Review: Nintendo’s TVii tops button-laden remotes

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Nintendo‘s TV-watching tool for the new Wii U game console beats my regular remote control hands down.

Called TVii, the service transforms how you watch television in three key ways. It turns the touch-screen GamePad controller for the Wii U into a remote control for your TV and set-top box. It groups your favorite shows and sports teams together, whether it’s on live TV or an Internet video service such as Hulu Plus. And it offers water-cooler moments you can chat about on social media.

It takes some getting used to, and I had a lot of re-learning to do after years of using my thumb to channel surf. But once I did, I found the service an advance from the mass of buttons on most TV remote controls.

TVii comes free with the Wii U, although it didn’t become available in the U.S. until mid-December, about a month after the game machine’s debut.

One nice touch is that TVii gives you a way to search for shows over Internet video apps and live TV all in one place. I can then choose whether to watch it on the big TV or on my controller’s touch screen, which measures 6.2 inches diagonally.

Handling these different sources of video at once is a tall order, and Nintendo Co. does it pretty well. No one else has combined live and Web TV as seamlessly before. As the lines blur between the two, I would hope some of TVii’s advances are copied and improved upon by other gadget makers and TV signal providers.

For starters, TVii asks for your TV maker, your set-top box maker, your location and your TV provider (that could be an antenna). TVii then uses infrared codes to control your TV just like the old remote, and it can offer a traditional channel guide for live TV shows. TVii also asks for your favorite shows, sports teams and movies. This helps it create an easy-to-understand grouping of shows you might want to watch.

I appreciate the way TVii walked me through the setup process. It was refreshing, given the misfortune I recently had of trying to program the remote control that came with my cable set-top box, which is about as fun as doing your tax returns. TVii takes away the need to read folded-up instruction manuals that appear to be written by and for electronics hobbyists.

After the setup, TVii presents you with a series of icons for Favorites, TV, Movies, Sports and Search. A little avatar of your identity is in one corner, and tapping on it lets you adjust your favorites or go through the setup again. Each person in a household can have a different avatar and set of favorites.

In Favorites, your shows are listed with cover art, and you can swipe through the offerings. Tapping one, say, “The Mindy Project,” will pull up an episode list with pictures and brief summaries. Choosing an episode will bring up a range of options — the channel if it’s on live TV, or buttons for Hulu Plus or Amazon, where you can pay for monthly access or just one episode through the service’s app. (The free version of Hulu is blocked on gadgets, including the Wii U and tablet computers. Apple’s iTunes, unsurprisingly, isn’t integrated.) The option of clicking through to Netflix will be added some time in 2013.

One hiccup is that if you want to watch a show on live TV now, it asks if your TV’s input source is already set to the set-top box, rather than the Wii U or another gadget such as a DVD player. If it is, you tap “yes” and the channel changes. If not, you have to tap until the source switches to the right one and then tap “yes.” Still, there’s no need to go back to your TV’s remote control.

The other menu items for TV, Movies, Sports and Search operate pretty similarly. Eventually you’ll get a range of options to watch. In the case of sports, you’ll likely see several game possibilities, with the latest score showing up on each game icon.

As an alternative, you can resort to a physical TV button on the GamePad that brings up touch controls that mimic a simplified, standard remote.

Another option is using an altogether separate interface in which favorite channels and other controls are displayed graphically on a semi-circular wheel. It looks strange, and I wouldn’t recommend it.

Anyone who is frustrated by the jumble of cables and boxes that now surround TVs will see TVii’s appeal. My wife said she liked the ease of holding and touching the controller, rather than fiddling with the button-laden remote. One downside I can see with TVii is that you have to keep looking down to figure out what to watch. And you have to plug it in frequently, as the GamePad controller will die out after three to five hours of use.

TVii also offers a standard channel guide in which you can scroll up and down for programs on different channels or right and left for different times of day. A touch will change the channel to the program, which is nice.

For certain shows and sporting events, TVii will supply a running list of key events called “TV tags.” These descriptions of events, like the precise moment when Mindy’s Christmas party descends into chaos, are displayed on the GamePad’s screen, along with a screenshot. Tapping on one opens up a comment window, and an onscreen keyboard allows you to make a comment. For sports, you get a description of each play, such as the number of yards thrown in a pass, beside a graphic that gets updated.

Not many people have Wii U consoles yet, nor is everyone tuned to TVii. As a result, I found myself with only one or two commenters to share my thoughts with.

If you’ve connected TVii to Facebook and Twitter (again, some sign-up is involved), your comments will go out to your friends and followers, but the TV tag that you are commenting on won’t show up, so they might not know what you’re talking about. TVii adds the hashtag “NintendoTVii” to help readers take a guess.

In the end, TVii isn’t perfect.

It isn’t yet able to program your digital video recorder, although it will do so for TiVo DVRs by March. Sports are limited to pro and college basketball and football, and there’s no integration with fantasy sports leagues. And the battery life of the GamePad is short.

A review unit I was sent failed to take a charge and had to be replaced, although I haven’t found others who have had the same problem.

These irritations aside, Nintendo has given us a way to control the clutter of channels, apps and devices crowding around the TV. It’s relatively easy and intuitive and some updates are on the way. Considering the garble of the TV universe, that’s pretty good.

___

About TVii:

TVii turns the GamePad controller for the Wii U into a remote control that integrates your live TV and Internet video experience. The service is free, but you’ll need a Wii U game console, which starts at $ 300. You’ll also need to pay extra to use video services such as Hulu Plus, Amazon and Netflix.

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U.S. pop singer Patti Page dies at age 85

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – American pop singer Patti Page, whose 1950 hit “Tennessee Waltz” topped the charts for months, has died in Southern California, her manager said on Wednesday. She was 85.

Nicknamed “The Singing’ Rage,” Page sold more than 100 million albums in her 67-year career, which included 1950s chart toppers “(How Much Is That) Doggie in the Window,” “I Went to Your Wedding” and “All My Love (Bolero).”

She died on Tuesday in a nursing home in Encinitas, north of San Diego, after suffering congestive heart failure, her manager, Michael Glynn, told Reuters.

“She’d been having some health issues for the past couple of years,” Glynn said. “She was actually doing better yesterday. I spoke to her and she sounded well.”

Page won a Grammy for her 1998 album “Live at Carnegie Hall: The 50th Anniversary Concert” and will be honored with a lifetime achievement Grammy in February. She had expected to attend the ceremony, Glynn said.

Page was born in Oklahoma as Clara Ann Fowler in 1927 and was known for her light, every-girl voice. Her first big hit was “With My Eyes Wide Open, I’m Dreaming,” which peaked at No. 11 on the charts in 1950.

Eight years later, Page scored her penultimate top-10 song, “Left Right Out of Your Heart,” as rock ‘n’ roll was emerging as the dominant trend in popular music.

Her final big hit was “Hush … Hush Sweet Charlotte” in 1965. The song served as the theme of a film of the same name starring Bette Davis.

Her reputation was burnished in recent years when rock group The White Stripes covered her 1952 song “Conquest” on their Grammy-winning 2007 album “Icky Thump.”

She was married three times, most recently in 1990.

Page is survived by her two children, and several grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

(Reporting by Eric Kelsey; Editing by Jill Serjeant and Peter Cooney)

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Clinton discharged from hospital, doctors expect full recovery

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was discharged from a New York hospital on Wednesday after being treated for a blood clot near her brain and her doctors expect her to make a full recovery, the State Department said.

Clinton, who has not been seen in public since December 7, was at New York-Presbyterian Hospital under treatment for a blood clot behind her right ear that stemmed from a concussion she suffered in mid-December, the department said on Sunday.

The concussion was the result of an earlier illness, described by the State Department as a stomach virus she had picked up during a trip to Europe that led to dehydration and a fainting spell after she returned to the United States.

“Secretary Clinton was discharged from the hospital this evening. Her medical team advised her that she is making good progress on all fronts, and they are confident she will make a full recovery,” Philippe Reines, a deputy assistant secretary of state, said in a statement.

Reines said Clinton was “eager to get back to the office.”

Earlier, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters at her daily briefing Clinton had been talking with her staff by telephone and receiving memos.

Clinton also spoke to two foreign officials – the U.N. envoy on Syria and the prime minister of Qatar – on Saturday, the day before the State Department disclosed the blood clot and her stay at the hospital.

In a statement released by the State Department on Monday, Clinton’s doctors said she was being treated with blood thinners and would be released from the hospital once the correct dosage had been determined.

(Reporting by Arshad Mohammed; Editing by Sandra Maler and Todd Eastham)

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Exclusive: McConnell defends 'imperfect' fiscal deal

Editor's note: This op/ed is by Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.

The first day of a new Congress always represents a fresh start. This year, it also presents a perfect opportunity to tackle the single-greatest challenge facing our nation: reining in the out-of-control federal spending that threatens to permanently alter our economy and dim the prospects and opportunities of future generations of Americans.

Earlier this week, I helped negotiate an imperfect solution aimed at avoiding the so-called “fiscal cliff.” If I had my way taxes would not have gone up on anyone, but the unavoidable fact was this if we had sat back and done nothing taxes would have gone up dramatically on every single American, and I simply couldn’t allow that to happen.

By acting, we’ve shielded more than 99% of taxpayers from a massive tax hike that President Obama was all-too willing to impose. American families and small businesses that would have seen painfully smaller paychecks and profits this month have been spared. Retirement accounts for seniors won’t be whittled down by a dramatic increase in taxes on investment income. And many who’ve spent a lifetime paying taxes on income and savings won’t be slammed with a dramatically higher tax on estates.

Was it a great deal? No. As I said, taxes shouldn’t be going up at all. Just as importantly, the transcendent issue of our time, the spiraling debt, remains completely unaddressed. Yet now that the President has gotten his long-sought tax hike on the “rich,” we can finally turn squarely toward the real problem, which is spending.

Predictably, the President is already claiming that his tax hike on the “rich” isn’t enough. I have news for him: the moment that he and virtually every elected Democrat in Washington signed off on the terms of the current arrangement, it was the last word on taxes. That debate is over. Now the conversation turns to cutting spending on the government programs that are the real source of the nation’s fiscal imbalance. And the upcoming debate on the debt limit is the perfect time to have that discussion.

We simply cannot increase the nation’s borrowing limit without committing to long overdue reforms to spending programs that are the very cause of our debt.

The only way to achieve the balance the President claims to want is by cutting spending. As he himself has admitted, no amount of tax hikes or revenue could possibly keep up with the amount of money Washington is projected to spend in the coming years. At some point, high taxes become such a drag on the economy that the revenue stalls.

While most Washington Democrats may want to deny it, the truth is, the only thing we can do to solve the nation’s fiscal problem is to tackle government spending head on — and particularly, spending on health care programs, which appear to take off like a fighter jet on every chart available that details current trends in federal spending.

The President may not want to have a fight about government spending over the next few months, but it’s the fight he is going to have, because it’s a debate the country needs. For the sake of our future, the President must show up to this debate early and convince his party to do something that neither he nor they have been willing to do until now. Over the next two months they need to deliver the same kind of bipartisan resolution to the spending problem we have now achieved on revenue — before the 11th hour.

When it comes to spending, the time has come to rise above the special interest groups that dominate the liberal wing of the Democratic Party in Washington and act, without drama or delay. The President likes to say that most Americans support tax hikes on the rich. What he conveniently leaves out is that even more Americans support cuts. That’s the debate the American people really want. It’s a debate Republicans are ready to have. And it’s the debate that starts today, whether the President wants it or not.

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France counts 1,193 cars torched on New Year’s Eve

PARIS (AP) — A New Year’s Eve tradition for some in France of torching empty, parked cars has continued.

Interior Minister Manuel Valls said Tuesday that 1,193 vehicles were burned overnight around the country, where the stunt began in the 1990s.

There was no way to compare this figure to recent ones because the conservative government of former President Nicolas Sarkozy stopped making the numbers public while he was in office. But the rate of burned cars was apparently steady. On Dec. 31, 2009, 1,147 vehicles were burned.

For some, the decision of France’s current Socialist government to resume making public figures of New Year’s Eve’s torched cars is unwise.

Bruno Beschizza, a security chief for Sarkozy’s UMP party, said on iTele TV that publishing the numbers motivates youths to commit such crimes.

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Thieves stole more than $1 million worth of Apple products during a New Years Eve heist

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Playboy Hugh Hefner marries his ‘runaway bride’

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Hugh Hefner is celebrating the new year as a married man once again.

The 86-year-old Playboy magazine founder exchanged vows with his “runaway bride,” Crystal Harris, at a private Playboy Mansion ceremony on New Year’s Eve. Harris, a 26-year-old “Playmate of the Month” in 2009, broke off a previous engagement to Hefner just before they were to be married in 2011.

Playboy said on Tuesday that the couple celebrated at a New Year’s Eve party at the mansion with guests that included comic Jon Lovitz, Gene Simmons of KISS and baseball star Evan Longoria.

The bride wore a strapless gown in soft pink, Hefner a black tux. Hefner’s been married twice before but lived the single life between 1959 and 1989.

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Gambian leader says to build herbal AIDS-cure hospital

BANJUL (Reuters) – AIDS patients would be offered an herbal cure at a 1,111-bed hospital in Gambia that the president said on Tuesday he plans to build despite medical concerns the treatment is dangerous.

President Yahya Jammeh said in 2007 he had found a remedy of boiled herbs to cure AIDS, stirring anger among Western medical experts who claimed he was giving false hope to the sick.

“With this project coming to fruition, we intend to treat 10,000 HIV/AIDS patients every six months through natural medicine,” Jammeh said in his New Year’s address, adding that he expected the 1,111-bed hospital to open in 2015.

The World Health Organisation and the United Nations have said Jammeh’s HIV/AIDS treatment is alarming mainly because patients are required to cease their anti-retroviral drugs, making them more prone to infection.

Jammeh said in October that 68 HIV/AIDS patients undergoing his herbal remedy had been cured and discharged, the seventh batch since the treatments began five years ago.

Other African leaders have drawn criticism for extolling the power of natural remedies to combat AIDS.

The administration of former South African President Thabo Mbeki was ridiculed for denying there was a link between HIV and AIDS while prescribing meaningless treatments such as beet root instead of internationally proven medicines.

The HIV rate in Gambia is relatively low compared to other African states, with 2 percent of the country’s roughly 1.8 million people infected, according to the United Nations.

Jammeh came to power in Gambia, a sliver of land on Africa’s west coast that is popular with sun-seeking European tourists, in a bloodless military coup in 1994.

He is accused by activists of human rights abuses during his rule, and most recently drew international criticism for executing nine death-row inmates by firing squad.

(Reporting by Pap Saine; Writing by Richard Valdmanis; Editing by Michael Roddy)

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House finally ready to vote on fiscal deal

WASHINGTON (AP) — Maneuvered into a political corner, House Republicans abandoned demands for changes in emergency legislation to prevent widespread tax increases and painful across-the-board spending cuts and cleared the way for a final, climactic New Year's night vote.

The decision capped a day of intense political calculations for conservatives who control the House. They had to weigh their desire to cut spending against the fear that the Senate would refuse to consider any changes they made in the "fiscal cliff" bill, sending it into limbo and saddling Republicans with the blame for a whopping middle class tax increase.

Adding to the GOP discomfort, one Senate Democratic leadership aide said Majority Leader Harry Reid would "absolutely not take up the bill" if the House changed it. The aide spoke on condition of anonymity, citing a requirement to keep internal deliberations private.

The legislation cleared the Senate hours earlier on a lopsided pre-dawn vote of 89-8. Administration officials met at the White House to monitor its progress.

"I do not support the bill. We are looking, though, for the best path forward," House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., declared after one meeting of the party's rank-and-file.

Despite Cantor's remarks, Speaker John Boehner took no public position on the bill as he sought to negotiate a conclusion to the final crisis of a two-year term full of them.

It wasn't the first time that the tea party-infused House Republican majority has rebelled against the party establishment since the GOP took control of the chamber 24 months ago. But with the two-year term set to end Thursday at noon, it was likely the last. And as was true in earlier cases of a threatened default and government shutdown, the brinkmanship came on a matter of economic urgency, leaving the party open to a public backlash if tax increases do take effect on tens of millions.

After intensive deliberations — a pair of rank-and-file meetings sandwiched around a leadership session, the GOP high command had not yet settled on a course of action by early evening.

Instead, they canvassed Republicans to see if they wanted simply to vote on the Senate measure, or whether they wanted first to try and add spending cuts totaling about $300 billion over a decade. The cuts had passed the House twice earlier in the year but are opposed by most if not all Senate Democrats.

"We've gone as far as we can go," said Rep. Jack Kingston, R-Ga. "I think people are ready to bring this to a conclusion, and know we have a whole year ahead of us" for additional fights over spending.

The economic as well as political stakes were considerable.

Economists have warned that without action by Congress, the tax increases and spending cuts that technically took effect with the turn of the new year at midnight could send the economy into recession.

Even with enactment of the legislation, taxes are on the rise for millions.

A 2 percentage point temporary cut in the payroll tax, originally enacted two years ago to stimulate the economy, expired with the end of 2012. Neither Obama nor Republicans have made a significant effort to extend it.

The Senate-passed bill was designed to prevent that while providing for tax increases at upper incomes, as Obama campaigned for in his successful bid for a second term.

It would also prevent an expiration of extended unemployment benefits for an estimated two million jobless, block a 27 percent cut in fees for doctors who treat Medicare patients, stop a $900 pay increase for lawmakers from taking effect in March and head off a threatened spike in milk prices.

At the same time, it would stop $24 billion in spending cuts set to take effect over the next two months, although only about half of that total would be offset with spending reductions elsewhere in the budget.

The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office said the measure would add nearly $4 trillion over a decade to federal deficits, a calculation that assumed taxes would otherwise have risen on taxpayers at all income levels. There was little or no evident concern among Republicans on that point, presumably because of their belief that tax cuts pay for themselves by expanding economic growth and do not cause deficits to rise.

The relative paucity of spending cuts was a sticking point with many House Republicans. Among other items, the extension of unemployment benefits costs $30 billion, and is not offset by savings elsewhere.

"I personally hate it," said Rep. John Campbell of California. "The speaker the day after the election said we would give on taxes and we have. But we wanted spending cuts. This bill has spending increases. Are you kidding me? So we get tax increases and spending increases? Come on."

Others said unhappiness over spending outweighed fears that the financial markets will plunge on Wednesday if the fiscal cliff hasn't been averted.

"There's a concern about the markets, but there's a bigger concern, which is getting this right, which is something we haven't been very good at over the past two years," said Rep. Steve LaTourette of Ohio.

House Democrats met privately with Biden for their review of the measure, and the party's leader, Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California, said afterward that Boehner should permit a vote.

"That is what we expect. That is what the American people deserve," she said.

For all the struggle involved in the legislation, even its passage would merely clear the way for another round of controversy almost as soon as the new Congress convenes.

With the Treasury expected to need an expansion in borrowing authority by early spring, and funding authority for most government programs set to expire in late March, Republicans have made it clear they intend to use those events as leverage with the administration to win savings from Medicare and other government benefit programs.

McConnell said as much moments before the 2 a.m. Tuesday vote in the Senate — two hours after the advertised "cliff" deadline.

"We've taken care of the revenue side of this debate. Now it's time to get serious about reducing Washington's out-of-control spending," he said. "That's a debate the American people want. It's the debate we'll have next. And it's a debate Republicans are ready for."

The 89-8 vote in the Senate was unexpectedly lopsided.

Despite grumbling from liberals that Obama had given way too much in the bargaining, only three Democrats opposed the measure.

Among the Republican supporters were Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, an ardent opponent of tax increases, as well as Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, elected to his seat two years ago with tea party support.

It marked the first time in two decades that Republicans willingly supported higher taxes, in this case on incomes over $400,000 for individuals and $450,000 for couples. Taxes also would rise on estates greater than $5 million in size, and on capital gains and dividend income made by the wealthy.

___

Associated Press writers Andrew Taylor, Larry Margasak and Julie Pace contributed to this story.

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Pope marks end of difficult year, notes God’s good

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Benedict XVI marked the end of a difficult year Monday by saying that despite all the death and injustice in the world, goodness prevails.

Benedict celebrated New Year’s Eve with a vespers service in St. Peter’s Basilica to give thanks for 2012 and look ahead to 2013. He appeared tired during the service and used a cane afterward — an indication that the busy Christmas season may be taking a toll on the 85-year-old Benedict.

In his homily, Benedict said it’s tough to remember that goodness prevails when bad news — death, violence and injustice — “makes more noise than good.” He said taking time to meditate in prolonged reflection and prayer can help “find healing from the inevitable wounds of daily life.”

This past year was full of highs and lows for the pope, including a successful trip to Mexico and Cuba but also the betrayal of his butler, convicted in October of stealing Benedict’s personal papers and leaking them to a journalist.

After the service, Benedict was brought out in a covered car to pray before the Vatican’s main nativity scene in St. Peter’s Square. Walking with a cane in the chilly piazza, Benedict chatted animatedly with the artist who crafted the scene, which recreated an entire village from the poor, southern Italian region of Basilicata which donated this year’s crèche.

The Vatican gladly accepted Basilicata’s donation after the €550,000 price tag the Vatican paid for the 2009 nativity scene was revealed in the documentation leaked by Benedict’s ex-butler Paolo Gabriele.

Gabriele was convicted of aggravated theft by a Vatican tribunal and sentenced to 18 months in prison. He received a pre-Christmas papal pardon and is expected to soon leave his Vatican City apartment for a new home and job elsewhere.

On Tuesday morning, Benedict celebrates a New Year’s Day Mass, which the Catholic Church celebrates as its world day of peace.

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