Album music sales drop, singles in renaissance
The Associated Press today reported 2007's substantial decline in the music industry's album sales, illustrating how albums are no longer the vehicle of choice for music consumption.
The year 2007 saw a total of 500.5 million albums sold, including "hard copy" media: CDs, cassettes and LPs -- yes, someone's still out there pressing vinyl. This is a 15% drop from the unit total for 2006, according to Nielsen SoundScan.
WirelessHD could forge high-def streaming home networks
Wireless links carry the potential to speed consumer adoption of high-def video by easing home networking woes. Sony, Toshiba, LG, Samsung, NEC, Matsushita, and now Intel are now working on a standard called WirelessHD to help meet this promise, while some other vendors continue to go it alone.
Although consumer electronics makers are still trying out a variety of approaches to sending high-def video over wireless links, the industry is now starting to see more consolidation around an upcoming standard known as WirelessHD.
Sling to demonstrate remote TV for BlackBerry
California-based Sling Media Inc., maker of the popular SlingBox place-shifting hardware device, has officially announced its intention to demonstrate SlingPlayer for BlackBerry and a new HD SlingBox at CES 2008 next week.
Sling Media announced that it will be showing off SlingPlayer Mobile on a BlackBerry Pearl 8120, with a release slated for later this year. Sling intends to extend its service for watching and programming TV remotely through the popular e-mail handset.
Xbox Live 'up and running' for some, but not all
Despite claims on the service's support page that all is well, users are still reporting to BetaNews and other media outlets that the problems said to be fixed still continue.
Microsoft is blaming the outages on the massive influx of new customers over the holidays, which could mean that the company was ill-prepared to handle what is typically the busiest time for the video game sector.
The era of DRM fades further with Sony BMG's switch
The lone holdout of the big four music labels caved to pressure from the rest of the industry and will begin to sell tracks free of the restrictive technology.
EMI and Universal Music Group had announced their plans to drop DRM earlier in 2007, and Warner Music Group announced its plans in December. With Sony BMG's announcement, a majority of the top acts in music today will now be available in MP3 format.
Two major high-def streaming providers become partners
While Blu-ray and HD DVD have missed their window of opportunity for resolving the high-def format dilemma, CES 2008 could see two of the biggest names in the high-def streaming field demonstrating a realistic, connected alternative.
The alternative vehicle for high definition movies on home consoles -- if there is ever to be one -- is the streaming, on-demand, programmable network. Today that vehicle could be a big step closer to reality, and just in time for next week's CES, with an agreement between two services to forge one service: CinemaNow's streaming movie download service will soon feature Macrovision's platform technology.
PSP to finally become a communications device with Skype
On a site dedicated to building up excitement over its announcements at the 2008 Consumer Electronics Show, Sony inserted language all but confirming the rumors of Skype for PSP.
Sony's site gives new credence to rumors of Skype for the PlayStation Portable -- rumors which date back to June 2006: "Call friends, talk trash to fellow gamers or catch up with acquaintances via Skype for PSP."
CES Trend #5: Notebooks becoming the PC of choice
At CES 2008 next week, manufacturers won't be showing off hot new desktops; instead, sleek new notebooks will take center stage. In the United States, notebooks are already outpacing desktop PC sales by a small margin and it won't be much longer before the rest of the world catches up.
The desktop market peaked in the United States in 2006, but with growth in developing markets continuing, it will take a while longer for the market to peak elsewhere. Research firms seem to agree that this will happen sometime around the end of the decade, when notebook sales will eclipse desktops in combined worldwide shipments.
Motorola launches MPEG-4 DVR boxes for HD cable
Vendors are seeding the market with HD consumers devices of various sorts. But if you get an MPEG-4 set-top box, for example, when will there be enough HD cable content around for you to manage?
Despite the many technical challenges still facing widespread adoption of high-definition video, more and more consumer device makers are now hopping aboard the HD bandwagon, including Motorola, a vendor that today introduced its first MPEG-4 set-top DVR (digital video recorder) boxes for cable TV.
Analyst: Blu-ray Macs will premiere at Macworld
AppleInsider has posted predictions from American Technology Research analyst Shawn Wu that point to new Macs with Blu-ray drives premiering at Macworld on January 15.
Since Apple has held a seat on the Blu-ray consortium for years already, and CEO Steve Jobs is on the board of directors at Blu-ray supporter Disney, it seems that if Apple was to align with a next-gen format, Blu-ray would be favored.
Are Lenovo's laptops beating Acer and Apple to the punch?
By unveiling a new line of stylish laptops ahead of both CES and Macworld, Lenovo stands alone in the limelight today. But is there still room for another large player in the laptop space?
In unveiling a trio of design-conscious "IdeaPad" laptops for the consumer market, Lenovo today beat newfound competitors such as Dell and Acer to the punch by at least three days, and Apple by a couple of weeks.
French Health Ministry warns about heavy cell phone use
France's Ministry of Health made a statement yesterday warning citizens not to use their cell phones too much, although actual data on specific health risks remains inconclusive.
The statement advised against making calls when reception is poor or during high-speed travel. It also warned that phones should be kept away from "sensitive areas of the body" by using hands-free mode whenever possible.
Hitachi debuts 500GB laptop drives, but you can't buy them
If 320GB isn't enough storage for your mobile computing needs, Hitachi has a new option that offers a whopping 500GB of space, but with one caveat: it's bigger than standard laptop hard drives.
Hard disk manufacturers have been working hard to develop new technologies to pack ever more data into the smaller hard drives used in notebooks. While standard desktop drives are hitting the long-awaited 1 terabyte milestone, more consumers are opting for laptops instead, demanding similar storage capacities.
Motorola offers sneak peek at DH01 mobile TV
Motorola announced today that it will be showing off a new mobile media player at CES 2008 in Las Vegas next week that also acts as a mobile DVR.
The 4.3 inch screened DH01 will show live television, on demand video clips and DVR programming at 25 frames per second. According to Motorola, the device has a 5-minute memory buffer that allows for pause and replay functions on live television broadcasts.
China censoring foreign video sharing sites
In an obvious effort to keep its citizens from seeing content that it hasn't already pre-approved, the Chinese government is about to block video sites it doesn't control.
The new laws in China will take effect at the end of the month. Under the policy, Web sites that offer streaming video in the country will need to obtain a permit to operate. Applicants will need to be either state-owned or controlled to qualify.
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