Posted by Amanda Akien on 28 May 2003 | Tagged as: Announcements
Convergence has been discussed for decades. Finally it looks like becoming a reality as companies large and small put considerable effort into developing equipment for Digital Lifestyles.
Posted by Simon Perry on 28 May 2003 | Tagged as: Distribution
Lufthansa are going to be providing broadband Internet access on-board their planes from 2004. Service will either be via Ethernet or WiFi and will be around $35 for a 7-8 hours flight.
Posted by Simon Perry on 22 May 2003 | Tagged as: Announcements
Apologies for the recent lack of access to Broadband Entertainment News this week. Register.com failed to inform us that our domain, simonperry.com, was due for renewal. Placed in a position of possibility losing the domain, we were forced to pay them $235 to get the domain back, although they were the ones who had passed it for deletion. It not a very reasonable business practise and we would suggest avoiding them at all costs.
Posted by Simon Perry on 22 May 2003 | Tagged as: Distribution
Oftel, the UK telecom regulator has announced the UK now has two million broadband subscribers, which is encouraging. Sadly they’re currently including connections as slow as 128k in their calculation — not commonly thought of as broadband. At least the numbers are moving in the right direction and the take-up is accelerating.
Posted by Simon Perry on 16 May 2003 | Tagged as: Content
AOL and Sony have got together to make content and Instant Messenging available on broadband-enabled Playstation 2′s. Suits both parties I would have through, a good boost in publicity for Sony and a catch move by AOL against Microsoft. The “AIM Talk” voice-enabled Instant Messenger service is a trump of Xbox Live’s in-game talking.
Posted by Simon Perry on 15 May 2003 | Tagged as: Content
When will this stop? Apple have passed two million track sales in 16 days of service. This time they’ve provided more detail about the sales — half of the purchases have been as complete albums.
Posted by Simon Perry on 13 May 2003 | Tagged as: Business
The first product to come out from the TiVo/Toshiba deal, the Toshiba SD-H400, has been announced which combines a PVR and DVD player.
Posted by Simon Perry on 12 May 2003 | Tagged as: Distribution
UK Cable provider Telewest launched a 2Mb Internet service today, in addition to their current blueyonder 1/2Mb and 1Mb services. The pricing is very competitive at £50.
Posted by Simon Perry on 12 May 2003 | Tagged as: Gadgets, Platforms
There’s been a lot of speculation over the price that Microsoft will charge for the Xbox Live service after it’s all inclusive trial price comes to an end. They’ve now announced it at just short of $50/year or just short of $6/month. Whether the offering is strong enough to demand that kind of money isn’t obvious, but what is clear is that it will face stiff competition from the Sony’s zero cost service.
Posted by Simon Perry on 8 May 2003 | Tagged as: Gadgets, Platforms
VIA and Niveus have announced a digital lifestyle product, the Niveus Media ONEbox. The 1GHz machine runs Windows XP and is based on VIA mainboard and chippery, providing the functionality you would have imagined, Connects to your TV and HiFiPVR functions – record and playback TVPlay DVD’sPlay/rip CD’s & MP3′sDisplay digital photo’sPull content from other machines on your networkInterfaces for Ethernet, Firewire, USB, serial and parallel portsControllable via a remote controlNiveus Media have developed their own software, ONEbox Media Center, to control all functions and have integrated the TitanTV’s Electronic Program Guide (EPG), which will mean it will only cover US TV programming.
