Media server developer Plex Inc rings in the New Year with two notable new updates to its cross-platform range of media server and media center products. First, Plex Media Server 0.9.7.9.375 launches with a number of enhancements and new features, including support for album music searches and the potential for massive performance improvements when streaming via DLNA.

Joining it is a major update to the Plex for Windows 8, which adds a universal search tool among other improvements.

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When I say "old media" I refer to several mediums, including movie studios, TV networks and the recording industry. However, in this case, I am talking about, perhaps, the oldest of all -- the newspaper. It seems that the once-desirable rags may be one of the last forms of media to actually get it.

To that end, the licensing body that represents the Irish nations newspapers seems bent on going forward with a plan to wring fees out of any website that links to its material. To that end, the group issued a statement today, reading, in part, that: "The sort of activities which constitute "copying" for these purposes are the photocopying of newspaper articles, placing of newspaper articles on an intranet website, viewing of articles on a website hosted by a press cutting agency and the sending of articles to clients or other third parties".

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Tenth in a series. Welcome to this year's first look at what's new and hot in Windows Store and the Windows 8 ecosystem. The week has been rather uneventful but that can easily be explained with the Holiday season, which is never the most productive time of the year when it comes to software. This week there are 23,788 apps in the U.S. Windows Store of which 4,439 are paid applications of which about half offer free trials, and 19,365 free apps. Some of the free apps may include advertisement or in-store purchases, but there is unfortunately no statistic available on that.

Here is a selection of 10 Windows 8 apps that released this week or were updated.

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Second in a series. A friend of mine who is a securities lawyer in New York worked on the 1985 sale of 20th Century Fox by Marvin Davis to Rupert Murdoch. He led a group of New York attorneys to Los Angeles where they spent weeks going over contracts for many Fox films. What they found was that with few exceptions there were no contracts. There were signed letters of intent (agreements to agree) for pictures budgeted at $20-$50 million but almost no actual contracts. Effectively business was being done, movies were being made, and huge sums of money were being transferred on a handshake. That’s how Hollywood tends to do business and it doesn’t go down very well with outsiders, so they for the most part remain outside.

Jump to this week’s evolving story about Intel supposedly entering with a bang the TV set-top box business replete with previously unlicensed cable content -- an Over-The-Top virtual cable system. This was expected to be announced, I’m told, at next week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

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Are you looking for competition to Netflix and Amazon Prime? By now you have likely heard that Redbox has teamed with Verizon to provide just that. The kiosks, which can be found almost everywhere these days, are quite popular with a number of people, but running out to a store, especially in bad weather, is not overly user-friendly. When the snow is flying, it is so much nicer to get the movie you want without leaving your couch.

Redbox has been testing its new Instant service in private beta for a couple of months now. If you want to try and get into the program then head over to Redbox Instant and request a code, but be aware that the wait can be long. In fact, with the service expected in early 2013 you may just be better holding off.

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The PC market for audio players is a little on the crowded side, with free tools to do just about anything you want, so it’s not exactly easy for new programs to make an impression. There are still companies queuing up to try their luck, though, and the latest contender is Resonic, an interesting tool now available in its first public alpha release.

Why should you care? Developers Liqube clearly understand they have to get the fundamentals right first, and the program duly offers support for a host of audio formats. The current list is MP3, MP2, MP1, OGG, M4A, MP4, AAC, MPC, MP+, OPUS, SPX; WMA, WMA Pro, WMA Lossless; WAV, AIFF, FLAC, APE, ALAC, WV, TTA; IT, XM, S3M, MTM and MOD: sounds good to us.

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You can be forgiven if you recently purchased a television and came home with what is now called a "smart TV." After all, that's the market trend, and you will be hard pressed to find a boob tube without Internet capability. Honestly, I, for one, am just happy that the industry seems to have stopped trying to force 3D on what looks to me like a most unwilling audience.

Now comes this report -- NPD claims "that nearly six out of ten consumers who own a connected HDTV are accessing Over-the-Top (OTT) video services through the device". OTT means an external device -- any external device, such as a Blu-ray player, DVR, game console or other device. Even those like Roku, Google TV and Boxee.

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If you’ve ever explored the world of Windows video players then you’ll almost certainly have come across Media Player Classic (compact, easy to use, but a little dated now) and its spin-off Home Cinema project (more powerful, plenty of features).

What you might not have noticed, though, is the latest addition to the family, Media Player Classic-BE (for “Black Edition”, apparently). It’s a recent offshoot from Home Cinema and looks almost exactly the same, but already has one notable addition and plenty of smaller tweaks to enjoy.

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I wrote here nearly a year ago that there would be no more annual lists of predictions and I’m sticking to that, but I want to take the time for a series of columns on what I think will be an important trend in 2013 -- the battle for Hollywood and home entertainment.

The players here, with some of them coming and some of them going, are Amazon and Apple and Cisco and Google and Intel and Microsoft and maybe a few more. The battleground comes down to platforms and content and will, by 2015 at the latest, determine where home entertainment is headed in America and the world for the rest of the century. The winners and losers are not at all clear to me yet, though I have a strong sense of what the battle will be like.

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Have you kept an eye on our amazing software giveaways this year? Hot on the heels of our first two amazing deals comes this, a free and fully functional copy of Xara Photo & Graphic Designer 6. This universally acclaimed design tool runs on Windows PCs and is capable of photo-editing, drawing, graphics design and even desktop publishing, all rolled into one super program.

And the best news of all? For a 48-hour period from midday GMT, Saturday December 29, you’ll be able to download this amazing app, worth $89, for free thanks to Downloadcrew Giveaway.

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Ninth in a series. The world did not end last week, so here we are with this weeks installment of our weekly look at the greatest Windows 8 apps that got released or updated this week.

The store recently crossed the 35,000 apps mark worldwide according to MetroStore Scanner, and while you won't find that many apps in your local store -- the US app store has 22,876 currently -- it is remarkable after two months of release; 18,618 of those apps in the US store are free to download and use, while 4,249 are paid apps. That is a ratio of more than four to one, and while some free apps may include advertisement or in-game purchase options, it's still a healthy ratio for the store.

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The year has almost passed and that makes it a great time for reflection. Of course, I have thought most about my family -- what we did in 2012 and our plans for 2013. I have thought of household repairs and projects planned for the coming year, goals I would like to attain, but I also considered what technology I used the most and the changes I made.

My colleagues and I plan personal tech retrospectives. I'm first up.

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While there are plenty of tools around which promise to help you download online videos, most have snags or compromises that make them annoying to use in real life. They don’t support your favorite sites, maybe; they don’t let you download the precise format or resolution you need; there are restrictions on downloading videos simultaneously, or whatever it might be.

4K Video Downloader claims to be different, though. “Downloading is simple and pleasant”, the authors say. The program covers “YouTube, Facebook, Vimeo, Dailymotion and Metacafe”, and you’ll want to use it because “we pay great attention to simplicity and usability”. Interesting, but can the reality live up to the hype? We took a look.

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Amazon is Netflix's biggest competitors, but the company had a gaping hole in its armor. While the app works just fine on the Kindle Fire tablets, it was MIA for every other Android user out there. Now the retail giant has finally made the service available to other users on the popular platform, but before you get excited, there is a catch, and it is a big one.

When you find the app in the Google Play store you will immediately notice two things -- one is that it only works with version 3.2 and up of the OS. The other is even more troubling. The app is for Google TV only. Even the new flagship Nexus devices are not capable of using it.

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Eighth in a series. Since the world is going down today anyway there is not really much need for today's article and while I thought for a moment about taking the day off, I'd like the idea of leaving the world with work done. So, here it is, the eighth part of the best Windows 8 apps of the week series on Doomsday.

Pssst: If the world doesn't end, and you have Windows 8, now you have something to look forward to.

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