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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, 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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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.

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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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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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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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.

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’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 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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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.

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 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 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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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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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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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 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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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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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, 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, 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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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 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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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, 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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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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- 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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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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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’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 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 — 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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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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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 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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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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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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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.

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 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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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 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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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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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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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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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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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 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, 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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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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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’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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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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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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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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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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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 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 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 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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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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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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- 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’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 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, 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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- 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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- 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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- 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 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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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 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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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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"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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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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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 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.

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, 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'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.

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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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'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 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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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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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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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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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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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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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 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'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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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 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.

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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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 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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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- 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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- 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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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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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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 Poised to Unveil iSlate, Nokia a Revamped Ovi Store

- Nokia’s New Web ...

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

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

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

AT&T needs to spend an ...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

- Demos Backward ...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

While allowing access to Web services ...

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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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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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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 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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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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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 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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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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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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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 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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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-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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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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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 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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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 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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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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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 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 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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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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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 (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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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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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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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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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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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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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 — 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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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 - 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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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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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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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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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 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 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 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, 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 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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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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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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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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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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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 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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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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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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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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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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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 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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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 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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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 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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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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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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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 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 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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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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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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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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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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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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 - 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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 - 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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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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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 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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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, 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 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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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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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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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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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 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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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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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 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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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, 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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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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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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 - 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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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 - 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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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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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 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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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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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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 - Venture to Be Called Digital Television Group

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 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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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 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 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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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- 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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 - ‘Flat, Unadulterated Theft’

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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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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 - Smaller, 20% - 50% Less Power Consumption

Broadcom’s new BCM2763 VideoCore IV chip for smartphones supports 1080p...

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The much ballyhooed 20^th 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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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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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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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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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 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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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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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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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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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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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 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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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 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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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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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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 - 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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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 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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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,...

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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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- 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 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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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 ’ 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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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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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 , 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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- 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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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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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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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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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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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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  - 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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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-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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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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- 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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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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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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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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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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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.

- 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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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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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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 - NBCU CEO Zucker: ‘We Haven’t Done a Good Enough Job’

In the prelude to and in the aftermath of Comcast’s proposed and agreed to acquisition of NBCU from General...

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 - Bye, Bye HDMI Cables

The Wireless Gigabit (WiGig) Alliance, backed by the likes of chipmaking giants Intel, Broadcom, Atheros...

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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 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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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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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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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 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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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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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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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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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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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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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, 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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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 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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Google has begun adding automatic captions to videos available via YouTube in order to give deaf viewers full access to the service.

Ken Harrenstien, a hearing impaired ...

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MySpace has finally launched its MySpace Music in the UK this week, expanding its ad-supported music audio and video-streaming service in hopes to drive up traffic with its ...

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Australian label Moo Moo Music supplies sounds and songs to background music systems, and it is currently on the hunt for new talent.

By looking for talent from emerging ...

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While the music industry is always looking for the next big thing to drive sales amid its tumultuous seasons, it is starting to look at smartphones and their apps as a...

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Webcasts of live and recorded concerts, music videos and recording studio sessions have been very hit-or-miss and have ranged from blurry, pixilated videos of Madonna to ...

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- The Need for Low-Cost Mobile TV Handsets Makes for Strange Bedfellows

- 15 Mobile Operators Dangle Large 100K to 500K Orders

- Clarify What They Want

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Mirics, which makes chips for wireless devices to receive TV broadcasts — thus pushing an agenda of driving broadcast TV through netbooks and PCs — reported that ...

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The next thing we’ll have is programmers writing applications to run on refrigerators and vacuum cleaners. France-based Archos has opened its newest portable media...

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The biggest difference between a strict app approval process and a more lax one got highlighted this week: adult content on mobiles.

For the iPhone, there’s no app ...

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Clearwire has met its promise of being available to 30 million people, the final two markets being Seattle and Honolulu, by year-end.

It says it’ll quadruple its ...

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Faster, faster, said the smartphone user.

Virgin Media has begun offering 7.2 Mbps mobile broadband via a USB modem. It’s offered in a number of separate plans...

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Faultline pointed out that, while the BBC revealed record numbers for viewing on its iPlayer this week, by comparison with Hulu, it was a relatively weak showing.

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Harvard Business School Professor Anita Elberse has published a new study claiming the drop of around 33% of total weekly sales of any album and its songs are linked to consumers ...

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- 90M Pay-TV Subscribers by 2012

Two myths that exist at many US companies are that European households only have one TV set and few Europeans subscribe to cable...

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Brazil, Russia, India and China (the BRIC countries), with 42% of the world’s population, will have 139 million broadband connections at the end of 2009, according to Strategy ...

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AT&T and Verizon Wireless have decided to settle their disputes in the marketplace rather than in the New York and Georgia courts. Their suits/countersuits dealt with which had the best, biggest and...

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Internet gargantuans Google, Facebook, Yahoo and eBay plus other Internet companies have told the UK government they’re opposed to a proposed law that...

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At the end of November, police in Italy raided a factory that was manufacturing counterfeit discs shipped and sold throughout Europe.

The Italian Fiscal Police raided a ...

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Zorap, a "coming soon" service that allows users to video chat and share files, is slowly coming to life though it seems to be biding its time.

The service...

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- Throws Cloud Over Future Rovi Revenues

It is a litigant’s nightmare and a lawyers dream to try to sue anyone in a European court for a patent ...

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Australia’s Copyright Tribunal has started discussions over the country’s digital download royalty rates for authors’ rights as a case from 2007 finally reaches the bench.

The Australasian Performing ...

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Authorities in Japan have arrested 10 users of Share, a popular file-sharing application, on copyright violations, according to the Anti-Counterfeiting Association.

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- From TV Channels to Web Browsing

-‘Easily Ported to Many Devices’

TV and set-top box widgets are all ...

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The latest buzz around the music phenom Spotify is that it is aiming at game consoles and next-gen CE devices.

Spotify has said that the rumor isn’t ...

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Nintendo is delivering on its promises — and quite a few rumors — and has rolled out a new pay-per section for its Japanese VOD offering "Wii no Ma" or Wii...

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YouTube has been going after premium content for some time, but new reports show it is looking at TV network content in a new way.

YouTube is in early...

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France-based technology and media services company Thomson, which owns Technicolor and other digital media operations, has obtained protection from creditors so it can...

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Companies such as Entropic, Intellon, CopperGate, DS2 and Broadcom, which make chips for wireline home networking gear, have to take two paths to succeed with ...

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The ACE (Africa Coast to Europe) submarine cable system that’s being built by a consortium of companies will stretch 14,000 kilometers (8,400 miles) from France to South ...

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Coming soon, according to Wireless Watch, are devices that will allow remote monitoring of healthcare for users to manage their own fitness and their medical records. The ...

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- ‘A Computer With a Broadband Connection Is Like A School Inside Every Home’

- ‘Transform the State of Rio De Janeiro Into a Digitally Intelligent State’

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If US broadband service providers could only build broadband networks as fast as they can produce requests for government subsidies!

The US’ NTIA, one of the ...

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- But Will Have 600,000 Subscribers by Year-end 2010

Must-have, low-cost devices are no-shows for WiMAX. That’s a song that’s been played in The ...

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After World War II, then US President Dwight Eisenhower, impressed with Germany’s autobahn, got the US Congress to appropriate substantial funds to build a high-speed, ...

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Panasonic, the official audio and video sponsor of the 2010 Winter Olympics, will use the event to promote an upcoming line of "advanced 3D products," which means TVs, ...

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In four years — 2013 — one-third to one-half of new Sony TV sets will be 3D capable, according to Sony executive deputy president Hiroshi Yoshioka in an ...

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News Corp chief Rupert Murdoch has won round one in his attack on Google and other news aggregators for using others’ content to make money.

Google says it has...

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- The Media Industry Will Never Be the Same

- Gets the Content It Wants, When It Wants It and on the Devices It Wants It On

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- Isn’t There an App for That?

Time Inc, Conde Nast, Hearst and Meredith are developing plans to create an "iTunes for magazines," according to The New York Times, citing...

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- Quarterly Revenue up 3.5% to 41.7B

- Monthly ARPU Jumps 8.2% to $115

Charter Communications, the major US...

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The Wall Street Journal’s Martin Peers this week wrote a very critical article about Aol. (the company’s new name), saying that Time Warner and shareholders will be better off...

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Boomers are just as likely, if not more likely, to use technology in the same way and as frequently as Millennials, according to the "The 2009 Media Engagement ...

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- ‘Free’ Unlicensed Spectrum for WiMAX

- Alvarion Finds WiMAX’s Sweet Spot

- ‘The New Wireless Broadband Experience’

The goal is to have 100% broadband availability, right? Universal access? Every home?

To get there...

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TiVo appears to be slowly getting its desire: exiting DVR manufacturing and licensing its software and designs to others. This week, it said it’s working with the UK cable king Virgin Media to develop interactive programs that’ll be in Virgin...

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Music sales in Sweden are on the rise, and depending on who you ask, it’s either due to all the piracy legislation and court battles or the introduction of better legal alternatives like the four new physical retailers that have opened...

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Swisscom is changing the name of its IPTV pay-TV service, which uses Microsoft’s Mediaroom software, from Bluewin to Swisscom TV. After three years, it has almost 200,000 customers. 

The out-of-power Conservative party wants the government to help start about 80 local news channels that would be manned by volunteers. It sounds like Google’s YouTube Direct, which allows TV and online news editors to get free videos from “citizen...

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ARM, which designs processor chips that go in mobile handsets and other devices, said companies that use its designs to make chips are expected to have a good 2010. President Tudor Brown told Dow Jones Newswires that ARM’s conversations with...

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The BBC is making every episode of Melvyn Bragg’s “In Our Time” from Radio 4 available on the Net. See: http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/iot 

Vivendi with its 20% ownership of NBCU is still the block that’s preventing consummation of GE’s sale of a majority of NBCU shares to Comcast. Vivendi also has the right to offer its NBCU shares in an IPO but that could...

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News Corp, owner of The Wall Street Journal, the London Times and other newspapers worldwide, the Denver Post and the Dallas Morning News are considering action to block Google from indexing and offering their articles. Instead they’ll do a deal with...

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EBay has completed the sale of 70% of Skype for $2.75 billion to a group of investors and the Janus Friis/Niklas Zennstrom-owned Joltid. Here’s hoping Skype now has 100% ownership or at least 100% control of the Global Intelligence software...

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IFC Entertainment has signed a deal with Netflix to distribute 53 independent films on the service. The titles are already available for streaming on PCs and TVs, marking the first expansion of IFC content to the digital space on Netflix. ...

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Epix, the pay-TV and Web joint venture from Viacom, Paramount, MGM and Lionsgate, has announced that the pilot for its first original series will air early next year. The series, “Tough Trade,” will begin production for its pilot next month....

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MySpace Music, the joint venture from the major record labels and News Corp’s MySpace, has signed a global licensing agreement with independent label Merlin. It is uncertain if Merlin, which represents 10% of global music sales, will get an equity...

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Project Canvas may not be available until 2011, according to the BBC’s head of future media and technology Erik Huggers in a Daily Telegraph report.  

The obstacle, he said is the BBC Trust, which is...

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The BBC will begin limited testing of its iPlayer service on Humax-manufactured Freesat STBs on December 7. About one-third of Freesat users have a Humax box. A trial with the ITV catch-up service will begin in early 2010.  

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For the US, Hulu is the Internet video service that consumers most want to get on the TV set and content producers can’t try harder to keep off, but according to Verizon Communications CEO Iven Seidenberg, Hulu “won’t matter” a...

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YouTube has now grouped its premium content on its UK site under a “Shows” section, combining clips and full programs from Channel 4, BBC Worldwide, Fremantle and others.  

At launch, it included around 5,000...

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Rap artist 50 Cent is the latest to sign up and promote with the online Webcasting firm Ustream, though unlike most musicians, the artist is using the service to premiere his new movie, “Before I Self Destruct,” instead of a live...

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E-Book readers aren’t the only single-use Internet-connected devices.  

There’s also the $129 PogoPlug. It connects — via the home’s network, a media server or USB drive — to the Net so users can share with...

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Live Nation has announced a partnership with Apple to begin to develop a live music offering that will sell recorded and filmed concerts for purchase on iTunes. Apple has been stepping up its music-related video offering lately, and this addition...

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