News written by Dave Horvath (June, 2007)

Media players that stream content from the Internet are nothing new in today's market, but VeohTV wants to put its gloves into the ring. On the heels of similar players such as Joost and AppleTV, VeohTV hopes that its set of features will be enough to catch its own market share in this growing industry.

Although still in the beta phase, VeohTV claims to have already made agreements with "thousands of video sources" including the likes of NBC, Fox, Fight Channel, Car and Driver, as well as sites like YouTube, to name just a few. Currently, the software that runs VeohTV is on an invite only status where you fill out your information, and the company will send you a direct download link to the beta trial.

VeohTV will be a free software that you download, install on your dedicated media server PC and watch or even record your favorite media from many different Internet sources. Thats not all. VeohTV will offer users an experience complete with an interactive guide to browse favorite media subjects and if your media server comes equipped with a remote control, you can even control the guide through it. Additionally, VeohTV acts much like the popular TiVo where it can actually "learn" what you like to watch and, if allowed, fetch similar Internet programs for you to watch at your leisure. All media streamed through the software can also be "recorded" to your hard drive for viewing at a later date. Its too early to tell what type of copy protection, if any will be implemented.

Fans of the Cupertino California based company Apple have long awaited the famed iPhone for its promise of being the all-in-one gadget to own. With its ability to play music, watch videos and much more along with being a cellular phone, now anxious consumers can add one more feature to its healthy list.

Apple has announced that users of the iPhone will be able to stream video through Wi-Fi connectivity directly from YouTube. While YouTube has enjoyed great success for streaming videos to desktop users, there hasn't been much attention paid to mobile users. YouTube says they are now working on encoding a new format for their video streams to work seamlessly with cellular technology. Their hopes are that the new format will help aid in conserving battery life as well as keeping video quality up to the standards of the mobile user.

The Apple iPhone will be the first mobile device to receive YouTube's newly encoded content and is claimed to have some 10,000 video streams available when the iPhone launches on June 29th. YouTube also claims that new content will be added and available each week after the initial launch.

While the phone will use service from AT&T primarily, it will not get the benefit of the company's high speed cellular data links. In response, Apple claims that the YouTube content will operate fine and efficiently over the phone's short range Wi-Fi network connections.

In the constant struggle for who will emerge on top of the HD-DVD and Blu-Ray battle, Toshiba unleashes a new pair of devices that should surely get Sony thinking of its next strategy.

The Vardia RD-A600 and RD-A300 feature not only an HD-DVD recorder but either a 600Gb or 300Gb hard drive, respectively. The hard drives themselves are all that separate the two units from one another. That, and about $200 in the final price tag. Armed with a pair of digital hi-vision HD tuners, Firewire, and HDMI these dynamic duos weigh in at a lofty ¥200,000 (about $1,643). I'd start making your holiday gift lists early.

Source:
Engadget

While details of this are sketchy at best and there are multiple court orders to not release details to the public, it appears that the developers for the ARccOS encryption destroying software RipIt4ME and FixVTS have been heavily pursued by an Australian court.

In a copyright lawsuit issued Digital Digest, two separate court orders have been issued to seek out personal data as well anything related to the RipIt4Me software. In the first search, the courts were looking for anything related to the users involved, the actual use of the software as well as information leading to the development process. In particular, they were looking for information that shows the intent to circumvent the ARccOS corruption mechanism instilled on many Sony released DVDs. In a second search, one of the developers had personal items seized from their residence targeting again, information regarding the development of RipIt4Me as well as parties involved in its creation. Another person involved with the project was specifically named in the court order in which lead to the RipIt4Me website being taken down.

In a final order issued on May 3rd, Digital Digest was ordered to not include any forums that discussed DVD backups at all. In addition, the administrator of the site has been banned from providing any DVD backup support on any website.

Several big name movie studios have announced that they are fearful of the future of their film industry should the Cupertino, California based company Apple succeed with its Apple TV offering.

Released earlier this Spring, Apple TV seemed poised to take on the movie industry by offering select downloads from their iTunes service featuring a robust catalog of movies. With Disney already on board with Apple offering new releases and several other smaller studios offering titles from their older collection, Apple already offers some 500 movies. This new wave of film availability has sent the bigger movie moguls reeling.

The likes of Sony, Universal and 20th Century Fox will be missing from the iTunes list until they can see Apple implement a more viable plan for battling internet piracy. Additionally, these studios, along with a few others, believe that offering the convenience of downloading movies for a discounted rate through Apple's service will inevitably drive the price of DVDs down. With DVD sales being the industry's bread and butter, and with many poised to make their money from the next generation disks, this poses a huge business threat for future productivity.

In an interesting turn of events, the world's largest music label Universal Music thinks that it can get a better market share for legally downloaded music if it drops their current DRM practices. In a business study, Universal wants to dabble with the idea that financial gains from the sell of unprotected music just might outweigh the production costs and slump of sales in DRM encrypted downloads.

This experiment from Universal comes just two months after EMI decided to bed with digital giant Apple. This could be a good move on their part to combat competition in the music industry, but rivals such as Warner Music feel that a move like this would just open the floodgates on piracy.

Universal's experiment will last for only a short time, in which they will gather data and come to a conclusion on whether or not this is a good move later this year. Other companies such as the second ranked SonyBMG stated that if the music conglomerate decides to drop its current copy protection standards that it and other companies will be forced to do the same to stay competitive in the market.

In contrast, Warner has inked a deal with Lala.com to provide copy protection free music available for share, provided the company gets royalties on a per-play basis. Warner has also stressed that other means such as this need to be put in place, but DRM should not be taken away.

The National Hockey League has inked a deal with Sling Media, makers of the Slingbox. The Slingbox allows users to stream media from your television or DVR to any computer in the world. This deal is part of a push for their new service Clip+Sling which takes on a service similar to the popular YouTube website. The NHL has agreed to allow users to not only stream their favorite games, but they can take specific clips from games and upload them to the Sling Media website. The NHL also promises to upload their own original content for the masses to consume.

In contrast, another sports group, Major League Baseball doesn't feel that this service does their franchise any justice. To quote an MLB representative, Slingbox will allow users to ""redistribution of content without MLB’s express written consent". The MLB feels that allowing users to stream home games to anywhere in the world would interfere with their own already available content. The MLB hasn't made any moves towards legal actions to stop Sling Media from doing what it does best, but from the looks of it, it doesn't look like baseball fans will be able to partake in the same goodness.

Looking at a market analysis and seeing how well rival Nintendo is doing with its $250 Wii, the people over at Microsoft have started to turn around the ideas that they need a $199US console on the market. Thats what product manager David Hufford has hinted at. Hufford stated that he believes the $199 price point is the sweet spot in the console market and even stated that Nintendo's strategy of bundling a game with the console is a fine idea.

Microsoft comments that its fully aware that Sony's PS2 is still selling strong at its $129 price point and was a good deal since mid-2002 when it was reduced to $199 just after 2 years on the market. Sony boasts some 120 million PS2s shipped with a majority of them being sold post-2002.

Microsoft claims that even though they already take a hefty loss per console sold, that its ready to take an even bigger hit to have the opportunity to sell more units. They believe in their product and feel that the sell of games will make up for the loss in the cost of console production. Hufford also was heard at hinting of emulating Nintendo's sales tactic and could possibly include a pack-in game to coincide with the price drop.