While the U.S. version launched all the way back in July 08, it’s been a long wait for users across the pond. Along with announcing a new slimmer version of the PS3 and a bunch of other service enhancements, yesterday Sony revealed that the PlayStation video store will be opening its doors to parts of Europe from November this year.
Film companies Lionsgate, Paramount, MGM, Walt Disney, Fox, Universal and Warner Bros have been signed up by Sony, which will result in the delivery of “hundreds of movies straight to your PS3 and PSP,” Sony’s Andrew House has confirmed at the Gamescom Sony press conference in Cologne. These films will be purchasable using the usual wallet system, and the store will be rolled out in other territories throughout 2010.
While Sony will get there in the end — the company was already playing catchup in the games console delivered online video space even in the U.S. — the hold up is likely to be the usual issue of content licensing. Striking deals in one territory doesn’t guarantee speedy success in another.
In related news, Sony also announced that in the UK, the version of the BBC’s iPlayer TV catchup service for the PlayStation 3 will be promoted through the console’s ‘What’s new’ section being introduced as part of a new firmware update.
I personally wouldn’t go anywhere near this. The occasional ‘ilegal’ torrent at a time, such as a missed episode of Mad Men, may carry a little risk, but try justifying the complete Pirate Bay torrent index sitting on your hard drive — all 21 GB of it — and well I wish you good luck.
That’s exactly what you’re now able to do thanks to a helpful user of the world’s most famous file sharing site, reports ReadWriteWeb.
It looks as if an anonymous user uploaded the entire site’s archive in order to ensure that multiple backups exist in case torrents are removed post-purchase. Users who would like to download an archival copy of the site, can access it as a massive 21.3 gigabyte download for free.
I was so underwhelmed with VidZone, the PlayStation 3’s on-demand music video service, that I couldn’t bring myself to review it. The UI is clunky and videos stream in a 4:3 aspect ratio, even for recent releases, so that they don’t fill up the whole screen on my High Def telly.
However, it seems that I’m in the minority, if the company behind VidZone is to be believed. The service is a hit with the major record labels, meaning that it’s presumably resonating with consumers too, its co-founders tell GamesIndustry.biz.
After starting off by having to persuade the major labels to license their music videos to the service, VidZone says that the music industry is now knocking at their door.
When I reviewed Samsung’s touch screen feature phone, the Tocco SGH-F480, I described the home screen widgets, part of the company’s “TouchWhiz” user interface, as “a fun but under developed feature”. At the time, the Tocco only offered seven widgets, including a clock, calendar, birthday reminder, photo browser and music player, and I bemoaned the fact that third-party developers were unable to create more.
That was almost a year ago, and today Samsung announced that it’s finally opening up the TouchWhiz widget platform, which exists across many of the company’s touch screen phones running Symbian, Windows Mobile, and the handset maker’s proprietary operating system. Third party developers will be able to build their own home screen widgets using familiar web standards – HTML, JavaScript and CSS – similar to Nokia’s WRT or, on a more ambitious scale, the Palm Pre’s WebOS, or indeed any widget platform whether it be targeting mobile, the PC or the television.
Roku’s cheap but increasingly versatile set-top box has added another feather to its bow.
Joining both Netflix and Amazon-On-Demand, the $99 Roku Video Player can now stream live ‘out of market’ and archived baseball matches — in 720p HD no less — courtesy of MLB.TV (US-only).
Fans will of course still have to pony up for a season pass ($35) but that doesn’t seem like such as bad deal now that you can easily pipe that content to a wide-screen TV, and especially if you’re already an owner of Roku’s cheap ‘n’ cheerful little box.
Forget channel surfing, Web surfing is the future of television, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings tells CNNMoney.com.
In five to twenty years, says Reed, “the way that consumers will interact on the big screen will be similar to the way they interact on a laptop screen.” Instead of switching channels, they’ll visit online video destinations as the web becomes “the universal paradigm that’s gonna subsume and embrace the User Interface on all of these systems” [PC, TV and Mobile].
“In the long term what we’ll see is a web browser like IE or Chrome or Safari or any of these in the television, and the way that consumers will interact on the big screen will be similar to the way they interact on a laptop screen. That is with a web oriented paradigm and they’ll go to CNN.com or Netflix.com or ESPN.com as apposed to specific channels. So think of websites, over time, replacing channels… Over maybe 5 to 20 years.”
Users who are complaining that they can no longer access the online video site Hulu on through their PlayStation 3’s web browser are being given an official explanation. The short version: it’s not Hulu’s fault per se but the result of keeping content owners, who don’t want the service to compete with revenue generated by traditional television distribution, happy.
Bricks and mortar video rental chain Blockbuster were a decade ahead of the competition in terms of the move from physical media to digital. That lead, however, “never materialized into any real online video strategy over the next ten years”, writes industry veteran and EVP of StreamingMedia.com, Dan Rayburn.
“Without a doubt, Blockbuster should have been in the position Netflix is in today as they were the first movers in the market.”
Rayburn then goes on to paint Blockbuster as a digital headless chicken.
After rumors of a third change in direction, Joost, the Internet TV startup that just won’t seem to die, has announced plans to focus less on its own online video portal and instead tout the company’s newly launched white label service to “media companies, including cable and satellite providers, broadcasters and video aggregators.”
In other words, the company, which was founded by Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis of Skype fame, has conceded that ad-revenue alone can’t pay the bills and, instead, hopes that Old Media will.
Interestingly, on the same day as Joost’s announced change it direction, it’s been reported that rival Hulu alone boasts 10 percent of the online video ad market.
When the Pirate Bay four were convicted of “assisting in making copyright content available” and sentenced to a one year prison term and a fine of $3.6 million, the site’s co-founder Peter Sunde played down the verdict, claiming that it was business as usual. The argument being that the site itself was never on trial, only the four individuals named in the law suit.
Today, however, we learn that, moving forward, it’s far from business as usual as The Pirate Bay has been acquired by Global Gaming Factory X (GGF), a publicly listed company in Sweden, for the grand sum of $7.8 million. Profit made from the sale will be used to fund a new political organization set up “to help with projects about freedom of speech, freedom of information and the openness of the nets”, according to a blog post published on The Pirate Bay.
It was just over two years ago that I posted a brief note on a daring side project from Pirate Bay, the organization best know for its law-evading BitTorrent filesharing site. The project was to build a kind of YouTube-esque video streaming site, but one that operates outside of mainstream copyright law. Today we learn that the project, dubbed “The Video Bay”, lives on.
Based in the UK, I don’t have access to the US-only video site Hulu. But if I did I’d no longer be able to access the studio-backed Internet TV service on my PlayStation 3.
That’s because, following the Boxee fiasco, the game console has become the latest means by which to conveniently watch Hulu content on a television to be blocked, reports Engadget.
Users who try to visit the site via the PS3’s built-in web browser are being greeted with the message: “Unfortunately, this video is not available on your platform. We apologize for any inconvenience.”
While the U.S. version launched all the way back in July 08, it’s been a long wait for users across the pond. Along with announcing a new slimmer version of the PS3 and a bunch of other service enhancements, yesterday Sony revealed that the PlayStation video store will be opening its doors to parts of Europe from November this year.
I personally wouldn’t go anywhere near this. The occasional ‘ilegal’ torrent at a time, such as a missed episode of Mad Men, may carry a little risk, but try justifying the complete Pirate Bay torrent index sitting on your hard drive — all 21 GB of it — and well I wish you good luck.
I was so underwhelmed with 
When I 
Roku’s cheap but increasingly versatile set-top box has added another feather to its bow.
Forget channel surfing, Web surfing is the future of television, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings tells CNNMoney.com.
Users who are complaining that they can no longer access the online video site Hulu on through their PlayStation 3’s web browser are being given an official explanation. The short version: it’s not Hulu’s fault per se but the result of keeping content owners, who don’t want the service to compete with revenue generated by traditional television distribution, happy. 
Bricks and mortar video rental chain Blockbuster were a decade ahead of the competition in terms of the move from physical media to digital. That lead, however, “never materialized into any real online video strategy over the next ten years”,
After rumors of a third change in direction, Joost, the Internet TV startup that just won’t seem to die, has announced plans to focus less on its own online video portal and instead tout the company’s newly launched white label service to “media companies, including cable and satellite providers, broadcasters and video aggregators.”
It was just over two years ago that I posted a brief note on a daring side project from Pirate Bay, the organization best know for its law-evading BitTorrent filesharing site. The project was to build a kind of YouTube-esque video streaming site, but one that operates outside of mainstream copyright law. Today we learn that the project, dubbed “The Video Bay”, lives on. 
