So you’re out and about with the Misses, enjoying a nice night on the town. Maybe doing some light shopping in the downtown area. You know, a date night. Anyway, you both decide that you wanna watch a movie when you get home. So instead of stopping at a video rental store, you just dial a number and the movie is ready when you two get home. The future starts now, in 1951, with Zenith’s… → Read More
What did I say when the Blockbuster OnDemand service launched last year? I said something about not discounting the service because the company has a lot riding on it, that’s what. This partnership between Blockbuster and Samsung which will place the service on the majority of Samsung’s new video gear implies that the service broke through to the mainstream and is here to stay. → Read More
Paul McCartney’s previous album, Memory Almost Full, may have been, in so many words, complete garbage, but you have to give credit to the man for his latest endeavor, a new album from his electronic-ish band The Fireman. The album Electric Arguments is available as a DRM-free download from the band’s official site. It’s in a bunch of formats, too, including MP3, FLAC and Apple… → Read More
So CNET has a scare-you-to-bits piece about states beginning to tax digital downloads like iTunes. Nine states “have considered” such a tax this year alone, while the great state of Tennessee will tax “the retail sale, lease, licensing, or use of specified digital products transferred to or accessed by subscribers or consumers.” Then CNET brings up something called “nexus,” which is… → Read More
VUDU has just released a new version of their software and it will fix “several issues of importance to users and includes implementation of discounted extended rentals.” Discounted Extended Rentals: Rentals can now be extended at a discounted price for all movies on the service! * After an original rental window has lapsed (depending on the title, 24 or 48 hours after initiating… → Read More
The folks at VUDU sent this over. Sometime next week VUDU’s UI will get an overhaul to make the search for movies and TV shows much easier than it is now. They’re also making changes based on what we, reviewers/reporters, have been mouthing off about. I’ve only had a couple weeks to tinker with mine so I haven’t really noticed anything yet. Look for a review in the coming… → Read More
[photopress:inrainbowsno1_1.jpg,full,center] Despite being released three months ago as a digital download, Radiohead’s latest album, In Rainbows, was the best selling album last week. That must really upset the big record labels, who for God knows how long have been claiming that downloadable music would be the death of the album, of physical collections of music. Never mind that Radiohead… → Read More
[photopress:blackout.jpg,full,center] Make your own joke Sony, riding on a high after Warner’s decision to exclusively back Blu-ray, has used CES to announce Platinum MusicPass download cards. The cards, which will be available here in the U.S. on January 15, will let music fans download “high-quality” MP3s; they do look to be free of DRM, as we found out last week, since… → Read More
This guy, John Biggs, had the top-selling album last year Here’s to another statement by the RIAA calling all of us thieves. Album sales here in the good ol’ U S of A fell 9.5 percent in 2007 compared to sales in 2006. That number counts 10-track digital downloads as “albums,” but if you take those out of consideration then sales dropped 15 percent. The correlation to make… → Read More
It would be tempting to come up with a snarky headline for this story, such as “TiVo changing channels”, but we’ll spare you. In fact, we’re going to make a general summarization: TiVo is doing better than analysts thought it would, and that’s because it’s concentrating on working with content providers, not just using what they create. NBC, for example, after… → Read More
Breaking! Bands and Artists in the recording industry are trying to make money! Apparently, it took days for people to realize that Radiohead’s In Rainbows digital download was a marketing tactic to entice fans to buy the CD. After all, Radiohead is one of those bands with a bunch of cutters and alternative dudes as fans (oh no he didnt’!), so you know damn well they’re going to… → Read More
Not musically, but how they’ll go about selling their upcoming albums. Brit rockers Oasis and funkadelic party-machine Jamiroquai are slated to release their forthcoming albums directly to their fans on a “pay as you wish” system. The move comes after fellow UK musicians Radiohead used the same tactic to sell “In Rainbows”, which was released today, to fans. As a… → Read More
MusicGiants isn’t the most well-known online music download service out there, but they’ve been pumping out WMA Lossless files since 2005. Until a couple weeks ago, all of the super hi-res files were locked down with Windows Media DRM, but no more! Right now you can only get Paul McCartney’s Memory Almost Full DRM-free in truly bit-for-bit identical quality to a CD, but by this… → Read More
Microsoft has been taking its sweet time hopping on the digital download train – until now. Starting January 30th, Windows users will be able to download both Windows Vista and Microsoft Office 2007. Hopefully Microsoft won’t just take the MSRP of a boxed copy of Vista and slap it on the digital version. For not exchanging any kind of real materials, users should get a discount or… → Read More
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