The future of entertainment is on-line; at least many of us who use the internet believe this to be true. Now, whether that is downloading the video and then watching on your computer or iPod, or if it is streaming the video to your computer via a website or a program like Joost; seems to be a matter of debate. Apple has been leading the charge for the past few years, enjoying a great deal of success with music and to a lesser extent with video.

Over the past 12 months you may have heard that the music publishers and the major studios have started to experiment with options other than iTunes. It seems the over riding reasons have been less to do with meeting customer needs and demands, and more with keeping control of their products through the entire life cycle. To date no one has really been very successful in going up against the iTunes store; except maybe Amazon, but they already know on-line retailing.

Earlier this week NBC Universal released a beta of their new service Hulu. It is designed to be an iTunes killer. I can't tell you much about it as I am still waiting to get an invite so that I can log on and take a tour. MacRumors was able to get an invite and showed off an interesting aspect of Hulu, the ability to embed video in a blog or web-page. You-tube and other services allow this, but this should be the very first time a major company offered such a service for copy righted materials.

Below is a full length episode of The Office. Check it out, pretty interesting. For TV episodes I'm not sure how useful this is; but apparently you can edit down to clips as well. One thing I know, you can't do this with iTunes.

Tags: Video, Entertainment, iTunes

Came across a cool website while reading Digg, Josh's iTunes Album Art. What is it? Well, it is a webisite that had figured out a way to dig into the heart of the iTunes Music Store and pull out the album art it holds. Why is this cool? Well, if you don't buy your albums on iTunes you may not have the album art and don't want to scan it yourself. If that is the case, then you can use this website to try and grab a high-res version of your new album's cover.

Now, if you are using iTunes then you may already know that Apple gives anyone the ability to download their digital album art; even if you didn't buy the album from iTunes Music Store. It's really easy and works on both Macs and PCs. Josh's iTunes Album Art website is great if you don't have this or don't use iTunes. In any event, it's pretty cool to use. Of course, Apple could shut him down anything they want, and may do so. One never knows with Apple.

Tags: Apple, iTunes, Entertainment, Music

I was reading an article on MacRumors I saw a posting that showed this image of an iTunes support page dropdown that included the following (click on image):

• DidNotReceiveMovie-RentalMovie
• AccidentalPurchase-RentalMovie
• ContentQuality-RentalMovie
• DuplicatePurchase-RentalMovie
• WrongVErsion-RentalMovie
• BadMetadata-RentalMovie
• Other-RentalMovie

There have been rumors that movie rentals were coming to iTunes. While Steve Jobs seems dead set against a subscription model for music (I agree with this stance), a rental plan for movies makes sense. The rumor is that you could rent the movie for 30 days for $2.99 and be able to move it to one other device (i.e., iPod, AppleTV, iPhone, etc...).

Read the MacRumors article HERE

Tags: Rumors, iTunes, Entertainment, Apple

NBC Universal, owners of NBC, CNBC, MSNBC, USA Networks, SciFi Channel and so much more has made a milestone decision; to push Apple towards increasing the cost of TV episodes sold on Apple's iTunes Store. Currently a TV episode costs $1.99; according to news reports the cost would have gone up to $4.99, a $3.00 increase. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that NBC's suggested pricing is beyond stupid. While I am more than willing to plop down $2 to watch a missed TV episode that my DVR didn't record or that I might just be interested in seeing; $5 is just too high. I expected to see TV prices eventually drop a little as the service became more popular, especially when one realizes they aren't HD nor do they have 5.1 sound.

Apparently though NBC didn't see it that way. I guess since they made up about 30% of the content on iTunes they could dictate terms. Apple apparently wasn't willing to listen. Not only have they ended negotiations, but even though their contract with NBC goes until December 31st, 2007 Apple has decided that they will not make any of the 2007 NBC series available on iTunes. Their decision seems like a smart one from their point of view. If they offer the 2007 shows, mid season they would have to pull them all. That would create confusion and some very bad blood for Apple. Click Here to Read More...

Tags: Entertainment, Apple