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.
2m and Counting for Apple iTunes Music Store
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.
TiVo gets busy again
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.
They have also used this opportunity to announce their TiVo Basic service. This free, non-subscription service is a cut-down version of the normal TiVo service, that only looks forward three days rather the normal fourteen days and cuts out features such as the ability to auto-record a TV show based on it’s actors or director. TiVo’s monthly subscription has often been held up as a reason that the public has been hesitant about jumping on to PVR’s.
Telewest launch 2Mb service for £50/month
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.
This comes on the back of the recent news that the UK now has one million broadband cable customers.
Xbox Live US service pricing announced
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.
Niveus Media ONEbox announced
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 HiFi
- PVR functions – record and playback TV
- Play DVD’s
- Play/rip CD’s & MP3’s
- Display digital photo’s
- Pull content from other machines on your network
- Interfaces for Ethernet, Firewire, USB, serial and parallel ports
- Controllable via a remote control
Niveus 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.
It has a reasonable, non-PC looking case but doesn’t appear to have native support for WiFi and, as its single PCI slot is taken up with an ATI All-In-Wonder VE TV tuner card, it doesn’t look can unless it’s via USB. The expected price is $999 US and they plan to ship it in June 2003.
There is a growing number of these lounge-ready Media Hub/Digital Lifestyles devices appearing, which is further testament to realisation of media/computer convergence.
1 Million Tunes Sold at Apple iTunes Online
I got to use the Apple Music Store and iTunes 4 on Friday last week and was hugely impressed. Clearly I’m not the only one who’s keen on it as Apple has officially announced that they’ve sold more than one million songs in the first week. Along with this they’ve had 110,000 new iPod’s ordered and retailed 20k in the first weekend.
A huge success by any judgement.
Gymnasts twist to fit a story
The BBC News site has a story about how UK Gymnasts are becoming broadband connected to help their training. This has to be the strangest piece I’ve seen on the subject so far.
TiVo name a new president
TiVo has named Martin Yudkovitz as president. Previously he was at NBC for twenty years and leaves there as an executive vice president, so they’re clearly hoping that his address book will help them gain further acceptance with the US broadcasters.
“Yudkovitz will be responsible for driving deployment of TiVo through satellite, cable and advertising partnerships. Tivo said he will also focus on helping television networks and other content makers develop paid programming for its DVR service.”
Apple Announce iTunes Online and New iPods
As previously rumoured, Apple announced two music-related products yesterday – the new iPod‘s and their iTunes Music Store service. The iPod is essentially an upgraded, thinner version of the current machine that holds up to 30GB. It comes with a new docking cradle and the same unit will work on both Mac and Windows (later in the year).
The iTunes Music Store is the really exciting part. It sounds like it’s simplicity itself, as they provide 30 second, full quality previews of each track and buying is easy as they’ve licenced the Amazon 1-click system. The initially 200,000 tracks available provided by the big five record companies (BMG, EMI, Sony Music Entertainment, Universal and Warner) and are individually purchasable prices at 99 cents a track. They’re stored in AAC format but users will be able to burn unlimited CD’s for personal use and will be able to copy to unlimited iPods Old and New, and to three different Macs. Interestingly downloaded music is sharable between machines on the same wired or wireless network – and by using streaming rather than copying they will placate the music industry. Sadly, due to the licencing restrictions from the music companies, the service will only be available in the US – at least initially.
Video: Steve Jobs launches new iPod’s and Music Store service – watch it
Apple secrecy on unreleased products is legendary, so it was amazing to see that all of the details of todays announcements were disclosed on slashdot back in December. I wonder if the poster is still working at Apple?