January 23rd, 2008 | Posted in Net TV | 
No Comments
The BBC Worldwide is bringing short video clips from programs such as “Doctor Who”, “Red Dwarf”, and “The Mighty Boosh” to MySpaceTV.
The deal brings current and archived video content from BBC Worldwide programs to a MySpaceTV channel. The programming is available globally. As Mashable notes — and we must agree — the BBC site on MySpaceTV looks great. It’s more BBC than MySpace. Continue reading »
January 23rd, 2008 | Posted in Audio | No Comments
Offering unprotected music MP3s on a download-to-own basis or as part of an ad-supported service is all the rage these days.
The Associated Press reports that — to no one’s surprise — Yahoo Inc. is in early discussions with major labels to offer MP3s free of digital rights management (DRM) for purchase or as a part of an ad-supported streaming music service.
Two record company execs familiar with the talks told the AP that Yahoo hopes to launch the service this year. Continue reading »
January 23rd, 2008 | Posted in Audio | 4 Comments
During the CBS-Last.fm announcement today, CBS president and CEO Leslie Moonves said the company was looking into developing “communities around content.” “Community clearly is the future,” he said.
Interesting. What does this mean?
But first, here’s the deal: CBS and Last.fm, the London-based online music streaming site CBS bought for $280 million last May, have built a site where music fans can stream any song they want for free. Well, almost for free. The site is supported by advertising. Continue reading »
January 23rd, 2008 | Posted in Net TV, Other | 2 Comments
I expected more from TiVo chief exec Thomas S. Rogers, who recently answered a few questions from the Los Angeles Times at CES. Instead of vision, passion, direction, and confidence we’d expect from an innovator like TiVo, we got lukewarm, the obvious, and uninspiring.
TiVo has been doing some interesting things lately, evolving from what it’s known for (time-shifted digital video recording) into a company offering a wide range (and still growing) list of “television services.” In the last year or so, TiVo’s signed deals with Comcast and DirecTV, Amazon (downloadable content), RealNetworks (music), Jaman (indie content), and has begun offering video podcasts, among other services. Continue reading »
January 22nd, 2008 | Posted in Comms, Mobile | 2 Comments
The iPod Touch is Apple’s next generation iPod, right? Wrong.
During the company’s Q1 earnings conference call, Apple executives finally let the cat out of the bag and admitted publicly what they’ve known and I believed all along: the iPod Touch is potentially the “first mainstream Wi-Fi mobile platform, running all kinds of mobile applications”, not just music, video and casual web browsing.
Two words stick out: platform and mainstream. Continue reading »
January 21st, 2008 | Posted in Net TV, Other | 1 Comment
Apple-NBC is so high school. He loves me. He loves me not. He loves me. This time, it’s like NBC top exec Jeff Zucker is passing a note through a friend, suggesting that NBC might really like Apple again.
In the role of “friend”, the Financial Times published a story Sunday that said Zucker “eyes TV shake-up.” At the end of the report, the FT’s Joshua Chaffin includes a seemingly innocuous paragraph:
Mr. Zucker appears to have patched up relations with Apple after a pricing dispute last year led NBC to pull its shows from the iTunes digital media store. ‘We’ve said all along that we admire Apple, that we want to be in business with Apple,’ he said. ‘We’re great fans of Steve Jobs.’”
January 21st, 2008 | Posted in Net TV | 1 Comment
HBO is the latest U.S. television network to jump on the Internet TV bandwagon, albeit with a rather cautious approach.
The new service, dubbed “HBO on Broadband”, will be offered free of change to existing HBO subscribers only, and initially you’ll need to be served by the Wisconsin division of Time Warner Cable, and a user of their “Road Runner” high speed broadband service.
Over 600 HBO movies and shows will be made available each month, reports DVD Dossier, although most content will expire after four weeks. January’s lineup includes “We Are Marshall,” “Norbit,” “Breach,” “Smokin’ Aces,” “The Devil Wears Prada,” “Superman Returns,” “The Last King of Scotland” and the documentary “Baghdad Hospital: Inside The Red Zone.” Continue reading »
January 21st, 2008 | Posted in Net TV | No Comments
The New York Times provides a good overview of the challenges Apple — or any company — faces to deliver a European-wide online movie rental service.
“Apple will have to confront legal and regulatory hurdles, copyright challenges, scheduling conflicts and technological issues, reminders that the European media landscape remains a patchwork of individual countries, rather than the single market that the European Commission envisions”, notes the report. Continue reading »
January 19th, 2008 | Posted in last100 weekly wrapup | 1 Comment
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
This week’s digital lifestyle news was dominated by the Macworld Conference and Expo in San Francisco. Apple CEO Steve Jobs delivered his traditional keynote, announcing a flurry of new products and updates: Macbook Air, iTunes movie rentals, iPhone/iPod Touch software, and Apple TV “take 2”.
In our follow-up coverage we asked how movie rentals on iTunes fare?; called for the AppleTV to be opened up to third-party developers; and looked in more detail at the iPhone/iPod Touch updates and how they point to the future.
Additional Macworld coverage:
Other digital lifestyle news:
Features
Our feature of the week was a guest post by Aseem Kishore, titled ‘Ten mobile apps and services you should definitely check out‘. Aseem wrote: “…most cell phone companies are not necessarily giving you the best software and services for your phone. If you’re looking for some cool mobile phone apps or mobile services that are free and really useful, here are ten worth checking out.”
That’s a wrap for the week. Enjoy the rest of the weekend!
January 18th, 2008 | Posted in Other | 2 Comments
Back at the end of July we reported that CBS, home of The Masters and March Madness, and Nielsen Media Research were betting on gaming’s future. Now ESPN is getting into the game mix.
Gaming coverage on television isn’t new, but it’s interesting to see big names like CBS and ESPN dipping their big toes into the gaming pool. ESPN, the grand daddy of all sports television, has entered into a multiyear agreement with Major League Gaming (MLG) to provide exclusive online coverage of upcoming video game competitions.
The agreement includes streamed matches, player interviews, scores, and stats. ESPN will be onsite for each 2008 MLG Pro Circuit competition and will include content from the games in short segments on existing TV programs.
The temptation is to say that ESPN’s MLG gaming coverage is only online and that the cable network is not committing much valuable air time to MLG events on one of its cable channels. But think of this as a precursor of what’s to come. Continue reading »