VOD and AnyTime have emerged as favourites to grab a deal to supply Australia’s number-three internet company, iiNet, with content for its online movie service, scheduled to launch before the end of June
Deutsche Telekom’s Musicload, one of the largest online music stores in Europe, has come out strongly against DRM on account of its effects on the marketplace and its customers. Musicload said in a letter distributed last week that customers are having consistent problems with DRM, so much so that 3 out of 4 customer service calls are ultimately the result of the frustrations that come with DRM
Richard Dean Anderson will appear in the upcoming movie Stargate: Continuum. Anderson, who played Jack O’Neill on Stargate SG-1 for eight years before entering semi-retirement, will travel with an 18-person crew to the US Navy’s Applied Physics Laboratory Ice Station in the Arctic next week to film scenes for the direct-to-DVD movie
Soon you could be piping digital TV around your home via power sockets. At the Cebit technology fair, German hi-tech firm Devolo is showing off home networking technology that can handle signals from a set top box. While many firms are working on ways to route data via the mains power circuits in the home, Devolo is among the first to use it to send TV signals. Further improvements to the home networking system will help it handle cable and satellite TV signals
Check out this excellent My Neighbour Totoro doughnut, baked crispy fresh in the seaside town of Hakodate, Hokkaido.
As well as producing doughnuts of interest, Hakodate is home to Isoya Yuki, who enthusiastically sang the Kenshin theme song. You know, the one where her heavyweight love soon dissolves like the sugar cube, etc.
Viacom says it will sue Google and YouTube for US$1 billion. Viacom, which owns MTV and Nickelodeon, says YouTube uses its shows illegally. Viacom alleges that about 160,000 unauthorised clips of its programmes have been loaded onto YouTube’s site and viewed more than 1.5 billion times. Google says it is confident
that YouTube has respected the legal rights of copyright holders
Random House and HarperCollins have agreed to allow book browsing and searching on all their books
Computer hackers have scored a victory in their battle against Sony and the way the company controls its PlayStation Portable (PSP) handheld games console. Last month three hacker teams — Noobz, Team C+D and a group led by PSP hacker Dark Alex — co-ordinating their efforts over the internet, found a flaw in the most recently released version of the firmware — version 3.03. Using this flaw they devised a way to unlock all PSPs, regardless of their age or the firmware running on it
The BBC has struck a content deal with YouTube, the web’s most popular video sharing website, owned by Google. Three YouTube channels — one for news and two for entertainment — will showcase short clips of BBC content. The BBC hopes that the deal will help it reach YouTube’s monthly audience of more than 70 million users and drive extra traffic to its own website. The corporation will also get a share of the advertising revenue generated by traffic to the new YouTube channels
The useless twats at Channel Ten claim to have signed Torchwood. What a nightmare. I can see it now; the show will overhyped in a manner contrary to its style prior to screening, butchered beyond belief when it does air, suffer from unannounced timeslot changes before being banished to 2:00am, then it’ll be ditched halfway through its run with no further word. Where the hell was Aunty while Ten was poaching on their patch?
One of Australia’s best-known rock musicians, Billy Thorpe, has died at the age of 60. The singer suffered a massive heart attack at his home in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, early this morning. The singer worked for a series of bands in Sydney after emigrating from England, including in a support act for Johnny O’Keefe
BitTorrent, makers of a technology often used to trade pirated copies of Hollywood movies, is launching a Web site that will sell downloads of films and TV shows licensed from the studios. The BitTorrent Entertainment Network was set to launch Monday with films from Warner Bros., Paramount Pictures, 20th Century Fox, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Lionsgate and episodes of TV shows such as 24
and Punk’d
The appalling delays Australian TV viewers are experiencing getting overseas-produced series is driving many of them to download the shows via BitTorrent and other peer-to-peer networks. The problem is compounded by the fact that Australian viewers are unable to download legal copies of the episodes from the US iTunes web site. According to a survey based on a sample of 119 current or recent free-to-air TV series, Australian viewers are waiting an average of almost 17 months for the first-run series first seen overseas. Over the past two years, average Australian broadcast delays for free-to-air television viewers have more than doubled from 7.9 to 16.7 months
Why pay $20,000 for a commercial link to run your television station when a $10 kitchen wok from the Warehouse is just as effective? This is exactly how North Otago’s newest television station 45 South is transmitting its signal from its studio to the top of Cape Wanbrow, in a bid to keep costs down. 45 South volunteer Ken Jones designed the wok transmitter in his spare time last year when he wanted to provide wireless broadband to his Ardgowan home
Almost two-thirds of music industry executives think removing digital locks from downloadable music would make more people buy the tracks. The Jupiter Research study looked at attitudes to Digital Rights Management (DRM) systems in Europe music firms. Many of those responding said current DRM systems were not fit for purpose
and got in the way of what consumers wanted to do. Despite this few respondents said DRM would disappear in the near future
That bit in our American Holiday Video where we were attacked by the rednecks in the Alabama petrol station: I realise now that I should have seen it coming. We’d been warned by some American modernists — ie; Californians — that the southerners wouldn’t take kindly to any of our light mockery of the things they hold dear — Bush, heterosexuality, NASCAR, Country and Western, short hair… But I never really believed they would take it quite that badly
An official replica of the Maltese Falcon used in promo photos for the 1941 film has been stolen from John’s Grill in San Francisco. The statue was nabbed out of a locked cabinet where it was on display with signed Dashiell Hammett books and other rarities. John’s Grill proprietor John Konstin has put up a $25,000 reward for its return
Call them old fashioned, but the founding members of The Who don’t think the Internet is the future of rock, are unhappy about radio’s narrow musical focus, and convinced live music is what it is all about
Reports are surfacing that EMI is in negotiations with some of the leading music stores to offer a substantial portion of its music catalogue without DRM, with an announcement due as early as today. Under one scenario, music stores like Napster, Real Rhapsody, and others would fork over sizable advance payments in exchange for the right to sell music as unprotected MP3s. Another industry source reports that EMI was also discussing the possibility of selling MP3s on MySpace
Steve Jobs has written an essay on the Apple site about DRM, iTunes and the iPod. Perhaps it was prompted by the uncomfortable pressure the EU has been putting on Apple to open up the iPod. Jobs places the blame for the existence and continuing reliance on DRM squarely on the music companies. Quoting: Much of the concern over DRM systems has arisen in European countries. Perhaps those unhappy with the current situation should redirect their energies towards persuading the music companies to sell their music DRM-free. For Europeans, two and a half of the big four music companies are located right in their backyard. The largest, Universal, is 100% owned by Vivendi, a French company. EMI is a British company, and Sony BMG is 50% owned by Bertelsmann, a German company. Convincing them to license their music to Apple and others DRM-free will create a truly interoperable music marketplace. Apple will embrace this wholeheartedly
— via Slashdot
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