For all of you DirecTV subscribers who have felt left out of the MoCA revolution, fear not MoCA is on the way.  In this video interview, a DIRECTV engineering director gives a preview of what’s coming later this year including MoCA-enabled Set-Top Boxes, MoCA Ethernet-to-Coax adapters (mainly for legacy STBs), and multi-room HD-DVR service.  Note that the retail MoCA adapters for Cable TV from NETGEAR, D-LINK, and ACTIONTEC won’t work on the DIRECTV network (the Satellite and Cable TV work on different frequencies) so you’ll have to call DIRECTV if you want some extra MoCA adapters to hook up your PC, Blu-Ray, TV or whatever device in other rooms of your house.  That leaves only 1 conspicuous absence without a MoCA networking solution (actually 2 if you count AT&T who uses HPNA) and it starts with a D_SH.  Since they are prominently mentioned all over the MoCA Alliance website, it might not be a long wait.

See the video here.

In what seems to be a bet on the future of Over-The-Top (OTT) services, Wal-Mart acquired the VUDU online movie service in a deal estimated at $100M.  The VUDU service is used in HDTVs and Bluray Players from LG, Samsung, Vizio, Sharp, etc… and is adding more vendors this year.  VUDU is similar to the NETFLIX online streaming service, but is a Pay-Per-View service, offers up to 1080P HD movies, and usually offers a more recent catalog of movies.

Wal-Mart is one of the leading retailers for DVDs as well as HDTVs, so will be hedging their bets on the transition from packaged media to online media distribution.  VUDU might also help increase sales of Internet-enabled HDTVs and Bluray Players, as well as the services to install them.  Even longer term, Wal-Mart might also use VUDU to offer other online shopping services through the TV from digital music to household items from Walmart.com.

Whatever the future holds for Wal-Mart, VUDUs marketing power just increased exponentially and consumers will see and hear the VUDU brand a lot more.  Since VUDU offers the highest 1080P streaming quality of any online movie service (up to 10Mbps), a MoCA home network will ensure that perfect quality throughout the house.  Wal-Mart currently sells MoCA bridges on it’s website and with a VUDU-enabled HDTV, consumers will be the big winners in the end.

Your cable and satellite TV provider will soon be adding a MoCA network to your home in the form of new Cable DVRs.  Calling MoCA “one of the most widely-supported home media networking technologies”, ABI Research estimates 15 million next generation set-top boxes will have MoCA by 2014.  The network will be used for both “communication between multiple service operator boxes” and “communicating with third-party devices”.  MoCA is gaining a lot of traction in North America, and consumers are figuring out that they need more than just a wireless network in the home – they also need a wired network for the new digital entertainment services being offered.  With more MoCA networking products being introduced, consumers will have a choice of how they want to connect their home theater equipment whether it’s using a MoCA Ethernet-to-Coax Bridge or with a MoCA DVR.

Stay tuned for more MoCA product announcements.  Read the article here.

Another sign that MoCA is gaining momentum, recently spotted at the local Fry’s, the D-Link DXN-221 MoCA Bridge Kit aka Mediabridges !  Located right next to the NETGEAR MCAB1001 MoCA Kits as well as competing powerline and 11N bridges, the D-Link MoCA kits give users another option for building a high speed entertainment network for HD movie streaming, gaming and entertainment.  MicroCenter will also be carrying the D-Link products and since they are all MoCA compatible, you’ll be able to choose different brands to add to your MoCA network.

Look for more brands and new MoCA products coming later this year!

Click on the links below for even more info on installing a MoCA Home Network:

Actiontec MoCA page with installation instructions and video link

D-Link Installation Video

Netgear MoCA page with installation diagram

It’s official – you can now catch Netflix in more places than H1N1.  Netflix recently announced that it’s coming to the final missing game console, Nintendo’s Wii, joining the Xbox, Playstation 3, HDTVs, Bluray Players, Roku, TiVo, etc…  With all the access to streaming movies, maybe they can start catching up to their DVD library.

Just another reason to add a MoCA home network to your living room.  With all the connected electronics available, consumers will need the speed and reliability of a wired network available to their home theater.

Read the article here.

From the “What’s New” file from the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week, a new product that connects up to 4 Home Theater devices to the Internet from your living room.  WNC’s 4-Port MoCA Ethernet-to-Coax bridge uses the coax cable in your living room to connect to your home network, providing up to 170 Mbps to your connected HDTV, Bluray player, Xbox, PS3, TiVo, etc…  And since the 4-Port bridge is MoCA-compatible, it can interoperate with other MoCA devices from NETGEAR, D-Link, Actiontec and other manufacturers for a whole home wired network.  Just a peek at what’s new for MoCA in 2010.

Read the article here.

This PC World reviewer raves about the top of the line LG Blu-ray player stating:

The images it delivered to an HDTV were among the best we’ve ever seen. And with support for BD-Live, CinemaNow, DLNA, Netflix On Demand, Wi-Fi, and YouTube, the BD390 provides top-flight networking capabilities.

However, just the only thing he finds lacking is the built-in Wifi networking:

Speaking of poor video quality, the BD390 is one of two Blu-ray players we’ve seen with built-in Wi-Fi (the other is the Sony BDP-S560). This is a convenience for viewing BD-Live and YouTube content, but unless you have an exceptionally strong signal, we would advise against using Wi-Fi for CinemaNow or Netflix. When we tried it, we noticed a serious drop in image quality.

If that’s not screaming for a wired home network connection, either Ethernet or MoCA, to the living room – expect to hear more.  Stay tuned for more news from CES on why MoCA is THE way to go for networking to the Home Theater.

Another MoCA review is in the books, this time by Tom’s Hardware and the conclusions versus Wireless and Powerline are what everyone has come to expect:

For those who can’t string Gigabit Ethernet, MoCA is clearly the only choice when high performance is needed.

Tom’s Hardware puts MoCA through a number of tests, but where MoCA really shines is in whole home network performance as seen in the chart above.  When there are multiple video streams through the house, MoCA performance is almost double what Powerline and Wireless-N have to offer.  That means better HD streaming from Netflix, Xbox, TiVO, VUDU, DLNA or whatever movie services happen to be watched in your home.

Read the full review here.

Just off the heels of adding 2 new models of Roku set-top boxes, now Roku is adding new channels to it’s lineup of Netflix, Amazon, and MLB.com.  Although most of the new channels aren’t video including Pandora, flickr, and Framechannel, we can expect that Roku will be adding even more video soon.   Now that you can get Netflix on many other TV devices like Xbox, PS3, HDTVs and Blu-ray Players, you’ll start to see Roku begin to establish itself as much more than the Netflix TV box.