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LG's Netflix streaming Blu-ray player announced. What, no Wi-Fi?

We already knew that Netflix was working with LG Electronics to integrate its Watch Now video streaming service into some juicy new hardware. And today the two companies announced what that hardware will be.

Available this fall, the LG BD300 Network Blu-ray Disc Player, in addition to being able to play high definition Blu-ray discs and upscale standard DVDs, will give Netflix subscribers the option of streaming any of the 12,000 movies and TV episodes available on Watch Now to their TVs at no additional cost.

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"Just like your local record store", Universal launches Lost Tunes

“Think of us as your small local record store, run by a team dedicated to helping you find the very best music”, reads the welcome page of Universal Music’s new music download store.

Launched first in the UK, with international versions of the site expected in the coming months, Lost Tunes is attempting to tap into a bygone era where music fans regularly scoped out local record stores looking for rare gems. “Lost Tunes comes with a secret stash of records you can’t find anywhere else online” the welcome blurb boasts. “Anywhere else online” being an indirect reference to Apple’s iTunes, hence Universal’s choice of name.

To that end, tracks are offered as mp3s, encoded at the higher bitrate of 320kpbs, and compatible with almost any digital music player, including iPods.

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Blinkx launches universal Remote for Internet TV catch-up services in the UK

As broadcasters continue to roll out their own Internet TV catch-up services, what’s required is an easy way for viewers to find and be alerted to the availability of their favourite TV shows wherever they may be offered online. Enter blinkx “Remote”, a new service from the company behind the video search engine of the same name, which offers UK viewers a single destination to browse, search and access online video content offered by all of the major TV channels including those from the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, and Five.

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In a smart move Netflix rules out pay-per-view video service

While Netflix’s video streaming service only offers 10,000 movies and TV episodes compared to the 100,000 titles available via DVD, the company’s all-you-can-eat subscription strategy is the right one, and differentiates it from an increasingly crowded market of pay-per-view offerings. A market which, CEO Reed Hastings says, the company has no plans to get into.

“We don’t plan to enter the pay-per-view segment, where Apple, Amazon, Sony and others focus”, Reed told shareholders and analysts during Friday’s second-quarter earnings call. He also ruled out an ad-supported offering too, where, for example, Hulu and YouTube compete.

“Both of those segments will likely be substantial, but our subscription segment will also be large and will provide Netflix plenty of room for growth”, says Reed.

See also: Netflix is finally coming to Xbox 360, which is getting a dashboard makeover and Mii-like avatars

The problem with the majority of pay-per-view online video services, both rental and to-own, is that they remain prohibitively expensive, often costing equal to a physical DVD, and in some cases more. In comparison, Netflix is offering streaming at no extra charge to members who are already on a high enough DVD tariff, and in the longer term is protecting the subscription model which it helped pioneer.

Weekly wrapup, 21-25 July 2008

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.

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Internet TV news

How big of an impact is Internet-delivered video making in consumer living rooms?

Dan Rayburn, the EVP of StreamingMedia.com, crunched the numbers this week and decided that the impact is not nearly as large as we think. “While it is good to see more content options coming to consumers, adding up all of the install numbers for these devices gives a stark picture of just how small the install base really is,” Rayburn wrote. “The market is still too fragmented, with too many different devices, all limited by a lack of premium content.”

Verizon bringing Internet TV to its set-top boxes

Another major player enters the PC to TV space. Verizon is currently beta testing web video on their set-top boxes. Unsurprisingly, the content looks like it will be mostly user-generated or that which has been created specifically for the web, and therefore won’t compete directly with the telco’s own video-on-demand offering. Initial “marketing partners” to include Veoh, Blip.tv, Break.com, and YouTube.

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Report: 100,000 Roku Netflix set-top boxes sold

It was only yesterday that our friend Dan Rayburn over at Streaming Media was talking down the impact that Internet-delivered video was making in the living room. Or to quote Rayburn himself, his guest post for GigaOm was intended to “set expectations properly”, based on official figures and various estimates, which suggest that consumer facing set-top boxes from the likes of TiVo, Sony, Microsoft, Apple, Roku and Vudu that are capable of delivering online video, have sold a lot less than what most people think.

Today, however, Rayburn admits he got one figure wrong. Based on a new source, Rayburn says that rather than selling 10,000 units, the Netflix player by Roku has sold closer to 100,000.

While it surprised me the number was that high, it does seem possible, as that would equal about 1% of Netflix’s 8.2 million customers. Considering the price point ($99) and the fact that the product’s marketing is very focused, to a targeted audience, Roku’s penetration rate would be higher than the average product that has only been on the market for eight weeks. Plus, once you have the Roku box, the content is free.

Rayburn goes on to suggest that it won’t be long before the Roku box outsells the AppleTV (we don’t disagree), especially with the promise that the Roku player will soon support more than just Netflix. “This little device has some real potential to make a real impact in the market”, he says.

Q&A: Nicolas Gramlich of anddev.org talks Android, Google's developer relations, and more

Talking down Google’s Android mobile operating system has become pretty easy of late: An incomplete and buggy SDK, favoritism towards select developers, a general lack of transparency, and valid concerns that the platform could become fragmented and that Google has ceded too much control to carriers.

Yet, for the most part, the initial excitement and optimism over the long term potential of Android remains. Not least for 21 year-old Nicolas Gramlich, a computer science student at the University of Applied Sciences Mannheim in Germany, and founder of anddev.org, an online community for Android developers. “Android’s main attraction is its simplicity”, says Gramlich, which enables the rapid development of “feature-rich applications”.

See also: Interview: zintin CEO talks iPhone, Android and mobile future

“One can create an application that uses Google Maps, get the current GPS-position or read out the accelerometer within 10 lines”. The integration with Google Maps is especially tight, he says, something that doesn’t currently exist on other mobile platforms. And Gramlich should know. His first Android effort is a free navigation app called AndNav!.

In a short Q&A with last100, Gramlich discussed the slow progress Google appears to be making in updating the Android SDK, the company’s relationship with the developer community, competition from iPhone, and more. Read the transcript, edited for space and clarity, after the jump.

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Verizon bringing Internet TV to its set-top boxes

Verizon bringing Internet TV to its set-top boxesAnother major player enters the PC to TV space. Verizon is currently beta testing web video on their set-top boxes, reports Zatz Not Funny.

Unsurprisingly, the content looks like it will be mostly user-generated or that which has been created specifically for the web, and therefore won’t compete directly with the telco’s own video-on-demand offering. Initial “marketing partners” to include Veoh, Blip.tv, Break.com, and YouTube.

On the downside, a PC is still required to act as a bridge between Internet content and the TV via Verizon’s DVR set-top box, notes Dave Zatz.

Unlike TiVo which taps directly into YouTube’s H.264 content, Verizon utilizes their Media Manager PC software as an intermediary. Sites are indexed on a regular basis and when a video is selected from the DVR, the PC software automatically transcodes and streams content on the fly.

In addition to pulling in content from supported video aggregation sites, Verizon’s Media Manager software “also facilitates shipping virtually any video podcast to your DVR”. Podcast subscriptions can be added directly to Media Manager in the standard way via the PC’s web browser.

The new features will be offered as part of Verizon’s top tier DVR package, which currently includes PC photo sharing and multi-room DVR playback, and is expected to be offered to customers later this year or early next year.

Video: Netflix streaming on XBox 360

Now it’s official that Netflix is coming to the Xbox 360, although not until this fall, we’re as curious as the next person to see just how well it’s been implemented. Luckily, Inside XBox has published a brief – and we mean brief – video walk-through of the new feature.

Initial impressions: the UI is slick, and the integration between the XBox 360’s newly designed dashboard and Netflix.com, where you still manage your Watch Now cue, works as expected. We’re not sure what kind of Internet connection they were using, but movies start playing almost immediately. Check out the video for yourself after the jump.

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Don't buy a Netbook pleads PC industry

It’s no secret that I’m a big fan of the Netbook, an emerging new product category of low-cost and ultra-portable notebooks. But it seems many in the PC industry aren’t.

Initially targeted at the education market or those wanting a third machine, Netbooks are resonating with a much broader market — and not just because of their lower price point compared to more traditional and higher specced sub-notebooks. Despite years of industry propaganda, consumers are wising up to the fact that they don’t have to step on to the processor upgrade treadmill. Instead, in an age where more and more of our applications and data resides in the cloud (on remote servers, rather than stored locally), a machine with Internet connectivity and one that is powerful enough to run a modern web browser – that’s a Netbook by the way – is often all that we need.

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