French consumer electronics company Archos provides Android devices for heavy digital media consumers, including huge storage, broad format support, and unique applications for management and consumption. Today, Archos made its formerly exclusive Video Player app available to all Android 4.0+ devices in Google Play.

The application is exactly what you'd expect from Archos: serious media consumption. The app features hardware accelerated decoding for videos stored anywhere in your home network (locally, or remotely accessible via SMB and UPnP) or attached via a USB storage device. Archos says users who experience any issues with video hardware decoding can force software decoding in the settings menu, opening up accessibility further.

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By now most of us have read or heard that Instagram (now part of Facebook) proposes a change to its terms of service to allow the company to use your pictures and mine in any fashion it chooses, including selling the pics to third parties. So if you don’t want your baby pictures to risk being used in a beer ad, we’re told, you should close your Instagram account by January 15th. One pundit called this move Instagram committing suicide, but I think something else is going on.

Can’t you just see the meeting at Facebook in which this idea was first presented? ”It’s a whole new revenue stream!” some staffer no doubt howled. “If our users are oblivious or stupid enough to let us get away with it, that is. Maybe we can sneak it through over Christmas”. We’ll see shortly, won’t we?

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Audio loops are a great way to speed up the process of creating your own music, but it can be hard to get the precise sound you need. One possible solution might be to spend an age browsing your favorite online loop libraries in the hope that something turns up, but a simpler option it just to install LoopJam, which can remix existing WAV loops with a click.

Launch the program and it’ll immediately start playing a demo sample. This is also displayed as a waveform and divided into segments, each of which can have one of several effects applied (Highpass, Lowpass, Stutter, Reverser, and so on) by clicking in a grid.

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Open-source, cross-platform VLC Media Player 2.0.5 has been released for Windows and Mac. Although a relatively minor update, it fixes a number of regressions from previous releases, plus improves overall stability and performance. Mac users also get a slightly tweaked user interface.

Also released alongside the main build is VLC Media Player 2.0.5 Portable, a standalone version for Windows users that requires no installation.

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Seventh in a series. Welcome to another episode of what's hot and new in Windows Store. This week we have seen the release of a couple of official apps, Adobe Reader and Yahoo! Mail for instance, that made an appearance in store.

Other companies like Google or Facebook are monitoring the development of Windows 8 before they commit resources to building apps for the operating system. It is likely, however, that we will see additional official app releases for Microsoft's operating system in the weeks to come.

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The SZ Development released Free Music Downloader 1.30, the latest edition of its MP3 download tool, and the update is mainly about extending its list of supported sites.

The program provides a simple, free and portable way to search a number of sources for music. This update adds support for BandCamp, Hypem and Xiami to the existing list of sites and services, which also includes www.last.fm, vkontakte.ru, goear.com, GrooveShark.com, SoundCloud.com, mixcloud.com, ProstoPleer.com and 8Tracks.com. Elsewhere, a bug fix sees LastFM searches and downloads working again.

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Remember that Googlezon video from a few years ago? The one that predicted Google and Amazon would take over the world with, perhaps, apocalyptic results? Well, none of that has come to pass, but both companies continue to grow and expand. Amazon, increasingly becoming as much of a content delivery system as a product retailer, made several bold moves to get its media out to even more platforms, today.

For starters, Amazon moved to bring its Cloud Player music service to both Samsung Smart TV's and Roku set-top boxes and made its Instant Video service available for the iPhone and iPod touch. Both services are essentially cloud interfaces for your media.

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It’s that time of the year where it’s a great time to pick up a software bargain. Through December and the Christmas holiday season, the Downloadcrew Software Store has various software deals that are worth some consideration. Best of all, the Downloadcrew “Giveaway” site returns this Christmas, with five superb exclusive full software giveaway offers, for everyone.

You may have picked up a brand new Windows 8 computer during the festive season. If so, the first thing you’ll want to do is pick up a security suite to keep your system secure. The Downloadcrew Software Store is packed full of security offers from Bitdefender, AVG, Kaspersky, Avira and other brands.

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Real Networks Inc has released RealPlayer 16, the latest edition of its one-stop media player.

And the big addition this time is the redesigned RealDownloader, and in particular the new video bookmarking system.

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It's no secret that Microsoft sees its Xbox platform as much more than just a gaming console. It wants the device to act as the digital hub of our living rooms, and today the company took another step in that direction, announcing more than 40 new entertainment apps.

Xbox Live's Larry Hryb, AKA Major Nelson, posted the news this morning that "more than 40 new global entertainment partners [are] coming to Xbox LIVE, including new apps launching this week."

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German developer Canneverbe Limited has announced the first stable release of popular Windows freeware disc-burning tool, CDBurnerXP 4.5.0.

Once the freeware burning tool of choice, the latest update of this powerful and versatile data, audio and video burning tool has one notable update to its data-burning component: it ditches the old Numedia Soft burning library in favor of the StarBurn library in a move designed to improve compatibility and stability.

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Sixth in a series. Every seven days we look at some of the best new app releases for Windows 8. This week's releases include Amazon and Nascar official applications, as well as a selection of mostly media-orientated offerings.

Microsoft has added a top-paid category to select localized stores that displays top-rated paid applications. It is likely that this will be rolled out eventually to all stores.

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CyberLink has released PowerProducer 6 Ultra, the latest version of its DVD authoring tool, and while the changes aren’t revolutionary there’s plenty to explore.

The program now includes 14 animated 3D-like menu templates, for instance. Some aren’t so great, but others are very good indeed, and on balance they’re an excellent extension to the program’s abilities.

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Media server developer Plex Inc. has announced the immediate availability of Plex for Windows 8 1.0, a dedicated media center app giving users of Windows 8 PCs and Windows RT tablets access to their Plex Media Server collections via a full-screen, touch-friendly app.

Plex for Windows 8, like other Plex mobile applications, isn’t free. It launches with a special $2.99 price, likely to rise to $4.99 in line with its other mobile apps. The release is joined by Plex Media Server 0.9.7.7, a minor maintenance update that primarily resolves issues introduced with the new PlexSync service, which is currently restricted to PlexPass subscription holders only.

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Whether you are looking at how to best capture and share a video of baby’s first Christmas or the excitement of a marriage proposal this holiday season, cell phone, digital camera or camcorder often isn't enough. Some editing is required to tell a compelling and concise story.

I've prepared a list of 10 tips based on frequently asked questions from the more than two million consumers on CyberLink's DirectorZone social media site. Please add your own in comments, or sharing story about successful video-editing project.

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