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Hannover House, the video and film distributor has announced today a new deal with Google that will launch a video rental and VOD channel for Hannover on YouTube.

Starting this week, the channel will have 100 films from Hannover House, Elite Entertainment, FOCUSFilms, and Plaza Entertainment.

"YouTube and Google are uniquely positioned to reinvent the entire video-on-demand consumer model," says Eric Parkinson, C.E.O. "Their reach is unsurpassed, and their consumer pricing model is extremely competitive, in many cases beating traditional video rental costs. With more and more consumers moving toward video-on-demand as a convenient way to view movies, the Hannover House movie channel venture with YouTube will prove invaluable to our company."

"We believe that video-on-demand will continue to grow over the next few years into a major revenue source for the company. The technology has reached the point where films can be quickly and safely streamed directly to consumers, and this creates an immediacy not previously available. Additionally, video-on-demand eliminates the inventory, freight and storage costs associated with hard goods items such as DVDs and Blu-ray units."

BenQ has introduced the world's thinnest 21.5” W LED monitor, which promises "top of the line" performance as well.

Dubbed the BenQ V2220/V2220H, the 15mm-thick monitor has a 10,000,000:1 dynamic contrast ratio and offers Full HD 1080p playback.

DeviceMag adds that "the LED monitor has been designed in such a way that it possesses the ability to reveal detail in darkly lit areas of the screen rendered as undifferentiated blocks on less capable displays."

The monitor is also considered "green," given that it cuts down power consumption by 28.6 percent compared to CCFL models.

After first being blocked in 2008, an Italian court has once again ruled that ISPs in the nation must block access to the infamous torrent tracker The Pirate Bay, leaving millions of users without access to one of the most popular sites on the planet.

In the original case, after an appeal by the Pirate Bay, the Court of Bergamo ruled that foreign websites cannot be blocked over alleged copyright infringement. Fast forward until today and the Supreme Court has ruled that ISPs can indeed be forced to block torrent sites, even if they are foreign-based.

The ruling says any site that offers torrent links to connect to copyrighted material is "engaging in criminal activity," says TF.

Of course there are proxies, and thousands of other smaller sites that are not yet blocked, so it is not as if Italian torrent fans are in complete trouble.

After one week of suspended sales, physical books published by Macmillan have now returned to Amazon, ending the dispute that begun last week over the price of digital books (e-books).

Macmillan wanted the end of the set-price $9.99 e-book rate that Amazon has had for best-sellers, claiming it is too low and under-values books in general.

As a result, Amazon stopped offering both the e-book and physical copies of Macmillan titles but as of this past weekend Amazon responded by saying: We have to "accept Macmillan's terms because Macmillan has a monopoly over their own titles, and we will want to offer them to you even at prices we believe are needlessly high for e-books."

For now on, e-books from Macmillan will be priced from $12.99 to $14.99 at launch, with prices changing over time.

Although it is unclear whether the price cuts are temporary or permanent, Microsoft has cut the prices of their Zune HD models from $220 to $200 for the 16GB model and from $300 to $270 for the 32GB version.

Amazon and Wal-Mart have taken the cut a bit deeper, dropping the prices to $190 and $250, respectively.

Microsoft has implied that the prices are temporary "sales" prices but has not said when the promo will end, if ever. At the current price point, the Zune HD offers a discount from a comparable iPod Touch, the market leader for media devices.

The software giant still has under 5 percent market share while Apple controls over 70 percent.

According to BBLeaks, the upcoming BlackBerry Internet Service (BIS) 3.0 details have been leaked, and it appears that BB owners will be getting better support for Gmail among other significant updates.

For Gmail, BlackBerry owners can now create labels, as well as use a plugin that will sync the unread/read status of your emails to Gmail wherever you are using it.

Additionally, the leak shows added support for Open Office document file types, as well as Windows Media Audio (WMA).

It is still unclear when BIS 3 will be released but many are guessing it could hit as early as this month's MWC event.

According to the latest IDC numbers, vendors shipped 54.5 million smartphones in the Q4 2009, a record, and a 39 percent increase year-on-year.

Nokia led the pack with 67.7 million for all of 2009, 39 percent of the market. RIM came in second with 34.5 million shipments for the year, good for 20 percent share. Apple rode a strong Q3 and Q4 to come in third, with 14 percent share and 25 million units shipped.

Overall, 2009 shipments totaled 174 million, up 15 percent year-on-year.

Thanks to the DROID, Motorola was number four for the Q4, but still came in 7th overall for the year.

More details have been released on the upcoming Motorola Devour from Verizon, and it appears that the Android device will launch with Adobe Flash Lite, giving the phone the Flash support that no other Android device has had yet, including more expensive brother phone, the Verizon Motorola DROID.

Flash Lite works with Flash 9 content and will work using the built-in browser.

The latest update to Google Maps 3.4 has enabled multi-touch for the Motorola DROID, with pinch-to-zoom now available for the device, at least while using the popular app.

Last week Google updated the Nexus One to have multi-touch, silencing critics who had claimed that Google was purposely leaving out multi-touch for a number of different reasons including not wanting to pay patent royalties to rival Apple.

I updated my G1 to Maps 3.4 today and pinch-to-zoom didn't work so it seems as though this may be DROID-only for time being.

Yesterday we reported that Microsoft had slashed the price of the 120GB Xbox 360 HDD in Europe, while at the same time releasing a 250GB HDD in Japan.

Today they have announced the same offer for the United States, with the price officially dropping from $149.99 to $129.99 "while supplies last."

The software giant would not elaborate on whether this was the end of the 120GB model HDD, but it appears that way. Expect a 250GB HDD release in the EU and US territories soon enough.

According to a pretty long thread over at Zune.net, it appears that Zune Pass subscription holders have seen their music disappear in the last week, for no reason whatsoever.

Says the first post of the thread:

"Anyone else finding more content either not available, album only or music that was offered (Spoon/Arcade Fire) now just gone? This seems to be happening more and more over the past few months. Just wondering if anyone else has been having the same issues when looking for music?

Seems to defeat the purpose of paying $15 a month for a subscription and purchase service."

If you are a Zune Pass owner, check the full thread here and any responses from Microsoft.

According to figures from Forecasting and Analysing Digital Entertainment (FADE), the Xbox Live Arcade has hit $103 million in revenue for the year 2009, a giant 34 percent increase year-on-year.

The best-sellers were mainly at the $15 USD mark, and overall average price for downloadable games rose from $8.33 to $9.12 in the same time period.

Battlefield 1943 was the highest grossing game, accounting for $12.5 million in sales with an estimated 800,000 units sold.

The average XBL user spent $2.79 on Arcade for 2009, a drop from 2008.

There are currently over 20 million with XBL accounts.

Microsoft has noted that it will be dropping the price of the 120GB Xbox 360 HDD in Europe, as well as releasing an external 250GB HDD for the console in Japan.

The 120GB drive will drop from £99.99 to £79.99, "while supplies last," with many expecting that a 250GB HDD release will come after all supplies are exhausted.

"Microsoft is now offering a standalone 250GB hard drive in Japan to provide consumers in Japan more storage options for their games and entertainment," says Microsoft. "We work closely with retailers to determine the best approach for our products on a region-by-region basis. In Europe, the 120GB hard drive is available for an ERP of €129.99 / £79.99 while supplies last. We also offer other storage options for consumers to choose from such as the Xbox Live 60GB Starter Pack that includes a 60GB hard drive, three-month subscription to Xbox LIVE, ethernet cable and wired headset for an ERP of €79.99 / £59.99."

In June 2008, Sling Media introduced an iPhone-version of the SlingPlayer software, however, it only worked over Wi-Fi, and not AT&T's 3G data service.

As of this week, it appears a 3G-compatible version is coming.

Say the companies:

"Just as we've worked with Sling Media in this instance, we look forward to collaborating with other developers so that mobile customers can access a wider, more bandwidth-sensitive, and powerful range of applications in the future," said Ralph de la Vega, president and CEO, AT&T Mobility and Consumer Markets. "Collaboration with developers like Sling Media ensures that all apps are optimized for our 3G network to conserve wireless spectrum and reduce the risk that an app will cause such extreme levels of congestion that they disrupt the experience of other wireless customers. Our focus continues to be on delivering the nation's most advanced mobile broadband experience and giving our customers the widest possible array of mobile applications."

The upgrade is free to existing customers.

Deutsche Telekom AG is actively considering an IPO for its T-Mobile USA branch, as a way to help pay for the carrier's large upcoming infrastructure buildout.

Telekom is Europe's largest mobile phone carrier, but T-Mobile remains in fourth place in the US. It is currently in talks with banks for an underwriter of the public offering.

The company has already spent $3 billion on 3G infrastructure in the U.S., and Telekom's share price has fallen despite one of the largest stock market rallies in history.

DT and T-Mobile declined comment on the report.