Sky Anytime on PC downloaded its one millionth film on the 14 January neatly marking its first year of operation.
The Sky Anytime on TV service is the renamed Sky By Broadband service, which delivers select Sky’s TV content over a broadband connection to a PC.
Figures for the film downloads could have been larger if Sky hadn’t had to pull the service back in September after their chosen DRM-restriction system, by Microsoft, was cracked.
We’re assuming that the million films that have been downloaded have been paid for, making it a pretty big bonanza, given the films are a wallet-emptying £3.95 each. Once subscribers have paid up, they’re given access to it for seven days, but are restricting to 48 hours viewing window after the first viewing.
Dawn Airey, BSkyB’s managing director of channels and services, was keen to say her piece about it … “We’re delighted that customers have taken to Anytime with such enthusiasm. Sky Movies is the UK’s most popular movie service and we’re able to use broadband to give customers more flexibility in how they watch. The fact that in this first year we’ve already seen 1m movie downloads is testament to customers’ willingness to embrace new technologies and get more from Sky.”
Sky report that the service has gained a quarter of a million registered users in its first year of operation.
Backstory
To be frank, by the end of the program I was grateful to her. The sight of the fantastic disdain of Ken Russell made it worthwhile in itself.
It appeared that finally Endemol had got a quality production team behind this one, lead by an intelligent director.
Navigating through their home page to the CBB page; click on the “Watch 24/7” link; then the “Already own the pass” link. This pops up a new window with a form requesting sign up detail (despite the link being specific about already owning a pass).
Clicking Yes takes you to yet another Web page, grandly entitled License Acquisition. Here you’re requested to login _again_.
It’s not from lack of trying on their part either, Microsoft have been plugging away at their DRM solution for many years and, we have to assume, this is their latest as to get to view the streams, there’s a requirement to ‘upgrade’ your Windows Media Player to the latest version.
With Simon and Garfunkel’s ‘Slip Sliding Away’ surely on perpetual loop in the factory, LG have released yet another natty phone that’s big on that super-slidey thang, the 3G LG-SH110.
Rustling though the minimal specs offered thus far, we can tell you that Messrs LG have wedged in a 2.0-megapixel camera coupled with a secondary VGA camera for video calling, with the screen able to show your own face and the caller recoiling in horror at your gurning mug.
HSDPA connectivity offers super nippy 1.8Mbps connectivity with visio-conference functionality hoping to tempt business bods.
Not the first claim
The Nintendo DS has emerged as the top selling gaming device in both the US and the UK during 2006.
Americans certainly went waheey for the Wii, with 604,200 consoles shifted in December, backed up by brisk business for extra games.
Despite the bumper sales, Wii’s still remain as rare as a Cardiff City away win, with Nintendo Europe MD Laurent Fischer admitting that the company is still “facing stock shortages.”
In ye olde days, spammers just used to send out bucket loads of text-based emails, but these were proving progressively less effective against smarter anti-spam software employing tricks such as dictionary-based content filters.
All spam is annoying, but with its bundled images, this new technique adds a double whammy of gobbling up more precious bandwidth to deliver its spam-tastic cargo.
Sadly, the root of the problem with spam is the chumps who keep on responding and buying the dubious wares on offer (a bit like the mad fools who come down to Brixton to buy ‘drugs’).
The open source Mozilla Firefox browser enjoyed a whopping increase of nearly 50% during 2006, according to Web measurement firm, Net Applications
For every winner there has to be a loser or two, and in this case it was Microsoft, who saw their market share slump to 79.6% from 85.1% at the start of 2006, despite the release of an update to Internet Explorer last year.
Elsewhere, Opera grew its share to match Netscape, up from 0.6% at the beginning of the year.
Designed for Palm Treo 600/650/680/700p users, Genius! gives you fast access to mobile-optimised sites, via a tabbed interface offering, ‘information,’ ‘shopping’ and ‘translation’ categories.
Devious cheating pub quizzers will like the ‘information’ tab which will quietly send your question to fact-filled sites like google, wikipedia and answers.com and bring up a Webpage with the answer already showing.
Although it’s not one of those programs that is likely to change your life, power users regularly accessing the Web via their Palm Treos may find this an invaluable addition to their handheld – and at around a fiver ($9.99), it’s well worth a punt.