Harmonix, the company behind the successful “Rock Band” and “Dance Central” franchises, is no longer a part of the Viacom empire.

Viacom, which announced plans to shed itself of the division last month, has sold the division to an investment management firm which will return Harmonix to its independent roots.

While there’s an ugly lawsuit brewing between ex-shareholders (including the founders of Harmonix) and Viacom, the developer only had good things to say about its former owner today when announcing the sale to its fans.

“Viacom and MTV Networks have been an amazing home for us over the past 4 years,” Harmonix wrote in a forum posting. “It’s where we launched both Rock Band and Dance Central, worked with The Beatles, Green Day, AC/DC, The Who and thousands of other artists. We want to take a moment to thank everyone in that organization who helped make these awesome games possible.”

The lawsuit will continue, though, as the ex-shareholders group is accusing Viacome of manipulating costs after the success of Rock Band to avoid a sizable earn-out payment.

Viacom bought Harmonix in 2006 for $175 million. Terms of today's sale were not announced.

Note: As the holidays reach fever pitch, Technotainment will be offering some last minute gadget gift suggestions this week. If you haven’t already, be sure to check out our more complete gift guide that ran in the paper right around Thanksgiving for several other ideas for the tech hound on your list. Happy holidays to all.

GoFlex TV – Seagate has updated its FreeAgent Theater+ devices to accommodate its newest portable hard drives – but the guts of this HD video decoder (and streaming media player) remain basically the same.

It’s still a solid device to watch video files stored on your PC or Mac on your living room television. GoFlex TV offers seemless HD output, whether 720p or 1080p, and the system even remembers where you left off watching, eliminating the need to fast forward to that spot.

The best way to watch video is local – stored on a GoFlex drive (or other USB-supported hard drive) which is inserted into the device, but GoFlex TV is perfectly capable of streaming video, music and pictures from other PCs in your home. The quality of that streaming largely will depend on your network. Stuttering and dropped frames do occur.

The usual Internet streaming suspects – Netflix, YouTube and Flickr – are available and all work quite well. The biggest problems, actually, are the remote control – which is laid out a bit awkwardly and takes some getting used to – and the user interface, which is undeniably ugly, although easy to navigate. Seagate could probably learn a lesson from Western Digital, whose own media center device menu and navigation is much more pleasant to navigate.

Priced at $129, GoFlex TV is a handy option for people who have a lot of media content on their PCs that they’d like to watch on their TV. 

Note: As the holidays reach fever pitch, Technotainment will be offering some last minute gadget gift suggestions this week. If you haven’t already, be sure to check out our more complete gift guide that ran in the paper right around Thanksgiving for several other ideas for the tech hound on your list. Happy holidays to all.

Jambox by Jawbone – As mentioned yesterday, speakers for iDevices are a dime a dozen. But Jambox by Jawbone is one that truly stands above the crowd. In terms of boosting the sound (and volume) of your iPod, iPhone or iPad wirelessly, this is one of the best options on the market.

It’s not one of the cheapest, though. At $200, this miniature speaker costs as much as several high end options – but it’s portable, which is something its competitors can’t match. It’s a wonderfully designed device, available in black, red, blue or gray - and it’s tiny size (2.25 inches high, 6 inches wide, 1.5 inches deep) doesn’t hint at the power inside.

Using Bluetooth to stream audio content, the Jambox has tremendous sound quality courtesy of two 1.25-inch speakers and a small woofer. It’s not quite as good as you’ll get with docking speakers – but to be able to wander the room with your iDevice in hand is an acceptable trade off. The battery life is surprisingly long as well, clocking in at over 10 hours.

The Jambox also doubles as a speakerphone solidly, though that’s certain to be a secondary function for most users.

Among the best speakers for iDevices? Yes.

Best portable speaker on the market? Hands down.

(Available at Apple stores, Best Buy and more.)

Activision’s “Call of Duty” machine is showing no signs of weakness.

“Call of Duty: Black Ops” has hit $1 billion in sales in just six weeks, the company announced today. And the user engagement numbers are somehow even more impressive.

Since its Nov. 9 launch, players have spent more than 600 million hours with the game. That’s the equivalent of more than 68,000 years. Microsoft statistics show the average player logs on more than once a day and plays for more than one hour each time.

“There are more peak concurrent players on ‘Call of Duty’ than there are people reading any newspaper in America,” says Bobby Kotick, CEO of Activision-Blizzard. “Look at the number of people watching Jay Leno, David Letterman and Jimmy Fallon and combine them. You still have more people playing ‘Call of Duty’ now.”

Like its predecessor, “Black Ops” came out of the gate strong. In its first five days on shelves, the game had sales of $650 million. It hit the $1 billion mark nearly a month quicker than “Modern Warfare 2” though, and now stands poised to assume the crown of the top grossing videogame of all time.

Kotick notes that no announcements have been made about “Black Ops” DLC, but hinted that we’ll see more than just the two map packs that suppored “Modern Warfare 2”.

“I think you can expect we’ll have more content available,” he says.

Note: As the holidays reach fever pitch, Technotainment will be offering some last minute gadget gift suggestions this week. If you haven’t already, be sure to check out our more complete gift guide that ran in the paper right around Thanksgiving for several other ideas for the tech hound on your list. Happy holidays to all.

SoundFreaq SFQ-01 - iPod speaker docks are pretty commonplace these days, so unless a device really stands above the crowd, it’s hard to recommend it. The SoundFreaq SFQ manages to do so.

Know going in that this hefty speaker system isn’t the best on the market – and, at $200, isn’t the cheapest – but it does have a number of features that make it stand out. The integrated FM radio and ability to stream music via Bluetooth or aux-in is nice. And the sound quality is infinitely better than the iPhone or iPad’s internal speaker.

It does just fine for music playback, but I’ve found the SoundFreaq is actually more enjoyable to use when playing games or other apps on my iDevice. “Infinity Blade” becomes an entirely different game when there’s a deep booming bass and vibrant music.

It’s available at Target and Amazon.com.

(Note: If you’re in the market for a portable Bluetooth speaker for your iDevice, check back tomorrow.)

Note: As the holidays reach fever pitch, Technotainment will be offering some last minute gadget gift suggestions this week. If you haven’t already, be sure to check out our more complete gift guide that ran in the paper right around Thanksgiving for several other ideas for the tech hound on your list. Happy holidays to all.

Astro A*Star Ear Buds – Astro has already made one great product for audiophiles this year – the A30 headset. But as portability becomes the watchword in so many forms of entertainment, the company has pivoted and added Ear Buds to its product line.

At $80, the A*Star buds aren’t cheap – but they’re less than several competing brands. And, like the A30s, they provide a high quality sound experience with a heavy bass and nuanced range. No matter how loud I cranked up the volume there was no distortion.

Built with gamers in mind, they can be used with consoles or PCs, but they’re also real handy for iPhone players thanks to a dedicated call button built into the microphone.

While they don’t move Ear Buds into a new direction, the A*Stars are well made and, thanks to a flat cable instead of the usual rounded one, tangle-resistant. That’s something your recipient will love he or she has a habit of shoving their ear buds in a bag.

One hurdle: You can only currently buy Astro products through the company’s Website, so order these now for any chance to get them in before Christmas.

The trickle of pre-CES news has been fairly dull stuff so far, but Panasonic has taken things up a level with an announcement out of Japan this morning.

The company plans to introduce a new line of Viera TV sets that will allow users to record HD television programming directly onto an SD, SDHD or SDXC memory card (the same kinds found in most digital cameras).

The 42-inch LCD set (with LED backlighting), which goes on sale in Japan on Feb 18, will cost roughly $1800. Users are able to “schedule” recordings via the device – and record to a USB-attached hard drive as well.

A 16 GB SDHD card will hold roughly 1 hour and 20 minutes of programming, while a 64GB SDXC card will hold around 5 hours. It’s unclear from the announcement if the programs will be in a proprietary format or if owners of the set will be able to watch the shows on other devices via the card.

Right now the set is only slated to be available in Japan, but that’s likely to change when Panasonic begins making CES announcements in January. 

Watching music videos on your iPad so far has been a hit and miss affair. The best course of action has been shuffling through YouTube and crossing your fingers.

Now, Vevo – which is one of the clearinghouse sites for music videos – has launched a dedicated iPad app, letting those folks who miss their MTV to get their fill with more than 25,000 to choose from.

Vevo hosts works from 7,500 artists and is the main supplier of official videos on YouTube. (This app will let you weed out the fan tributes that can make it hard to find what you’re looking for.) The company also has exclusive videos of live performances and streaming events.

The app comes with the seemingly now requisite social features like finding out which videos are most popular in different geographic regions, sharing with friends and keeping up with artists via Twitter feeds.

The app is a free download. You will, however, have to deal with a few ads amongst the music.

While the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Wii are still game machines first and foremost, they’re increasingly being used for other forms of entertainment.

A new survey by Nielsen finds that non-gaming functionality is on the rise among console owners – and among PS3 owners, it even surpasses the time spent playing games.

Overall, users 13 and up spend just 49 percent of their time playing games on Sony’s console. Xbox 360 owners spend 62 percent of their time gaming. Wii owners, which ironically are often the butt of jokes among the core, spend the greatest percentage of their time playing - coming in at 69 percent.

Watching DVDs or Blu-rays is the second most popular function for consoles after gameplay. Xbox 360 owners spend 11 percent of their time watching DVDs, while PS3 owners use those machines for Blu-ray films 27 percent of the time – more time than they spend playing online games. (The Wii does not offer movie playback functionality.)

Streaming media – using services such as Netflix and ESPN3 – is the next most popular category. The Wii leads the charge there, with 20 percent of users’ time dedicated to streaming video. The Xbox 360 comes in at half that and PS3 owners use the console for that 9 percent of the time.

From there, the percentage breakdown gets miniscule, but items include watching downloaded movies or TV shows, listening to CDs or MP3s and using the console’s internet capabilities for surfing or social networking.

The annual Video Game Awards show in Spike TV is always a divisive event in the gaming community. While publishers enjoy the publicity of a glitzy television extravaganza, gamers tend to grind their teeth in rage, upset with how the show presents the industry.

This year’s show – broadcast Saturday the 11^th – boasted Neil Patrick Harris as host and some solid choices for winners. (“Red Dead Redemption” took Game of the Year honors.) But was it able to attract an audience?

Not so much.

My colleague Rick Kissell, Variety’s in-house ratings expert, was kind enough to pull the numbers for me and the numbers show that for the fourth consecutive year, Spike has seen the audience for the VGAs shrink. 627,000 people watched the show – a 3 percent drop from last year’s installment. That works out to 20,000 fewer viewers for those who prefer hard numbers.

The numbers will increase in the coming week, as DVR playbacks are counted through the 18^th. And we should get a better look at the demographic breakdown later. But all in all, Spike’s big gaming party is becoming less and less of a must see event for the industry’s top fans.

Update - 12/15 - While the overall numbers were down there is some reason to celebrate at Spike. Demographics in some key categories were actually up this year. Adults 18-49 were up 12 percent - from 370K to 450K; Adults 18-34 were up 5 percent from 278K to 292K and Men 18-34 showed an impressive 15 percent climb from 281K to 251K.

A full breakdown of the live-viewing demographics is below: