Category: Gadgets

Some clever characters have written a media player for the Xbox. Currently running videos on DivX 3 & 4, it will soon have MP3 and Windows Media capabilities as well. This kind of thing has been on the Dreamcast for a while by bedroom developers, and given the supposed ease of development of the Xbox, I would have thought it’s something Microsoft would want to encourage. Apparently they’re trying to take legal action to stop it.

Murmurs that the frequency that was/is used by ITV Digital in the UK could be sub-divided for wireless broadband access.

The sales on the Microsoft Xbox have been lower than expected, so they have now downwardly adjusted the sales targets from 4.5m to 6m to 3.5m to 4m). Where they are different from the game console makers is in the fact broadband and a hard drive are included with the unit, giving them a natural advantage in broadband, multi-user games.

I was briefly at a MS PocketPC social event in London last night and MS had taken the opportunity of making a large numbers of Xboxes available (around 30-40). It’s no shock that the attendees were keen to play, they must be the perfect market, but they were incredibly popular. So why isn’t Xbox selling in the numbers anticipated – the price maybe?

Microsoft UK have announced they’re taking 1/3 off the price of an Xbox from 26th April, dropping the price to £199. The PR quote is that they are “determined to not make price an issue” – translation – people think it’s too expensive and the GameCube is going to be coming out at the beginning of May in the low hundreds. The current three-way battle should be interesting to watch over the coming months.

There have been rumours buzzing around about the possibility of many of the $5-10k HDTV set that have been sold in the US won’t be able to display HDTV by the time it’s actually publicly launched. A news item appears to confirm the rumour. Discussions between the Hollywood studios and equipment manufacturers has lead to the creation of the High Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI). HDMI will be the interface between the receiving set top box and the screen/monitor, enabling the content to remain encrypted up to the point it is displayed. By unscrambling at the point it is actually viewed, the studios hope to reduce unauthorised copying of films.

The constantly innovative SonicBlue have been talking about combining PVR and DVD players in the same unit for only about an extra $75 on top of one of the individual box price by xmas 2003. Their CTO also predicted that in two years they will have one terabyte of storage in their PVR – giving around 3,000 of programming.

SonicBlue have signed and exclusive deal with Amazon to sell it’s 4000 range of broadband-enabled PVR’s.

A new Broadband delivered TV service is being launched in Helsinki. One of the companies, Elisa Communications, is also going to be working on a wireless version in a shopping centre.

Another broadband connected device, this time a TV from Panasonic. It will also have a dial-up modem and is reported as being able to download content at off-peak hours ready for viewing later, so I assume PVR functions.

Sony will be launching its PlayStation 2 on Broadband service in Japan in April. Through recent deals it now has access to 70% of Broadband users and is talking about offering general entertainment (music, films, etc) as well as downloading and playing games.