Netflix's woes took a strange twist on Sunday night, in an 11:59 p.m. EDT blog post by CEO Reed Hastings. "I messed up", he begins. Yeah, based on subscriber losses and punishing shareholders, Hasting puts it mildly.

The gist is this: After jacking up the price of combined DVD rentals and streaming by an astonishing 60 percent, Hastings presents an unexpected solution: Netflix is splitting its streaming and DVD rental business into two operations. The DVD biz will be called Qwikster. It's totally unimaginative nomenclature and doesn't the least bit describe the DVD business. Shouldn't Reed be fixing problems, rather than be creating more of them?

Continue reading →

Few people could imagine a TV viewing life that involved the rigid scheduling of a few years ago. The advent of devices such as Tivo and services such as Hulu and Netflix means that TV programms can be watched whenever it suits you. But while it can be useful to be able to timeshift you viewing in this way, OrbLive, used in conjunction with Orb Caster, can be used to stream video from your PC or Mac or your iOS or Android device.

Videos can be watched away from your computer without the need to synchronize files -- all that is required is that the streaming software be installed and your computer be left switched on. With these two conditions met, install the OrbLive app on your mobile and you’re good to go. The ability to stream your existing video library from one device to another is great news, but it doesn’t end there.

Continue reading →

I know we're all supposed to be working, but you deserve a YouTube break. I took one preparing this post; so should you.

Star Trek is 45 years old. The series was sold as "wagon train to the stars" at a time when Westerns dominated US network TV. I've pulled together some video spoofs and others for your viewing pleasure and some trivia -- all accurate from memory; I was a Trekkie in my youth. They're called Trekkers now, I believe.

Continue reading →

Music creation software has something of a poor reputation, with many people regarding it as being expensive to buy and complicated to use. This is a reputation that MAGIX is trying to change with its Music Maker program, and the latest version, MAGIX Music Maker MX goes a long way to achieving this aim. While the program is incredibly simple to use, the music creation you produce using the software can be made as basic or as complex and involved as you like.

Used at its most basic, MAGIX Music Maker MX provides you with 64 audio tracks onto which you can arrange a series of samples to create the skeleton of a musical composition. If you want, you can leave things as they are, but even the least musically minded of people could not resist tinkering with special effects, dropping in a few loops here and there, and then there is the drum machine to play with. Before you know it, you have become fully engrossed in the process of putting together a piece of music -- and it does not matter that you’ve never picked up an instrument in your life.

Continue reading →

Investors pounded Netflix in after-hours trading today, after Starz Entertainment cut off contract renegotiation. Netflix shares fell by 8.7 percent to $212.99. The stock had closed at $233.27. Starz content is a major anchor of Netflix's steaming service.

"Starz Entertainment has ended contract renewal negotiations with Netflix", Starz CEO Chris Albrecht says in a statement. "When the agreement expires on February 28, 2012, Starz will cease to distribute its content on the Netflix streaming platform".

Continue reading →

CyberLink has released a new major update to its PowerDVD 11 Standard and PowerDVD 11 Ultra software, build 2024. PowerDVD is billed as the “world’s leading universal media player”, supporting all major media formats. In addition, the Ultra version supports both 3D and Blu-ray playback in addition to DVD, most video formats and social media video.

The latest release adds a new Digital Media Server, which supports wireless transfer and playback of media between computers, tablets and DLNA devices. To complement this, a new app for Android 3.0 tablets, PowerDVD Mobile, has also been released.

Continue reading →