Floppyhead - Digital Media and Home Theater Computers » Digital Media

Pandora Survives | Adds Monthly Usage Limit

Kevin — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 15:44:31 +0000

It looks like Pandora is going to survive after all, albeit with some concessions due to royalty issues for online radio. From the Pandora blog:

The revised royalties are quite high - higher in fact than any other form of radio. As a consequence, we will have to make an adjustment that will affect about 10% of our users who are our heaviest listeners.

The gist of the changes is that accounts are limited to 40 hours per month of listening. If you go over 40 hours, you can pay $0.99 (yes, less than 1 dollar), for unlimited listening for that month. Overall, I can live with that, as long as it is not a slippery slope of upcoming charges. I might even look into Pandora One.

My usage of Pandora has picked up over the last 6 months with my purchase of an iPhone and Sonos adding support for the online music service. Pandora is basically my own private radio station. It is my most used iPhone app so I might actually use Pandora for more than 40 hours. We’ll see.

‘Jackass’ Movie to Test Internet Video Distribution

Kevin — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 03:28:25 +0000

Jackass 2.5, starring Johnny Knoxville and his band of merry men, will be launched on the Internet on December 19 and will be subsequently released on DVD. Instead of being a straight to DVD release, it is a straight to Internet release. According to the Associated Press:

Blockbuster Inc. will present “Jackass 2.5″ free of charge at http://www.blockbuster.jackassworld.com beginning Dec. 19 through Dec. 31; on Dec. 26, DVDs of the film will be available for purchase on the site and at major retailers, as well as for rent at Blockbuster stores and the company’s Web site. The film will also be available for download at iTunes, Amazon.com and other sites - at a price.

Jackass’s demographics make it a good test case for Internet distribution. Young males, who are the primary Jackass viewers, are typically Internet saavy and could be easily targeted with the right online campaign.

Hopefully, the movie will have some degree of success to the make the business model more attractive to Hollywood.� If it is done properly, the distribution of movies via the Internet could be a big boon to media center computers.

Blockbuster to Offer Downloads Via Kiosks

Kevin — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 12:32:09 +0000

Blockbuster has been hemorrhaging lately, trying to keep up with Netflix. It looks like the large rental movie chain is going to jump into the video download service via kiosks, among oter things.

Kiosks seem a little strange for a retail chain. I think Blockbuster is just trying to see what sticks in the marketplace. The idea behind the kiosks is that you connect your portable media player to the kiosk and download the movie. Seems like a niche market to me.

Redbox has the stranglehold on DVD kiosks in prominent locations like grocery stores and McDonald’s. Blockbuster was not able to beat Netflix in the mail-order rental business so I am not sure why they think they can take on Redbox in the kiosk business.

Via Electronichouse.

NBC Bringing Tonight Show and Jay Leno to Web

Kevin — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 00:48:10 +0000

Starting October 16, the Tonight Show with Jay Leno is making its way online. This is becoming a recurring trend of networks offering shows online. I like it.

From MediaWeek:

The Tonight Show will become the second late night talker that NBC offers online on a regular basis. Back in August, the network began posting full-length episodes of Late Night with Conan O�Brien on NBC.com, the first of the major late night talk shows to be available on the Web in its entirety.

There currently is a lot of Tonight Show related content at NBC’s website, stuff like Jay Leno’s Garage and The John & Ross Show. I am always glad to see networks release more online content. Hopefully the trend will continue and this content will get integrated into Windows Media Center though a plugin.

Belkin Ships Network USB Hub

Kevin — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 01:18:03 +0000

Belkin has begun shipping a networked USB hub ($130), that lets you connect any USB peripheral to your network like a USB hard drive or printer. From Belkin’s website:

Share up to 5 devices: multi-function printers, media readers, digital cameras and scanner on your network
Back up and access data from networked attached storage (NAS) devices
Play music from an MP3 player connected to a USB dock (using USB speakers)

This USB hub could be a great way to share printers and hard drives with a media center in your living room. If you are going to buy a print server for a USB printer, you might as well get this device. This also seems like a great way to make a Drobo storage robot into a NAS.

Before you start loading up on external hard drives to record HD content, Belkin has the following ominous caveat on their site:

Data transfer rates do not support some high-speed/high-bandwidth USB devices such as HD streaming web cams or other video transfer applications.

Via Electronichouse.com

ABC, FOX, and NBC Increase Web Presence | More Primetime Shows Online

Kevin — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 01:34:14 +0000

The television networks are finally beginning to harvest the power of the Internet. Networks are realizing that the Internet can provide free advertising and word of mouth for shows. Here are some examples.

ABC has reached an agreement with AOL to deliver full-length, ad supported episodes of a slew of its prime-time shows starting on Sept. 25.
NBC said it plans to launch a new desktop application that will provide PC-users with the ability to download full-length, ad supported episodes of its prime-time and late-night shows for one week following their initial broadcast.
The season premieres of seven Fox Broadcasting shows will be offered on Apple Inc.’s iTunes store for free.

You can see the slightly different strategies for each Network. NBC, while offering shows through Amazon for free, is attempting to bypass the third-party video “store” like iTunes. Fox and ABC are just trying to increase their shows profile on the Internet.

I am curious to see how these strategies work out and whether they are successful. I still think they need to release shows in high definition. BitTorrent is the real competition, not iTunes.

Spiralfrog Launches | Download Music for Free

Kevin — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 02:55:25 +0000

Spiralfrog, the ad-based music download service, has finally opened its doors for business. The music industry has been trying different ways to increase revenues, especially online.

Spiralfrog boasts over 800,000 tracks and 3,500 music videos available at launch. Although 800,000 sounds impressive, it has a long way to go to catch up to iTunes and even Emusic.

SpiralFrog is able to offer songs for free by requiring the user to view ads in order to download the music, and has a revenue-sharing deal with the labels. The music catalog right now revolves around Universal Music Group. EMI also is offering songs with SpiralFrog, as are a number of independent artists and music labels. Big name artists like Gwen Stefani and Fergie are available for download so that is a good sign.

I tried out the service to see how it performs. Overall, I think it works fairly well. Spiralfrog does make you download their own “download” software, which is kind of annoying but I guess pretty standard. You need to use Windows Media Player 10 or higher. Mac users need not apply.

The service requires the user to log in and view ads at least once every 30 days. On the front page, there is a counter that tells you how many days you have left before you have to “renew” for free. You also cannot burn the songs to CD or transfer it to an iPod.

Sprialfrog has two things not working in its favor right now: 1) a limited catalog of songs and 2) no iPod compatibility. New songs apparently are right around the corner but the iPod issue might be a deal breaker for the college crowd.

Roxio Launches Popcorn 3 | Transfer Video to Your iPod

Kevin — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 02:23:57 +0000

For all you Mac fans out there, Roxio just launched Popcorn 3, which allows you to transfer your favorite personal video entertainment to DVDs and popular portable devices. Moving digital content around from device to device is always a good thing.� I got Roxio’s press release by e-mail today and here is a snippet:

Popcorn 3 is equipped with a variety of innovative features designed to simplify and accelerate the otherwise time consuming and CPU intensive video conversion process, including Automatic TiVoToGo� Conversion that starts encoding as soon as the TV show is transferred to the Mac, Batch DVD-Video Conversion that enables consumers to queue up multiple DVDs for use with Roxio�s Fit-to-DVD� technology, and Pause and Resume buttons that enable users to suspend a disc copy or video conversion project, work on a different task, then resume when convenient.

To reduce time spent on multiple conversions and to ensure end-results meet expectations, Popcorn 3 comes with Video Quality Preview that enables consumers to review a snippet of converted video to check video quality prior to initiating the full encoding process. Popcorn 3 also supports Elgato�s Turbo.264 for faster video encoding. Popcorn 3 users can now create DVD’s up to four hours long, resulting in fewer discs and decreasing the amount of time required for video-project transfer.

The application also includes a rich disc labeling application that enables users to create personalized disc labels or print directly onto discs using LightScribe enabled burners and media. Built on the award-winning Toast burning technology, Popcorn 3 continues to provide consumers with a quick and easy way to copy and enjoy their movies on a disc or on-the-go.

2 Tips on How to Share Family Pictures and Videos

Kevin — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 00:48:28 +0000

Over the past year, my wife and I have taken tons of photos and video of our baby. We are constantly getting asked by friends to share pictures and videos of little floppyhead (hence the name of this site, though his head is no longer as floppy). Here are two suggestions for sharing photos and videos:

1) Use Picasa. It is a free digital photo album tool from Google. You can organize your photos, do a little bit of touching up, crop photos, and e-mail photos to friends and family. You can also send a link to a Google web album, which are free and does not require your family to register for an account like some of the other photo sharing services. The best thing about Picasa is that it handles large picture files very well. We bought a Digital Rebel camera so most of our images are quite large and are a pain to e-mail. Picasa automatically down sizes anything you e-mail or post to a web album, all from within the program.

2) Use Adobe’s Premiere Elements. I have yet to find a free piece of software that is as easy to use as Premiere Elements. Consider the $99 cost of the software as an investment in saving you time. Through Elements, you can make DVDs that include menus and chapters. DVDs in many ways are an easy way to share video. Everyone has a DVD player, even the older generations in your family that have no idea of YouTube. Plus, I am still alittle uneasy putting family videos on YouTube. Even if you are sharing videos online, Premiere Elements helps you make a slick looking video without a large learning curve.

Elgato Eye TV 250 | Turn Your Mac into a DVR

Kevin — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 00:44:48 +0000

I have the occasional Mac envy. Recently I have been eyeing the new Mac Mini, thinking it would make a cool HTPC. The problem with it is that there is no tuner built into it. Of course, you can always get an external tuner.

Elgato’s Eye TV 250 is the big fish in the Mac tuner world. EyeTV 250 Plus delivers free over-the-air digital TV to your Mac in 720p or 1080i HDTV (MPEG-2) and other digital television standards, as well as conventional analog TV via standard cable or antenna. From their website:

EyeTV 250 Plus records digital television in one quality setting, Lossless. The ATSC digital stream is recorded unaltered, and so you�re getting full quality HDTV content as encoded by the broadcaster. EyeTV supports closed captioning and Dolby� Digital sound.

Right now the only way to get HD content on Mac is through an ATSC tuner. Remember, Macs do not have HDCP built into the operating system like Microsoft’s Vista. This means no HD-DVD or Blu-ray for now. Plus, iTunes does not offer HD content. Forget about digital cable tuners and CableCards.

I use an ASTC tuner on my Windows XP machine right now and really enjoy it. Maybe it is time I take the plunge and buy a Mac mini. EyeTV 250 Plus is available immediately for $199 at the Apple Store, as well as through resellers.

(via ehomeupgrade)