Microsoft to Sony: anything you can do, we can do faster.

After we got over excited about the PlayStation 3’s forthcoming support for DivX video, Microsoft’s XBox 360 has beaten Sony to the punch. The console’s latest software update adds DivX (and Xvid) video playback, which, after extensive testing, Gizmodo happily reports that in terms of DivX-compatibility, the 360 can now “play back pretty much anything”. Technically speaking, however, only DivX 5.0 and above is supported, which luckily should cover all but the oldest of DivX files floating around the web.

Adobe have announced the release of Flash Media Server 3, the latest version of its delivery platform for the company’s near ubiquitous Flash technology. Over at our sister blog, Read/WriteWeb, Josh Catone has the scoop, and says that “the most striking change to Flash Media Server is the drastically reduced price”.

Because in the past Flash Media Server has cost so much (upwards of $45,000 per license), streaming flash media has long been a very cost-prohibitive endeavor. The high price, commonly referred to as the “Flash tax,” led many to seek out alternative media servers like the open source Red 5. The latest version of Flash Media Sever, which will ship in January 2008, will be come in three versions, ranging from free to $4,500 — a price drop of 90%.

The Flash Media Interactive Server 3, the most expensive of the offerings, will provide more scalability and a robust new plugin architecture that its lower priced counterparts don’t offer. But for single server deployments, the $995 Flash Media Streaming Server, should be sufficient and could be attractive for smaller media publishers. Adobe will also offer a developer version for free that supports up to 10 concurrent users.

Other important developments in Flash Media Server 3: the debut of streaming HD video. FMS3 will offer H.264 video streaming, as well as support for High Efficiency AAC (HE-AAC) audio that can be streamed to Flash player, AIR applications, or Adobe’s Media Player app.

In addition to the Flash Media Server 3, Adobe also announced that Flash Player 9 Update 3 (codenamed “Moviestar”) has left public Beta and is available for general download as of today. We’ve previously written about “Moviestar”, noting its support for the more efficient H.264 codec, which is capable of delivering much higher quality video using the same bandwidth as the legacy Flash video format.

I’m toying with the radical idea of boycotting NBC. That means no more of “The Office,” “Heroes,” “Chuck”, or any of the other shows I watch from NBC Universal.

Why? I’m pissed. I’m pissed because in the digital age networks should deliver their content the way we want it, not just how they want to do it. For some, that means watching shows through the networks’ ad-supported streaming Websites. For others, we’ll pay for the shows we watch through download services such as iTunes or Amazon Unbox and watch it on whatever devices we own — AppleTV, iPods, TiVo, DVRs, Play for Sure devices.

The technology is here to do both, to give consumers multiple choices for how they view network content, fitting their busy mobile lives. Instead, NBC Universal wants to control our entire viewing experience.

NBC over the weekend picked up its ball, stomped off the iTunes playground, and who knows if it will ever return. After a very public rift, NBC and Apple are split, finished, kaput — for now. Their initial contact expired at the end of November, and true to its word NBC pulled all of its content from the iTunes store.

It’s almost as if, once NBC decided to dump iTunes, the network has been looking for every venue possible to make its shows available for digital viewing.

The latest place on the Internet to find NBC shows is Netflix, best known for its online DVD rentals. Netflix has signed a deal with NBC Universal (press release) to offer online episodes of “Heroes” and past episodes of other series such as “30 Rock”, “Friday Night Lights”, and “The Office.” Netflix subscribers will have the option of watching these shows immediately on their computers at Netflix.com or on DVD.

“Heroes” episodes will appear on the Netflix website the day after they air on NBC. There’s no word if each episode will be available throughout the season, or if shows will be taken down once new ones are aired.

South Park fans rejoice (“Kenny” to live online forever).

Following a successful experiment with “The Daily Show”, MTV Networks will make every episode of “South Park” available free online sometime next year, as part of the company’s wider distribution strategy “to reach consumers everywhere” (see the Reuters report).

The lesson learnt by MTV Networks subsidary, Comedy Central, when it made the entire archive of “The Daily Show” available for streaming online, is that Internet TV viewing can lead to more traditional television viewing. In other words, The Daily Show’s television viewing figures are up not down, even though fans are able get an unlimited fix via the show’s own website.

The three significant British terrestrial TV networks – the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 – have today announced an initiative to develop a combined service for accessing their on-demand and catch-up services. The new service is currently known under the working title “Kangaroo”. At the moment each network offers their own service, each with their own failings and benefits. Most recently the BBC launched their controversial iPlayer, which hit headlines after it was announced that it would only be available (in the first instance) for Windows XP machines, alienating Windows Vista machines and users of other operating systems.

By having a unified method of browsing, downloading and viewing programs from each of the three providers, viewers will have more control over the content stored on their machine. I argued a while back that a unified application just makes more sense. The end-user only has to learn one method to view their favourite programs, and not three. Imagine this as being similar to an electronic program guide (EPG) – one view for all channels (or at this time, for those channels covered by those networks). If, for example, Sky’s EPG was fragmented like the current online catch-up services, you would have one style menu for BBC, another for Sky channels, another for Channel 4, and so on.

The online video landscape has changed dramatically since the AppleTV was launched last January. Along with a range of me-too video download stores competing directly with iTunes, there exists a confusing mix of ad-supported destination sites run by the television networks themselves, including Hulu, and the catch-up service, NBC Direct, complemented by desktop Internet TV applications such as Joost and Babelgum (again, both ad-supported), as well as video aggregators like VeohTV. Perhaps recognizing this, Apple CEO Steve Jobs himself has sought to reposition the company’s set-top-box away from “completing the story”, in terms of Apple’s digital lifestyle strategy, to being relegated to the company’s hobby.

And yet its still difficult, if not impossible, to get content originating from most Internet TV services onto a television, something which the AppleTV solved with regards to iTunes. So why has the AppleTV failed to ignite the market for PC to TV devices? That’s the question posed by Tom Krazit, over at CNET’s Crave.