elsewhere. they're getting one back now, as the company announced it's kicking off the rollout of Red Button interactivity to the TiVo on Sky Sports HD, letting footy fans catch more extended highlights of Premier League games. There's more on the way too, with support planned for the upcoming F1 channel and BBC services in April. Check out the press release after the break for more details on what will be supported and when, assuming one will be watching the games on TV instead of diving into hooliganism, or whatever it is fans of football do, we'll keep our handegg thank you very much.

Honeycomb and Ice Cream Sandwich Android-running hardware has had access to HD resolution YouTube streams since launch (as seen above), but an update to the app that rolled out yesterday finally brings HD to some devices running Froyo or Gingerbread. The catch is that YouTube HD res won't work on every Android 2.2 or 2.3 phone or tablet, as we're told it is set dynamically based on screen size and resolution. Another quirk is that some devices still won't install the updated version directly from the Market, like our Epic 4G Touch. Still, assuming you can snag the update -- through official or unofficial means -- if you have the pixels to spare you should see upgraded video quality from now on.

[Thanks, Gideon]

After delivering its official remote app for iOS in December, Roku has quickly followed that up with a version for Android. Claiming compatibility with any Android 2.1+ device, it appears to have all the latest tweaks from the iPhone version already included, with a D-Pad and shortcuts to popular apps. Users can also do the same basic functions like add / remove / rate channels, control playback, and control multiple Rokus. Hit the Android Market at the link below to snag the free app for yourself or head over to Roku's blog to let it know if this is truly better than the numerous unofficial apps already available.

While a handful of Engadget editors braved the show floor in Barcelona, we here at Distro HQ were busy trying to keep pace with the insane amount of news coming out of Mobile World Congress 2012. Fittingly, issue 30 of our fine weekly is packed to the rafters with the best and latest in mobile technology. Also in this issue, Tim Stevens gives us his detailed impressions of Microsoft's Windows 8 consumer preview; we pick apart the long-awaited refresh of BlackBerry PlayBook OS; and Dante Cesa dives into Razer's first gaming laptop, the Blade. Plus, we grill Mobile Burn founder Michael Oryl for the Distro Q&A; Donald Melanson offers his latest reading recommendations; we get real for IRL; and Box Brown reveals a handful of Siri Easter eggs for Last Word.

Distro Issue 30 PDF
Distro on the iTunes App Store
Distro in the Android Market
Distro APK (for sideloading)
Like Distro on Facebook
Follow Distro on Twitter

In a change of conversation that would make Don Draper proud, Netflix has picked up its blogging pen and accentuated the positive, even as hundreds of titles provided by Starz Play blinked away this week. The first bit of good news? Content that's coming instead of going includes several movies that scored trophies at last weekend's Academy Awards,including Best Picture winner The Artist, and Best Documentary winner Undefeated that will arrive "later this year, plus Best Animated Feature Rango that goes live on the service March 31st. That extends to movies in theaters too, as last weekend's top two, Act of Valor and Good Deeds, are pay-TV window exclusives for Netflix. The other positive note is that it achieved a goal of offering closed captioning on 80 percent of the hours streamed by the end of last year, and notes 90 percent of streaming is now done on devices that have been updated to support optional captions. The bad news there is that some embedded TV and Blu-ray player software might not be able to be updated for captions, and progress on adding captions for that last twenty percent of content may be slower since it's content that isn't viewed as often. So, is the red envelope company doing enough to keep you hanging around, or are you going to blow through the last few eps of Lillyhammer and pull the eject button?

We had to wonder if Aereo / fka Bamboom would actually be able to launch its $12 / month antenna-based live TV over the internet service before the networks tried to sue it out of existence and the answer is in: no. Ahead of Aereo's planned March 14th launch, AllThingsD reports several New York Area broadcasters including Fox and PBS have filed suit in US District Court to stop it from getting off the ground. Put simply, they don't believe copyright law allows Aereo to retransmit their OTA broadcasts on the internet without obtaining a license from them to do so, whether it uses one large antenna or an array of tiny antennas (pictured above) -- one for each subscriber -- as it says it will. Clearly Aereo disagrees, however we don't recall that argument working out so well for Zediva. Hit the source link to read the entire complaint in PDF form for yourself or just peep a press release from the National Association of Broadcasters after the break, we'll let you know if Aereo has any response.

Update: Check out Aereo's response, also included after the break. Just as predictably, it "does not believe that the broadcasters' position has any merit and it very much looks forward to a full and fair airing of the issues."

Texas Instruments is helping to lead the way when it comes to mobile computing -- when we want an early look at what's to come months and even years down the road, TI is always one of our first stops. At this year's Mobile World Congress, the semiconductor leader wasn't shy about showing off its latest innovations, including those from its manufacturing and design partners. Today's demo focused on wireless video streaming -- a concept that engineers are approaching from every imaginable angle, and that is bound to make its way to consumers in a very big way within the next few years. TI's flavor is based on WiFi, and offers a dual-connection solution, letting you pair a tablet with a TV using peer-to-peer while also creating a second link between the tablet and a wireless router for Internet.

We took the tech for a spin using one of TI's development platform tablets and an external WiFi dongle (shipping versions will be integrated), and everything worked as described, though the video stream was noticeably choppy and compressed. TI reps explained that they dialed down the bitrate in order to maintain a connection at the MWC expo hall, which, as you might imagine, probably had a wireless signal density greater than any other room in the world. The tablet we saw was running a very slick context-aware UI that displays one of three home screens based on your current location -- there's one for work (that displays your calendar), one for home (media and home automation controls) and another for travel (restaurant reviews and weather). Pushing content from the tablet to the TV seemed to be seamless, and while both the UI and wireless functionality may appear to be ready to make their way into your home, TI isn't making any announcements about availability. There's no need to wait for a teaser, however, which you'll find just past the break.

Always Innovating appears to be living up to its name, making significant progress on that clever HDMI Android dongle that we first heard of way back at CES. Now the company's TI OMAP4-based television companion is rockin' some Ice Cream Sandwich madness, drawing curious Mobile World Congress attendees into the Texas Instruments booth for a look. We happened upon the device on the last day of the show, and we couldn't help but be impressed. The premise here is quite simple: your "dumb TV" (i.e. one that isn't Internet-enabled) gives up one HDMI and one USB port (for power), in return connecting you to the wonderful world of Android 4.0. Think web browsing, tweeting, gaming (yes, even Angry Birds), video streaming -- that same experience you'll get with any Android tablet can now be had on your aging flat-screen TV.

Always Innovating isn't feeling inspired enough to take the lead on manufacturing, instead licensing the technology to third parties, but with some agreements signed and others on the way, this ICS solution on a stick may be hitting stores just in time to become this holiday season's ultimate stocking stuffer. Pricing is of course up to the manufacturers, but TI reps suggested that we might see these things pop up later this year in the $50-99 range, finally making Google on every TV a much more reasonable proposition. Care to take a gander at this stick-based wunderkind? Jump past the break for our hands-on.

So far, Redbox has maintained that it's only willing to delay rentals of new releases a maximum of one month, but while Warner pushes for a longer window the rental kiosk chain has reached an agreement with Universal Studios Home Entertainment. The new deal keeps the delay window at 28 days, and promises to keep the discs flowing through August 2014. Despite Redbox's threat to start offering Warner movies day and date due to their dispute, so far it's still taken a couple of weeks for new releases like Harold & Kumar and J Edgar to make their way into kiosks. So far there's no word of other studios backing Warner's push for a 56-day delay between the date movies go on sale at retail and the earliest budget renters like Redbox and Netflix will offer them, which is a good sign. Not mentioned in the press release? Whether or not this deal could affect the availability of content for Redbox's internet streaming service that's on the way with Verizon.

It's taken forever to come about, but the first three Indiana Jones movies will be released on Blu-ray for the first time later this year. Paramount announced it will deliver The Complete Indiana Jones Blu-ray Collection this fall (no exact date yet), without explaining how it could possibly be complete if it lacked The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles. This set does however include the three movies everyone wants to see (Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade) plus the other one (Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull) which was previously released on Blu-ray. Paramount and Lucasfilm are promising the "highest possible" picture and audio quality plus a collection of the usual behind the scenes featurettes and extras plus some surprises. Judging by the work Lucasfilm and Fox did on the Star Wars Blu-ray discs we should be in for a treat, and fans of other classic Spielberg flicks have a lot to look forward to from Universal's centennial celebration releases which will include Jaws and E.T. While we wait for more details, hardcore Indy fans can already get their preorder on at Amazon where the set is priced at $74.99, or check after the break for the press release and a few throwback trailers.

That adage of "less is more" definitely doesn't apply to retailer return policies, so we have no complaints here. Best Buy is reportedly going to offer a more lenient 30-day window for device returns, up from the company's current 14-day policy. Naturally, this also covers price matches, and applies to all products, including those from Apple, where two weeks is the norm. You'll find the full details over at our sister site TUAW, when you hit up the source link just below.

We don't have 100 fingers -- theoretically the supported limit of Windows 8 on the 82-inch capacitive touchscreen display we just had a chance to go hands-on with at the company's latest OS demo at Mobile World Congress -- but things looked pretty impressive even with just 10. The display we saw is manufactured by a company called Perceptive Pixel, and it may even look familiar -- it's the same glass screen used by television news networks like CNN. But, unlike the giant touchscreens you've seen on TV, this guy is connected to a standard off-the-shelf PC running Windows 8 Consumer Preview. The glass panel is constructed of optically-bonded Gorilla Glass, so there's very little space between the picture and your hand, making for a much more realistic user experience. Naturally, this monitor is all about the visuals, so you really need to see it in action to get an accurate impression of just how slick the experience can be. Jump past the break for our hands-on.