Roxio versus Nero

Two of the most popular consumer level DVD authoring programs are made by Roxio and Nero.  Roxio's Easy Media Creator and Nero's Suite are both priced around $100 and provide about the same features.  The goal of these products is to bring media management and creation to the desktop for the every day person.  With these applications you can import video and pictures from your camera, edit them, and then make your own DVD's.  While both products aim for simplicity they are in many ways complicated and buggy.  In addition the bundled software take over your computer by making itself the default application for every media file type available.  Fortunately Windows Vista Home Premium now comes with Windows Movie Maker and Windows DVD Maker which should be able to meet most of the needs of the everyday person.  If you needed features beyond what Windows Vista can provide, I'd recommend going with Nero first.

BetaNews | BBC Launches Free Online TV in UK

The media industry takes another step into the online entertainment space as BBC announces their new online TV application called iPlayer. Available for Windows XP computers located in the United Kingdom, users can download shows available in the BBC catalog and watch them on their own time. The content is of course protected by digital rights management preventing the files from being copied. In addition each downloaded show expires after thirty days. While this represents another move to online television (IPTV), the availability and usability of the media is rather limited.

Link to BetaNews | BBC Launches Free Online TV in UK
Link to Engadget | BBC launches iPlayer online video service

BetaNews | Congress Expresses Concern Over Digital TV Switch

If you are a part of the 19% of Americans still receiving your TV signal from your rabbit-ears antenna via over the air broadcast you may want to know that coming February 2009 Congress has decided to pull the plug on analog TV broadcasting. In the meantime Americans need to make the switch to cable, satellite, fiber, or over the air digital high-definition broadcast requiring an HDTV compatible antenna. You can most likely benefit from this free broadcast HDTV right now if you have a digital tuner in your TV combined with the HDTV antenna. Have an HDTV is almost exclusively necessary to have a digital tuner. To summarize if you want to keep watching TV for free after February 2009 you'll need to make sure you have an HDTV television set along with an HDTV antenna. Both HDTV's and antennas are available from low-end to high-end at various retailers such as WalMart, Best Buy, Circuit City, and more.


Link to BetaNews | Congress Expresses Concern Over Digital TV Switch

Joost: What is all the hype?

Here is my response to CyberNet's excellent post on Joost's recent announcement.

I think what Joost represents as a technology and a philosophy shift in the media market is what the world needs to help shake things up and add some competition to the big media conglomerates. Just in the last year there has been so many announcements about IPTV in various forms that have caused the industry to reevaluate what consumers want. As Apple launched into the iTunes Movie and TV stores and products like Joost and Amazon Unbox were announced we saw ABC, NBC, and others start making their shows available through web portals. This is a step in the right direction which I think Joost represents. I think Joost gets all the hype not because of their content or their sometimes unstable application, but because they are riding the waves of their former successes of Skype and Kazaa. Those guys seem to know what they are doing not only in technology but seeing and meeting the need of what the world wants.

What is Joost?
Joost is an interactive, on-demand, Internet- connected, television application that runs on Windows and Mac that allows you to watch tv and movies for free on your computer.

BetaNews | TiVo Offers Direct Movie Downloads

TiVo has announced the available to download movies on demand from the Amazon Unbox online video store. Movies and TV shows can be both purchased and rented with prices ranging from $0.99 weekend rentals to $14.99 for movie purchases.


Link to BetaNews | TiVo Offers Direct Movie Downloads

MacNN | Joost goes live, gets unlimited invites

The Internet TV company, Joost, has announced the availability of unlimited invitations in an attempt to roll-out their service in the mainstream. While you still need to sign-up via an invitation, finding them won't be very difficult anymore.

Link to MacNN | Joost goes live, gets unlimited invites

Joost Signs Major Advertisers

Joost pushes ahead in the Internet TV market today as they sign advertisement contracts with thirty-one advertisers including the likes of Coca-Cola, Nike, and Visa.

Link to Joost Signs Major Advertisers

Make Internet TV

The folks who brought us the Democracy Player (an Internet TV application) over at the Participatory Culture Foundation have provided a slick new website to help you make your own online video content including recommended equipment, licensing, and best practices for production and post-production.

Link to Make Internet TV

Macworld Announcements

Macworld 2007 brought us three major new Apple products that may change the way the world thinks about gadgets.

Missing the keynote, the new Apple AirPort Extreme provides your home or small business with super-fast 802.11n wireless networking along with printer and hard drive sharing. The AirPort Extreme starts at $179 and is compatible with PC's and Mac's.

The previously announced iTV has been branded as the Apple TV which provides a set-top box to share your iTunes library of music, podcasts, movies, music videos, photos, and more and connect it to your high-definition home theater system. The Apple TV supports wired and wireless connections to allow one computer to sync directly to the Apple TV's 40 GB hard drive and stream iTunes from up to five other iTunes libraries. Supporting up to 720p HD quality video, the Apple TV has HDMI and component video as well as analog or optical audio outputs. This revolutionary media device comes with the Front Row interface and remote for $299 and ships in February 2007.

The biggest announcement at Macworld blew everyone's mind as Steve Jobs introduced three revolutionary products: a full screen touch video iPod, a mobile phone, and an Internet communicator. The greatest surprise of all was that these three products are one device called the iPhone. The multi-touch screen iPod consists of only one hardware button with a complete software driven interface that provides innovative features such as auto-landscape/portrait mode, visual voicemail, wide-screen video, full web browser, Google Maps, and more. Steve Jobs claimed that the iPhone will revolution the mobile phone industry much like the iPod revolutionized the music industry. The iPhone now sports its own tab on the Apple website where you can view videos of the iPhone features in action.

Netflix "Watch Now" feature offers movie download alternative - Engadget

Netflix "Watch Now" feature offers movie download alternative - Engadget

Coming soon to your Netflix account...downloadable movies. Netflix has invested quite a bit of money hoping you might be interested in downloading/streaming the Netflix library over the Internet to your PC rather than just ordering DVD's to be sent to you through the mail. Every week seems to be bring us another service to provide downloadable content through the Internet. Perhaps this could be the beginning of the end for optical media.

BetaNews | Skype Founders Name TV Startup Joost

BetaNews | Skype Founders Name TV Startup Joost

The founders of Skype and Kazaa have finalized a name for their new peer-to-peer digital television service called Joost. Currently the beta is only available to those with invitations or invited by others of the server. Should Every Day Tech News get our invitation, we will make the invitations available.