Now if they are more hackable than the Esquire e-ink was….

excellent. the video scrolling paper from firefly is one step closer to becoming reality. hopefully the holographic pool table isnt far behind!

The problem with this post is that it doesn’t mention that pepsi is also using this technology to advertise at the same time in the same magazine

Wait for it….L-L-L LEGENDARY!!!

looking past all other issues here (and I second the feeling “Aggghhhh Future.”)

Who is going to wait for an ad to load? thats dumb, I turn off my speakers when an ad plays while I’m loading a youtube video, why would I sit on a two-page ad spread and wait for an embeded video to load in rl?

sorry but so far epic fail.

Now if the engineers find a way to somehow load the content from flash memory entirely instantly… Then props to them and it deserves a hack-a-day mention.

If they want me to read it their going to have to pick a better magazine than Entertainment Weekly.

argh. advertising.

To the people who think this will ‘clog up landfills’, you need to stop being meat puppets to green marketing.

As for the magazine, this could be very innovative or VEEEEERY annoying.

So what the hell is the point of reading if they’re just going to make it more like TV? I’m already sick of crap like this, just one more way for retailers to try and cram their products down your throat. I agree, would be cool having a cheap display, but who says it’d be hackable, and not purposely prevented? Maybe I’m falling victim to greenpeace’s spell, but I think things like this belong in the “because I can” category, and not the “because it’s profitable” one. Count me as against this concept, I can already see it now, sitting on the crapper in peace when (shouting voice)’Congratulations! You’ve been selected…’ etc

@everybody who dislike that idea…

face it yourare *not* the target audience !!!
i guess you dislike
* nerving ring tones and even more people who are going to pay 5$/ring tone
* stupid java games ala “i can read your mind…” for 10$/game
* social networks and social games ala sims
* people who share a shitty snipplet of music played on there crappy mobile phone with everybody at a distance of 20m
* people who think sharing *all* photos of the last whatever party with the rest of the internet community is cool
* people who buy stuff and throw stuff as the get bored resp. existed to it.
* advertising every few clicks and flashy websites

Face it if you read hack-a-day you might not be the audience for a magazine who is going to have video ads …
they will do whatever they think will help to target there audience… not looking at some old school hackers :P

Bye

The people that push this shit need to be put down! When will these infectious new york sleaze bags stop! Why don’t they just team up with the drug companies and taint our water? Just imagine having the CBS illness, You’d have to watch Letterman every night or start having involuntary convulsions. If you miss Survivor Oh No… a grand mal seizure.

my ears

I just so happen to have 2 copies of this mag(mine and my g/f’s) rip the ad open and SUPRISE it does have a mini usb jack, for charging, but if you read it when you first plug it in it says you can enter a password when that charge screen comes up….given that there are only 5 buttons i imagine it shouldent be impossible to figure out the password, just time consuming…but the real question is, if you unlock it, does that allow you to really do anything with it??? ill let you know if i even figure out which of the 120 possible passwords it could be… anyone one else figures it out,im all ears…

The password crack is easy. It’s 123 right after the warning.

So does that mean you can put new videos on the drive and have them show up on the screen – how do you program the buttons/menu? Whatever it is, it seems like someone did figure out how to hack in on a large scale. More info here: http://www.eisenstadtgroup.com

@scans
I would be, but I have yet to get my hands on one. they probably have a slightly different video spec for the device. :/

Maybe someone else has some more info… Good luck.

OK, I got it playing my videos.
Using SUPER, you can see that the video files are AVI containers encoded with XviD and mp3 at 320×240 and 25 fps and ~1500 kbps bitrate.
The audio is 44100 sampling, 2 chan, 128 kbps bitrate.
Install XviD codec and use SUPER to encode into this.
Just rename the files to overwrite the .avi files on the media player.
It acts just like a USB drive.
Unfortunately there is no way to change the volume that I see.
Make sure you uncheck Adjust The Encode Volume so that it isn’t blastingly loud unless you want to make it quieter.
With FFmpeg and Top Quality (VBR I think), you might be able to get 1 hours worth of video on this thing.
Now it can be reused rather than dumped after use.

I just got one from AT&T, there is only 1 button. So after you plug in the USB, you just hit the number 1 button 3 times and you have a usb drive. Everything above is correct.
Pressing the 1 button after it’s playing will skip to the next file.
nfl:\VIDEO\VID00006.AVI
nfl:\VIDEO\VID00007.AVI
nfl:\VIDEO\VID00008.AVI

SUPER is seen by the heuristics engine as a virus.

I have one from IBM.
Upon removing the outer covering from the device, I found that a third button was hidden by the packaging. I was able to use the ’1-2-3′ password input to gain access to the filesystem contents.