According to The Business Insider, software makers PacketVideo are planning to release an iPhone app that will enable users to watch live TV on their phone.
The ability to watch live TV on mobile phones has been a reality in both Japan and South Korea for some time and seems to have been very popular among users.
For the networks it is hard to see how this would be anything but beneficial. More eyeballs forced to watch the commercials that are still a part of the live TV experience. Of course, this is not good news for cable operators, especially if PacketVideo somehow is able to offer something other than what is already freely available via over-the-air broadcasts.
The iPhone also lacks a TV-tuner so the signal has to be coming via WiFi so who knows. It is beyond my technical understanding.
The bigger question is whether or not anyone wants to watch live TV on their phones. The only real applications I can think of are news and sports. News might be a possibilty, but I would hate to be PacketVideo trying to wrangle broadcasting licenses from the major sporting leagues.
Image via Wikipedia
There was a piece in the New York Times about the somewhat surprising success of iPhone Apps, especially the success of the apps that aren’t free:
What’s most interesting is how iPhone users are willing to spend money in ways that Web users are not.
I’ve criticized Apple from time to time for not having a coherent approach to delivering free content with advertising. But in some ways, the development of a market for paid content is a bigger and less expected achievement.
Why has this happened? Apple has created an environment that makes buying digital goods easy and common. With an infrastructure that supports one-click purchases of songs and videos, it was easy to add applications in the same paradigm. Paying for software, especially games, is not new to Apple customers. So when you see the iPhone manual or the Frommer’s Paris guidebook, it feels natural to click. (And of course, your credit card is already on file with Apple.)
What I think is most important in this story is that is proves that most people are more than willing to pay a reasonable price for a decent piece of content if a) it is extremely easy and streamlined to make the purchase and b) the content is priced in a way that seems to fit the value.
It certainly wouldn’t be hard for their the be a vast P2P network for iPhone apps much like there is for music right now – and there is when it comes to “jail-broken” iPhones – but it seems that the vast majority of users are more than happy to pay for the apps they want since Apple has made it simple and affordable.
Hey record labels and studios, you guys paying attention?
One of the few things that keeps me downloading TV shows from “illegal” P2P sites is that the networks, while offering up great content via streaming, have been quite stingy when it comes to downloading shows for viewing on portable devices.
NBC is trying to move in that direction with the introduction of NBC:Direct.
Windows only: Sure, almost all the offerings on NBC Direct can be watched at streaming site Hulu. But if you’re an HD fiend and want offline access, NBC Direct’s player might be worth checking out.
NBC Direct is definitely powered by DRM and ad-powered software, so if you’re not cool with that, well, you probably know a few other places to look (like, er, Hulu). But if you dig the idea of subscribing to, and downloading higher-quality videos of your favorite NBC shows, it’s not a bad way of getting them guilt-free. (via)
There are still ad breaks, which is fine, but the continued presence of restrictive DRM, being Windows-only and far from “one-step” means that it is unlikely to stem the tide of pirates.
As with most internet fads, better get in quick as it will probably be over by next week. But until then we have an all-new meme-in-the-making with the help of Microsoft’s new Songsmith software.
If you missed the priceless web-video about Songsmith, it basically takes any vocals you sing to it and then adds musical backing tracks in a variety of styles.
Now, (via Pitchfork) comes so downright genius “remixes” in which the lyric tracks of famous songs are loaded into Songsmith and the resulting backing tracks are, well, quite a departure from the original. Of the ones posted on Pitchfork, my favorite had to be this new version of Wonderwall by Oasis:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1e_h1OJfS4&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&feature=player_embedded&fs=1]
Aside from being pretty funny, it demonstrates both the possibilities and limitations of a program like Soundsmith. More importantly, it will be fascinating to see if these sorts of mashups become a true new internet meme or just a funny passing fancy.
Sure, it’s easy to pick on Microsoft, what with Apple making all those clever “I’m a Mac” ads (not to mention all those clever products). Still, it is hard to cut them much slack when you see something as monumentally lame as this long-form ad for their new DIY song-making software, Songsmith:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oGFogwcx-E&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&feature=player_embedded&fs=1]
The saddest part is that the software is at least marginally cool. It certainly doesn’t replace authentic songwriting but it could be fun in a RockBand / Guitar Hero sort of way.
It’s hard to decide what is most surprising – that some company would actually pitch this as a way to sell Songsmith or that Microsoft execs allowed the video to be distributed once they saw the final results.
On of the many super-cool niches out there on the web is the world of “fanedits.”
As defined by TorrentFreak:
“Taking famous movies as a base, faneditors spend huge amounts of time editing with sophisticated software in order to create improved or just plain different versions of existing movies. Most of the time, faneditors try to improve what is wrong or bad with a movie, using advanced techniques to create a new piece of art based on the original. Of course, faneditors love to share their work with others in the community, something the movie industry wants to bring to an end.”
Now comes word that one of the most popular sites for fans to share their edits is being shut down due to DMCA takedown requests.
Not only is it yet another absurd example of the major motion picture studios attacking the core fans they rely on for ticket sales, but, in this case, it exposed one of the horrible pirates they are trying to stop.
“I am boon23, faneditor and administrator of the biggest fanedits website in the world. I’m a preschool teacher from Europe and as faneditor I post under the name CBB (created by boon) and have so far created 29 fanedits, which is quite a lot. It is my hobby, my art, the thing I really love to do and will continue to do.”
Yup. A preschool teacher. Nice work, guys. Go get ‘em!
Tags: Add new tag, Arts, Computers, Digital Millennium Copyright Act, dmca, Editing, Film, Film industry, movies, torrentfreak
Uncategorized | admin | 
November 24, 2008 8:37 pm | 
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