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Tag: content-providers

  • YouTube HD Videos Now In Widescreen


    After weeks of trialling its new HD capabilities YouTube has officially launched its high-def channel.

    Users clicking on the newly added "watch in HD" option will automatically see the videos play in widescreen (16:9 aspect).

    YouTube originally announced its intention to go widescreen in November following the video sharing giant’s recent decision to start hosting full-length Hollywood movies.

    As well as boosting HD content, YouTube plans to add filtering options, including the ability to search HD videos.

    The Google-owned company will also be adding three new landing pages – youtube.com/music, youtube.com/news and youtube.com/movies – with a view to simplifying categorization and search.

    With competition intensifying as the likes of Hulu showing high definition videos, the improvements suggest YouTube is responding well to the challenge.

    The changes come just as Warner Music is pulling all its music videos off YouTube because of Google’s refusal to pay more money.

  • VUDU Brings The Web To TV


    VUDU has launched a new platform that brings Web-hosted applications and services to consumer appliances, including its own Internet movie player.

    The VUDU RIA (Rich Internet Application) platform will deliver TV shows as well as Web apps which enable users to share their photos and watch the tens of millions of YouTube videos on their HDTVs.

    The company plans to open VUDU RIA up to third party developers in the first half of 2009.

    Prasanna Ganesan, VUDU’s Chief Technical Officer, said the goal in creating the new platform was to allow anyone with Web development skills to easily author Internet-driven applications for the TV.

    "We are very pleased with the results and look forward to opening up VUDU RIA to the developer community," he said.

    VUDU says it plans to add more applications and services throughout 2009.

    Edward Lichty, executive Vice President of Strategy and Content, said VUDU RIA enabled customers to quickly open up huge libraries of web based content to TVs in living rooms around America.

    The company has created an initial set of applications and services in a new area of the VUDU home page, called VUDU Labs. It is available to all VUDU owners in the US amd has applications that include casual games, implementations of Flickr, Picasa and the entire YouTube library, as well as a new "On Demand TV" area with more than 120 channels.

    These include free on-demand shows provided by major network television and on-line specialty sites spanning news, food, music and sports.

  • Seadragon App Is Microsoft's First For iPhone


    Microsoft’s Live Labs has released its first application for the iPhone.

    Seadragon Mobile is an experimental image viewer that aims to make high-resolution images easier to handle on a small screen.

    It allows users to view enormous photo collections and high-resolution imagery using the iPhone’s multi-touch intuitive interface.

    The application provides a Deep Zoom feature to enable smooth image browsing of lots of images as well as simple manipulation of massive, gigapixel images.

    Alex Daley, group product manager for Microsoft Live Labs, said the iPhone had been chosen to launch the app because it is the most widely distributed phone with a graphics processing unit.

    "Most phones out today don’t have accelerated graphics in them," he said. "The iPhone does and so it enabled us to do something that has been previously difficult to do.

    "I couldn’t just pick up a Blackberry or a Nokia off the shelf and build Seadragon for it without GPU support."

    Microsoft’s goal for Seadragon is nothing if not ambitious – essentially it wants to change the way screens are used, be they wall-sized displays or smartphone screens, so that graphics and photos are smoothly browsed, regardless of the amount of data or the bandwidth of the network.

    Seadragon Mobile is available immediately on the iTunes App Store as a free download.

  • Bright Day For Dark Knight Blu-ray Sales


    Warner Brothers’ The Dark Knight has eclisped Iron Man to become the fastest selling Blu-ray Disc movie of all time.

    Approximately 600,000 Blu-ray copies of the movie sold on the first day in the US, Canada and UK.

    This represent 20 per cent of the total three million copies sold during the first 24 hours.

    An estimated one-sixth of the high-def discs were bought in the UK, with most of the remainder presumably being snapped up in the US.

    Warner Brothers is now predicting that it will sell one million BDs by the weekend.

    Iron Man’s day one record had stood at 250,000 BDs.

    Not surprisingly the studio has been quick to talk up what the figures mean for Blu-ray.

    Kevin Tsujihara, president of Warner Brothers Home Entertainment, said: "Numbers like these in this economic environment firmly establish Blu-ray as where consumers are headed."

  • HD Video Download Service Allows Blu-ray Recording


    Japan is to get the world’s first HDTV video download service that allows users to export high-def content from HDDs to Blu-ray Disc.

    Tsutaya online provides video content from a server to compatible digital home appliances and allows the content to be copied on Blu-ray Disc, iVDR-S and memory cards.

    Tsutaya obtained permission to use seven of the technologies that can export content based on MarlinDRM specifications.

    The service, which is to be launched on 19 December, will offer over 400 titles, including movies and TV programs created by US film companies.

    Tsutaya online has gained permission to dub HDTV content from them.

    HDTV video can be exported, without down conversion, to Blu-ray Disc, DVD-R DL (AVCREC) and iVDR-S media.

    AACS will be applied to recording on Blu-ray Disc and DVD-R DL media, while SAFIA will be applied to recording on iVDR-S media.

    Video can also be delivered in a form protected by DTCP-IP to DLNA-compatible devices.

    Tsutaya expects to be able to offer a down-convert service from HD to SD, with the content than able to be recorded on SD memory cards, Memory Stick PRO and EMPR (embedded memory with playback and recording function).

  • TeliaSonera Launches Unlimited Mobile Music Service


    TeliaSonera is to launch an "all you can eat" mobile music download service.

    The Swedish operator becomes the latest mobile player to offer subscribers unlimited access to "millions of songs" from all the major record labels plus several independent labels.

    The operator said that Telia Musik can be downloaded to either a mobile or a PC.

    Telia in Sweden will be the first mobile operator to launch the service, which will be free for the first three months and cost SEK99 (USD $12.2) per month thereafter.

    However, TeliaSonera said the service will eventually be offered to more than 13.3 million mobile customers across six of its markets, including Norway, Finland, Denmark, Estonia and Lithuania.

    In Sweden, Telia Musik will compete with Sony Ericsson’s new unlimited music download service, PlayNow Plus.

    It is being offered by rival mobile operator, Telenor Sweden, and also costs SEK99 per month.

    The service could also compete with Nokia’s high-profile Comes With Music product, which is being offered in the UK by mobile operator 3 UK and is expected to launch in further markets soon.

  • Netflix Beats Blu-ray Target – Hopes High For 2009


    Netflix has reached its target of 500,000 Blu-ray subscribers ahead of schedule.

    The retailer’s chief financial officer Barry McCarthy said subscribers had added the option of paying an extra USD $1 to receive Blu-ray Disc titles at a quicker rate than Netflix forecast in October.

    While prices of Blu-ray players have dropped sharply recently, the same has not been true of disc prices. This may have benefitted Netflix’s HD rental service as new Blu-ray player owners look to rent moviest rather than buy them.

    Netflix expects the Blu-ray service to help boost total subscribers to about 9 million by the end of the year.

    To continue its high-def push, Netflix will promote Blu-ray inside its mailing envelopes next year.

    As well as providing the Blu-ray option, the company has boosted subscribers by offering its listing of over 12,000 video-streaming titles available for TV viewing through TiVo digital video recorders.

    Last week, Netflix also began offering an HD download service on two Samsung Blu-ray players.

  • Pioneer 400GB Blu-ray discs will play on PS3


    There are undoubtedly pros and cons to having a single disc that can pack in 400GB of data – movies, music…whatever you can throw at it.

    Pioneer is preparing for release a 16-layer Blu-ray disc that not only offers this colossal storage capacity but will play back on most current standalone Blu-ray players, including the Sony PlayStation 3.

    The manufacturer insists that the read-only disc will be backwards compatible with existing players because the specifications of the pick-up head (PUH) of the disc are the same as those for blank BD discs.

    Currently, Blu-ray discs are either single layer 25GB discs or 50GB dual-layer discs.

    The new multi-layer disc is based on current Blu-ray discs but made from a new material of reflective layers of Dielectric.

    It is read-only (ROM) but there are plans for rewritable discs by 2010-2012.

    What is still not clear is whether current players will be able to read all 16 layers of the 400GB disc, rather than just the first two.

    The company also added that it will begin manufacturing 40-layer 1TB discs in 2013.

  • Samsung Blu-ray Players First To Offer Netflix HD


    Blockbuster may be hinting at offering its download service on Blu-ray players – Netflix is actually doing it.

    From next week two Samsung Blu-ray players are to provide Netflix videos in high definition.

    With a firmware update, both the BD-P2500 and BD-P2550 models, which currently offer standard-def steaming, will be able to offer HD
    programs from Netflix’s online DVD rental service.

    The Netflix HD movies, of which there will initially be about 300 titles, will be in 720p video, a lower resolution than the 1080p resolution
    available on Blu-ray discs.

    That said, it will bethe first time that a Blu-ray player will be able to offer high def streaming from any service.

    Last week, Blockbuster launched a movie rental download service in the US via set-top boxes.

    Following the announcement, Blockbuster CEO Jim Keyes was reported as saying that its download services will be coming to undisclosed Blu-ray players "by the first quarter of next year".

  • Growth Towards 3D HDTV Gains Pace


    Panasonic has submitted a proposal for a 3D Blu-ray standard to the Blu-ray Disc Association.

    The standard would offer guidelines for creating "left/right-eye two-channel full HD images".

    Hiroshi Miyai, Panasonic’s director of AV developments, said that the changes should be quite simple, claiming that the discs would simply need some kind of flag to identify image data, equipment and other elements supporting 3D imagery.

    "We really don’t need any other major changes," he said.

    Panasonic’s submission comes as Korea’s LG announces its intentions to bring 3D TVs to some markets in 2009.

    Choon Lee, vice president director of LG’s Digital TV Research Lab, gave no specific information about the launch details other than that one or two unspecified markets will be getting the technology.

    He said the tech itself would undergo a slight change to existing Blu-ray technology and use the media to keep costs to buyers down.

    In Japan, viewers receive two hours of 3D programming daily over satellite broadcasts.