Digital Audio/Video News

As Yahoo says it will shut down the servers that allow transferring its DRM music, Britain considers a move that would green light unfettered music downloads for a yearly tax.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - News video-sharing site Redlasso said on Friday it will suspend its video search and clipping service for bloggers as it defends against a copyright infringement lawsuit filed this week by NBC and Fox News Channel.

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Thousands of users on YouTube, the popular video-sharing website, are toasting two young Indian politicians, one of them seen as a potential prime minister, after they spoke eloquently in a parliamentary debate last week.

Yahoo has become the latest company to abandon customers who bought tracks from its music store encoded with DRM, drawing fire...

Creative added yet another entry to its ever-expanding line of Zen media players on Thursday, with the introduction of the Creative Zen Mozaic, flash-based MP3 player. Creative officials said the company plans to bring the Zen Mosaic to the U.S. at the end of the month.

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Jon Heder, who starred in "Napoleon Dynamite" and skated opposite Will Ferrell in "Blades of Glory," is venturing into digital entertainment as the star of the zombie comedy "Woke Up Dead."

NEW YORK (Reuters) - When comedy talk show host Jimmy Kimmel acts as a pitch man for DirecTV this summer, he joins a list of celebrities the U.S. satellite television provider has engaged to promote itself as a premium brand.

InformationWeek - However, video-sharing sites like YouTube should carefully consider ad-subsidized service models since its audience has grown accustomed to free streams, analysts point out.

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's music and film industries launched a fight back against online piracy on Thursday, persuading the six biggest Internet providers to send warning letters to those suspected of illegal file-sharing.

LONDON (AFP) - Britain's six biggest internet providers have backed a government plan to clamp down on rampant music and film piracy, it was reported Thursday .

NEW YORK (Billboard) - The Chrissie Hynde-led rock band the Pretenders will roll out their new album, "Break Up the Concrete," as one MP3 per week leading up to the September 23 release of the CD via Shangri-La Music.

LONDON (Reuters) - More than one in four Europeans regularly watches online video on sites such as Google's YouTube but the medium has a long way to go to catch up with regular TV, according to Internet research firm Jupiter.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - NBC and Fox News Channel sued video-sharing service Redlasso for copyright infringement on Wednesday, accusing the website of showing programs like "The Tonight Show" and "The Fox Report with Shepard Smith" without permission.

Media giant Viacom took its fight to the public this week seeking to outline battle lines in its $1 billion lawsuit against YouTube's parent, Google. Viacom filed the lawsuit in March 2007 alleging that YouTube purposefully allowed Viacom's copyrighted content to be distributed on the site. The suit was filed after negotiations between Google and Viacom over licensing content fell apart.

Google's YouTube is quickly shedding its reputation in Hollywood as a clearinghouse for pirated content and could soon be home to clips from popular movies and TV shows--all legally obtained.

I spent Tuesday afternoon as a guest of Beet.TV impresario Andy Plesser, who hosted a fascinating colloquium at Stanford University. It was a small group, maybe a couple of dozen people altogether, drawn from the technology industry, the venture capital community and media to discuss the state of online video.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Fears that belt-tightening U.S. consumers will bruise third-quarter earnings for makers of MP3 players, cell phones and other gadgets, pummeled the stocks of consumer electronics companies like Apple Inc and SanDisk Corp on Tuesday, a day after they issued grim forecasts.

InformationWeek - The product-purchase option will debut with four TV shows, "The Oprah Winfrey Show," "The Ellen DeGeneres Show," "The Colbert Report," and "Burn Notice."

TiVo owners will see links to buy products shown in commercials and TV shows directly from Amazon.

InformationWeek - The bug can corrupt files, such as applications, music tracks or digital photos, if they're transferred to a Windows Home Server unit equipped with two or more hard drives.

SEATTLE (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp will turn to users of its Xbox 360 to create new video games and broaden the types of games available on its console, taking a page out of the strategy books of Facebook and YouTube.

TiVo and Amazon expanded their digital partnership Monday. The pioneers in digital video recorders and online retail have teamed up to give TiVo subscribers the ability to purchase products from Amazon.com on TV sets, using the TiVo remote control.

Four top consumer-electronic companies are backing a wireless multimedia CE interface developed by Amimon, by forming a special interest group devoted to the technology.

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's largest pay-TV firm BSkyB is to launch an online subscription music service and has signed the world's largest music group Universal as its first partner, in a deal that could challenge Apple.

NEW YORK - The old song had it right: Breaking up is hard to do. But a free new phone service called Slydial might make it easier to get through that and other awkward moments — without actually having to talk to anyone.

Online shopping addicts beware. A TiVo-Amazon partnership will soon allow TiVo customers to purchase items via Amazon.com without ever leaving the couch.

TiVo--a company well-known for helping TV viewers skip commercials--is teaming up with Amazon.com to make it easier for consumers to purchase products they see on television commercials and talk shows, according to a report Monday on The New York Times Web site.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Apple Inc said on Monday its current-quarter earnings would be well below Wall Street targets, sending shares of the iPhone, iPod and Macintosh maker down 10 percent.