Industry

The Day the Music Died

Many, many people have covered this story, but in case you haven’t seen it here, here or here, the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) has made a significant change in its rate scheme which, if upheld, will result in substantial royalty increases – enough to kill off most Internet music services.

From GigaOM, here’s what Tim Westergren of Pandora had to say:

“Left unchanged, it’s over for us and every other internet radio service, period. Makes it un-viable,” Pandora co-founder Tim Westergren wrote in an email. “We’re staying online because we’re hopeful that sanity will eventually win out. This is a ludicrous ruling.”

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Macrovision Signs Netflix and BitTorrent

Macrovision put out a press release indicating that their copy protection is making its way into a variety of online download services. Netflix, BitTorrent, Movielink and Instant Media will all employ Macrovision’s Analog Copy Protection (ACP) technology as part of their distribution of movies and videos on their websites. Macrovision’s ACP technology helps online video … Read more

Mari Goes Moto

Dave’s not the only one going corporate. I am now blogger-in-chief for the Motorola Connected Home Solutions group. Officially I started the job at the beginning of the year, but we’ve been working out a few kinks, and in February made the switch to WordPress. (Counting my lucky stars on that one…) Check out the … Read more

TiVo & Daylight Savings Time

dali-clock.jpgIn an attempt to save energy nationally, Congress has extended the period of Daylight Savings Time here in the US. So we’ll be springing ahead a few weeks early this year. I’ve received several news alerts in the last week regarding TiVo and DST, a few of which caught my attention…

WTVM9:

And even V-C-Rs and Tivo which don’t have built-in updating devices

Mercury News:

But be prepared to reset your computer clock, too — and the clocks on your TiVo, BlackBerry and anything else electronic that depends on time.

TiVo units do have the ability to receive updates via dial-up or broadband and I don’t recall ever setting the time on my DVRs, so I did a little digging around. From some posts on the TiVo Community Forum (here, here, and here) it seems like:

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Perceptive Pixel

Remember in Minority Report when Tom Cruise and friends stood in front of screens and their mere hand motions summoned up data, zoomed in on photos and generally brought the universe to their fingertips? Well that’s what this video demo from Perceptive Pixel reminds me of. I saw it over on NewTeeVee, and it’s sheer … Read more

Blockbuster To Acquire Movielink

movielink.jpgAccording to the Wall Street Journal (via non-subscription sites), Blockbuster is in “advanced talks” to pick up Movlielink for under $50 million. Movielink, of course, is an online movie download service (using Microsoft’s video format and content protection, like rival CinemaNow). They were a pioneer in this space (long before iTunes and Netflix showed up) and were actually created by the studios, which most folks either don’t know or seem to have forgotten:

Movielink is owned by a joint venture of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Universal Studios and Warner Bros.

The purchase strikes me as a positive move for both companies… assuming they can pull it off. Movielink gets an audience (they’re pretty much unknown outside my geeky circle) and Blockbuster gets an immediate online download presence to compete with Netflix.

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Media Extender Day, Part 4: TiVo

We can’t have a media extender conversation here at ZNF without mentioning existing TiVo boxes. Though, at this point, it’s really a tale of two cities: Series2 and Series3 units. Networked Series2 units offer multi-room viewing (MRV), allowing the transfer and playback of recorded shows from one TiVo to another within the house. While we’ve … Read more

Media Extender Day, Part 3: SlingCatcher

Apple and Sony aren’t the only ones with media extenders launching in the $200 – $300 range later this year. My employer (Sling Media) will release the SlingCatcher in the second half of 2007. Our initial features will be the ability receive a Slingbox video feed on a television (without any sort of computer in … Read more