Weekly wrapup, 18-22 Feb 2008

by Steve O'Hear

February 23rd, 2008 | Posted in last100 weekly wrapup | No Comments

Here’s a summary of the week’s digital lifestyle action on last100. Note that you can subscribe to the weekly wrapups, either via the special weekly wrapup RSS feed or by email.

Top digital lifestyle news

In a post titled ‘Blu-ray wins format war – much longer HD download battle lies ahead‘ we reported on the news this week that Toshiba is to cease production of HD DVD players and recorders, meaning that the next generation DVD format war is over and Blu-ray wins. “However, a much longer battle lies ahead – HD downloads – leading some to argue that the next-gen DVD format war is irrelevant. In the future consumers won’t buy physical media, they’ll purchase and download it over the Internet. True but let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves.”

In Apple-related news this week, BBC Worldwide (the commercial arm of the UK public broadcaster) has started selling television shows on iTunes UK. The BBC has also confirmed that a version of its UK-only TV catch-up service, iPlayer, will be coming to the iPhone and iPod Touch within weeks.

And to promote its newly launched movie rental service in the U.S., Apple has started offering “Weekend Movie Picks”, whereby a select title is being offered for rental each week at 99-cents.

We also reported on the launch of DVD Jon’s new company, doubleTwist, and the beta release of the doubleTwist application (Windows-only) that’s designed to allow users to share digital media files — music, video, pictures — across devices regardless of type or copy protection.

More digital lifestyle news:

Features

Our main feature of the week was a guest post by Gerd Leonhard (author of “Music2.0“, co-author of “The Future of Music” and CEO of Sonific.com) titled ‘Flat Rate or Flat Line – further thoughts on the Music Flat Rate.’ Gerd states the case for a flat rate for digital music (something we’ve been calling a “music tax” here on last100) and how it would solve the music sharing “problem”.

That’s a wrap for the week. Enjoy the rest of the weekend!

last100 is edited by Steve O'Hear. Aside from founding last100, Steve is co-founder and CEO of Beepl and a freelance journalist who has written for numerous publications, including TechCrunch, The Guardian, ZDNet, ReadWriteWeb and Macworld, and also wrote and directed the Silicon Valley documentary, In Search of the Valley. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.