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Hulu Grabs New Web TV Series

Simon Fuller, the creator of "American Idol," has developed a new original series, "If I Can Dream," which premiered this week on Hulu. Hulu calls the show "groundbreaking" and hopes that it can turn a Web TV show with a big budget into a profitable venture...

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FCC Chief Wants Universal Broadband Coverage

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski will recommend that the US government invest $25 billion to build a universal broadband network by 2020, according to the Wall Street Journal. AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson this week said it would take subsidies to achieve the goal. Genachowski also wants the...

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Panasonic Selling First HD 3D Home System Set Next Week

Next Wednesday, Panasonic will host an event at a Manhattan Best Buy store, where it will cut the ribbon on 3D TV sales and showcase "the world’s first-ever full HD 3D home theater system." Panasonic and Best Buy will then slowly begin kicking off 3D TV...

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3D Catwalks Go Global

A 3D fashion show from the label Burberry went off without a hitch when delivered to four global sites through Globecast’s system. The women’s wear show during London Fashion Week was broadcast to viewing parties in Paris, New York, Tokyo and Dubai. Globecast uplinked the feed...

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Sony to Challenge Apple iPad

Sony will soon join the iPad-imitator club. According to The Wall Street Journal, the former consumer electronics king is developing a portable device that is a cross between a netbook, an eReader and a Sony PlayStation Portable (PSP). The product’s launch is expected this year. Sony...

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Kabel BW Offers DOCSIS 3.0 Broadband to All Consumers

The German cableco Kabel BW will no longer require consumers to be pay-TV subscribers before they can get DOCSIS 3.0 broadband access and telephony. The plan is aimed at consumers who get TV over the air (DVB-T) or from a satellite service. The company said the...

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Sports Illustrated Video Goes Digital Daily

Time Warner’s Sports Illustrated Group is launching a new daily video service on its Web site, including the "SI Inside Report," a Web-based news program. The service will publish up to 15 videos per day, with a big focus on news content, interviews and highlights. It...

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IPlayer Comes to BlackBerrys

The BBC’s iPlayer is now available on BlackBerrys. Initially, it works only via a Wi-Fi connection. 3G is expected to be added shortly, which will allow users to watch BBC TV shows almost everywhere.

...

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Videophone Era about to Dawn

Samsung is following Panasonic and LG in adding the Web-based phone service Skype to several TV sets that come with Internet connectivity. The company said a connected camera would be used to make videophone calls. New Skype users can set up an account with the TV...

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Dorothy, We’re in Google, Kansas

Cities and towns throughout the States are preparing proposals to entice Google to select them as a site for building a 1 Gbps broadband network. Topeka, Kansas, has changed its name to "Google" for the month of March as part of its application. It promised it...

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Politics come to iPhone Apps

Politics come to the iPhone as an app from the UK’s Conservative party. The app lists the party’s position on key policies. There are videos of party leader David Cameron, and party leaders can be contacted. There are Twitter updates and a virtual "swingometer" that will...

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Russian Hulu-Like Hub Up and Running

A new long-form online video service in Russia, Ivi.ru, launched last week, giving users access to ad-funded premium content, including Russian-language TV programs and movies.

The site, which looks like a virtual copy of Hulu, launched with more than 9,000 hours of content...

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Japanese TV Goes Streaming Live

Jupiter Communications is aiming to be the first Japanese broadcaster to offer simultaneous live streaming of its programming, initially targeting PCs and mobiles.

According to Nikkei, Jupiter Communications will offer a live and archived TV-content service that will cover sports, news and other...

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NCAA Opens March Madness Video Vault

The NCAA announced the launch of a new online video vault containing its coverage of previous men’s basketball tournament games, from the Sweet Sixteen through the championship games from 2000 and later.

Games, available at vault.ncaa.com, have been indexed around teams,...

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Sony Music Drops Promo CDs for Digital Media

Sony Music UK is gearing up to become the first major record label to stop using CDs as promotional tools for radio stations and journalists.

Sony Music UK will soon begin issuing only digital e-cards, saying that the physical stock is too expensive...

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Spotify Continues to Mull Music Videos

Spotify recently secured video rights for the international debut of a new Jimi Hendrix music video, first sparking the idea that it might enter the music video market. Now some fresh words from its head, Daniel Ek, are fanning the flames.

"The technology...

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Thumbplay Moves into Music, Targets RIM

Thumbplay, the New York-based ringtone giant, is launching a new all-you-can-eat mobile music subscription service that sounds a lot like its competition.

For $10 per month, users can stream as much music as they want, though it includes no downloads or ownership; users...

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T-HT Waiting for Government Approval to Launch Fiber Broadband

Croatia’s incumbent telco T-HT will have to wait to launch its new fiber optic network until the government regulatory agency HAKOM has approved its proposed retail and wholesale price list. T-HT spent about $186 billion building the network, which is capable of serving up to 200,000...

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Mobile TV Ramp-Ups Increasing

Mobile TV is on the upswing worldwide, according to a report from bmcoforum (Broadcast Mobile Convergence) that says more countries started commercial mobile broadcast TV services in 2009 or prepared to offer mobile TV in 2010.

It cites as examples:


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Comcast iPhone App Lets Subscribers Operate DVRs

Following the lead of DirecTV, Comcast will allow subscribers to control their DVRs with an iPhone app. Surely every other pay-TV service will follow suit.

What subscribers would really like, no doubt, is to watch what’s on their DVRs on an iPhone....

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Microsoft Demos Mobile 3D Interface

Microsoft is developing a mobile version of its "Surface" touchscreen interface, using a projector and a camera to create an interface that reacts to movement in three dimensions.

The system is still very much in the testing phase. Microsoft has said it’s not...

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Netflix Eyeing Streaming IPhone App

After Sling Media got the go-ahead for streaming content to the iPhone over AT&T’s 3G network, other companies have been pushing video apps heavily — but none are as hoped-for as the one Netflix is reportedly considering.

Netflix is hinting at a forthcoming...

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Virgin Media Gets Pre-School Shows for All of its 3-Screen Subscribers

As part of a deal for Time Warner’s Turner Broadcasting pre-school children’s pay-TV channel Cartoonito, Virgin Media will offer Turner Broadcasting content online and through mobile handsets.

Virgin Media’s executive director of digital entertainment Cindy Rose said the deal will boost Virgin...

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Next Freescale Chip to Enable Sub-$150 EReaders

New device formats go through the usual cycle: Real enthusiasts snap the gadgets up at premium prices, and then the costs have to come down to address the mass market. Freescale claims to be accelerating this process for the increasingly crowded eReader segment, with a new...

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Tablets, Smartbooks and Cloudbooks Take on PCs and Smartphones

One of the key trends of 2010 will be the embedding of wireless broadband in a widening range of devices, beyond smartphones and netbooks/notebooks, according to a new report called "Tablets, Smartbooks and Cloudbooks — First Battlefield in The PC/Phone Wars."

Many of...

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Archos Launches 2 New Tablets

Archos is like the South Korea of the portable media players industry — great hardware, second-rate software. See "Korean Tech Is Losing Its Cool" at:

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_09/b4168024781121.htm

Archos has never made a dent in the US...

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Virgin Mobile Prices Mobile Broadband to Attract Wireline Users

Virgin Mobile USA says its new mobile broadband plans are aimed at attracting wireline broadband subscribers. The plans are prepaid and are priced by the amount of data the user downloads. Subscribers have 30 days to download.

Called Broadband2Go, the rates are:


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Craig Wireless Brings WiMAX to Western Canada

Craig Wireless will in the second quarter unveil its commercial WiMAX services in the Olympic host city Vancouver. It plans to expand later this year to other areas like Manitoba and British Columbia and will be available to one million residents.

Initially, the...

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Skepticism Greets FCC Chief’s Spectrum Promises

FCC chief Julius Genachowski has issued more details of the US National Broadband Plan, which will be presented to Congress on March 17. However, few were reassured that he would succeed in freeing up sufficient spectrum to meet the burgeoning needs of mobile operators and new...

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AT&T CEO: Usage-Based Pricing Coming for Mobile Broadband

Consumers are accustomed to paying for their utilities by the amount they use. They may soon get the opportunity to pay for mobile broadband the same way — by the amount of data they use. Mobile broadband bandwidth is still more precious than wireline broadband because...

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Clearwire Results Show Strong Progress

- Adds 87,000 Net New Subscribers

- Sprint, 2 Cablecos Help Sales

Clearwire is starting to show the fruits of its ambitious build-out schedule and new management team, led by Vodafone veteran Bill Morrow. During the fourth quarter,...

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Movie Downloads Dip in 2009

All those rumors of new cloud-based streaming TV show and movie services are looking a bit more likely, thanks to a new report from Screen Digest.

Sales of digital films rose sharply in 2007 and 2008, but according to the latest report, growth...

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RIAA, File Sharers Play Ring around the Rosy

Harvard law professor Charles Nesson, whose client Joel Tenenbaum is embroiled in a continuing battle with Sony Music over file sharing, is now maintaining that his client’s 30 illegally downloaded songs represent only $21 in damages to record labels. His reasoning is that had his client...

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RealDVD Goes Real Quiet

US District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel issued a permanent injunction barring RealNetworks from selling its DVD copying software RealDVD, and a new settlement in the case has finally signaled an end to the copyright lawsuit brought by Hollywood

Facet, the RealDVD player...

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Appeals Court Smiles on TiVo

TiVo got some good financial news this week when a US Court of Appeals upheld its patent claims against the Dish Network and its companion company EchoStar, a suit that could bring TiVo hundreds of millions.

TiVo said the two companies will owe...

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Fair Use Case Sees Toddler’s Victory Dance

Stephanie Lenz was caught up in the content licensing war between Universal Music and YouTube after uploading a video of her toddler dancing to a song owned by Universal. Last week, however, a judge cleared her of wrongdoing and set some boundaries for fair use.


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UK Targets Open Wi-Fi Networks

The UK government is cracking down on open, free Wi-Fi services under the copyright provisions in the Digital Economy Bill. It won’t exempt libraries, small businesses, coffee shops or universities from the fury.

The new regulation could leave many organizations open to similar...

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Innocent Until Proven Breathing

During her teenage cheerleading career, Whitney Harper did what many kids do and downloaded music using various P2P networks. Harper was caught by MediaSentry, the investigatory arm of the music labels, and brought to court, where her knowledge was put on trial.

Harper...

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Pirate Bay Fails to Pull Content

File-sharing hub The Pirate Bay has failed to remove its links to torrents that allow users to download copyrighted content, missing a deadline set by a Dutch court and possibly incurring a $4,000 per day fine for each of its three former operators.


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TiVo Catapults Back into Being a Major Player in Digital Media

Two major events catapulted TiVo back into the spotlight. The UK’s dominant cableco Virgin Media said it’ll launch by year-end a DVR that’s based on TiVo technology, and an appeals court upheld TiVo’s patent lawsuit against the Dish Network and EchoStar. The suit could bring TiVo...

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Virgin Media to Use TiVo’s New Software in Upcoming DVR

- Best DVR Interface, Best Network

- Any Content Consumers Want

Virgin Media CEO Neil Berkett told Cable Congress attendees that the company will offer by year-end a DVR that is based on TiVo’s new Premiere product.


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New TiVo Box Marries Web, TV Content

TiVo introduced a pair of set-top boxes this week that have the goal of simplifying the mixing, searching and watching of videos from Web-based services like Netflix and YouTube with local and pay-for TV programs.

TiVo’s new "Premiere" boxes, slated to hit the...

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Cablevision Says Bye, Bye DVRs

- Will Offer Network DVR Service

- To Stop Buying DVRs for the Home

Cablevision will by year-end stop offering home-based DVRs. Instead it has started offering a network DVR (nDVR) service to subscribers. They will be able...

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Netgear Brings Wi-Fi to Internet-Connected TVs, Blu-ray Players & Media Adapters

Consumers are buying in increasing quantities TV sets and digital media adapters with Internet connectivity but then find they’ll have to run an Ethernet cable to them in order to connect to the home network. Few of the devises have Wi-Fi built in.


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Woxter Shows New Powerline Products

Home network gear maker Woxter will show new Powerline products based on DS2’s UPA chips at CeBIT in Hanover. Javier Parraga, Woxter CEO, said the company is focused on "bringing the HD experience to the home through any socket." The company said its DS2-based multi-room HDMI...

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DS2, UPA Praise G.Hn’s Completion

The Universal Powerline Association (UPA), backed primarily by Powerline chipmaker DS2, says it already has designs that incorporate dual mode silicon that supports both UPA and the recently completed G.hn Wireline Networking Standard.

The ITU-T G.Hn standard defines very high-speed home networking...

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IBM Uses Light Pulses to Accelerate Communication Speeds between Chips, Computers

The march of computer technology is inexorable and like the universe, accelerating in speed.

Faster communications between chips and computers are a next frontier. IBM says it has the lead over Intel when it comes to a future technology that uses light pulses...

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Lithuanians to Get 200 Mbps Broadband

Lithuania’s incumbent telco TEO LT has built a fiber-to-the-home network called Zebra and this month will begin offering broadband speeds up to 200 Mbps.

Packages will include Basic at 40 Mbps, Optimum at 160 Mbps and Mega at 200 Mbps.


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Summary Analysis of FCC’s Broadband Plan

Broadband evangelist and expert Dave Burstein provides this summary analysis of the FCC’s as yet unannounced proposal for a broadband plan for the US:

The US broadband plan accomplishes very little for affordability, quality, speed or availability of broadband in the US, although...

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Cable Pay-TV & Broadband Spreading in Europe

- DOCSIS 3.0 Now, Perhaps LTE Later

Cable pay-TV is becoming more popular in Europe, filling the opportunities the incumbent telcos have allowed in pay-TV and high-speed broadband. There’s a report circulating around this week’s Cable Congress in Brussels that shows 50% of...

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Tricolor TV Brings Satellite Broadband to Russia

The Russian pay-TV service Tricolor TV plans to have 100,000 satellite broadband subscribers by year-end, according to Broadband TV News. However, Tricolor TV general director Vlacheslav Mordachev said the company has not yet been authorized to charge for the service. He said about 300 residences are...

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TeliaSonera to Upgrade Broadband Network with VDSL2

- "The Strength of Fiber with Existing Copper Access"

The Swedish government estimates that 90% of the country’s residences have broadband access, and the government has said its goal is for them to have access to speeds up to 100 Mbps.


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Cisco to Build Experimental 1 Gbps Fiber Network

Cisco, like Google before it, will build some experimental ultra-high-speed fiber networks in North America. Unlike Google’s go-it-alone plan, Cisco will work with broadband service providers. The first deployment will be with Canada’s Shaw Communications to build a 1 Gbps trial networks.

...

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Nintendo Goes 3D, No Glasses Needed

One of the more impressive pieces of 3D floating around is from a new Nintendo DSi game that showcases a glasses-free 3D experience that interacts with both the user and the handheld device.

The DSiWare game — meaning it’s a digital download —...

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ADB Shows Prototype of 3D Set-Top Box

Technology developer ADB is showing of its 5000 series set-top boxes that feature 3D content and a new 3D user interface that are only a few months away from being operator-ready.

"We haven’t altered the application logic at all, which meant it...

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Sears, Amazon Selling 3D Sets from Samsung

Sears will be the first retail chain to sell 3D TV sets in less than two weeks. It’ll offer two Samsung 3D TV sets. The 46-inch model goes $2,599. A 55-inch model will sell for $3,290. Both prices are less than what comparable sets sold for...

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Spanish Football Goes 3D

This weekend saw a live 3D transmission of a football match in Spain, becoming what looks to be Spain’s first 3D transmission of a sporting event. The Spanish satellite operator Hispasat facilitated Telefonica’s 3D broadcast of a match between Inter Movistar and MRA Navarra, and it...

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Sony, CBS Build 3D Consumer Research Center

Sony Electronics and CBS have established a 3D consumer research center and screening facility. The new Sony 3D Experience will be located within CBS’s Television City research facility in the MGM Grand casino in Las Vegas — an experience that could’ve stolen the show two months...

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Blockbuster Brings Late Fees Back to Some

Blockbuster somewhat famously got rid of late fees for movie rentals in the early 2000s, but it’s bringing back the old standard to stay competitive with the likes of Redbox and Netflix.

Blockbuster has a new policy that basically brings back late fees...

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Sony Gets Hit with Y2K in 2010

The year 2010 isn’t a leap year. Someone should’ve told that to Sony before now.

Many models of its PlayStation 3 consoles stopped working for a day and would not connect to the Net or Sony’s network for content and games. The...

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Stimulus Funds Equip Public Libraries

The US government will by late summer or early autumn give at least one state, Louisiana, $8.8 million in stimulus funds to improve broadband and network technology at the state’s chain of public libraries.

State librarian Rebecca Hamilton said the money will...

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BBC Bets on Web Delivery

The BBC this week announced a major cost cutting — £600 million ($900 million) — that would among other things cuts its Web pages in half, close two of its digital radio broadcasts and reduce the amount it spends to buy content from outside the UK....

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Pace Knocks Technicolor out of 2nd Place in STBs

- Tops £1b for First Time

- Moves up on Motorola

- HD Driving Sales

Pace

says it’s passed Technicolor (née Thomson) to trail only Motorola in worldwide sales of set-top boxes to pay-TV operators. The company...

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Food Fight! Viacom, Hulu Spar over Content

In its first major spat with a TV content partner, Hulu will lose some of its most popular content: "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart" and "The Colbert Report."

The content is getting pulled due to an impasse between Viacom, which owns the...

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Sony Goes 3D Everything

While Sony isn’t always the most cohesive of companies across its many parts, it’s becoming clear that 3D is the great unifier. Sony’s president of personal imaging and sound, Masashi Imamura, recently told Digital Photography Review that the company is tackling 3D on every front, including consumer-produced content....

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Philips Shouts ‘Me, Too!’ in 3D

Philips has announced it will soon take to market a 3D set that includes a 3D version of its Cinema 21:9 super-widescreen set, which is close to the aspect ratio of feature films. The sets in this 9000 series are Web-enabled and have a Wi-Fi connectivity that looked...

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Intel, Others to Bring $3.5B to New Companies

Intel this week announced a new alliance with 24 venture capital firms, establishing a goal of investing $3.5 billion to US-based technology startups over the next two years. The funds will extend to companies in the computing, information technology, green tech, biotech and Web sectors. Most of the...

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Ad-Funded Mobile Music Videos Coming Soon

English digital music marketer TuneTribe has joined up with the mobile entertainment publisher 3rd Space to launch a new ad-supported mobile music video service. Users will be given access to content once they watch an embedded ad on their mobiles. The companies said that "new mobile channels" are...

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Vodafone Goes For Broke, or at Least Really Cheap

Mobile phone operator Vodafone has announced the launch of what it calls the "lowest cost mobile phone on Earth." The new Vodafone 150 will be sold for less than $15 and is aimed at the developing world; initial launches are slated for India, Turkey and eight...

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ABC’s ‘Fundamental Transformation’ Kills 300+ Jobs

ABC News has begun eliminating between 300 and 400 positions at its news division after weeks of speculation and rumors about pending terminations. ABC’s cuts are affecting all areas of ABC News, and the company’s president David Westin released a statement saying that "we anticipate that between now...

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Redbox Goes Blu in Q2

According to statements by Coinstar CEO Paul Davis, the company’s movie rental kiosk service Redbox will begin adding Blu-ray titles to its 22,000 kiosks beginning in the second quarter of this year. So far, the company has been only testing Blu-ray releases in its kiosks. Davis said Blu-rays...

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Free: The ‘Predictably Irrational’ Price

In an MIT experiment by economist Daniel Ariely, consumers were offered a choice between a Hershey’s kiss for a penny or a truffle for 15 cents, and consumers overwhelmingly picked the truffle. When reducing the price to free versus 14 cents, respectively, the free kiss became by far...

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Working at the Carwash

For fans of AM radio stations and some FM stations, driving through a city filled with tunnels, trolleys, railroad tracks and the occasional carwash all come with a slight interruption of service. One unexpected benefit to these new in-dash 3G services, most recently from the likes of Pandora...

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NBC’s Online Olympics Opens Strong

NBC Universal’s NBCOlympics.com site hit 13.6 million visitors in the first four days of the games, a 250% increase in traffic when looking back at the 2006 Winter Olympics. The news is very good; this year’s Web content has more viewing restrictions than previous coverage.

NBC says...

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An Inside Look at Labels and Web Videos

Talk to anyone who was big on YouTube and viral videos in 2006, and they will likely remember the band OK Go’s self-made music video that involved members dancing on treadmills. The video led to huge success for the band at that time, but a similar success is...

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CBS Could Be First with $1 ITunes Episodes

Amid all the iPad rumors, there has been a persistent notion that Apple will begin delivering cheaper TV show episodes to the device — and CBS is throwing petrol onto that fire.

"There are certain shows that will be sold on Apple for 99 cents," CBS CEO...

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MSI’s Latest All-in-One Goes All Out

Gearing up for a big presence at this year’s CeBIT on March 2, MSI is showing off its latest Wind Top all-in-one PC that’s buried deep in the latest tech.

The new Wind Tops — the 24-inch AE2420 and the 22-inch AE2280 — show a trend in...

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Lenovo Says No Slates Coming for Businesses

- Cites a Lack of Demand

Lenovo has updated its tablet-able business laptops this week and very consciously and pointedly said it will not bring out a slate device for business consumers, because those users don’t want it.

Lenovo boosted the ThinkPad x series tablets with a better low-power...

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Spotify Going Video?

Spotify has secured the global exclusive on a new video for Jimi Hendrix’s unreleased cover of the song "Bleeding Heart," marking the first time Spotify has run a full-length music video on its service.

This could be a drive for new consumers — or a test...

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Pandora Made $50M, Paying Just $30M in Royalties

Pandora often said that its ship was sinking over the past few years, but it appears that 2009’s troubled waters were seas of green.

The company now counts more than 40 million users; is adding 35,000 new subscribers to just its iPhone app daily; and made...

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Aspiro’s New Service Is a Wimp

Last week, Aspiro announced that it was expanding its existing music platform to serve as a white-label streaming service for a branch of Universal Music, and now the Wimp streaming music service has been unleashed.

Yes, Wimp. It has been officially unveiled through a partnership with Platekompaniet...

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Lack of Funds Means Sellaband Sale

Sellaband, a Web site that uses money from musicians’ fans to fund new albums, received a lot of press when Public Enemy announced it would develop a new album through Sellaband funding — and then a lot more press as the album never made it off the ground....

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Spotify Technical Issues Highlight Premium Benefits

Like all services that exist in the cloud, Spotify is at the mercy of problems that occur in datacenters. While services exist in the cloud, it seems a local storage option would be a significant tool in turning free listeners to paying customers.

Last weekend, the location...

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Apple to Push IPhone OS to More Platforms

Apple is planning to leverage its work in shifting its Mac OS X to other platforms — specifically its existing adaption with the iPhone OS — to power a variety of new platforms, according to a job posting from Apple.

Apple said that these new platforms would...

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Nintendo Brings DSi XL to the US

Nintendo unveiled the US release date of its DSi XL (XL), the latest version of its portable media player.

The current DS model has a pair of 3.25 inch displays and one touch screen. The new XL will also feature one touch screen, but both displays will...

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Sprint Readying 4G Mobile

Sprint is expected to release its first 4G smartphone in the first half of 2010, and the mobile will work fully with the carrier’s WiMAX network. While Sprint has existing 3G/4G gear, this is the first standalone mobile from the carrier.

The news comes from Paget Alves,...

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Huawei Shows First Triple-Mode LTE Modem

Huawei was certainly trying to grab the technology high ground in Barcelona, and as well as demonstrating HSPA+ at over 100 Mbps and promising 300 Mbps down the road, it also showed off the first triple-mode LTE modem, which also supports UMTS and GSM.

The product runs...

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US Government to Gobble up 500MHz Wireless Spectrum

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said its upcoming national broadband plan will require 500 MHz of new spectrum for mobile broadband use, and a wireless infrastructure is key to American competitiveness.

In a speech at the New America Foundation think tank, Genachowski said FCC’s mobile broadband plan includes...

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AT&T to Balance LTE Lag With Easy Upgrade Mantra

AT&T has lost almost every PR point to Verizon Wireless in the past year, not only because of its much publicized network problems but also because of its slower development of networks capable of real mobile broadband. The decision to upgrade its 3G system only as far as...

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Music Shows off Its Numbers

The music industry this week realized it lost a lot of music buyers, but it still came out with a lot of positive and interesting notes recently. Here are some highlights from the industry:

 - Apple sold its 10 billionth song via iTunes, and the song was...

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Industry Sends out Search Party for 24M Lost Customers

Twenty-four million fewer people are now buying music in the US, which is sparking an industry attempt to find these customers lost in the wilderness.

The number comes from the NPD Group in a study of US consumers from 2007 to 2009. During that period, 33 million...

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Netbook Ownership Increases

As of January, netbook ownership in the US is up 5% from the same time last year.

The latest netbook survey from the price-comparison Web site PriceGrabber.com shows netbook ownership in the US is now sitting at 15%, with 11% of current non-owners planning to purchase one...

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Web Brands Garner Consumer Trust

While at its inception, shopping for items on the Web was often a big gamble on what would arrive, online retailers have since established heavy standards and consumer loyalty.

Now, users shop online for just about everything and, apparently, the brand they turn most to in the...

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Mobile Subscriptions Worldwide to Hit 5B in 2010

The number of mobile phone subscriptions across the globe is set to pass 5 billion this year — a penetration rate of 67%, assuming a one-person-to-one-mobile ratio.

The report, from the United Nations agency International Telecommunications Union, says that penetration rates average above 100% in many developed...

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TVs Are Plugging In

Trends in the latest CE devices are hard to measure and keep in perspective sometimes, but a new report from iSuppli shows that consumers truly are starting to seek out Web content on the TV set in a big way.

The survey of US consumers who bought...

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Mobile Phone Sales Flat in 2009

- 8% Q4 Growth Has Many Excited

It’s not every day that an almost flat growth in sales is a good sign, but many are glad to see that trend for 2009’s global mobile phone sales.

Sales ended up reaching 1.21 billion units, down about 0.9%...

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Google Runs Afoul in Italy

Two managers and a former Google executive have been found guilty of privacy violations in an Italian court. It appears to be the first conviction of its kind for Google or its employees.

The three were on trial over charges stemming from a Google Video clip...

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UK Won't Pull Pirates' Plugs

When first discussing its upcoming digital economy and regulation legislation, the UK said it planned to monitor P2P networks and possibly cut off pirates from accessing the Web. Some reports on the meetings around the bill suggested that this move could even be permanent for the worst pilferers.


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No Three-Strikes in International Trade Pact

Despite previous rumors, a "leaked" draft of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) does not include any mandates for signatories to legislate "three-strike" policies for Web pirates.

The ACTA, currently being negotiated behind closed doors, follows existing US copyright laws very closely, especially the Digital Millennium Copyright Act...

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Baidu Found Guilty of Infringement

- Expanding Search Engines, Beware!

China’s search giant engine Baidu has been found guilty of infringement in a series of Chinese lyrics cases after providing unauthorized links to lyrics in its Baidu MP3 Lyrics search service.

The case, brought by Chinese publishers MCSC and covering at...

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Qwest Gives Zillion $10 Million

Qwest Communications has invested $10 million in the over-the-top video service provider ZillionTV, securing exclusive rights to offer the VOD service in the telco’s footprint.

ZillionTV was slated to launch commercially in Q3 2010 and originally planned to partner with Qwest and other telcos to deliver its...

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Vevo Coming to a Boxee TV Near You

Vevo’s CEO Rio Caraeff recently said that his company is developing an HD TV app for its music video service, starting with the upcoming set-top box from Boxee.

Vevo, a joint venture between Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment, currently has distribution deals with YouTube and...

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Nvidia’s Optimus Sparks Netbook, Apple Possibilities

Debuted earlier this month, Nvidia’s Optimus is being billed as a new solution for the mobile graphics space and, according to AppleInsider. It will also be used as a graphics platform for the next version of Apple’s MacBook laptop line.

Nvidia’s Optimus allows a device to seamlessly...

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Virgin Media: 100 Mbps or Bust

By the end of 2010, Virgin Media said, it will have launched a 100 Mbps broadband service for the UK. Similar offerings have launched in other countries; most recently, Germany’s Kabel Deutschland launched both a 60 Mbps and 100 Mbps offering in Hamburg.

Virgin Media’s increase would...

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For Broadband, It’s Money That Matters

The Federal Communications Commission recently unveiled an ambitious plan to expand broadband coverage to 100 million American homes, it also found out the biggest reason these homes do not already have such a connection: cost.

According to a recent FCC survey, affordability is the biggest factor in...

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3D Discs See First Scuffle

While there is not expected to be a format war, it appears that 3D Blu-ray discs will still start off their lives with a few bumps and bruises.

The 3D film "Avatar," now the highest-grossing theatrical release of all time, was originally assumed to hit retail shelves...

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Canal+ Subscribers to See Christmas in 3D

France will be getting a dedicated 3D channel from Canal+ by Christmas, the company said this week.

"During the first half of this year, we are busy solving the remaining technical issues, and we expect to launch a channel dedicated to 3D this Christmas," deputy chief technology...

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Samsung Wants to Be First with 3D TV Sets

Samsung is trying to be the first TV maker to get a full HD 1080p 3D TV set to consumers in Europe and may well do so with its LED screens.

The company said it will begin shipping 3D-capable units in Europe next month and expand...

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Apple Bringing IPad to More Stores

Apple COO Tim Cook spoke at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference this week, calling Apple a mobile device company — and it appears that even Apple’s sales plan is growing legs.

Cook said that the majority of Apple’s revenues now come from mobile devices or...

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Hulu Eyes IPads, Wallets

Hulu — that joint venture from News Corp, NBC Universal and Disney — has already admitted it has a mobile goal for the near future, and now its eyes are falling on the iPad.

Hulu chief Jason Kilar already stated that the company wants to establish itself...

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Mobile World Congress: The Nitty-Gritty

This year’s Mobile World Congress was a key indicator of the industry’s directions for the year and showed a cautiously optimistic mood. Vendors and carriers are expecting a slightly better year than 2009, looking to both new technologies and devices to drive growth instead of just battening down...

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Comcast, NBC U Deal Gets One Green Light

The proposed Comcast-NBC Universal merger has caused a big stir in the US — from congressional and FCC investigations to in-house meetings at the telcos and Web production houses — but the deal is getting at least one go-ahead and will likely be fully green-lit soon.

Despite...

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Wal-Mart Enters Online Video Market by Buying Vudu

- Looking to Recoup DVD Losses

- Now Owns the 1080p HDX Format

Wal-Mart is buying the video streaming service and one-time box maker Vudu, showing that the world’s largest retailer is planning to enter the Web-based movie sale and rental business one more time.


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Cablevision Brings Web & PC Videos to TV Sets

- Video, Pictures, Spreadsheets on a Personal Cable Channel

- TV Screen Likely to Attract More Partners, Advertisers

In the era of TV Everywhere, Cablevision Systems wants the TV in its place, bringing Web content to every subscriber’s set to keep seats planted on the couch.


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Google’s Need for Universal, High-Speed Broadband

"Google has every incentive to lower every single barrier to online access. The company makes it money from search advertising. The more search moments there are, the better they do. Cheap, high-speed fiber Internet connections in homes and offices and free Wi-Fi outdoors, in cafes, airports, and other locations —...

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Turner Broadcasting Picks Brightcove for Europe

Time Warner’s Turner Broadcasting will use Brightcove’s online video platform in the UK, Spain, France, Italy, Germany and other European countries. Turner will offer ad-supported and free an unspecified variety of online video shows starting with Cartoon Network, Boomerang and Adult Swim.

...

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WiMAX Replacing Wi-Fi for Municipal-Wide Broadband

WiMAX is replacing Wi-Fi as a wireless broadband service for municipalities. Barham, a town with 1,100 inhabitants in Kent, is offering fixed (stationary) WiMAX to residences. Consumers mount a small antenna to the outside of their residences and point it at one of the town’s VFast network nodes that offer...

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Early YouTube Rival Veoh Officially Dies

While its obituary has been written many times, it appears that the video streaming site Veoh has officially bitten the dust. The service launched in 2005 and aimed largely at long-form TV and Web content at a time when most still considered small video snacking to be the only successful...

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Qualcomm Shows FLO TV Smartbook

Qualcomm was showing off a FLO TV enabled smartbook at this week’s Mobile World Congress. It receives FLO TV signals and offers live social networking updates.

...

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Apple Trades $10K for Song 10B

It took Apple roughly three years to sell its first billion songs, but the company is now preparing to sell its tenth billion music track since opening its doors in 2003. Apple has tossed up a "10 Billion Song Countdown" promotion on its Web site and will give...

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Sprint, Real Partner on Mobile Music

RealNetworks and Sprint have announced an agreement to streamline the music content available on Sprint’s mobile phones through a single digital music storefront set to open later this year. The content — ringtones, ringbacks and full-length tracks — will be delivered and managed by Real’s Media Entertainment Platform. The deal...

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The PS3 Is Going 3D, Soon-ish

There have already been rumors aplenty about Sony’s PlayStation 3 (PS3) going HD this summer with just a firmware update, but there finally seems to be some proof. A reference for that firmware update has been found in a debug build of the PS3’s 3.20 firmware, which is currently being...

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3D HDMI Specifications Released for Free

With 3D coming down the pike at some point in the future, one fear in the mind of many consumers and tech companies is that another format war is coming. While there may yet be some infighting, it appears that most of the new tech will come without much of...

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No Usage Caps for One Aussie ISP

Australian ISP AAPT has stopped putting usage caps on its broadband plans and will give subscribers unlimited broadband. It’s a first for Australia. CEO Paul Broad said, "What we’re now launching will change the broadband telco landscape in this country."

...

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RAI Uses Nokia Siemens Gear for HD Videos

Italy’s public broadcaster RAI Radiotelevisione Italiana will use Nokia Siemens Networks’ fiber optic-based Next Generation Network gear to distribute HD video to fixed and mobile broadband devices and server mobile broadband applications.

...

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Mobile Data Is an Unstoppable Train

Spending on mobile data, driven by the need smartphone owners have for being always connected, will more than double during the next four years to $93 billion from $43 billion in 2009, according to the Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) report in its 2010 ICT Market Review & Forecast.

...

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HBO Launches Streaming Service

HBO just gave existing customers one more reason to love it: a new streaming video service for the PC and mobile TVs.

HBO has announced the launch of its HBO Go, the new video streaming service, saying that it initially will be available to only the 38 million cable...

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Studios Want Longer Wait Times for Digital Content

Time Warner’s Warner Bros Home Entertainment Group has said it settled existing litigation against Redbox, the kiosk DVD rental service from Coinstar, with the agreement that Redbox won’t distribute new releases to customers until 28 days after the movie’s DVD release. Redbox still faces pending litigation from News Corp’s 20th...

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SeeSaw Launches With 3,000 Hours of Free Shows

Arqiva’s Seesaw, an online catch-up and archived video service, launched this week with 3,000 hours of recent and cataloged TV shows from the BBC, Channel 4 and Five.

Recent BBC shows are not available on the BBC’s iPlayer service, and only viewers in the UK can access the service.


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NBC Demands Accounts for Olympic Videos

Those interested in watching online video streams of the major Olympic events will first have to prove to NBC that they are subscribers to a cable or satellite TV package.

Clicking on a variety of videos on the NBC Olympics site leads a user to a page...

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Sports Illustrated Heavily Promotes Web Content in Print

Sports Illustrated’s 2010 swimsuit edition has hit the newsstands and is putting a major focus on the Web and Web videos.

For die-hard fans of the issue, Sports Illustrated has been hosting a series of videos of and interviews with its models on its own Ustream channel...

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Apple Gearing Up for $1 TV Shows

According to the Financial Times, some TV networks have agreed to let Apple begin selling their TV show episodes at $1, instead of $2, on the iTunes store in connection with the coming launch of the iPad in April.

This and other reports claiming the same thing have yet...

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Aspiro Brings Europe Universal’s Streaming Songs

Aspiro, provider of mobile entertainment services in various parts of northern Europe, will be developing a white-label music streaming service for its regional branch of Universal Music Group.

The service will likely be an extension of Aspiro’s existing offering, still in beta, that partners with the music retail store...

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Warner Nixes Another Streaming Service

Warner Music’s catalog has been removed from the French music streaming service Jiwa, and the site is now asking users to make donations, presumably to keep it afloat.

Jiwa co-founder Jean-Marc Pflueger told Billboard that the removal was due to an order by Warner, which declined to...

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EMI, APPT Bundle Music With Web Down Under

Australian telco AAPT and EMI Music are joining up to create a new service bundling a music subscription with broadband and home phone lines.

The new AAPT "Entertainment Bundle" will offer a combination of unlimited broadband and home phone line rental with a streaming music subscription, and it appears...

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Google Axes Popular Music Sites

Google has removed several long-running music blogs hosted on its Blogger service, citing copyright infringement notices from the record labels.

Google — without any warning according to some bloggers — shut down these blogs and deleted individual posts in the blogs due to the notices. It said that "upon...

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FLO TV for Chrysler Cars

Audiovox says it’s now shipping its previously announced Advent-based FLO TV for cars.

Audiovox’s Advent-Brand FLO TV Receiver for Cars

Chrysler is offering it on eight models for $629, which includes a one-year subscription to FLO TV. Mopar supplies the 7-inch...

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Nagravision Shows Its Mobile TV Products at MWC

Nagravision demonstrated its mobile TV solutions at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) this week. The products allow the secured streaming of mobile TV, catch-up TV and video-on-demand over 3G/4G and Wi-Fi networks.

"Benefiting from the imposing iPhone success, mobile TV and VOD applications are boosting the market worldwide, a...

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Mobile TV Devices Coming to US Market

Free mobile TV is expected to become available in the US this year. It’ll be broadcast by thousands of local TV stations, which can broadcast two to four digital channels, depending on how many of them are in high-definition.

The service is currently being tested in Washington, DC.


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BBC Taking World Cup Matches to Mobiles

Live and free — what better way is there to see the World Cup? How about seeing it anywhere you are, thanks to a mobile device.

The BBC is broadcasting each match in real time from South Africa through its BBC Sports apps. The service will launch in May,...

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Apple’s Books Likely to Have DRM

While Apple pushed hard for its music to be free, the company reportedly won’t mind bound books.

According to the Los Angeles Times, Apple’s iBook store will feature a version of the FairPlay DRM for its copy protection. This is at odds with some initial reports about Apple’s e-books...

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Google Fights Apple With Its Wallet

If there’s a pesky iPhone app that makes consumers use one of your services but not your mobiles, what’s a company to do? Well if you’re Google, you buy the app and its publisher — and then pull it from iTunes.

That could end up being an expensive strategy.


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Blockbuster Lands on HTC Smartphones

While The Wall Street Journal has already written its obituary, Blockbuster seems alive and kicking — or, at least, thrashing about with a new-found fury.

The video rental giant said that its Blockbuster On Demand movie download service will now come embedded on HTC’s new HD2 smartphone, though the...

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BBC to Offer Free Apps for Mobile Devices

The BBC said this week that starting in April, it will offer free mobile applications on a range of mobile devices, no doubt starting with the iPhone. Initially they’ll be for BBC News and BBC Sports.

Almost immediately, The Newspaper Publishers Association (NPA) urged the BBC Trust to stop...

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Mobile Operators Aim for One Unified App Store

Does anyone smell smoke?

It appears that 24 of the world’s largest mobile operators do, and they are teaming up to save their smoldering app stores.

The operators’ initiative, known as the Wholesale Applications Community (WAC), wants to form a single, open-platform for developers. If the...

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Intel, Nokia Develop Unified Mobile OS

Making good on a partnership that bore sour fruit last year, Nokia and Intel are joining forces again for a mobile operating system named MeeGo. It’s a blend of Intel’s Linux-based interface Moblin and the vestiges of Maemo, a platform the two were supposed to unveil last year and recently...

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App Store Development Triples

Developers began more than 1,600 new iPhone OS applications in January, according to the mobile application analytics firm Flurry, nearly tripling the number of apps begun in December 2009. All eyes appear to be falling on the iPad.

Flurry attributed the uptick to the iPad for not only renewing...

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Omniphone to Standardize on Dolby Pulse for Music Formats

- Goodbye MP3!

- Will Convert Entire Music Catalog

- ‘Suddenly, You Can Store 4 Times More Music on Your Device’

The digital music service provider Omnifone will completely upgrade to Dolby Laboratories’ Pulse file format for its "cloud-based" music services for mobile,...

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Sony Dash Gets Netflix

Movies from Netflix’s Watch Instantly online service will be available on the $199 Sony Dash portable video player. Netflix uses Microsoft’s Silverlight technology.

Users can access streaming movies and TV shows from Netflix on their Dashes. Choices from a Netflix member’s Queue are displayed when the user touches the...

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Dolby Plays 5.1 Multi-Channel Sound on Smartphone

Mobile devices are going to soon sound like home surround sound systems.

Dolby Laboratories

made the first public demonstration of its 5.1 multi-channel surround sound on a mobile phone, an Android-based LG smartphone.

Dolby said there are already 20 mobile phone models on the market or in...

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Cox: LTE Is "Complimentary" to Wireline Broadband

LTE technology will make for great mobile broadband but won’t equal wireline broadband, according to Cox’s VP of wireless services Stephen Bye, speaking at this week’s Mobile World Congress.

Cox, a major but privately-owned cable TV service, has been testing LTE network technology in Phoenix and San Diego. It...

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T-Mobile Announces HSPA+ External Modem

T-Mobile USA this week announced what it said is the US’ first HSPA+ modem. Available in March, it’s called webConnect Rocket USB and will work on Windows PCs and Macs.

CTO and innovation manager Cole Brodman said the unit’s speeds are three to five times faster than traditional 3G...

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Nokia Siemens Shows 1 12 Mbps HSPA+ Technology

Nokia Siemens Networks showed its HSPA+ cellular technology at a peak speed of 112 Mbps at the Mobile World Congress this week.

Many mobile operators can upgrade their existing wireless networks to HSPA+ at a far lower cost than upgrading to LTE. And they can do it now, not...

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Ericsson Shows 1 Gbps LTE

Ericsson demonstrated LTE mobile broadband at a speed of 1 Gbps down at the Mobile World Congress this week. Ericsson used its commercial LTE hardware in the demo.

...

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74+ Mobile Operators Have Committed to LTE

When you look at the number of operators that have committed to deploy LTE as their 4G technology, it’s apparent that WiMAX will never be the dominant technology in mobile broadband — and the LTE operators are by and large already very big and successful.

More than...

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Verizon Wireless CTO: LTE to Launch in 2010

Verizon Wireless is about to complete successful tests of LTE mobile broadband technology, VP and CTO Dick Lynch said during a press conference at the Mobile World Congress. He said the company is on track to launch LTE commercially this year.

Lynch said the tests, which took place in...

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WiMAX Fights Back Against Avalanche of LTE Stories From MWC

Fighting off the continuous stream of LTE success stories coming out of the Mobile World Congress this week, WiMAX partisans at WiMAX Forum announced that more than one billion people worldwide will be able to connect to a WiMAX network by the end of 2011. "Able to connect," not "connected,"...

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Sony Slips to 5th in Sales of TV Sets

Where’s Sony in sales of TV sets? The Wall Street Journal reports that Samsung’s TV business has almost doubled since 2006, and the company now leads in global market shares with 17.2%, up from 16.5% a year ago, according to DisplaySearch’s report for 2009’s third quarter. LG is in second...

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The Pay-for-Content Battle Continues

If there’s one place that Web-based media wants to get into, it’s the customer’s wallet.

There are still a few holdouts who won’t pay for TV or grumble about having to pay for TV channels and then have to watch the commercials. Most early pay-TV subscribers wanted better reception...

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Video is the Killer for Mobile Broadband

Video is the killer app when it comes to mobile broadband usage — it’s killing bandwidth capacity — according to ByteMobile, which supplies mobile Internet solutions. It said video consumes more network capacity than any other application.

The company said its research showed:

- 10% percent of mobile...

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Web Video Audience up 5.2% in 2009

The US online video audience grew 5.2% in 2009, moving from 137.4 million unique viewers in January to 142.7 million in December. Total streams for the US grew 5.8%, and the time spent per user on streaming video overall grew 5.7%.

According to Nielsen’s data, Web video is still...

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Interest in Mobile TV & Video Growing Recently

The interest in mobile TV and video is growing with 55% of UK respondents expressing interest in viewing TV or video on their mobile devices, an increase from 51% in 2009, according to a report published by QuickPlay Media. The company likes the survey results because it provides software that...

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36% of US Homes Without High-Speed Internet

About 36% of US homes still don’t have broadband, according to a new report from the US Commerce Department.

The Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) has been assigned the task of dispensing $2.8 billion to help spread broadband to unserved and underserved areas.

"We’re at a...

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73M Mobile WiMAX Subscribers

The number of subscribers to the mobile version of WiMAX now exceeds the number for the fixed-version, according to Maravedis. The numbers are still small.

It said 73 million active mobile WiMAX subscribers were reached by the end of Q3 2009.

WiMAX embedded devices are slowly growing their...

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Faster HSPA & Even Faster HSPA+Mobile Broadband Technology Spreading Globally

- 200M Connections Now, 342M by Year-End

- 1,800 HSPA Consumer Devices

For iPhone and other smartphone users complaining about their cellular service, there is hope. The world’s mobile operators are racing to deploy faster networks because consumers are buying smartphones at increasing rates.

The...

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DOJ Develops Intellectual Property Task Force

In a move that’s likely to get cheers from the software and media industries, the US Department of Justice has announced the formation of its Task Force on Intellectual Property, aimed at detecting and preventing intellectual property crimes and digital piracy.

The task force will be chaired by the...

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Adult Studios Take on the Tubes

The success of YouTube is seen throughout the Web by just about every industry, but the adult film studios aren’t happy about the innumerable imitators that it has spawned featuring their content.

Ventura Content

has filed a $6.75 million complaint against the owners of Brazzers, which operates various adult entertainment...

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Netflix is Afraid of the Big Bad ISP Wolf

Netflix is concerned that ISPs could abuse their positions as broadband service providers and affect content distributors if they too become Web-video distributors.

Netflix recently asked the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to adopt new rules to protect its subscribers from these practices.

"Network operators control the delivery pipes...

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Former Pirate Bay Head Launches Payment Service

The spokesman for The Pirate Bay, Peter Sunde, has launched a new micropayment service called Flattr, which hopes to act as a tip jar for musicians, artists and software developers.

The service works by a user paying a monthly fee to Flattr. That fee is then distributed to various...

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UK Court Acquits TV-Links Service

A UK court has found the now defunct TV-Links not guilty of conspiracy to defraud and of violations of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act.

TV-Links was a Web site that offered links and some in-browser access to unauthorized streaming TV episodes on third-party Web sites.


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Boxee Gives Mixed Numbers

Boxee has released the latest version of its service — about a month after its initial beta launch — and has given some numbers that are both reassuring and troubling for the platform and STB provider.

Boxee says that in the first 37 days after its launch,...

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Sony, Microsoft Show Off Numbers

Want a good reason to look to gaming consoles as the next key place to deliver Web-based content? Here are 63 million.

Sony

Microsoft

’s CEO Jack Tretton has given some numbers for the company’s free PlayStation Network, saying it now covers more than 40 million users. In December,...

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Sezmi Launches Pay-TV Alternative in LA

Sezmi will launch its alternative to pay-TV for the first time in Los Angeles. It’ll be sold exclusively by Best Buy.

Sezmi offers two plans: Sezmi Select for $4.99 a month and Sezmi Select Plus for $19.99 monthly.

Subscribers must first purchase a Sezmi box for $299. It’s...

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New Motorola to Converge Its Cell Phones & Set-Top Boxes

Motorola, fresh from being re-organized last week, used MWC to say it will add e-mail and social-networking functions from its cell phones to its pay-TV set-top boxes.

The new Motorola will contain the company’s mobile phone and home-products divisions when it separates from the wireless networks and...

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Beceem Produces Dual Use WiMAX/LTE Chip

Beceem Communications’ newest chip for mobile devices will allow them to use either WiMAX or LTE networks. The BCS500 ship supports 802.16 IEEE WiMAX and the 3GPP-LTE standard’s Release 8 specifications. The chip will be available for sampling in the fourth quarter of this year with mass production expected in...

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New TI Wireless Chip: Cheaper, Smaller, Better Performance

Texas Instruments is shipping demo versions of its new WiLink 7.0 single-chip that integrates Wi-Fi 802.11n, GPS, FM transmit/receive and Bluetooth technologies. The company said the chip reduces costs by 30%, reduces size by 50% and performs better compared with other chips. Devices that have the WiLink 7.0 solution are...

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Time Warner Cable Passes 9M Broadband Subscribers

As it previously promised, Time Warner Cable, the second-largest US pay-TV service, has passed the 9 million mark in broadband subscribers. COO Landel Hobbs said the company will increase speeds and add features during 2010.


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Service Provider
FCC to Call for 100M Homes with 100 Mbps Broadband

- ‘We Should Stretch Beyond 100 Mbps’

From the viewpoint of content distributors, online services and consumers, the chairman of the US’ broadband regulatory agency is saying the right things.

Julius Genachowski of the FCC talked to a meeting of state regulator, the National Association...

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EBU Approves 3D Group

The European Broadcasting Union (EBU)’s Technical Committee has approved the formation of a new EBU 3D study group for TV content.

The group will allow EBU members to find and share information and experiences with existing 3D technology.

The group will also likely end up playing...

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Epix Reveals First Mobile Plans

Epix — a Web and pay-TV video channel joint venture among Viacom, its Paramount division, Lionsgate and MGM — is getting ready to unveil the last tier in its "Big on Any Screen" approach, demonstrating a mobile version of its service to a select few at this year’s...

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Sony’s Vidzone Posts Positive

Sony Computer Entertainment Europe has good numbers for its Vidzone application, currently counting two million downloads across 18 countries in just six months.

Vidzone is a free, on-demand music video service for the PlayStation 3, featuring national and international artists. In the past six months, 200 million...

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Jobs Wins THE Mobile World Congress Award Despite Apple Not Participating

The most important person in the mobile industry, according to journalists who attended the Mobile World Congress this week, was Apple chief Steve Jobs, who did not attend and whose company did not participate. The selection says a lot about how Apple, under Jobs’ leadership, has done more...

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France Telecom Wants Belgian Triple Play

France Telecom is preparing to launch a new "multi-screen, innovative TV service," through its subsidiary Mobistar, which will deliver content in Belgium via TVs, PCs and mobiles. The operator claims the coming content will be a "European first."

The launch date is tentatively set for the second...

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New Motorola to Aim at the ‘Three Screens’

Motorola is positioning its surprising reorganization — the one that lumped mobile handsets and home networking together — as a unique capability that will allow it to offer technologies for the three sets: TV, PC and mobile devices.

"It’s definitely a differentiator," said Sanjay Jha, who will...

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Qualcomm Fights Free Mobile TV

- Offers FLO TV Apps for Smartbooks

- Upgraded FLO TV Costs Less, Improves Video Quality, Offers More Channels 

- Now for Windows PCs Too

Free mobile TV is coming to the US to compete with Qualcomm’s FLO TV pay-TV service. Local TV stations will...

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India-Designed Adam Tablet Threatens Apple’s IPad

Samsung

and other brand name CE makers aren’t the only ones promising to offer products competitive to Apple’s iPad, scheduled to start shipping in March.

Hyderabad start-up Notion Ink showed at MWC this week an iPad competitor called Adam, which the company said it spent three years developing....

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Samsung to Use Nagravision Technology in Internet-Connectable TV Sets

There are few TV sets or Blu-ray players on store shelves and even fewer in homes that can connect to the Net. However, te race is on for CE makers to offer the most and best online services and videos.

Samsung

this week said it will incorporate in its TV sets technology...

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3D: ‘The Third Great Revolution’

"If you look at the history of film, there have now been three great revolutions. The first was silent to talkies. The second was black-and-white to color, 70 years ago. And this is the third great revolution, a quantum leap. We’re at the top of the waterfall with 3D. And...

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Telcos’ TV Revenues Growing

The telcos’ pay-TV market growth was strong in 2009. "As a result," according to ABI Research industry analyst Serene Fong, "service revenue for the global telco TV market increased to nearly $12 billion in 2009 and will increase to nearly $17 billion by the end of 2010.

...

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986M Yards of Fiber by 2014

If IGI’s forecast is correct, lots of homes are going to get 100 Mbps broadband and pay-TV from their telcos. The total length of fiber optic cables is expected to grow from 35 million meters (yards) in 2010 to 986 million meters (yards) by 2014, according to a report from...

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Stimulus Funds Go to Build Rural Fiber Network

Maine Fiber said it’ll use the $25.4 million it received in stimulus funds from the US government to build a fiber optic network called the Three Ring Binder project. It’ll provide high-speed broadband to more than 100 rural Maine communities with 110,000 homes and 38 government facilities.

...

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News Corp ‘on the Cusp of a Digital Dynasty’

News Corp chief Rupert Murdoch said the future of the company’s newspapers is in paid-for online content. The company, he said, is "on the cusp of a digital dynasty" that will be highly profitable. The company is having "very substantive conversations" with other media companies about how to monetize their...

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Locked in a Box for Web Fame

Minor UK TV personality Tim Shaw has locked himself in a box for roughly 30 days, streaming most of the captivity live on Justin.tv. Shaw has locked himself in a box where he only has a camera and a light that shines for 12 hours a day. Since no man...

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Sprint Loses 148,000 Subscribers

What’s Sprint Nextel to do? In the fourth quarter of 2009, it lost another 148,000 subscribers, admittedly far fewer than the 1.27 million it lost in the same quarter of 2008. The competition from AT&T Mobility and Verizon Wireless is only going to get fiercer as the two cellco giants...

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AT&T Selects Ericsson and Alcatel-Lucent for LTE Network

AT&T has selected network gear makers Ericsson and Alcatel-Lucent to build its new LTE mobile broadband service with the build out beginning in 2011. Verizon Wireless selected the same two and has started building this year. AT&T said it’s waiting until 2011 so more LTE devices will be available. It’s...

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Motorola Puts up Money for Mobile Music

Motorola is bankrolling TuneWiki, a provider of social music players and mobile applications, with a new round of funding that is said to go directly toward mobile features like geographic charts, real-time mapping and social networking features. TuneWiki’s music player has a big focus on combining a licensed library with...

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IPhone Increases Q4 US Share to 25.3%

Apple’s share of the US smartphone market grew 1.2% in the fourth quarter to give it a market share of 25.3% for the quarter, according to ComScore. It trails RIM, whose BlackBerry had a 41.6% share in the fourth quarter. Microsoft’s share declined 1% to 18%.

...

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Might Microsoft Buy AOL?

"Would cash-rich Microsoft spend $3 billion to buy AOL or $20 billion to buy Yahoo?" was being discussed by co-host Cody Willard of Fox Business News’ "Happy Hour" and Formula Capital founder James Altucher.

...

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Korea Telecom to Become the Apple of IPTV

Korean Telecom (KT), promising to become the Apple of Internet-delivered pay-TV (IPTV), plans to launch a more "open" version of its IPTV service Qook in March. Content developers will be able to create and market their products over its IPTV network. It said the move will establish closer ties with...

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ESPN3 Gears Up for Launch

According to The Wall Street Journal, ESPN is gearing up for a bigger push into the world of Web videos — for paying subscribers, that is.

The paper is reporting that ESPN, a unit of Walt Disney, is preparing a new marketing and service campaign for its ESPN360.com site, which will...

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Super Bowl Spots Big on CE, Web

Super Bowl commercials this year are expected to have cost more than $3 million per 30 seconds, and many of these spots harkened to what’s popular on the Web. While many were for services that come from the Web, such as GoDaddy.com, CareerBuider.com and Monster.com, a few highlighted the depths...

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Hulu Helps Indie Success

While YouTube has seen some varied success with independent films lately, Hulu got a nice plug from the indie film community recently.

"Strictly Sexual" is a romantic comedy that never made it to the big screen but can now claim millions of viewers and fans. Stevie Long, who wrote and acted...

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DailyMotion Expands Music, US Plans

Despite some labels putting the kibosh on ad-supported services, EMI has signed a deal with the video-sharing site DailyMotion to make its library of music videos available to the video service’s 65 million global users across its Web site, mobile platform, apps and the recently launched DailyMotion channel for Net-connected...

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Music Choice Rolls out Interactive Music Video Network

Music Choice, a video and music network that mainly lives on cable and satellite TV services, has launched SWRV, a new interactive music video network that allows users to rate, vote on and submit their own videos.

It’s a mix of Web and TV content, with a programming lineup that’s initially...

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YouTube Gets Better Content Filters

Google’s YouTube has introduced a new "Safety Mode" that allows users to opt-in for settings that prevent the display of what it considers objectionable material.

Safety Mode appears to be more similar to parental content controls than to be an extension of its content guidelines that flat out bans things like...

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Web Movie Service Voddler Picks up $3.5 Million

Sweden’s Voddler, a streaming video service provider, has raised $3.5 million in its lastest round of funding for its peer-to-peer (P2P) video distribution offering that is backed by around 15 major studios.

Voddler is in a beta testing phase for its video delivery service, currently using content from Disney, Paramount, Sony...

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RealVideo Continues Death Spiral

RealNetwork’s video format, RealVideo, is continuing to crash and burn around the Web, with C-SPAN becoming the latest service to drop the streaming format in favor of Flash and Windows Media.

A message on the C-SPAN site said: "Due to lack of demand for the RealVideo format, we will be retiring...

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Warner Music: Free Tunes Are for the Birds

The major record label Warner Music has said it will no longer license its content to free music streaming services.

Warner told the BBC that services like Last.fm, Grooveshark and even Spotify and Pandora are not good for the industry.

This is causing a bit of a stir and raises questions over...

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Labels Still Looking at Physical Distribution

While the death knolls for traditional physical albums are still ringing, labels haven’t completely thrown their weight behind digital distribution and new digital formats as the best replacement.

In a recent move, Warner Music appears to be one of the first major labels to move away from the usual 10-plus track...

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MySpace Looking to Audio Ads

In an effort to boost revenues, MySpace Music has begun testing out audio ads that users hear before the free music streams provided on the Web site.

The 30-second ads are reportedly spaced and timed so that a user hears roughly one ad per 100 songs on their playlist. Ads also...

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Qualcomm’s Mobile TV Revenues Decline

Qualcomm’s revenues from its Flo TV operation were $2 million in 2010’s first quarter, down from $6 million in the year-ago quarter, according to a report the company filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

It lost $107 million before taxes in the quarter, up slightly from the $98 million it...

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Vizio to Offer Three ATSC-Compatible Mobile TVs

Vizio, which sells more LCD TV sets in the States than anyone else, will offer later this year three mobile TV models that receive live TV from local TV stations that broadcast ATSC-M/H signals. The service is free.

Vizio to Offer ATSC-M/H...

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Valups Puts Live TV on IPhones, IPod Touches, IPad

- Offers Models for Europe, US, Japan

- Uses Axel’s Mobile TV Technology

Axel Technologies, which develops mobile TV software, and Valups, which designs consumer electronics gear, have developed a product that allows users to watch free DVB-T mobile TV on iPhones, iPod Touch devices and the iPad. The two said it’s...

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Zune Phone Rumors Heat Up It’s that time again.

Now that the Apple buzz is beginning to recede, the rumor mill is kicking up more dust about the much-whispered mobile based on Microsoft’s Zune.

The latest rumors are coming from the Spanish-language blog MuyComputer, which said recently that the Zune phone will launch at next week’s Mobile World Congress event...

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Opera Wants IPhone to Open Its Browser Borders

This week, Opera announced that it will demo a version of its Opera Mini 5 Web browser for the iPhone at next week’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain.

Opera already makes a rather popular series of mobile Web browsers for most other platforms, so the iPhone and its continued growth...

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Conexant, AnyDATA Offer Designs for 3G-Connected Picture Frames & Home Security Devices

Consumers can expect many more devices that are permanently connected directly to the Internet — no Wi-Fi needed. They’ll be similar to Amazon.com’s Kindle e-book reader, which connects directly to a 3G network to download books and publications.

Chipmaker Conexant Systems has been working with AnyDATA, which designs and makes wireless...

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T-Mobile’s Upgrade to HSPA+ Is Under Way

Deutsche Telekom’s T-Mobile USA is in the midst of upgrading on the East and West Coasts its 3G network to HSPA+, which can potentially provide download speeds up to 21 Mbps.

In an interview with GigaOM, Dave Mayo, VP of planning and finance, said the carrier already has upgraded to HSPA+...

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Swisscom to Begin Testing LTE

Swisscom has started testing LTE mobile broadband technology in anticipation of rolling it out perhaps as soon as 2011. In the meantime, it — like many other cellcos — is using HSPA technology to upgrade its existing 3G network.

The company said declines in its fees for mobile broadband have accelerated...

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BT Lights up 1 Millionth Hotspot

BT’s Openzone now has 1 million Wi-Fi hotspots.

BT Openzone general manager Chris Bruce said the company would trumpet the event with a number of promotions that are intended to increase their use. Bruce said, "We’re raising awareness of the fact that Wi-Fi allows you to get online where you want...

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Warner Music Does Well Outside of US

With the Napster decades fresh in everyone’s mind, Warner Music has posted some hopeful gains for income in both music sales and publishing outside of the US.

Overall music sales income for 2009 was up 3.4% compared to 2008. International sales were up 12.7%, while US sales were down 9.5%. Globally,...

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Britain’s Digital Radio Switch Hits Static

While the UK has seen a big push for a digital radio switchover by 2015 from industry groups, consumers appear to be lagging in their acceptance and uptake.

Digital Radio UK

, a trade body established by the BBC, along with Arqive and others in commercial radio are looking to the Q4...

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African-Americans Gain Influence in Tech, Media

According to a new BET survey of African-Americans, the community has increased its US buying power by more than 55% from 2000 to 2008, despite only gaining a 10% increase in population, and this increased buying power is going very quickly to the technology sectors.

The "African Americans Revealed" study found...

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501M Broadband Subscribers by 2014

There will be 501 million wireline broadband subscribers at the end of 2014, according to ABI Research, an increase of 9% from 422 million at the end of 2009.

About 106 million of them will use fiber-optic based broadband, up from 44 million at the end of 2009.

ABI Research industry analyst...

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Americans Spending on In-Home Entertainment Soars

In 2004, the average American home spent $770.95 annually on services like cable television, Internet connectivity and video games, according to data from the Census Bureau in a New York Times article.

It rose to $903 by the end of 2008 and is expected to increase to $997.07 by year-end.

The sum...

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149M Handsets With Wi-Fi by 2015

Mobile handsets with Wi-Fi enabled mobile handset penetration in the United States will grow at more than 25% CAGR between the end of 2009 and 2015, to reach 149 million in 2015, according to a report by Coda Research Consultancy.

The company said much of the growth is due to the...

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Demand Increasing for Internet-Connected STBs

Pay-TV services are tearing down the walls of their gardens by adding other methods of content access — especially Internet connectivity — to their set-top boxes, according to a report from IMS Research.

The demand for pay-TV set-top boxes that are Internet-connectable devices is being driven by increased bandwidth, the evolution...

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Streaming Video Eats up Mobile Broadband Bandwidth

Those who wonder why their mobile phone doesn’t work as they expected need look no further than the growth in streaming video to mobile handsets.

Streaming video to mobile phones is the world’s fastest growing mobile application, according to Allot. It says the usage of mobile data bandwidth increased 72% worldwide...

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Aussie ISPs Not Liable for Users’ Piracy

A federal Australian judge has ruled that Internet service providers cannot be found liable for copyright infringements committed by their subscribers.

That red tint you see in Australia and the US are the movie studios seething with rage.

In a very closely watched case filed by US movie studios against the Australian...

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Court: Norway ISPs Don’t Have to Block Pirate Sites

A Norwegian court has ruled that the country’s ISP Telenor and others do not have to block access to the file-sharing site The Pirate Bay, and the decision likely extends to other BitTorrent trackers.

The international record label trade group IFPI and several movie studios lost their case when Court of...

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First Pirate Defendant up for Her Third Trial

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the defendant Jammie Thomas-Rasset have rejected a judge’s order reducing the damages she must pay from $1.92 million to $54,000. This means the Minnesota woman will now face a third trial.

It appears that this third trial will largely be about determining damages.

Initially,...

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China Finds Pirate School to Be a Phoenix

"Spare one minute to learn, and you’ll make your life more exciting" was the rallying cry of China’s infamous Black Hawk Safety Net, a pirate school that has died and risen back from the ashes in China this week.

Police in the Hubei province recently announced that they had closed down...

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Italy Says No Pirates, Please

An Italian court has ruled that the country’s ISPs must block Italian citizens from accessing the file-sharing hub The Pirate Bay, reinstating a ban that has been batted around in Italian courts for two years.

The ruling first came in 2008 in the Court of Bergamo and was then overturned by...

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DVD-Quality ‘Avatar’ Hits the Web

A DVD-screener copy of "Avatar" — those copies generally sent out to a wide range of film industry professionals for things like award considerations — has hit the P2P networks and torrents and has seen well over one million downloads in its first week up for grabs.

Because of the timing...

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Roku Allows Third-Party Remotes, Gets New Content

Roku has announced support for some new ways users can interact with its set-top box, namely through mobile apps from third-party developers.

For users with mobiles running Android, a new app from Gregg Reno is getting support, copying the layout of the normal Roku remote. For the iPhone and iPod Touch,...

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Vudu Officially Kicking Box to the Curb

When Net-delivered movie content for TV sets was getting off the ground, Vudu’s box was perhaps the best way to get recent movies on-demand — but it’s time to bury that old hat.

Vudu no longer manufactures stand-alone boxes.

Vudu, according to The New York Times, is done with its box pretty...

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WatchIndia Goes From Site to STB

While we often ask, "Does anyone have any shelf space left near their TV sets?" this new offering makes us think some users will be clearing off the shelf a bit.

In a move that’ll likely do well with its loyal fans, WatchIndia.tv has announced it will launch a Live India...

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Ericsson and PicoChip Put 3G in Home Devices

 - Will Replace & Supplement Wi-Fi

Access to 3G, WiMAX and LTE mobile broadband networks will come in a wide variety of devices that will go well beyond handsets. The capability will be embedded not just in mobile gadgets but home-based products previously reserved for Wi-Fi. This will create a new...

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Netgear, Ericsson Offer Consumers a 3G Router With Wi-Fi

Lots of residences in rural areas cannot get wireline broadband, so they use 3G mobile broadband in the home.

Netgear

and Ericsson now offer a 3G mobile broadband-linked router called MBRN3300 that allows a 3G mobile broadband link to be shared within the home.

Devices connect to it via either Ethernet cables or...

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Motorola Invests in Media Chip Maker Zenverge

Motorola’s investment arm Motorola Ventures has participated in financing for chipmaker Zenverge.

The company has developed a single chip that supports transcoding, decoding and encoding of multiple formats at up to four times HD performance or for up to four simultaneous HD streams. It said the chip speeds far exceed the...

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New Group Wants to Develop Standards for Online Video Delivery

The Video Convergence Forum (VCF) is a new industry group that says it is "dedicated to the development and promotion of open interface specifications and consistent business models for the online delivery of video content."

"The VCF will strengthen and grow the online video industry — from broadcast television through mobile-to-mobile...

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Trident Completes Acquisition of NXP Operation

Chipmaker Trident Microsystems has completed the previously announced acquisition of NXP Semiconductors’ operation that makes chips for TV sets and set-top boxes. Trident said the acquisition makes it "a global leader in the digital home entertainment segment, establishing Trident as one of the top three providers to both the television...

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Rovi Integrates FourthWall’s TV Widgets & Targeted Ads Into Its On-Screen Guide

Pay-TV services that offer Rovi’s interactive program guide will soon be able to offer FourthWall Media’s TV widgets and targeted advertising platform.

Widgets allow viewers to access and use non-traditional pay-TV applications. FourthWall widgets include eBay on TV; news; weather; numerous sports widgets for nearly every major league team and college;...

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Samsung to Use Rovi Technology and Entertainment Metadata

Like the universe coming into a perfect Mayan alignment, the digital media world has lined up perfectly for Rovi, which has both acquired and developed media recognition technologies and metadata that help consumers find and buy content.

The enormous increase in the volume of content that has become available in digital...

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Bell Aliant Keeps Building Fiber-to-the-Home Networks

Bell Aliant will use money from New Brunswick to build additional fiber optic networks. The company operates in six Canadian provinces with telephone, broadband and pay-TV services. Its competitors are the cable TV companies.

It will build fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) in several New Brunswick communities.

"Having access to the fastest and most innovative...

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Comcast to Use Xfinity Brand for Its Services

Comcast, the US’ largest cableco, will use the Xfinity brand for its DOCSIS 3.0 broadband, digital TV and digital phone service: Xfinity TV, Xfinity Internet and Xfinity Voice. Its initial launch is in 11 markets: Boston; Philadelphia; Baltimore; Washington, DC; Chicago; Portland, Oregon; Seattle; Hartford; Augusta, Georgia; Chattanooga, Tennessee; and...

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Belgacom Offers New Broadband Plans

Belgium telco Belgacom will have new broadband speeds and monthly rates starting March 1.

Plan

Speed

Rates in € ($)
Internet Start 2 Mbps 18.9 (26)
Internet...

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Google to Develop 1 Gbps Super Fast Broadband

 - Will Build Several Small Test Networks

 - Wants to Foster Killer Apps for Super Fast Broadband

The financial future of Google, more than for any other company, needs universal high-speed broadband.

Google said it plans to build several test networks in the States that are capable of speeds up to one gigabit...

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BT to Allow Rival ISPs to Use Its Infrastructure to Run Cables Its Infrastructure to Run Cables

BT will allow other broadband services to run their cables through BT’s ducts and tunnels and on BT poles, the company said. The move will save BT rivals billions that would have been needed to dig up streets and install cable.

The out-of-power Conservative Party; BT rivals such as TalkTalk and...

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German, Belgian Cablecos Launch 100 Mbps DOCSIS 3.0 Broadband

Cable TV companies worldwide continue to deploy the super-fast DOCSIS 3.0 broadband technology. The latest two are in Germany and Belgium.

This week, Kabel Deutschland (KDG) launched it in Hamburg with two speeds: 60 Mbps and 100 Mbps. It said it would make it available in Berlin, Munich and Hanover within...

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Apple Says Location-Based Ads Are a No-Go

In a recent post to its iPhone Developers news and information site, Apple posted a note to developers saying they are not to use location and GPS data for advertising purposes.

The news comes shortly after Apple finished acquiring the mobile advertising Quattro Wireless, which makes some think the move may...

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Exqi Culture Develops 3D Show

Belgian production company Alfacam will launch its first 3D TV program this month on its Exqi Culture channel. The music-related show Studio 3 will be recorded and broadcast in 3D. The company has said it is working with a variety of 3D receivers and broadcast partners to expand the reach...

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Sony Shipping 3D-Capable Blu-ray Players

 - Wi-Fi, DLNA, IPhone/IPod Touch Compatible

 - Access BBC IPlayer, Lovefilm, YouTube

Several TV makers have promised they’ll ship 3D TV sets this year. Sony will have feature-filled Blu-ray players that play 3D discs and are ready to connect to 3D TVs in North America and Europe.

Its BDP-S470 and BDP-S570 play 3D...

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Fashion Show Goes 3D

While those multicolored glasses aren’t the most fashionable of items, British fashion label Burberry is pushing the accessories as it plans to broadcast its upcoming fashion show catwalk line in 3D.

The 154-year-old brand will stream its London Fashion Week show in 3D at various associated parties in New York, Paris,...

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Technicolor Is Ready to Run Studios, Retailers Online Video Stores

Technicolor, Thomson until its recent financial reorganization, is ready to run online video services for the major studios and content retailers, according to Technicolor CMO Ahmad Ouri.

It’s already running the back room operations for Tesco’s online video service. Tesco, the UK’s largest retailer, negotiates the licenses with content owners. When...

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Rhapsody Will Be Spun Off

RealNetworks and Viacom have announced plans to spin off their subscription-based music offering joint venture, Rhapsody, into a new corporation that will operate independently of the two former parents.

Rhapsody has continued to struggle against a variety of music services, chiefly Apple’s iTunes.

In its most recent SEC filing, the company hinted...

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Motorola to Split Into Two

As we went to press Thursday night, Motorola said it will split the company in two with both trading and operating as independent companies. Both will be able to use the Motorola brand.

One will have, as the following story describes, the home network/set-top box business and mobile handsets. It’ll be...

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EMI Planning Sweeping Cuts

In place of pink slips, it appears EMI will soon be swinging a mighty big ax.

The major record label is planning "radical cost cuts, including a further reduction in its 3,500-strong work force," the Telegraph reported. The move is likely to help it improve its appeal to investors.

Terra Firma

, a...

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Technicolor Ships 100 Millionth Pay-TV STB

Technicolor, née Thomson, largely ignored its STB-manufacturing business in its recent announcements about its financial reorganization. This week it said that operation has reached the milestone of delivering 100 million digital pay-TV set-top boxes since it entered the market in 1994. Customers include DirecTV, BSkyB, Tata Sky, Sky Brazil and...

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Vizio Launches Four 3D TV Sets

 -Uses Sensio’s 3D Technology & XpanD Glasses for ‘Stunning’ Picture

 - LED Screen, Dual Band Wi-Fi, Bluetooth & Wireless HDMI

Vizio has resolved the 3D dilemma of whether 3D content or 3D TV sets would come first. It intends to have 3D sets waiting for 3D content in millions of homes by...

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Brightcove, Ping Identity to Offer Authorization Platform for ‘TV Everywhere’

-‘Will Revolutionize the Way Pay-TV Services Deliver Video’

- Unlock Content From the TV Set

- Viewers Can Only Watch What They Subscribe To

Brightcove has developed technology that allows pay-TV operators to deploy the TV Everywhere (TVE) catch-up online service that most pay-TV companies intend to provide.

The company said its TVE platform...

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Katzenberg: Home Video Sales Not Needed for 3D Films

Responding to the question whether the studios need the revenue from sales of 3D DVDs to consumers to make 3D movies profitable, DreamWorks Animations Jeffrey Katzenberg told Daily Variety, "The major releases in 3D this year made back their incremental investment of making them in 3D in the...

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‘Google Is a Vampire’

"Google is a vampire, and you run scared. There is no reason to be indexed in Google. You haven’t gotten anything back except that you’ve turned into zombies. You’ve got to realize they’re vampires, and you can’t be the dumb blonde showing your neck." — Mark Cuban, Internet...

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LG’s LTE Modem First to Get Approval by Japan

South Korea-based LG is the first to get its LTE modem certified by Japan. LG said Japan’s cellco giant NTT DoCoMo will use the modem in its LTE tests later this year.

...

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1.3m See a Digital State of the Union

Nearly 1.3 million people streamed a live Web video feed of Obama’s State of the Union address last week. The speech was available on a variety of Web sites and blogs, including video giant YouTube. The White House has so far been unable to determine how many people...

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Revision3 Sees Big Uptick in Web Views

This week, Revision3, a small Internet video network, announced a strong showing in video growth — a good contrast to 2008’s downsizing at the firm. The company now has 1.5 billion minutes of viewer engagement annually and had its revenues grow 30% in 2009. Ad sales revenues for...

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Netflix: IPad ‘Not a Huge Priority’

When eyes first beheld Apple’s iPad, the mind conjured up all sorts of video options for the new leisure device which then turned thoughts to Hulu and Netflix — and yes, iTunes, too — for all that great video content in an intimate setting. As these dreams were...

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Pace Signs Brazilian Distributor

Set-top box maker Pace has extended its penetration into the Latin American market by signing Brazil’s Visionbyte, which will sell Pace’s MultiDweller STBs to its cable TV operator customers.

...

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‘This American Life’ App Streams Every Episode On-Demand

In the US, National Public Radio has a much beloved radio show named "This American Life," whose new iPhone app will stream every single episode of the show on-demand. The show, which has a long run in the number one spot on iTunes’ podcast chart, can be streamed...

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Qualcomm at the Super Bowl With 3 Ads

Qualcomm’s FLO TV will run three of those $2 million plus (that’s each) commercials on this Sunday’s Super Bowl. "All three spots introduce viewers to mobile TV and our FLO TV Personal Television, which are some of the many ways in which FLO TV lets people take live...

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Southwest Airlines to Offer Wi-Fi on Every Plane

Southwest Airlines says it’s purchased the equipment it needs to make Wi-Fi available on all its planes. Inflight Wi-Fi provider Row 44 got the order. It provides high-speed Internet access via the Ku band satellites. Roll-out is expected to begin this year and be completed by 2012. Southwest...

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Another Movie Rental Retailer May Bite the Dust

Movie Gallery, which owns the movie rental chain Hollywood Video, may file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and could shut down two-thirds of its 2,700 stores, according to The Wall Street Journal. Online rental services such as Netflix plus kiosks such as Redbox have changed consumers’ rental preferences.

...

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Verizon Premieres Olympics Channel

Verizon Wireless has launched a 2010 Olympics channel from NBC on its V Cast Video.

Verizon has partnered with NBC for multi-platform coverage of the Winter Olympic Games; full coverage will begin February 12 with the games’ opening ceremonies.

Verizon will offer coverage on...

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Sony PSP App to Stream Live Arsenal Football — Sort Of

Sony Computer Entertainment has announced a new app for its handheld PlayStation Portable that will provide live streaming video of the Arsenal’s English Premier League football matches, with one huge caveat: Users apparently must be in the Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium. Users can see goal replays, player information and...

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ITN First With German Show Biz Channel on YouTube

ITN this week launched the first German-language show biz news channel for YouTube. It’s called Promi411, and it’s at: http://www.youtube.com/PROMI411

The site offers celebrity news from around the globe.

ITN said its English-language show biz is one of the most viewed channels on YouTube....

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Bollywood Film Hits YouTube, Theaters Same Day

The new Bollywood film "Striker" will be perhaps the first in its genre to premiere specifically on Google’s YouTube this Friday, the same day as its theatrical release. The film will be one of the new round of content YouTube tests its rental offerings with and so far...

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Hulu, CBS to Host Super Bowl Ads

Super Bowl Sunday is arguably one of the biggest money days for advertisers and often features commercials pushing the envelope. This year, Hulu and CBS Sports are giving all the ads space on their sites after they air. At Hulu.com/adzone and CBSSports.com, users will be able to see...

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Netflix Picks up More Flicks

The DVD rental and movie streaming service Netflix has announced a variety of new deals with independent film distributors to expand its instant streaming library. Deals with six new distributors will make roughly 300 new titles available for instant streaming. Some titles are already available, and others will...

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YouTube Shows off Presidential Credentials

YouTube has posted the video of its interview with President Barack Obama, taking questions submitted by YouTube users after his State of the Union address last week. The company said it received more than 11,000 questions for the President and more than 55,000 votes on which of these...

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Reuters Launches Web Video Service

The news agency Reuters has announced plans to create a new video news platform for US newspapers, magazines and radio stations, partnering with News Distribution Network (NDN) for the service. Initially, the companies said the service will deliver licensed video content from partners including CBS News and E!...

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Wikipedia Readying Video

Wikimedia, the company behind various Net-information services such as Wikipedia, said that it has installed a new server that will allow for a large increase in video being uploaded to its encyclopedia site and others.

Video for Wikipedia was believed to be showing up last year, but...

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Talk Talk to Become a Pay-TV Service

Talk Talk, the broadband service provider that’ll soon be spun out of Carphone Warehouse, is likely to offer a pay-TV service in 2011 over its broadband network, according to documents the company made public. BT already uses its broadband network to deliver its BT Vision pay-TV service.


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Ustream Lands up to $75m for More Live Web Streams

Ustream, the provider of a live video streaming service that incorporates real-time interaction with social networks, has closed its latest round of funding, which could bring in as much as $75 million. The round, led by Japan’s Softbank, will give Ustream $20 million now, and Softbank has the...

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Univision’s YouTube Offering Goes Live

Making good on their November agreement, Google and the Spanish-language broadcaster Univision have launched a new YouTube channel that offers full-length TV show episodes and clips of other content from Univision, TeleFutura and Galavision.

Content on the new channel includes some of its more popular shows like...

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Virgin Media Served Almost 300m BBC iPlayer Videos Since Launch

Virgin Media has served almost 300 million views on its BBC iPlayer service, launched in May 2008. Monthly views have increased from 10.5 million views in June 2008 to 20 million views in December 2009.

ITV

Player had 25 million views on Virgin Media...

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Thumbplay Picks up 20 New Deals, Reaches 8m Total Songs

Thumplay has signed 20 new content partners up for its cloud-based music application, reaching a total of 8 million tracks from 25,000 labels and 75,000 artists without labels. Thumbplay already has license deals with the four major labels, and its service runs $9.99 per month. It’s currently in...

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Spotify: US Launch Is Coming

Spotify, Europe’s beloved freemium streaming music service, is looking at a US launch window of 30 to 60 days.

The news comes from its CEO Daniel Ek at a music conference in Los Angeles. "We’re in the final stages of setting up. Yesterday we signed a data...

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China’s KKBox Wants US Launch

KKBox, a streaming music service operating mainly in Taiwan and Hong Kong, has announced plans for a US launch in the third quarter of this year, looking to bring Chinese-language music to the US’ population of Chinese speakers.

KKBox is a freemium service, much like Pandora or...

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IPhone Gets SlingPlayer On-the-Go; Is IPad Next?

- An AT&T Announcement, Not Apple’s

The iPhone and perhaps the iPad just got a major boost to their mobile TV-like capabilities, thanks to an announcement from AT&T.

The mobile carrier has announced that its 3G network will now support the SlingPlayer Mobile TV application, allowing...

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Study of Mobile TV Viewers to Begin in DC

The Open Mobile Video Coalition, a mobile TV trade group of mainly local TV stations, is teaming with market research firm Harris Interactive and Rentrak, which measures multi-screen media viewing, to measure consumer viewing habits with mobile TV.

They will conduct tests in Washington, DC, that...

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ITunes Preview Gives App Access

Apple has expanded its browser-based iTunes Preview — which allowed users to see and play song clips without launching the iTunes client— to now cover software information and reviews from the App Store.

The service is an Apple-hosted Web site that provides the description, price and creator-chosen...

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DirecTV App Hits 1m Downloads

DirecTV’s DVR schedule app recently made its way to the Android and WebOS platforms, but it’s been available for the iPhone for roughly one year and has now hit 1 million users on that device. To celebrate, DirecTV said it will soon expand the app and other services...

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Nokia: $2b Profit, 1m Downloads

Nokia recently released its financial results for last quarter, notably marked with a €1.39 billion ($1.95 billion) profit and total revenues of roughly €12 billion ($16.8 billion). Revenues were up 22% from the previous quarter but down 5% from a year ago.

Nokia has just announced the...

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Hulu Has Mobile Plans

Hulu — that joint venture from News Corp, NBC Universal and Disney — might be aiming for a new mobile model, according to its chief Jason Kilar.

Kilar, speaking at a conference this week, said the company is looking into a mobile presence that will include key...

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Sprint Rumored to Have WiMAX Smartphone

Rumors and announcements about handsets for LTE have begun in recent weeks, but Sprint may soon have the first 4G handset. It’s a smartphone called Supersonic that would run on Clearwire’s WiMAX network, which Sprint is reselling.

Sprint has not confirmed the matter other than to say...

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Time Warner Cable to Start Pushing WiMAX Mobile Broadband

Comcast has been the swiftest of the three cableco backers of Clearwire to roll out Clearwire-based services, but Time Warner Cable (TWC) is turning up the heat now.

Its offering is branded Road Runner Mobile. CEO Glenn Britt said on the company’s Q4 results call. "I...

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Microsoft Touts White Space Spectrum in India

Microsoft has been one of the biggest proponents of using the "white spaces" spectrum in the US TV bands for unlicensed wireless broadband, according to a report from Wireless Watch. This has been approved by the FCC but anti-interference mechanisms and commercial devices are still to be finalized....

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Alca-Lu Exec: LTE Has Won the 4G Market Against WiMAX

The battle is over between LTE and WiMAX for supremacy in the 4G wars, Alcatel-Lucent’s COO for wireless Patrick Plas said in a CNET report. He said mobile phone operators have overwhelmingly selected LTE over WiMAX.

Plas also said his company is "not putting a lot of...

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Independent Test Shows 4G Speeds up to 47 Mbps Down

An independent test of TeliaSonera’s 4G broadband service showed downlink data speeds up to 47 Mbps and latency as low as approximately five times greater than the performance typically seen in 3G networks that have been upgraded to 3G’s fastest equipment, HSPA+.

The tests were conducted with...

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WiMAX Coming to Rural India by Year-End

The government owned BNSL plans to begin building a WiMAX broadband service in rural areas by year-end, according to Press Trust of India (PTI), which said the information came from a BSNL official.

...

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NTT DoCoMo Will Show LTE Handset This Month

Mobile phone equipment maker NEC has said NTT DoCoMo will demonstrate a prototype LTE handset this month at the Mobile World Congress trade show in Barcelona, Spain.

NEC said that prototype will show the "transmission of high-resolution video through its ‘LTE-PF’ equipped communications platform and showcases...

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Netbook Sales Grew 79% to 30.2m in 2009

Netbook vendors shipped 30.2 million units worldwide during 2009, as worldwide units increased 79% annually, according to Strategy Analytics. The company called it "an important year for netbooks" and said North America and Western Europe were the biggest netbook markets.

Acer

, Asus, HP and Dell...

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Worldwide Mobile Market up 11.3%

The global mobile phone market grew 11.3% in the fourth quarter of 2009, ending five consecutive quarters of pitfalls, according to a study by IDC.

The study found that vendors shipped 325.3 million units in the quarter, up from the previous 292.4 million. The total for 2009...

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Three-Quarters of US Homes to Soon Have HDTVs

Illustrating why Internet videos must at least approach HD in quality, a study from ORC of US consumers shows that 62% have an HDTV and another 12% expect to buy one within two years. Together that would be almost three quarters of homes and would certainly include almost...

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Workplace Piracy Up 55%

ScanSafe, which provides corporate software, has released a new report saying workplace piracy and attempted piracy is up 55% over the past three months.

The report monitored corporate networks and said the rise in piracy wasn’t restricted to software and often included movies and music as well....

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Report: 99% of BitTorrent Files Infringe on Copyrights

Coming to no one’s surprise, it appears that the vast majority of files on BitTorrent networks are pirated versions of a variety of content, infringing on at least one copyright.

A new study from Princeton’s Sauhard Sahi found that 99% of the files in a recent study...

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YouTube Movie Rental Revenues Less Than $11k

The final numbers are in, and YouTube’s experiment with film rentals for five films, which were available for 10 days, received a combined 2,684 views. Movies rented for $3.99, which gives a total of $10,709.16 for the company to divvy up.

"It definitely exceeded our expectations given...

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60m Americans Use Web Radio Weekly

More than 60 million Americans listen to Internet radio weekly, and the number will expand to 77 million users by 2015, according to a new study from Bridge Ratings.

Of those 60 million, 84% are considered regular users and listen to at least five minutes of an...

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Smartphone Boom Is Underway

It looks like the best job opportunities are in smartphones, not plastics as Dustin Hoffman was advised in "The Graduate."

A $995 report from Portio Research called "Smartphone Futures 2010-2014" says that despite the recession, smartphone sales increased in 2008-2009. During the same period, worldwide handset shipments...

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Orange Voted UK’s Most Reliable Mobile Broadband Service

The UK’s most reliable mobile broadband service is France Telecom’s Orange, according to a study by YouGov, which polled 4,944 adults online, of which 2,037 used mobile broadband by means of a dongle, modem stick or data card. Orange subscribers in the study numbered 187.

Orange was...

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Nokia, RIM, Apple Lead 30% Increase in Smartphone Sales

Recessions come and recessions go, but consumer demand for mobile phones that connect to the Internet continues to increase rapidly. Strategy Analytics reports that global sales of smartphones increased 30% in the fourth quarter from a year earlier to 53 million units.

The company said Nokia (39.2%...

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Sales of MPEG Encoder/Decoder Chips to Hit 2b by 2013

Sales of MPEG chips (integrated circuits or ICs) that compress and decompress digital video will reach two billion units by 2013, according to In-Stat. The number shows the popularity of devices, especially portable ones that play video files in MPEG format.

"Compression technology continues to improve, offering...

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Italy Wants TV Rules for Web Videos

Amid concerns from the Web and its leading video sites, Italy’s government is pressing on with plans to extend its existing TV broadcasting regulations to Web sites that host videos.

The draft decree is expected to go into effect this month and would force YouTube and others...

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‘Lost’ Premiere Hits the Web Early

ABC’s "Lost" was the second-most pirated TV program of 2009, reaching more than 6 million downloads per episode and trailing the number one contender by only a few thousand downloads. ABC recently held a beach party in Hawaii for the season premiere of the show, drawing 10,000 attendees...

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Microsoft Files $43M Suit Against Lithuanian BitTorrent Tracker

In a unified move with Lithuania’s anti-piracy group LANVA, Microsoft has sued the operator of that country’s largest BitTorrent site LinkoManija, Torrent Freak is reporting.

Microsoft accuses LinkoManija operator Kestas Ermanas of distributing and assisting in the distribution of illegal copies of Office 2003 and 2007. LinkoManija...

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Grandma Gets Cleared of Piracy Charges; Net Gets Re-Connected

It’s an uncomfortable week for ISPs and copyright owners. A 53-year-old grandmother has been cleared of accusations of downloading 18 films and TV shows, which initially resulted in a suspension of her Internet service.

Cathi Paradiso of Colorado had her Internet service suspended by Qwest after 18...

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Sony Develops TV Show for PlayStation Network

Following Microsoft’s lead, Sony Computer Entertainment America has developed a TV show that will be broadcast on its game consoles through the PlayStation Network. "The Tester" is a reality series in which 11 contestants compete in challenges to win a job as a video game tester at Sony...

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Apple’s TV Is at Best a Hobby

Apple TV has been around for nearly three years but, according to an employee, the box is still very much an "experiment" in the works.

In a company meeting following its iPad announcement, CEO Steve Jobs confirmed that Apple TV was still a "hobby" and would not...

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SeeSaw in Beta Test, Amassing Content

SeeSaw, the online TV service that Arqiva acquired from the BBC, has been running a beta test for a week and making deals with content providers such as Channel 4, Five and independent producers. The deal with Channel 4 gets it "Peep Show," "The Inbetweeners," "Skins" and "Grand...

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Sony Signs With Mosaid for Wi-Fi Patent Licenses

Mosaid Technologies, a Canadian-based patent licensing firm, has signed Sony to a worldwide, non-exclusive wireless patent license agreement. The license, Mosaid said, will cover all Sony products with Wi-Fi.

Mosaid said it signed 13 wireless patent license deals in 2009 to companies operating in four markets: mobile...

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ST-Ericsson Launches Wireless HDMI Transmitter Chips for Mobile Devices

The drive toward wirelessly connecting HD devices in the home continues.

ST-Ericsson

announced a line of 1080p HDMI-compatible transmitters on a single chip — the AV7100 and the AV8100. They go in mobile devices such as handsets, gaming consoles and digital cameras and enable...

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Vecima Unveils New HD Video Encoder

Vecima’s Spectrum Signal Processing division has launched a high-definition video encoder that will enable broadband service providers "to cost-effectively deliver live, broadcast quality HD television over IP networks" like the Net. It said the Spectrum video encoding solutions can be used in a number of applications in the...

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Tories Promise 100 Mbps Broadband for Majority by 2017

In the last 10 years, broadband has gone from "what is it?" status to become politicians’ promise.

The out-of-office UK Conservative party has promised speeds of 100 Mbps to the majority of homes by 2017.

Private investors would help finance deployment in rural areas...

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Swisscom Sorts out a Plan to Run Fiber Inside Residential Buildings

Fiber-to-the-home is spreading in Switzerland, a country that has many multi-tenant residential buildings. The incumbent telco Swisscom has solved legal problems that confront many service providers when it comes to the internal wiring in a multi-tenant building: Who pays for the installation? Who owns the rights to use...

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Brazil Wants to Raise $10.7b to Build Broadband Networks

The Brazilian government has proposed a government-run investment group whose aim is to raise $10.7 billion to build broadband networks in Brazil. It’ll be named InfoBrasi.

The country’s goal is to make broadband available to about 90 million Brazilians.

Brazilian president Luis Inacio Lula da Silva...

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ExoPC Is First iPad-like to Launch, Days after Apple

A small French company called ExoPC is one of the first to come out with its own iPad-like tablet computer — the ExoPC Slate — based on Windows 7.0 Pro. The company even borrowed the slate name that most analysts preferred for the iPad,

Feature for...

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Glasses-Free 3D Demo Coming to CeBIT

Singapore’s Sunny Ocean Studios aims to put its autostereoscopic (no glasses) 3D competition to bed with a new 27-inch display that offers 64 viewing angles; most glasses-free sets currently being shown offer eight to 10 viewing angles. It’s easy to not be in the right angle here, and...

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Panasonic Opens Blu-ray 3D Authoring Center

Panasonic is planting another "first" flag. Its Blu-ray 3D advanced authoring center is up and running, handling 3D Blu-ray image processing, interactive content and disc certification. "We are confident that we lead the industry with MPEG-4 MVC (Multiview Video Coding) 3D image compression technology," said Jeannine Patton, VP...

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AT&T ‘Excited’ about 3D for U-verse Pay TV

AT&T is testing 3D TV technologies in its labs, said Peter Hill, VP of video and converged services at AT&T Labs, in an interview with IPTV News. There’s no surprise there, after the overload of 3D demos at CES last month and the fact that AT&T wants to...

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Panasonic Previews Two 3D Theaters for Olympics

Panasonic this week previewed its 2020 Winter Olympic pavilion, which features two full HD 3D theaters in Vancouver’s Yaletown.

Panasonic describes it as a new era of immersive visual entertainment and promises to make it all available for consumers’ homes. The 3D experience at home, it...

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Sky’s 3D Pub Weekend Goes Over Well

While the US was suffering through a 3D song broadcast at the Grammys that used those piddly red/blue-lensed glasses, News Corp’s BSkyB was kicking off its first true 3D TV broadcast for a match between Manchester United and the Arsenal at a few pubs.

So far, reviews...

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The Flash Stand-Off

Support for Adobe’s Flash is key to any competitor’s attempt to outshine the iPhone user experience and is, of course, one of the key Web technologies that Apple continues to spurn — even on the iPad.

This epitomizes Apple’s Achilles’ heel: the belief that its own...

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Comcast Adds 247,000 Broadband Subscribers in Q4

- Launches Xfinity Brand for DOCSIS 3.0 Broadband, Digital Video & Phone Service

Comcast’s fourth quarter report shows it added a net 247,000 high-speed broadband subscribers and 243,000 digital phone subscribers in the fourth quarter.

However, competition from satellite and telco pay-TV services caused Comcast...

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Sony Reports Quarterly Profit

Sony’s cost-cutting and changes in product strategy over the last few years are paying off. It terminated 20,000 employees and closed about 18% of its manufacturing plants during the cutbacks.

For its fiscal third quarter, profits were up and Sony cut its projected annual loss. It also...

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Clicker Launches Web Video Guide for UCLA

Clicker Media, developer of a Web video program guide that currently covers 600,000 episodes on 10,000 TV shows, has announced a new expansion for its programming guide that was developed with UCLA. The new catalog for UCLA will include Clicker’s existing database as well as original videos —...

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AOL: Profits Up, Revenue Down

AOL, in its first quarterly report since separating from Time Warner, reported a profit of $1.4 million. The company reported a $1.9 billion loss in the year-ago quarter.

Revenue was down 17% compared with the year-ago quarter but was better than some analysts expected.

As...

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Rumor Mill for IPad Keeps Churning

- Carriers, Cameras, Lawsuits

Apple’s latest product was the subject of countless rumors on the Web, and the beast is not quite dead.

Apple has released its software development kit (SDK) for the iPad; sent out a specifications sheet to various press and developers; and begun...

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Technicolor Bets on 3D Movie DVDs in the Home

- Lands Movie DVD Production Deal With Warner Bros

- To Sell Grass Valley Group and Other Major Operations

As part of its financial reorganization, Thomson, now renamed to Technicolor, plans to sell off several units. Technicolor says it wants to focus on content creators. Technicolor...

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Qtv Teams With Widevine to Offer One Media Player for All ‘Three Screens’

- Works on More Devices Than Any Other Media Player

- Compatible With PS2s, 1,100 Mobile Phone Models, PCs, Internet-Connected TVs and Blu-ray Players

- Aimed at ‘TV Everywhere’ Service Providers

Widevine and Qtv have worked together to develop a media player that works on...

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YouTube, White House Pair for Q&A

YouTube will host a live interview with President Barack Obama next week, which will feature a question and answer session. Questions will come from YouTube users who posted their thoughts and concerns during the Web site's broadcast of Wednesday's State of the Union address. "We'll bring some...

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Wild Bear Has Webcam Birth

The black bear Lily has become an Internet sensation after giving birth live on the Web, thanks to a Webcam installed in her den. The camera was installed on January 8, and users and scientists have been watching her ever since. Lily has likely become more popular...

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Nokia X6 Flagship: It Won't Come With Music

Nokia has decided not to bundle its Comes With Music service on its flagship X6 music phone model, hoping to boost sales by cutting costs. Dropping the unlimited music service will allow Nokia to cut the price of the phone by a third. Nokia so far has...

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Hulu Again Mulling $5 Subscription?

Crank up the rumor mill. With Apple grabbing all the headlines this week with its new iPad, the best way to command attention is to leak possible deals, and Hulu is leading the way. Rekindling old rumors, The LA Times said Hulu was in talks for a...

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IPad's Shortcomings Surprise

"Given Apple's recent track record, what is surprising is how much skepticism and disappointment greeted the iPad's debut. Among the chief complaints: No support for Adobe Flash, no camera, no multi-tasking capabilities, no monthly television service subscriptions and no 3G service partnership with Verizon Wireless." - Jason...

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Majority of Men Prefer 'Geekettes'

So is this what it's come to? UK online gift and gadget retailer Prezzybox.com says its research shows that 61% of men said they would rather date a female geek because she is more likely to be interested in the same things, like gaming, technology and gadgets....

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'Supernatural' Creates Web Spin-Off

The CW drama series "Supernatural" is getting its own Web spin-off called "Ghostfacers," which will be produced by Warner Bros TV's Studio 2.0 and Wonderland. The 10-episode Web series will show on TheWB.com and CWTV.com, both of which will also feature other "Ghostfacers" content, such as gag...

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Yahoo to Spread Videos on All Its Sites

Yahoo intends to add more videos to all its sites this year, according to CEO Carol Bartz, who regards TV as Yahoo's biggest competitor for ads. The company has also made deals with a number of CE manufacturers to embed Yahoo Widgets to their TV sets.

...

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ViaSat Acquires Satellite Broadband Provider WildBlue

ViaSat completed its acquisition of satellite broadband provider WildBlue in December. WildBlue has about 400,000 satellite broadband subscribers, second in the States only to Hughes Network and its more than 500,000 subscribers. It's expected that many of the US' 10 million or so unserved homes will only...

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MagicJack to Launch Femtocell

MagicJack, which has sold millions of its USB adapters for making phone calls via the Net, will soon launch a femtocell device, according to founder Jack Barstow. It reportedly plugs into a PC's USB port and synchs to any compatible mobile phones within 8 feet. The mobile...

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Thomson Restructures, Changes Name to Technicolor

Thomson's shareholders have approved the company's proposed restructuring plan. One result is that the company will now be named Technicolor, the name of one of its operating divisions.

...

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Lionsgate Launches Film Incubator

Movie studio Lionsgate launched its Lionsgate Incubator joint project with online content creation network Massify, saying the companies will distribute on the Web any resulting films or ideas produced by the partnership.

YouTube

is expected to be the primary outlet for content coming...

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Aol Will Make Original Web Content

Recent Time Warner spinoff Aol has purchased video production company StudioNow for $36.5 million in cash and stock with the goal of soon creating original online programming. Aol said it will be folding StudioNow into its Seed.com offering, expanding the suite to cover creation, storage and management...

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YouTube Rentals: A Lead Test Balloon

YouTube's movie rental experiment with the Sundance Film Festival isn't looking so great for the video service.

According to a NewTeeVee report, the five Sundance films saw a mediocre reception over the weekend, renting roughly 1,500 times total for $3.99 a piece. This rounds out...

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Google, Vimeo Try out HTML5 Video

Google has been slowly throwing support behind HTML5, signaling it's considering making the next version of YouTube compatible with the standard.

Google has rolled out a new HTML5-based player on YouTube that allows users to watch videos without needing Adobe's Flash plug-in. Apple has been...

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YouTube Monetizing 1B Videos Weekly

Google's video hub giant YouTube is now monetizing "over a billion videos per week," according to the company's director of video partnerships Patrick Walker.

This would mean that the company monetizes about one day's worth of videos each week.

Speaking at this year's...

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YouTube Goes to the Disco

Google's YouTube has begun testing a new music discovery and playlist creation tool that features artists covered by its Vevo deal and gives users a playlist of songs and videos.

The new service - the YouTube Music Discovery Project and Playlist Creation Tool, a.k.a. YouTube...

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PRS, Apple Sign Pan-European License

The UK collection society PRS for Music, representing 65,000 songwriters and music publishers, has reached a pan-European licensing agreement with Apple's iTunes Store.

The deal gives iTunes pan-European access to the repertoire of all PRS members that it handles performing rights for, including publishers like...

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Vodafone Claims Largest Music Subscriber Base in Europe

With nearly 450,000 customers having signed up for its music subscription services, Vodafone said it has "the largest number of paying music subscribers in Europe."

It has had music deals with the major labels for DRM-free MP3 music since 2009: Sony Music, EMI Music, Universal...

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Comcast Eyes Streaming Music

While the big buzz about Comcast still centers on its NBC Universal deal, the cable giant is also reportedly in talks to begin offering a music streaming service to its Internet service and cable TV customers.

TechCrunch

, citing multiple sources, said that Comcast...

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Shazam Now Selling 300,000 Daily

Mobile music discovery app provider Shazam is now selling 300,000 digital music tracks every day, the company's CEO Andrew Fisher said on a mobile app and music panel at this year's MIDEMNet.

Fisher said the company is seeing a 13% conversion rate from users tagging...

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Spotify's Big Numbers Game

Spotify's UK head Paul Brown was on hand at this year's MIDEMNet and had a lot of good news from the company - including that it now has 250,000 paying subscribers across its six European markets.

Spotify's ad revenues are now "a double-digit million Euro...

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Germany Tries to Resurrect Interest in Mobile TV

Germany's ZAK, the equivalent of the Ofcom and the FCC, made a conditional offer to invite bids for mobile TV that uses DVB-H technology. It expects to make a final decision by mid-march. The licenses will be for 10 years.

After a prior bid in...

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European Apps Cost More

The app store analytics company Distimo has published its December report on mobile applications and has highlighted the price range of available apps for various countries in the Google Android Market.

Distimo found that app publishers in the European zone - here just concerning Austria,...

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Novatel to Ship HSPA USB Modems

Novatel Wireless plans to ship a USB modem for HSPA cellular networks in 2010's second half. It'll be capable of receiving data at up to 42 Mbps. Actual speeds are expected to be in the 20 Mbps to 30 Mbps range. The device uses Qualcomm chips.

...

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Upgrading 3G Versus Implementing 4G (LTE)

AT&T will begin testing LTE in 2010, but is unlikely to deploy on any scale until 2012 or later, according to Wireless Watch. It says it may be more important for AT&T to invest in further upgrades to HSPA, which can be boosted to a peak data...

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AT&T's Wi-Fi Hotspots Get 85.5M Hits in 2009

There were 85.5 million hits on AT&T's 20,000 or so Wi-Fi hotspots last year - more than four times the number in 2008 - according to AT&T. The company operates Wi-Fi hot spots in retail locations such as Barnes & Noble bookstores, McDonald's and Starbucks.


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Apple Reviews AT&T's Plans to Upgrade Mobile Network

Apple COO Tim Cook said this week that AT&T intends to improve the performance of its mobile broadband service to counter increasing customer complaints. He said Apple has seen the plans.

Cook said, "We have personally reviewed these plans, and we have very high confidence...

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Verizon Wireless' Rush to LTE

The Wall Street Journal's Martin Peer questions the wisdom of Verizon Wireless' current deployment of LTE mobile broadband technology. Peers says there will be no LTE devices available initially so that Verizon Wireless will launch LTE with only LTE adapters for portable PCs.

He...

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Cox Completes LTE Tests

Privately-owned US cableco Cox this week said its trials of LTE mobile broadband network technology have been successfully completed. Cox said the 4G trials included video, a function that could give Cox an edge over telco rivals AT&T and Verizon Wireless.

Cox is the only...

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Recording Industry: Piracy Kills Non-English Artists

Picking up a strategy that's not likely to win support from anyone, the music industry is playing the nationalism card in its latest attempts to combat piracy.

Saying that piracy is killing of non-Anglophone music in countries like Spain, France, Brazil and those throughout Africa...

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Music Sales Fall 10% in 2009

Global recorded music sales were down 10% in 2009, despite digital music growing 12% to $4.2 billion. Digital sales now account for 27% of the total market.

The news comes from the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), a trade group for the major...

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Nielsen Ratings Include Web Views in 2010

Starting this fall, Nielsen's TV show ratings will include online views with their traditional broadcast ratings. Nielsen intends to introduce a new service to cover the combined viewing tallies.

The service, according to recent reports and statements, isn't going to be as inclusive as it...

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Labels Lose $9m Baidu Suit

A Chinese court has ruled that search engine Baidu is not infringing on the copyrights of major record labels by providing "deep links" to torrents and illegal download links on third-party sites.

Warner Music

, Sony Music and Universal Music filed a $9...

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Supreme Court Denies Sony's 'Interactive' Appeal

The US Supreme Court has declined to hear an appeal from Sony Music, letting stand a lower court's ruling finding that Launch Media's Web radio service does not require additional licensing fees.

The lower court said Launch Media - bought by Yahoo for $12 million...

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Rights Holders to Fund UK Net Crackdown

In the UK, record labels and film studios will have to do most of the heavy lifting when it comes to paying for anti-piracy measures, according to the government.

Treasury minister Stephen Timms said at the Oxford Media Convention that rights holders should pay 75%...

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Judge Lowers $2m Piracy Verdict

A US district court judge has radically cut the amount pirate Jammie Thomas-Rasset must pay in damages for illegally sharing music online. A jury found Thomas-Rasset liable for $1.9 million in damages last June.

Thomas-Rasset was found guilty of willful copyright infringement and ordered to...

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Netflix: One More Country Coming

It's easy to forget that Netflix pulled out of the UK six years ago, but recent words from its CEO are making many suspect it'll be back in the UK within six months.

Netflix previously said that it will launch a streaming-only test-market operation in...

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Rogers Has 46,000 TV Anywhere Users

- Adds More Content

Canadian cableco giant Rogers is adding more content to its TV everywhere service and now has 46,000 registered users.

TV everywhere viewers are required to be subscribers to one of Rogers' services. They can access the content from any...

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Roku Seeks Money for 100 Web Video 'Channels'

- Aims to Compete with Pay-TV

Set-top box maker Roku is planning to raise at least $30 million in private funding this quarter and wants to use that money to expand its channel offerings and wage a war for your eyeballs.

Roku CEO...

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DirecTV Taking Large Quantities of MoCA Home Network Chips

MoCA chipmaker Entropic Communications says it's getting volume orders from DirecTV, which is having them built in to the multi-room DVRs it will start selling. Most of the world's cablecos, the US' two satellite TV services and Verizon have standardized on MoCA as their home network.

...

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Siemens Gets LEDs to Transmit up to 500 Mbps

Siemens, working with the Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute in Berlin, has discovered a way to use off-the-shelf LEDs to transmit data wirelessly at speeds up to 500 Mbps. Previously, the fastest speed Siemens had achieved was 200 Mbps.

The technology, called Visible Light Communication (VLC),...

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US Awards 14 New Broadband Stimulus Grants

Fourteen new US broadband stimulus awards totaling $310 million focusing on broadband, fiber and middle-mile project have been announced by the Rural Utilities Service, one of the awards administrators.

Recipients are a mixture of incumbent phone companies and electric utilities building middle- and last-mile networks....

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Mediacom Offers 105 Mbps DOCSIS 3.0 Broadband

Mid-sized cableco Mediacom has deployed its 50 Mbps DOCSIS 3.0 broadband in nine additional markets and now offers DOCSIS 3.0 to about 25% of its subscribers.

It is also testing a 105 Mbps down/5 Mbps up offering in two markets. It's offered at $150 per...

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The End of the Line for Wireline? Maybe Not

This article was written by Dave Burstein and originally appeared in his DSLPrime newsletter.

Wireline is declining worldwide, including in fast-growing economies like China and India. Sanford C Bernstein & Co analyst Craig Moffet has run some numbers and come to the conclusion US...

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Motorola Gear Increases Broadband Speeds at Armstrong

It's not only the large cablecos that are using DOCSIS 3.0 to offer subscribers broadband speeds that are faster than the telcos' DSL technology.

Armstrong Cable

, with cable systems in Kentucky, Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia, is installing Motorola's DOCSIS...

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Liberty Global Sells Jupiter Shares to focus on European Growth

Liberty Global, which owns cable TV companies outside the States, is selling its 37.8% stake in Japan's Jupiter Telecommunications (J:Com) for $4 billion.

Liberty Global, one of John Malone's media companies, said it wants to focus on expanding its pay-TV operations in Europe.


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From the Analysts: Predicting iPad Sales

The question that financial analysts would like answered is how many iPads Apple will sell once it starts shipping them in March.

 1. Gene Munster, an analyst with Piper Jaffray predicts Apple will sell to 4 million iPads in the first year and upward of...

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Samsung 3D TV Panel Production Begins

Samsung has begun production on panels for its 3D TVs, claiming to be the first manufacturer to do so.

It is beginning production with LED- and LCD-compatible panels for 40-inch, 46-inch and 55-inch sets. The panels will allow TVs to display 3D as well as...

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Sky to Drop SD, Launch 3D Early

Sky unveiled its plans to phase out SD receivers while pushing 3D, even giving 3D a bit of an early start.

Its dedicated 3D TV channel, Sky 3D, will launch this April, and it will preview its 3D broadcasts Sunday, January 31, with a live...

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Next3D Takes Aim at Net-Delivered 3D

One of the big worries of 3D - and one purported anti-piracy benefit - is that the content would be too large to deliver successfully over existing broadband connections: enter Next3D.

Next3D, which produces tools for creating and consuming the coming 3D wave, has said...

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Mobile & Broadband Increase AT&T Profits by 26%

Mobile and broadband growth fueled a profit increase of 26% to $3 billion at AT&T for its fourth quarter.

It added 2.7 million mobile customers in the fourth quarter, the second-highest quarterly increase in AT&T history, the company said.

AT&T credited the profit...

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Apple Profits Increase 50%

Apple's fiscal first-quarter profit increased 50% to $3.38 billion on revenue of $15.68 billion - much better than analysts had expected.

IPhone sales doubled, compared with the same quarter a year ago to 8.7 million.

Macintosh sales were up 33% from a year...

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Time Warner: Broadband, Phone Services Look Good

- Pay-TV Subscribers Decline

Perhaps it's the telcos' entry into the pay-TV market, the growing availability of TV shows and movies online or the lame economy, but Time Warner Cable reported a decline in the number of pay-TV subscribers for the quarter.

In...

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Report: Blockbuster Likely to Call It Quits in 2010

It's tough fighting the Internet, as Blockbuster, the record labels and others have learned.

Blockbuster is a probable candidate for going out of business this year, according to the Forbes article "It's Likely Closing Time for These Chains in 2010."

The story quotes...

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FiOS Growth Slows; Verizon Wireless Booms

Verizon's FiOS TV's rate of growth slowed down in the last two quarters of 2009. It added only 344,000 FiOS TV subscribers in the last six months after adding 599,000 in the first six months of the year. It had 2.9 million FiOS TV customers at the...

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New Music File Formats Debut at MIDEM

- The MP3 Was So Last Decade

Interactive music formats didn't grab headlines at this year's MIDEM, as most tried to salvage streaming music models and were closely watching where labels and investors were planning to spend their few dollars for 2010.

MXP4

and MusicDNA...

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Apple's IPad: A New Gateway to Entertainment

- Between a Smartphone and a PC

- A Leisure Media Device for the Couch, Kitchen, Bed, Plane

- Developers Never Mattered So Much

The much-rumored, hinted at and leaked Apple tablet PC was launched this week, aiming squarely at all those times you were...

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Disney, Starz May Give Netflix Streaming Hiccups

Disney and Starz are currently in negotiations to extend its deal to distribute Disney films through...

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PS3 Gets Japanese TV Tuner

Sony Japan has introduced a new TV tuner for the PlayStation 3 — the Torne — which has ...

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Amazon to Launch Kindle SDK

The online retail megastore Amazon.com has announced it will be releasing a software development kit to...

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Cox Already Testing Mobile in 3 Markets

Cox Communications, as it promised, began testing its own mobile phone/broadband service in a few markets...

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The White House Streaming Live In Your Pocket

The White House has announced the official release of an iPhone/iPod Touch application dubbed "The White...

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Apple, Google Face of in Mobile Search/Advertising

The Bloomberg Business Week article Apple v Google details how the two companies are gearing...

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Mobile Devices to Become Dominant for Web Access

Morgan Stanley analyst Mary Meeker predicts that within five years, more users will connect to the...

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NY Times to Start Charging for Access

The New York Times this week joined the Wall Street Journal and The Financial Times and in 2011 will begin charging consumers to ...

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Turner Classic Movies Packs Apps with Content

Cable TV channel Turner Classic Movies (TCM) has launched what it’s calling a "premium mobile application"...

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Bread and Circuses, Free Wi-Fi Too

The Massachusetts Port Authority has voted to offer free Wi-Fi, to travelers at Logan International Airport,...

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Liberty Global: TV Everywhere? Oui. 3DTV? Non.

Liberty Global said it expects to launch the TV Everywhere service in its European cable TV...

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LeBouquetTV Launches US Web TV Offering

French Web TV service LeBouquetTV is gearing up for a mid-February launch for subscribers in the US, the company said.

The new bouquet of channels ...

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YouTube Downloading Gets Easier for Most Content

There have always been ways to copy content on YouTube, but two services have recently...

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YouTube Nabs Sports Rights

Google is poised to become a big rival for some pay-TV operators and sports broadcasters, ...

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YouTube Begins Movie Rentals on Friday

YouTube has decided to kick off its sponsorship of the 2010 Sundance Film Festival by ...

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Virgin Media Swims to a New Beat

Virgin Media has reportedly given a name to its upcoming music download service and set a ...

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MySpace Finally Revives Imeem Playlists

MySpace has surprised users and made good on a promise to bring back users’ playlists ...

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Rock Band Network Store Opens Its Doors

MTV has launched the public beta of its new Rock Band Network Store, which allows any ...

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Ad-Supported, DRM-Free Downloads Get Second Label

EMI has become the second major music label to license its content to the ad-supported, ...

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Eyeball.fm Aims to Give Music Users Something to See

Since no one music streaming model has broken away from the pack, hybrid services like...

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Sky Upgrades Remote Record App

Sky has given its iPhone Remote Record app a do-over, now allowing users to check ...

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France Telecom’s Orange, Shanghai Media Group’s BesTV to Collaborate on Three-Screen Convergence

BesTV New Media and France Telecom’s Orange have signed an agreement to collaborate on the...

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France 24 Goes to Japan

France 24’s English language programs are available live and on demand to the 55 million...

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Google, Amazon Launch UK Android Music Store

Google and Amazon have teamed up to launch a UK version of Amazon MP3 that works with Google’s mobile Android operating system, allowing users ...

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Apple v Nokia: Content Model Will Be Key to Outcome

- Apple Poised to Unveil iSlate, Nokia a Revamped Ovi Store

- Nokia’s New Web ...

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120 Mbps WiMAX 2 Coming in 2011

The specification for WiMAX 2, the third version of WiMAX after the fixed and mobile ...

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Verizon Wireless Revamps Pricing

Verizon, on the cusp of its first LTE rollouts, has shaken up its prepaid and postpaid price ...

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AT&T Spending Less to Upgrade Mobile Network Than Verizon Wireless

- Investment Analyst Calls for AT&T to Spend Additional $5b

AT&T needs to spend an ...

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Alcatel-Lucent Demos LTE and LTE Applications

LTE and WiMAX wireless network technologies are expected to offer consumers mobile broadband speeds that...

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Pirate VPN up and Running

Last March, founders of The Pirate Bay announced plans to create a virtual private network...

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Virgin Media Takes a Whiff of Web Activities

Virgin Media is planning to use a packet sniffing software to begin monitoring the amount of ...

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Oxford University Bans Spotify Because of P2P Habits

England’s Oxford University has banned students from using the streaming music service Spotify because it...

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Polish Consumers Ready for Mobile TV

Some 75% of respondents in a Polish survey said they’d subscribe to mobile TV for a ...

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Magna Predicts Home Penetration Rates for DVRs, VoD, Broadband

Almost half (44%) of US homes will have a DVR by 2015, according to Mediabrands’ ...

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Blu-ray Revenues up 67% in 2009

One reason Hollywood and CE makers are so excited about 3D Blu-ray content must be the...

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Swedish Music Sales See First Gain Since 2000

Music sales in 2009 rose 10.2% in Sweden, representing the first revenue increase in the ...

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Internet Capable Phones to Outnumber PCs by 2013

Consumers will have more Internet capable phones (1.82 billion) than PCs (1.78 billion) by 2013,...

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Mobile Broadband Growing Twice as Fast as Landline in Africa

Mobile broadband is growing at nearly twice that of landline broadband in Africa, according to...

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384m Internet Users in China

The number of Internet users in China increased 28.9% in 2009 to a total of 384 ...

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America’s Youth Are Always Connected

Americans age 8 to 18 are now spending more than seven and a half hours per day with media ...

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Mobile Content Revenues to Increase 28% in 2010

Revenues from mobile content will increase 28% this year, according to a study from the...

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Homes With Internet-Connected TVs, Blu-ray Players to Exceed 473m by 2015

Worldwide revenues from sales of Internet connectable TVs will reach $29.3 billion (€20.4 billion) in...

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Broadband Brings Job Growth but Not Higher Wages

Areas of the US where broadband access was increased showed job growth, but the increased...

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Traditional TV Viewing Will Continue to Dominate

TV sets and broadcasters’ linear schedules will continue to be the dominant source of entertainment...

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Sales Increase of Notebooks to Exceed Netbooks in 2010

The popularity of low-profit netbooks has forced PC makers to produce lower cost notebooks that...

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Only 19% of World’s Broadband Connections Are at 5 Mbps or More

Only 19% of the world’s Internet connections are at speeds of 5 Mbps or more, according ...

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Verizon Cuts the Pirate Chord

A few months after Verizon Communications began issuing file-sharing warnings to customers, the company has acknowledged it is cutting off access ...

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Microsoft Sues TiVo Over Patents

Microsoft has filed a patent-infringement lawsuit against TiVo, saying that the DVR company is violating...

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‘2010 Will Be the Year G.hn Captures the Market’

- DS2 to Ship G.hn Chips in Q3 and in Quantity in Q4 2010.

- Demos Backward ...

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Pace Shipping New DVR for BT Vision

Pace says the newest DVR set-top box that it makes for the BT Vision IPTV service ...

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Connexion Goes for HomePNA

Connexion Technologies, which installs and manages home networks in single-family, multi-family, high-rise, resort and hospitality...

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Gefen Offers Wireless HDMI

Consumer demand continues to ratchet up for wirelessly connecting devices in home entertainment centers as...

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ARM Shows More Powerful Processors

ARM, which designs but does not make processor chips, continues to increase their ability to ...

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Carphone Warehouse Sees Growth in Broadband

Carphone Warehouse remains optimistic about its TalkTalk operations. It thinks it’ll add 36,000 new broadband subscribers,...

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France Commits to 100% High-Speed Broadband

The French government is anteing up €2 billion ($2.88 billion) that’ll be used as low-interest...

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O2 UK to Sell Landline Broadband

Mobile phone operator O2 UK will begin selling landline broadband in March. It will lease lines from other landline broadband companies such as its ...

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US Streamlines Broadband Stimulus Funding

US agencies are running about three months behind schedule on allocating funds from the first...

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Foxtel 3D Coming in 2011

Foxtel has announced that it will be one of the first Australian broadcasters to deliver ...

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CableLabs: Existing STBs are 3D Compatible

The cable industry’s research and development shop, CableLabs, has said that 3D support testing has...

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Motorola Withdraws Offer to Sell Its Network/Home Division

Motorola, which has been trying to sell itself off by the piece, said this week it has ...

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Google-China Spat Leaves Uncertainty in the Middle Kingdom

While Google and China have been going back and forth over recent cyber-attacks and China’s...

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Apple: Making Users Want a Tablet for No Apparent Reason

You have to hand it to Apple. It’s one of the best there is at two very important aspects of ...

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BT to Offer 40 Mbps Fiber Broadband for £19.99/Month

BT Retail is taking dead aim at Virgin Media with its upcoming fiber optic-based broadband service that’ll be called BT ...

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Media Adapters to Take Over Sales of Web-Delivered Entertainment

- Consumers Want One Log-In for All Web-based Services

While allowing access to Web services ...

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CES Attendance Up

Consumer attendance at this year’s CES was up from 2009, despite a slight decrease in company participation. The Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) released a final total of 120,000 attendees, up from 113,000 in 2009; however, the numbers marked a decline from 141,000 in 2008. Only...

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Yes, There’s Already 3D Adult Content

One thing about having the Adult Entertainment Expo happening at the same time as CES is that there are always questions and answers for the things most attendees wonder but few dare ask. Adult entertainment producers are already using 3D cameras and techniques for filming their...

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‘TVs Have Never Crashed Historically’

Scott Smyers, president and chairman of the board of DLNA and a senior vice president at Sony Electronics, said that one of the big fears with all these new widgets is what could happen to the TV set. "TVs have never crashed historically," Smyers said at...

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Showtime Widget Goes After New Eyes

Showtime Networks has announced the launch of a new Showtime TV widget running on Yahoo’s Widgets platform. The widget lets viewers access free samples of Showtime original series premieres, behind-the-scenes content and more value added content in hopes of converting Web-enabled TV owners to new...

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YouTube: Bigger Than You Remember

With all the Web connections going on between CE and videos at this year’s CES, YouTube was left by the wayside in a lot of product announcements and partner lists despite being on just about every single Web-based platform and Web-enabled device that came out. While...

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See Doomsday Tick Closer, Live on the Web!

For the first time in two years, the hands of doomsday have moved, and users were able to see it live on the Web on Thursday. Representatives from the board of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists moved the minute hand on Doomsday Clock live on the...

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Verizon Doubles FiOS Termination Fees

Verizon plans to double the early termination fee for its FiOS TV service, according to a variety of reports. Most say the fee will jump from $179 to $360 for customers who leave before their two-year contracts are up, though such rates are often pro-rated depending...

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Zune HD Ups Video, Playlists

The little media player that could, Microsoft’s Zune HD, has released an update adding Xvid support to help be more compatible with the MPEG4 format. DivX, the other popular format for video junkies, won’t likely be making the scene because of its proprietary nature. To make...

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Don’t Fear the Napster Generation

Sony CTO and DECE president Mitch Singer is bad at hiding his disdain for the so-called millennial generation, but there is one thing he’s forced to count on them for — embracing HD and 3D content very quickly.

While these are the users that fully embraced Napster and...

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Universal Licenses FreeAllMusic

When not filing lawsuits, Universal Music is expanding the reach of its catalog through deals like a recent one with FreeAllMusic.com (FAM), an ad-supported music download service. FAM is one of the few ad-supported download services picking up new label support instead of watching its...

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Pandora Profitable in Q4 2009

Pandora was on hand at this year’s CES to announce a relationship with automakers for in-car audio systems —featured in Ford’s keynote — but more exciting news was garnered from the showroom floor: Pandora became profitable at the end of 2009.

Pandora, which now counts more than...

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Alarm Bells Ring for App Store Piracy

A recent report has said that the companies selling iPhone and iPod Touch applications have lost more than $450 million due to piracy since the store opened in July 2008.

At first, this sounds like a lot — and this is one of those piracy figures that is...

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Palm Brings 3D Gaming to WebOS

One of the tricky things about the new 3D craze is how exactly to describe content like Palm’s newly announced 3D games.

Perhaps jumping on the crazed bandwagon, Palm has announced seven new 3D mobile games, all now available on its Palm App Catalog storefront.

The games themselves...

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Same Apps are Popular, Despite the Platform

It looks like the same apps tend to be popular no matter which app store you’re perusing, according to new research from Mplayit.

The company, which runs an app discovery service for Facebook, has taken a look at the most popular iPhone, Android and BlackBerry apps among...

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Android Apps Go for the Wallet

Some apps are after your money — literally.

Fraud has apparently hit the Android market as security outfits have begun issuing warnings that some banking apps are apparently more included to empty your account than to tell you how much is left.

So far, the apps in question seem...

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UK Wants Free Laptops, Web for Poor

The UK has made a pledge of giving away more than 270,000 free laptops with mobile broadband to low-income families under a new government program.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown said the goal is for families to be connected to their children’s schools and lessons via the Internet....

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Sprint Drops WiMAX by Another $10

To help boost sales of its WiMAX service — and likely its new 4G wireless router the Overdrive — Sprint has cut the price of its WiMAX service by another $10, down to $59.99 per month.

This is the second $10 cut in about five months and shows...

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Kineto Offers Dual Mode Wi-Fi/Cellular Technology for Smartphones

Smartphone users prefer to connect to Wi-Fi rather than a cellular network for accessing the Net because it’s faster. Cellcos prefer the use of Wi-Fi, too, because it reduces the traffic on their cellular networks.

Kineto Wireless is offering its Smart Wi-Fi Offload system, which allows...

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YouTube Helps Drive Vevo to Number 1

After its early December launch, Vevo was able to claim the title of the biggest US music service on the Web that month.

The music video site, a joint venture from Google, Universal Music, Sony Music and reportedly EMI, attracted 35.4 million unique viewers in December, besting...

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Digital Music to Beat out Physical in ’10

Total dollars spent on digital music this year will finally surpass the sale of physical music goods, according to a new forecast from eMarketer.

Paul Verna, eMarketer senior analyst and author of the report, said that US consumer spending on digital music will increase at a compound...

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Web TV, Blu-ray Set to Boom

Web-enabled video devices are expected to get quite the boost in global shipments this year, climbing 78% in year-over-year shipments from 2009 to 2010.

The subcategories here that will see the biggest uptake in the short term will be enabled-TVs and Blu-ray players, according to IMS Research....

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European Physicians Turn to Web Videos for Work

Roughly 46% of online physicians in Western Europe tune in to online video for professional purposes — that’s just for conferences, Webinars, video calls and technique demonstrations, not those animal clips that fill up work time for many others.

According to the study from pharmaceutical and healthcare...

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US Finds Mobile Tech as a Positive Change

While the majority of Americans look back on the previous decade with a bit of disdain, innovations in both mobile hardware and software were viewed as positive changes.

The new data comes from a Pew Research Center study that also found Millennials — those age 18 to 29 —...

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Netbooks, Low-Cost Portables Drive PC Sales Growth

Netbooks and low-cost portable PCs increased PCs sales 22.1% worldwide to more than 90 million units in the fourth quarter, according to Gartner. Rival IDC reported similar results.

HP, Dell, Acer and Toshiba increased market share with lower prices at the expense of Apple, which did not cut...

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Rural US Broadband Subscribers Happy, Want More Services

Satisfaction with their broadband service and the percentage with home networks installed is about the same in rural America as in urban/suburban areas, according to a free report from Parks Associates called "Rural Broadband Services and the Digital Home."

Key points from the report include:

 1. Rural broadband...

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Japan Ends 2009 With 110m Mobile Users

Japan has released figures for the end of December 2009 that show 110.62 million mobile subscribers — a 440,700 user gain from the end of November.

The figures come form the Telecommunications Carrier Association, which found some good news for the major players in the market:

 - Softbank...

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Forrester: For Tech Spending, the Worst Could Be Over

Spending in the technology sector has leveled off and could begin seeing a rebound this year, according to a new report from Forrester Research.

The firm expects US spending to grow by 6.6% in 2010, following an 8.2% decline in 2009. Globally, expenditures are expected to jump...

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Major Labels Want Pirate Bay to Walk the Plank

The four major record labels are petitioning the Swedish courts to compel two of The Pirate Bay (TPB) operators to pay the fines awarded to the labels during the operators’ convictions on charges of copyright infringement last year.

The court previously ordered Gottfrid Svartholm Warg and ...

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Universal Sues Grooveshark Over Copyright Infringements

Universal Music, one of the big four labels, has sued the music download service Grooveshark, alleging that the Web site is offering Universal recordings from before 1972 for free. According to the label, this includes "some of the most popular and successful recording artists of the...

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Spain Steps Up to Anti-Piracy Plate

Spain is considered one of the safest places for pirates to thrive — but that could be changing.

The Spanish government has approved new legislation that will empower its courts to shut down and block access to Web sites that offer unauthorized downloads of music and video ...

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Court: Satellite TV Pirate Must Pay $51m

A federal court in Florida has ordered a man to pay $51 million in damages to satellite TV operators after posting software online that helps others to illegally receive satellite TV programming.

The summary judgment against Robert Ward awarded damages to DISH Network, EchoStar and NagraStar.

The court...

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Widgets Gaining Adoption; ‘Snacking’ Now a TV Possibility

Yahoo’s Widgets platform had a great showing at CES, even if some of its partners were less inclined to say that Yahoo was powering the app platform for their TV sets or Blu-ray players

Widgets are bridging the gap between PC and TV, allowing a push and...

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Rovi Supports HbbTV

Rovi (formerly Macrovision) has announced its support for the Hybrid Broadcast Broadband TV (HbbTV) project, the European initiative aimed at standardizing access to and delivery of advanced TV services, like catch-up TV and Web-based offerings.

Rovi said it is eager to work with the HbbTV project and...

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DivX Launches New TV Content Platform

Digital media developer DivX has launched a new platform — DivX TV — aimed specifically at those Net-connected TV sets that are winding up in living rooms with more and more frequency.

DivX TV aims to bring a "diverse line-up of online media content streamed directly to...

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LG Unites Services Through Blu-ray Player

CES was chock full of products and gadgets with Net connections, huge hard drives and other built-ins, but now that the dust has settled, a Blu-ray player from LG Electronics looks to be one of the best models around.

LG’s BD590 is a Blu-ray player with a built-in...

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LG TV Sets Get a Splash of Color

Orange and LG Electronics have signed an exclusive agreement to bring Orange’s Web video portal to LG TV sets in France beginning this March.

The dedicated Orange portal will offer a variety of entertainment content and information services, including Orange Sports Info; 24/24 Actu News Service; live...

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AT&T’s U-verse Gets a Bigger Microsoft Focus

After a rumored three years in the works, AT&T has officially said it will give U-verse TV subscribers the ability to access the service from Microsoft’s Xbox 360 console sometime later this year.

The big question now: For how much?

Through the service addition, customers "will be able to...

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Samsung, BBC Love Film

The BBC’s iPlayer and the on-demand movie service Lovefilm are getting some top-line billing in a range of new connected TVs being shown by Samsung Electronics.

Between 70 and 100 applications will be featured on Samsung’s new Net TV platform — dubbed Internet@TV — and will span the...

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Vudu Shopping Itself Around

The digital video service and set-top box maker Vudu is reportedly in acquisition talks, and it’s most interested buyer appears to be Wal-Mart.

According to All Things Digital, citing sources associated with the talks, Vudu is in "meaningful" discussions with the retail giant.

Wal-Mart is said to be a...

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Epix Finalizes Cox Deal

Epix — a Web and pay-TV video channel joint venture among Viacom, its Paramount division, Lionsgate and MGM — has finally reached a carriage agreement with Cox Communications, which claims to be the nation’s third-largest cable TV provider with around 6 million subscribers.

Epix allows its users to...

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Wii is Feather in Netflix’s Cap

Netflix has completed its gaming console dominance by securing a deal to deliver movies and TV shows to the last of three major consoles — Nintendo’s Wii — according to an agreement with Nintendo America.

The Internet-based video streaming service from Netflix will become available to US...

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Sony Puts Very Short Range Wireless Connectivity Into Cameras

Short range wireless standards are all the rage, but most of the activity has been around personal area networks that cover a few meters or yards.

Sony is targeting its would-be industry standard, TransferJet, at far shorter distances, about three centimeters (1.2 inches). The technology will...

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SiBeam Shows off Next Gen WirelessHD Chips

During the hoopla over 3D at this year’s CES, SiBeam quietly made considerable headway with its chipsets aimed at delivering high-speed WirelessHD. It showed existing Panasonic designs and added US TV maker Vizio to its customer base.

It was almost exactly a year ago to the day that...

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FCC Won’t Swipe Spectrum From Broadcasters

The FCC is dropping a plan that required broadcasters to give up some of their spectrum holdings for wireless broadband use.

While it was a plan that had made its way to the ears of broadcasters and has leaked out sufficiently, an FCC spokesperson said that it...

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For TV: Explaining Why ‘There’s an App for That’

Apple’s slogan for its iPhone commercials has sunk deep into the psyche of the consumer electronics industry, as every piece of connected CE develops a series of widgets, apps or a platform for apps. While some blame Apple for putting a heavy demand on every new...

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Tablets Heat up; Cool-Down Expected Soon

If CES is good for anything, it’s about the best outlet there is for generating hype. This year, tablet PCs took full advantage of the ballyhoo and are on everyone’s purchase list, despite most not being ready for store shelves.

Tablets, slates, wrist computers, hybrid screens; no...

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CES Trend: Media Becoming Bigger, More Social

After poring over our coverage of CES and the insurmountable stack of USB press kits given out at the show, there was an overwhelming desire to pull out an MP3 player and detach from the connected-CE space, an experience CES didn’t want anyone to have.

The big...

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DECE Selects Neustar to Operate DRM Rights Database

A coalition of studios and technology companies operating under the industry standard DRM called Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem (DECE) has selected Neustar to operate a database that is intended to limit piracy.

The intent is to allow consumers to watch content they have purchased on all...

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3D’s Cold Shower

 - Standards Merely Sub-Standard

 - Content: Time, Location, Cost

As the smoke clears from the 2010 CES, it’s hard not to look at 3D as the next big thing happening soon in home entertainment. It’s hard not to get caught up in the frenzy and feel the excitement that...

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Vudu Ups Its CE Ante

At this year’s CES, Vudu announced an expansion to its collaborator list for its 1080p streaming media platform. Vudu is expanding into broadband home theaters, more HD TVs and new Blu-ray players from LG, Mitsubishi, Samsung, SanyoManufacturing, Sharp, Toshiba and Vizio. Vudu chairman and CEO Alain Rossmann said...

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Nine Inch Nails Gives Away 405GB of HD Concert Video

In March 2009, the heavy rock band Nine Inch Nails went on a US tour, collecting a total of 405GB of raw HD footage. The band has released all of that footage free to its fans and is offering them free Blu-ray and DVD copies. The rest of...

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Sony’s ‘Moon’ Wants No Oscars

In a bold and smart move, Sony has said it will not promote its underground hit “Moon” for an Oscar award because the movie does not come out on DVD until later this month. The studio wants to keep the film off the Net and avoid piracy that’s...

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Nintendo Jumps on 3D Bandwagon

The buzz around 3D isn’t just at CES this month. According to a recent interview with the Japanese site Asahi, Nintendo’s president Satoru Iwata said that a new, upcoming Nintendo DS handheld is currently under development and will include at least one HD resolution screen and either a...

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Amazon Has a Blu-ray Sale

Amazon put nine Blu-ray players on sale last week following the CES announcements of dozens of new Blu-ray players. The new nine are all under $200, with a Sony player setting the cheapest mark at $125. Panasonic has a close model that runs $127. Some devices Web-enabled, but they lack...

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The CES Specter: Apple

The most buzzed about new product and the most talked about mobile — and the mobile with the most products aimed at it — weren’t on display this year, and their parent didn’t have a presence. Apple’s rumored iSlate tablet PC and the iPhone grabbed a lot of...

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Sony Accidently Gives Access to Film Still in Theaters

Sony Computer Entertainment accidently made the film “Armored” from Screen Gems available as a download on its PlayStation Network (PSN) for a few hours recently, despite the fact that the film is still in theaters and has no release date set for its DVD. Sony said it removed the film...

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Jamendo Puts up ‘For Sale’ Sign

Jamendo, a Web site featuring free music downloads for Creative Commons licensed content, is actively seeking a buyer or a merger partner and has reportedly been in talks with at least one possible buyer. The company last raised funds in mid-2007 and has been unsuccessful in recent funding attempts. Jamendo...

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Rovi’s Web Video Content Guide Broadens Service

Rovi has announced a number of new content partners for its TotalGuide media service, which attempts to provide a full listing of movies, TV shows and other video and audio content available for Web-enabled TV sets. Rovi added ShowTime, ZillionTV, Rhapsody and 15 European content providers for its service. Rovi’s...

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Intel Streams Video Into Program Guides

One of the most interesting uses of video came from Intel in what appeared to be a Web-based service that could easily be adapted to an IPTV service.

During CEO Paul Otellini’s CES keynote, he demonstrated an updated version of the TV channel guide. Instead of showing the traditional text information...

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YouTube 3D: The Free Riddle

The one partner that rarely showed up at CES was YouTube. Premium content was a big focus for the TV sets featuring 3D, but even many of the laptops and desktop PCs that were 3D-capable avoided going to everyone’s favorite user-generated content hub.

TV sets might’ve avoided YouTube because it’s not...

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DISH Launches Its TV Everywhere Suite

Satellite TV service provider DISH Network last week launched its “TV Everywhere” service — capitalizing on a very familiar name it trademarked last September — which will let its customers remotely access live and recorded TV programs through the Web and existing home networks.

DISH has partnered with EchoStar’s Sling Media...

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Microsoft Puts Stock in Xbox: 3D, Motion and Retro

During his CES keynote, Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer discussed some of the company’s upcoming improvements to its Xbox 360 lineup.

What grabbed the most hype and applause was the announcement that the gesture-based control system, “Project Natal,” would ship for the game console in time for the 2010 year-end holiday season. The...

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Baidu Plans Chinese Hulu-Like Service

Chinese search giant Baidu has announced plans to create a new independent company to launch a licensed video portal of premium content for Chinese Internet users.

There has been a lot of speculation about this for quite some time, and Baidu confirmed most rumors with the news. The service will inevitably...

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Sony Gets Personal With Its New Dash

Sony rolled out a product that instantly spawned comparison to the upcoming Apple tablet — and losing to the so-far fictitious tablet where bloggers and tech journalists are concerned — and is definitely one of the top products to watch coming from this year’s CES.

Called a “personal Internet” viewer, Sony’s...

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CES Trend: Netbooks, Tablets and E-Readers! Oh, My!

If there’s one thing that might’ve outnumbered and out-buzzed 3D TV sets at this year’s CES, it was the new spate of netbooks, tablets and e-readers from just about every established name in computers — and quite a few brand-new players.

Some products were very hard to distinguish from each other,...

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Tivit Ready for Spring US Launch for Mobile TV on Wi-Fi

Sneaking out from CES is a device that has already made waves in the Far East, so far only in Japan: a simple mobile TV product called the Tivit. It adds a new dimension to place shifting by taking TV signals in — whether they’re designed for TV sets or...

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Live Mobile TV Flows to the iPhone

FLO TV, a mobile TV unit of Qualcomm, has partnered with Mophie to develop a new product that will bring live TV to Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch devices.

The Mophie “juice pack” will be integrated with the new offering, giving the iPhone a more protective case and an extended battery...

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Nexus One: Much Ado About Nothing?

Is the Google Nexus One really a groundbreaking “superphone” (the term used by the company itself) or just an Android version of the HTC HD2 made to look like an iPhone? Some believe that it really won’t matter either way, because the pros and cons of the gadget itself were...

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Thumbplay Launches Mobile Music Offering

Mobile entertainment distributor Thumbplay entered the mobile music fray at this year’s CES, launching a beta version of a streaming music application first available on BlackBerrys and as an Adobe Air desktop application.

Thumbplay said it has millions of songs from the four major labels and from leading independent groups like...

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Google Fetches Local Info for Mobile Users

Google has integrated a new location-based feature for its search service when accessed by iPhone and Android-based mobiles, allowing users to discover content that is physically nearby.

The “Near me now” service provides information on local restaurants, coffee shops, bars and retail shopping — in Las Vegas it also pointed out...

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Clearwire WiMAX Reaches European Shores

While the world had its eyes turned toward Las Vegas, Clearwire had its hands busy across the Pond, rolling out a WiMAX service that will initially cover roughly 600,000 people.

The US-based operator had its first entrance into the European market at the end of the week, offering high-speed mobile broadband...

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Sprint Shocks CES With 4G Flash

Sprint hosted a flashy, star-studded CES event this year that had the audience anxiously waiting for the big reveal: the Overdrive.

There was a palpable confusion in the air as Sprint unveiled its new Wi-Fi router, and many in the audience expressed that they were looking for a new tablet or...

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Augmented Reality Apps Expected to Soar Through 2014

The yearly number of mobile downloads for augmented reality content is expected to rise from just under 1 million in 2009 to more than 400 million by 2014.

The new projection from Juniper Research said that the increased penetration will come from the development of new app stores, newer augmented reality...

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US Music Purchases Amp up in 2009

US music purchases were up a total of 2.1% in 2009, reaching 1.54 billion in album, single, video and digital track sales. Digital music in the States now accounts for 40% of total music purchases.

The news comes from Nielsen’s year-end report that is a bit of a mixed blessing for...

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2010 Could See Broadband Adoption Drag

In 2010, roughly four million US households are expected to become new high-speed Internet service customers, a 10% decline from 2009’s gains.

The forecast comes from Pike & Fischer, which estimates that roughly 65% of US homes will have broadband by the end of the year, totaling 77 million homes. Most...

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US Justice Department to Look at Comcast-NBC Universal Deal

The US Department of Justice has announced it will take the lead in the government’s peering into Comcast’s $30 billion proposed purchase of a controlling stake in NBCUniversal.

The agency will be taking a look into Comcast and might be giving a more scrutinizing glance because of a recent complaint that...

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Viacom, YouTube $1b Lawsuit Heats Up

Roughly three years after Viacom sued Google over copyright infringements on YouTube, the case appears to be getting some fresh legs.

Both sides have asked for a summary judgment in the case, meaning that the federal court may in fact make a clear decision in the billion-dollar lawsuit, based on the...

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Netflix Announces New Partners,Bigger Wait Times

Netflix announced five new consumer electronics partners that have integrated the video rental service into their Blu-ray players and Net-connected TVs.

The new partners include Panasonic, Sharp, Toshiba, Sanyo and Funai, which covers the Philips, Magnavox, Sylvania and Emerson brands.

At this year’s CES, a multitude of new CE devices and software...

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Netgear Stora Simplifies Storage Access, Expands Reach

Netgear is leaving behind the notion of a multi-room home network and thinking about more of a multi-national home network, thanks to its new Stora.

In addition to all of its networking devices, Netgear’s Stora is an Internet-capable device that allows users access to all of their locally-saved music, movies and...

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MoCA and HomePlug Powerline Alliance Make Relationship Official

The Multimedia over Coax Alliance (MoCA) and the HomePlug Powerline Alliance entered a formal liaison agreement last week to better facilitate communication and information sharing between the two organizations. They have agreed to begin coordinating their efforts in “educational and informational programs and activities that promote new multimedia applications and...

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Netbooks Approach Instantaneous Booting

During the LG keynote, a sly announcement was made that its new X-120 netbook will be able to boot up and access content in seven seconds.

And it’s true.

Splashtop has created an “instant-on access” platform for an assortment of netbooks that works with a variety of operating systems and configures them...

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FCC Has Strong Plans for US Broadband

The federal government had a strong presence at this year’s CES, including FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, who promised innovative, new ideas and approaches to encourage more competition for Net-enabled CE, especially Web content on TVs.

“One of the things we’re looking at hard in the broadband report, and everywhere, is the...

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Whatever the Apple Tablet Is, It Apparently Leaks Like a Sieve

This article first appeared Client Server News. For more information on the publication email paperboy@riderresearch.com

There may be little left for Apple to announce about its purported tablet or “iSlate” come January 27, a date change since January 26 was noised about. The rumor mill is slowly teasing out...

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3D Blu-ray Gets Approval, Logo

After getting ratified in December, the new Blu-ray 3D standard has just had its logo unveiled by the Blu-ray Disc Association.

The specification allows for 1080p video delivery to each eye while a user wears stereoscopic glasses. The standard will work with all the new 3D TVs coming out of CES,...

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The New Living Room Default: Net-Connected

 - Video Conferencing, Widgets Now Standard

 - Connections Coming Built-in to TVs and CE

 - Whole Home is Next

While the few, hyped TV sets of CES 2010 were the 3D sets, the show marked a shift toward the new standard for an HD TV as the connected-set.

There was not...

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3D TV: The CES Hype and the CE Hope

 - 5 Powerhouses, 5 Approaches

 - Building the Ecosystem All at Once

 - Moving From Kitschy to Relevant

There’s no doubt that 3D was the big story of this year’s Consumer Electronics Show, but as the show wrapped up and the displays went back to their corporate homes, the consumer...

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Making It "Ruff Ruff" for the Telcos

DOCSIS 3.0 broadband technology is so important to the cablecos that their NCTA trade show’s official dog, a Dalmatian, is named "DOGSIS 3.0."

Instead of Rolling Over, They Say, ...

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UK Likes Its Net Radio

According to RAJAR’s fifth Net audio survey, 17.4 million UK residents, roughly one-third of the adult population, now say they have listened to an Internet radio station. Nearly 4.5 million say they use personalized Web radio services like Last.fm and Spotify, up from May’s...

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Mozilla To Browse the Mobile Web

Mozilla is said to be finalizing work on its first mobile version of its Firefox Web browser. The company said it hopes to release a candidate version this week with a final version out before year-end. The first browser will be configured for Nokia’s ...

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Public Enemy Finds Public-Funded Album Adversary

In October, Public Enemy gave the fan-based fundraising platform SellaBand a big endorsement by saying its next album would be made through funding on the platform. The group hoped to raise $250,000 and grabbed $50,000 in the first couple of weeks; donations seemed to...

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Epix Nears Carriage Deal With Cox Communications

Epix, the pay-TV and online movie channel coming from Viacom, Lionsgate and MGM, is close to signing its first distribution deal with a major TV provider, Cox Communications. The news comes from Bloomberg, which said Cox will begin airing the content next year. Cox...

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NBC Backs TV Show With Social Web, Game

NBC is promoting the next season of its TV series "Chuck" through the launch of a social game "Mission: Chuck Me Out" that rewards players for mentioning, viewing or recommending the series on social networking sites. Users log in to the game through Facebook,...

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Big Mac, Fries and Free Wi-Fi

Beginning January 2010, 11,000 McDonald’s restaurants in the States and some in Canada will offer free and unlimited access to their AT&T operated Wi-Fi hotspots. Another 3,000 locations don’t currently offer Wi-Fi. The company has been pushing its stores as alternatives to Starbucks coffee...

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Game Console Makers Likely to Increase Online Efforts

Makers of video game consoles — Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo — are likely to push their online content services even more. US sales of video games and consoles fell 7.6% last month compared with November 2008, according to NPD Group. Sales declined from $2.9...

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Wal-Mart, Best Buy, Amazon Duke It Out in Laptops, TVs

There’s a three-way race in the States for supremacy in consumer electronics among Wal-Mart, Best Buy and Amazon.com, and it’s being duked out with price cuts. It looks like consumers are winning. Wal-Mart cut prices early and often. Best Buy this week said it will...

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YouTube Flick to Become Feature Film

In a harrowing Internet man-bites-dog tale, a four-minute, 48-second-long YouTube clip from Uruguay has landed its creator a $30 million contract to create a Hollywood sci-fi flick.

Fede Alvarez’s YouTube video "Ataque de Panico" (Panic Attack) showed giant robots invading and destroying Uruguay’s ...

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Comcast Goes to Xfinity and Beyond

Comcast has unmasked its Xfinity TV, formerly known as TV Everywhere, and is opening up the trial to give its subscribers access to extra TV programming on the Web.

Comcast’s offering so far includes around 2,000 hours of programming from 30 cable networks and...

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Paramount Pushes Physical Rentals Through 2014

Viacom’s Paramount Home Entertainment has expanded its distribution deal with Coinstar’s kiosk movie rental service Redbox through 2014 after recent test runs of a variety of distribution options.

Paramount, which Redbox has been sharing rental information and user data with, will now...

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TV-Web DRM Gets $15M Backing

Widevine, which specializes in forensic watermarking and DRM services on the content-owner side, announced this week that it raised $15 million in new funding.

Widevine currently powers a wide variety of Web-based movie services, including those powered by Sonic Solution’s CinemaNow, as...

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Paramount Sells Movie Bytes

Paramount Pictures is looking to make a few extra bucks by selling its older movies one clip at a time.

While DVD sales continue to fall and online video services eat up eyeballs and advertising dollars, Paramount is hoping its new storefront will attract...

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Pandora: 40m Strong and Growing

Someone’s been taking his vitamins.

Pandora Media said it will end the year with more than 40 million registered users and 15 million other users actively visiting its Web site — not bad for starting 2009 with only 20 million users.


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Seeqpod Sell-off, New Venture Likely

Seeqpod, a music search and streaming service that was sued by the major labels and ended up declaring bankruptcy this year, is closing a deal to sell off its assets. Seeqpod will sell as much as it can to "a large Japanese media company," its...

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MySpace, Imeem Deal Leaves 110,000 Indies Unpaid

More than 110,000 independent artists who used an imeem-backed online storefront will not be paid for their music sold through the service even after MySpace Music’s imeem buyout is complete.

Wired.com is reporting that MySpace’s purchase of imeem only covered...

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O2 Hits 150 Mbps in LTE Test

Telco giant Telefonica’s O2 is testing LTE with a few users in Slough, near London’s Heathrow airport. Testers have been given Huawei-made LTE dongles to use with their PCs.

A peak download speed of 150 Mbps was achieved in the Slough area,...

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Verizon Wireless Makes Wi-Fi Access Free in US, Canada & Mexico

 - But Not to Its Smartphone Subscribers

Verizon Wireless is following the path that AT&T made by offering its Mobile Broadband and Global Access subscribers free access to its thousands of Wi-Fi hotspots in the US, Canada and Mexico. The plan is available for...

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Ericsson, STM First With Dual Mode LTE/3G Chip

Consumers want faster mobile broadband but don’t want the nightmare of having to carry two devices, one for LTE and another for existing 3G networks.

Network gear maker Ericsson and chip maker ST-Ericsson, a joint venture with STMicroelectronics, say they are the first...

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Viral Videos Favored Music in 2009

While the big buzz for viral content is often given to user-generated content and home videos of funny pets or stunts gone wrong, professionally produced content proliferated the major hotspots for viral videos in 2009.

Specifically, music videos were king.

Eight of the...

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Report: More Mobile Broadband Users in 5 Years Than Wireline

Do you see what I see? The mobile broadband world will soon pass the wireline broadband market in number of users.

Within five years, more consumers will use mobile broadband devices than wireline broadband, according to the Wall Street shop Morgan Stanley, which says...

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Net TVs Pick up Popularity Points

It’s no surprise that people want to watch more Internet video, but it will surprise some that consumers want to do so consistently on their TV sets.

A new report from consulting firm Deloitte found interest in Web content on the TV and says this...

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US HDTV Penetration up; HD Channels Not Following

One of the best reasons to make HD Web-based content available to connected TV sets could be that while the HDTV penetration in the US is approaching the 50% milestone, users are not readily switching to HD pay-for TV packages.

According to researcher DisplaySearch,...

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TV is Still King

While the content offering on the Web expands exponentially and box office revenues continue to soar to new heights, the US is still showing a preference for the glowing box in the living room.

According to Deloitte’s latest report, 34% of Americans say...

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Facebook’s Silver Lining

The youth may be the future, but the more experienced among us are beginning to present a very significant presence on the Web — and Facebook seems to have a tight grip on both.

The social networking site was the third most visited...

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WiMAX’s Momentum Increasing

 - 3.9 Million Subscribers by Year-end

Like a sprout in spring, LTE popped up this week in Stockholm and Oslo with the world’s first public deployment — by TeliaSonera — but WiMAX isn’t going to slow down.

Infonetics...

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OECD Says Universal Fiber Broadband Would Pay for Its Cost

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) says government investment in national fiber optic broadband "could be justified based on even small direct benefits in just four key sectors of the economy — electricity, health, education and transportation.


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Vimeo Sued for Lip-Syncing

Video hosting site Vimeo got a lot of buzz a few years ago when its employees did a lip-synced song as a recruiting video.

Now called "lip dubbing" on the service, the method has gotten rather popular there and elsewhere on the Web,...

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India Full of Pirate Plunder

India looks to have reached the number four spot of the world’s largest illegally downloading countries.

That ranking comes from the Motion Picture Distributors Association (MPDA), which has commissioned two recent reports on the country’s bad habits.

The first study, from DtecNet, tracked...

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Australia: Web Filter A’hoy!

The government of Australia plans to introduce an Internet filtering system in an attempt to block obscene and crime-linked Web sites, amid concerns that filters don’t work but do restrict individual and organizational freedoms.

On Tuesday it said it will introduce legislation next...

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Citigroup Misled Us, Says EMI Acquirer Terra Firma

The private-equity firm Terra Firma Capital Partners has sued Citigroup in New York, claiming that Citigroup falsely scared it into increasing its offer in the 2007 purchase of record label EMI. Terra Firma said the bank knowingly misled it by saying Cerberus Capital Management...

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Channel 4, Talk Talk Join BBC-Led Project Canvas

 - Venture to Be Called Digital Television Group

 - Group Wants More Members

The companies that started Project Canvas — the BBC, ITV, British Telecom, (Channel) Five — whose goal is to develop a universal technology to access and play videos on Internet-connected TV...

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‘The CloudTV Revolution Is Now Coming to CE’

The natural evolution of technology leads to the centralizing of content by getting it from separate devices, whether it’s media servers in the home, Internet-based e-mail or the network DVRs that Cablevision got the courts to approve.

ActiveVideo Networks, calling...

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Blu-ray Players the New STBs?

Web-based home entertainment options are slowly collapsing that tangled mass on consumer shelves into one solid, connected set-top box — and some believe that box will begin life as a Blu-ray player.

New research from The Diffusion Group (TDG) sees the Blu-ray player...

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Oregan’s Onyx Browser Makes CE Debut in Cello’s TV Sets

Oregan Networks developed the Onyx browser that’s embedded in Cello’s new iViewer TV sets. Cello bundles free-to-view Web video services like YouTube, as well as social services such as Twitter and Facebook, in its iViewer packages. The sets also come with the BBC’s iPlayer...

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Sony: PlayStations Might Go Network-Only Storage

Sony engineers and designers are considering using network-only storage, according to Sony’s Masayuki Chatani, speaking to Nikkei Electronics Asia.

Chatani said the console previously featured a traditional hard drive because of the cost of Flash storage and the limits of network...

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Home Theater PCs Now Sliding Behind the TV

While Net-connected set-top boxes are all the rage, there is another option for getting all that great Web content to an HDTV set: a home theater PC located somewhere nearby.

These PCs traditionally take up a bit more space than the average STB and...

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Competing HD Connectivity Technologies Race to Completion

The following analysis first appeared in Faultline. For the complete report, please e-mail reports@riderresearch.com and ask for FL332.

The race to develop wired and wireless replacements of HDMI to connect nearby devices like a TV set and a Blu-ray player continues with four...

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FCC Offers 3 Proposals for Universal Broadband

Responding to a demand from the US Congress for universal broadband, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) this week made several recommendations:

 1. Revising the country’s telco-funded subsidy program, the Universal Service Fund (USF), for rural phone service to add broadband funding. The USF...

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Google Heads up Consortium to Build 17 Tbps Undersea Cable in Asia

The oceans’ bottoms may soon be covered by wall-to-wall fiber optic cables.

The Southeast Asia Japan Cable Consortium intends to lay an 8,300 kilometer (5,000 mile) cable for broadband connectivity throughout Asia. It will initially link Singapore, Hong Kong, Indonesia, the Philippines and Japan.


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Nvidia Will Bring 3D Mainstream

With the 3D specifications for the Blu-ray format nearing formalization — let’s hope there’s no HD-DVD snafu — Nvidia said it’s preparing to bring 3D video entertainment to consumer’s homes in a very big way next year.

Nvidia says it will offer a complete...

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Spec Finished for 3D Versions of Blu-ray Players

It’s finished! The Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) this week said the specification for "Blu-ray 3D" is completed and available. Producers will be able to issue 3D movies, TV shows and other videos with the certainty they can be played on any 3D-equipped Blu-ray player. In...

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LG Commits to 3D TV Sets

Like Sony and Panasonic before it, LG, the world’s second-largest maker of TV sets, has committed to produce 3D models. LG said it’ll sell a paltry 400,000 3D TVs in 2010 and 3.4 million in 2011. By comparison, it expects to sell 25 million LCD...

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NXP Makes Breakthrough in Chip for Affordable 3D TV Sets

Bringing new technologies such as 3D to consumers requires chips that are highly functional and low cost.

Philips spinout chipmaker NXP Semiconductors this week announced what it called the industry’s first video co-processor enabling 3D TV, frame-rate conversion (FRC) and...

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Product Categories We’ll Investigate at CES

- Internet connected CE gear like TVs, Blu-ray players, pay-TV set-top boxes and digital media adapters

- Widgets and other platforms that are embedded in CE products to help viewers access walled gardens on Internet content

- 3D including TV...

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US VP Biden Leads Charge Against IP Piracy

 - ‘Flat, Unadulterated Theft’

 - Promises National Effort

While the US is no longer a leader in making hardware — things like TV sets, cars and PCs — it still produces and exports a great deal of valuable intellectual property (IP) such as ...

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Sweden’s TeliaSonera First to Launch LTE

Help in the form of faster speeds, greater capacity and fewer disconnects for smartphone and portable PC users is on its way.

Sweden-based mobile operator TeliaSonera is the first to announce officially a publicly available 4G LTE (Long-Term Evolution) network. It’s in the central...

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New Broadcom Chip for Smartphones Offers 1080p Video & 20-Megapixel Camera

 - Smaller, 20% - 50% Less Power Consumption

 - 4 - 6 Hours of 1080p Video Recording; 8 - 10 Hours of Mobile Playback

 - Development of Digital Media Technology Inexorably Increasing

Broadcom’s new BCM2763 VideoCore IV chip for smartphones supports 1080p...

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3D Flick Avatar Premieres December 18

The much ballyhooed 20th Century Fox 3D flick "Avatar," produced by John Cameron, premieres December 18. It’s reportedly "must see" if you want to know whether 3D video will become primetime in homes. If it does, 3D will put a strain on existing broadband networks. There’s a view...

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Search Engine Ads Get a Bit Muddled

Google Music is a pretty new service, so it’s getting the word out by buying ad space on Microsoft’s Bing search service, showing how far Google will go to make the service a success and steal back as many eyeballs as it can. Seeing ads for Google on Bing doesn’t...

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Sigma Designs Reports a Bummer Quarter

Chipmaker Sigma Designs, which recently acquired home network chipmaker CopperGate, reported poor results for its third quarter. Revenue was $35.5 million, down by $15.8 million, or 31%, from the prior quarter and down $11.3 million, or 24%, from this time last year. It lost $2.3 million compared to...

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Black Friday Blu-ray Sales Double

Despite our dire predictions for Blu-ray, US consumers bought $69 million in Blu-ray discs over the Black Friday weekend − double last year’s figure. Total DVD sales, including Blu-ray, were down 8%, so traditional DVDs are really taking a beating. Why buy a DVD when the same quality,...

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Dubai Metro Goes WiMAX

UAE telecom provider du has launched a mobile WiMAX network in Dubai Metro’s transport system train carriages as well as in the Metro stations. Travelers will be able to access the Net via their Wi-Fi devices like smartphones and laptops at speeds up to 90 kilometers (55 miles)...

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MySpace Allows Others to Wade in Real-Time Data Stream

Myspace wants to become an entertainment hub so it is opening up all of its public user information to outside developers, hoping they’ll create services that show the latest trends and consistently link back to the MySpace site. The hub has released a data stream interface that gives real-time access...

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Consoles, Games Looking to the Web

Game consoles are looking to the Web for more content and features, which videogame makers have noticed and are preparing for. After a recent acquisition of the massively popular Facebook game developer Playfish, EA has said the digital market will beat out the physical as early as next...

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Mobile Orchestra Develops Own Apps

Cell phones had better be turned on when class starts for the orchestra at the University of Michigan. Students in its Michigan Mobile Phone Ensemble have spent the semester developing their own music instrument apps; some mirror real instruments, and others seem a hybrid of a few. The...

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Apple Releases ITunes LP and Extras for All

Despite many initial claims about thousands of dollars being charged for the API and development of iTunes LP and movie Extras offerings, Apple is releasing a how-to for free. Apple released an SDK and a series of guides for services and best practices − even one concerning how...

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PlayStation 3 Gets More Free Music Videos

Some PlayStation 3 users will soon begin getting access to roughly 10,000 music videos all in 1080 HD, thanks to a Sony deal with Vidzone. Vidzone, which is London-based but heavily tied to New Zealand, will be a free download, music on-demand service that features adverts. The service...

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YouSee Launches Portal for Web TV

Denmark cableco YouSee has begun offering its customers free access to 30 of the country’s most popular TV channels for the PC via an online portal.

In a TV Everywhere-esque move, YouSee is launching this initial offering for all. It eventually plans to fully mirror its three...

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YouTube Launches Sports Section

YouTube is preparing to launch a "Sports Hub" through a partnership with SportAccord, a group that represents global sports organizations, and will have roughly 2,000 videos by next spring. The videos will cover clips and full versions of matches, competitions, interviews and educational materials from a wide range...

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Web Moves Nobel Speeches From Invite-Only to Open for All

For the majority of its history, the viewing of lectures and acceptance speeches of Nobel laureates was reserved for special and honored guests specifically invited to Oslo and Stockholm − and citizens of Sweden and Norway with the right TV packages − but this year, the analog dragon...

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YouTube Ends Download Tests

 

YouTube has ended its experimental free- and paid-video downloads, according to an e-mail sent out to its download partners.

The program, launched in February, allowed some producers to sell or give away video downloads and allowed them to download their own content as MP4...

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Vevo Launches With Fanfare, Viewers

The BBC is the latest media partner to jump in on an EU-funded research project using BitTorrent to test Web-based video delivery. The research comes from P2P-Next.

P2P-Next’s new trial streams TV show episodes in HD quality through BitTorrent.

If this and following tests go well,...

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Vevo Launches With Fanfare, Viewers

The BBC is the latest media partner to jump in on an EU-funded research project using BitTorrent to test Web-based video delivery. The research comes from P2P-Next.

P2P-Next’s new trial streams TV show episodes in HD quality through BitTorrent.

If this and following tests go well,...

full story

Vevo Launches With Fanfare, Viewers

 - Site Overwhelmed by ‘Magnitude’ on Day One

After a star-studded launch event in New York City, the label- and YouTube-backed music video site Vevo is now live.

Vevo is a premium online music video service powered by YouTube’s video technology. Users can watch...

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YouTube: Light as a Feather

While its been running full speed at 3D, and 1080p and the HDTV set in many living rooms, YouTube has also been quietly taking a lighter approach for users on those netbooks that can’t quite deliver HD quality video.

Launched within its TestTube, YouTube’s new products incubator...

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Alicia Keys Streams Album on Facebook

Fans of Alicia Keys will be updating their Facebook status more than usual this week as Keys releases her newest album, "The Element of Freedom," exclusively through the social networking giant. Fans can visit Keys’ fan page on Facebook and stream the entire album free of charge, though...

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Venture Capital Gets Smaller for Music Services

Some of the bigger names in digital music services that grabbed the big bucks for their launches or improvements over the past couple of years were imeem, iLike and Lala − and they’ve all been bought out.

MySpace picked up iLike, rolled most of its...

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MySpace Acquires Imeem; Will Move Playlists, Users

Social networking site turned entertainment hub MySpace made good on earlier promises and finished its purchase of imeem - and immediately began redirecting users to MySpace’s own Web site.

So far, the roughly "16 million" users are being transitioned to the MySpace site, but their imeem playlists...

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Pandora Set to Groove in the Auto

The Web radio service Pandora is preparing an aggressive jump into the automotive space and says significant integration with car radios and controls are coming − and coming soon.

Pandora CTO Tom Conrad, at a panel at the San Francisco Music Tech Summit, said Pandora will initially...

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Sales of Vinyl LPs Move Up a Tad

Can it possibly be that vinyl LPs are making a comeback in the era of iPods and downloads? Is the tin-ear generation beginning to realize that vinyl sounds better than digital?

The New York Times picked up on a recent report from Nielsen Soundtrack that said LP...

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Apple Buys Lala; Rattles Online Music Industry

The rumors of Apple buying music service Lala are coming true, and as the news spreads, the Internet is slowly turning into some new streaming beast with a mix of joy and dread.

Lala is a pay-for music service that allows users two options: 1) pay for...

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Maxlinear Unveils Diversity Chip for Broadcast Mobile TV

US radio chip designer MaxLinear has launched a new diversity chip for ISDB-T handsets in the Japanese market, a move that promises to cut around $2 from the bill of materials for providing mobile TV in a handset and eliminate external antennas, according to Faultline.

While the...

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Maxlinear Unveils Diversity Chip for Broadcast Mobile TV

US radio chip designer MaxLinear has launched a new diversity chip for ISDB-T handsets in the Japanese market, a move that promises to cut around $2 from the bill of materials for providing mobile TV in a handset and eliminate external antennas, according to Faultline.

While the...

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Mobile TV Market Resumes in China after 6-Month Pause

Mobile TV development and deployment in China has resumed after a six-month moratorium, according to Faultline, which says the plan is shifting through the gears but is still not cruising.

Shipments accelerated to 2 million in the last quarter, all using TD-SCDMA technology.

New entrants are...

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FLO TV Opens Purse to Get Top Disney Content

 

Qualcomm subsidiary FLO TV has reached into its coffers and bought rights to prime Disney content that may finally begin to attract viewers to its MediaFLO network in the US.

The new offerings are a simulcast Disney channel, bolstered by some original Disney Movies,...

full story

Consumers Want Mobile TV. Period.

Told you so. Several times, too.

Almost 90% of mobile phone users are interested in viewing live local news programming on their handsets, and 47% are likely to buy handsets with mobile TV, according to study by Magid Media Labs in partnership with the Open Mobile Video...

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Ustream Brings Live Broadcasting to the IPhone

- Introduces Video Recording for Older Models

With iTunes having more than 100,000 apps, it’s getting hard to stand out − but some like Ustream are doing that.

Ustream has been garnering a lot of attention by allowing music artists to stream concerts, music...

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Nokia Lands Chinese Partner to Develop Content and Services

Nokia and the Chinese investment company New Alliance have formed a 50/50 joint venture called Nokia Alliance Internet Services. It’ll help Chinese companies develop and distribute content and services for Nokia’s Ovi mobile broadband service.

Nokia executive VP for services Niklas Savander said China is...

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The IPod Touch: Apple’s Ace in the Hole

Planning to tackle the smartphone market? Why not grab a little bit more of the market with a device or two that does all the fun extras and comes with no network hassles or unexpected coverage holes.

Apple has taken this approach and is scoring well, according...

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Verizon Wireless: LTE Ecosystem Will Be Larger Than WiMAX

Verizon Wireless ’ executive director of networks Chris Neisinger said at a meeting of the WiMAX Forum that his company selected LTE as its 4G technology because it believed LTE will ultimately have a larger ecosystem of devices and network gear, Wireless Watch reports.

Neisinger...

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Alcatel-Lucent Signs up Bouygues Telecom for LTE

The battle wages on by wireless network equipment makers to sign up mobilcos for LTE network gear. France’s Bouygues Telecom will use LTE gear from France’s Alcatel-Lucent in a trial deployment in several locations in western France.

Alcatel-Lucent said it has signed up 19 mobile phone companies...

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More LTE Tests: Australia and Singapore

Mobilecos perhaps see that launching the much faster LTE mobile broadband technology will give them a competitive edge.

Australia-based Telstra is testing LTE mobile in its Hong Kong subsidiary CSL Limited. Singapore-based SingTel is testing LTE in its Australian subsidiary Optus.

Telstra said it doesn’t need...

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Cox Begins Testing Sprint’s Mobile Broadband in 3 Markets

Cox , the only major cableco to build its own mobile broadband network, has started testing the service in three markets: Hampton Roads, Virginia; Omaha, Nebraska; and Orange County, California.

Cox paid $304.6 million for spectrum licenses that cover much of its footprint. It has...

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The Last HDTV Report

- 45% Increase in Worldwide LCD HD TV Sales in October

This will be, we hope, the last time we make the point that HD TVs and HD videos have become the minimum expectation in video quality for consumers. As a result of consumers’ love...

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1b Mobile Internet Devices by 2013

The number of mobile Internet devices (MIDs) will surpass the 1 billion mark worldwide by 2013 as more consumers and businesses pick up these devices due to increased functionality and lower prices.

According to IDC, the MID explosion will go hand-in-hand with increased mobile Internet users and...

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Give Us This Day Our Daily Data

The average American snacks on about 34GB of data and information every day when looking at all forms of media, a 350% increase over the past three decades, according to the University of California.

According to the report, the daily consumption includes around 100,000 words − both...

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Portable Device Shipments up 10%

While the economy is proving to be a persistent sour note for many, portable electronic devices are expected to grow 10% in 2009 to more than 400 million units shipped, according to the latest report from In-Stat.

This category includes digital radio, e-readers, handheld game consoles, MP3...

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The Pirate Bay Stops Fighting

In November, a judge ruled that The Pirate Bay (TPB) must remove all of its copyright infringing torrents from its Web site and block access to Dutch users.

While TPB was considering an appeal, the trio behind the site subsequently announced it will close down and, according...

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O Tenenbaum, Your Money Green Delights Labels

A US federal judge has ordered graduate student Joel Tenenbaum to pay $675,000 in compensation to the major record labels and to destroy his illegally downloaded songs after finding him guilty of copyright infringement for file-sharing.

The labels were also pressing for Tenenbaum to be ordered to...

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Bye-bye Digital Media Adapters; We Hardly Knew Ye

  - Internet Connectivity Is Added to TVs, Blu-ray Players, Gaming Consoles

 Digital media adapters (DMAs), those boxes that connect TV sets to PCs and allow Internet-delivered videos to be shown in the living room, came along before most consumers wanted to watch homemade YouTube videos...

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Boxee Announces Its STB; Everyone Asks about Hulu

Anyone got any room left near the TV set for another set-top box?

On Monday night, the Internet video for the TV service Boxee got a crowd together in Brooklyn to demonstrate its latest service update and announce an upcoming Boxee set-top box. It’s the company’s first...

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UK-Made TV Set Comes With BBC IPlayer

UK-based Cello Electronics has started shipping a TV set called iViewer, which has an Internet connection and the BBC’s iPlayer embedded. It needs, of course, a broadband connection.

Marks and Spencer stores will have the product exclusively, at least for this holiday shopping season.


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TVs Catching Internet Flu

Financial news channel CNBC’s tech expert John Quain this week demonstrated the Internet connectivity of an LG 50-inch TV set with prices ranging from $1,150 to $1,800. Caught between the technology waves of HD and 3D, TV makers need a difference-maker and for the 2009 holiday season, that’s...

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Three Wireless HDMI-Like Standards Duke It Out

 

- WHDI Still Thinks It Can Outshine Wi-Fi for Video

"Wanna-be" wireless standards battle while the tangle of cables in, around and behind the home’s entertainment center continues to grow like a cancer. The fight is to become the universal standard for wireless high speed, short-range connections...

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Seagate Launches Solid State Drive, Finally

Solid-state drives (SSDs), which store everything in memory chips, took another step closer to becoming an option for PCs this week when Seagate, the world’s largest maker of traditional disk drives, launched its Pulsar solid-state drives.

 

SSDs use flash memory, which can boot, retrieve data and load...

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Labor Proposes £6 ($10) Annual Broadband Tax

Not to bring up a sore and long-forgotten matter, but the UK once taxed sunshine back when an Irish home’s taxes were based on the size of its windows. Now it’s the phone line.

UK Chancellor Alistair Darling has put £6 ($10) a year broadband tax on...

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Two New Undersea Cables to Connect Asia to the Rest of the World

The world keeps getting bigger wires, larger "pipes" that will allow entertainment and information producers to distribute contents directly to billions of consumers worldwide with the click of a mouse.

Singapore’s StarHub this week launched the first undersea cable linking Singapore directly to the United States. Called...

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DSL 2013: Double and Triple Speeds Possible, But Limited Deployment

By Dave Burstein of DSL Prime

John Cioffi, CEO of ASSIA, which specializes in high-performance DSL designs using Dynamic Spectrum Management (DSM), amazed the FCC hearing with talk of 200 Mbps bonded VDSL with DSM3, which one carrier believes will make fiber unnecessary. Infineon and ECI in...

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Hollywood’s Daily Variety to Start Charging for Access Again

The Hollywood insider publication Daily Variety will return to its roots when it phases in charges to access news on its Web site. It said that when it made the access free in 2006, the number of Web visitors increased − but not substantially its online advertising revenue.

...

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AT&T Exec Upbeat on U-Verse Pay-TV & IPhone

- Promises Congestion on Wireless Network Will Be Cleared

In markets where AT&T has advertised its U-verse pay-TV service for 24 months or more, its penetration rate is more than 20%, Ralph de la Vega, who runs AT&T’s wireless and consumer operations, said in a meeting with...

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Consumers Now Drive the Growth and Innovation in Technology

By Charles Hall

The 1990s was a decade that saw the total computerization of businesses and other organizations with PCs going on every desk. The typical company now has more than one PC per employee.

In the current decade of the "aughts," it was consumers that...

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Netgem Spins Out VideoFutur Entertainment Group

Fresh from landing a major deal with Telstra for its Internet-capable T-Box set-top box (STB), the France-based Netgem Group is splitting into two companies: one with technology and the other distributing video content via stores, kiosks, the Net and on-demand.

The consumer-focused audio/visual publishing and distribution operations...

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Comcast Seems Certain to Right the NBCU Ship

 - NBCU CEO Zucker: ‘We Haven’t Done a Good Enough Job’

 - NBC TV Dropped to Last in Viewership

 - GE’s Financial Troubles Held NBCU Back

In the prelude to and in the aftermath of Comcast’s proposed and agreed to acquisition of NBCU from General...

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New WiGig Wirelessly Connects CE Gear at 7 Gbps

 - Bye, Bye HDMI Cables

 - Connect STBs, Smartphones, Blu-ray Players, PCs, Digital Cameras

 - Copy a DVD in 15 Seconds

 - Intel Led Alliance Promises CE Products in 2011

The Wireless Gigabit (WiGig) Alliance, backed by the likes of chipmaking giants Intel, Broadcom, Atheros...

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A Glimpse Into IDC’s 2010 Crystal Ball

The New York Times preview of IDC’s 2010 predictions include: an Apple iPad digital tablet; pricier but higher function netbooks; 300,000 iPhone applications by year-end; 50,000 to 75,000 apps...

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Netbooks, iPhones/iPods, HDTVs, eBook Readers Fill Holiday Shopping Carts

Netbooks look certain to outsell iPhones and iPods this holiday shopping season — in revenue if not in units. TV sets are likely to be the biggest revenue producer, however, ...

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Micron to Ship Faster SSD Drives

PC users who want faster starts and file copying plus quick loading of applications need look no further than buying a PC with a solid-state drive (SSD) or adding one as a...

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Panasonic Sees Its Future in Solar & Energy-Saving Products

Sony sees its future as 3D video and Internet-connected CE gear. Panasonic, the world’s largest maker of plasma TV sets, sees its future in solar power and ...

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Spanish Cablecos May Follow Clearwire Model to National 4G Network

It may work in Spain, but it hasn’t worked in the States, at least not yet. Four of Spain’s largest Spanish cablecos — Ono, Euskaltel, R and Telecable — are emulating the...

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Redbox Gets Smart

Redbox has launched a new iPhone app this week that will publish codes for people to receive free DVD rentals, generally on Mondays. The app will send users to their nearest ...

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NY Uses Xbox, Playstation for Emergency Broadcasts

New York state officials are revamping their emergency alert broadcast system for natural disasters, emergency situations and terror attacks to include alternative media devices,...

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7digital Opens Finland, Norway Storefronts

The UK digital music store provider 7digital has launched new stores in Norway and Finland, selling more than 8 million tracks of CD-quality MP3s. 7digital has existing ...

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Blu-ray, DVD Combine for ‘Flipper’ Discs

Universal Studios Home Entertainment said it will release its first "flipper" discs — which contain both the Blu-ray and DVD versions of a film on ...

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Chamillionaire Goes to Vidly Express After YouTube Flap

Musical artist Chamillionaire was recently made to sit in a corner by his label Universal Music after uploading a video to YouTube and letting fans embed it throughout the Web.


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TV Everywhere Keeps Pay-TV Alternatives Out of the Market

Marvin Ammori, a media law professor at the University of Nebraska, told The Washington Post that services like TV Everywhere could keep start-ups out of ...

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The New Music Service for Television

Operators and content owners could work together to produce new music video TV channels by creating genre-based stations that fill the gap of previous music-related TV ...

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Comcast, Time Warner Ready to Launch TV Everywhere

Comcast, still a year or so away from taking over NBC Universal, will present its TV Everywhere service this month. Time Warner is expected to follow shortly ...

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Arqiva’s SeeSaw Online Video Service Gets BBC Content

The SeeSaw online video service was developed by the BBC under the name Project Kangaroo but was forced to sell it to Arqiva when the UK regulator Ofcom refused to let...

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Sony: PlayStation Will Get a ‘Premium Level’ for Content

Sony Computer Entertainment Europe CEO Kaz Hirai has confirmed that the company will be adding a "premium level" to the PlayStation Network (PSN) in an effort ...

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YouTube Adds Captions for Deaf Viewers

Google has begun adding automatic captions to videos available via YouTube in order to give deaf viewers full access to the service.

Ken Harren