digital

Some users of Windows Vista Media Center have been reportedly blocked from recording some NBC Universal TV shows, receiving error messages that read "restrictions set by the broadcaster and/or originator prohibit recording of this program" instead. ... One person prevented from recording the NBC shows is an IT director in Northern California who says this is indicative of why the current Digital Rights Management (DRM) schemes are flawed. DRM schemes affect people who intend to legally consume content, with no intention of stealing the content. People intent on stealing content already have ways ... (view more)

Napster is hoping to reclaim its former glory days after introducing a new web-based platform that allows users to play their music from anywhere in the world without having to download additional software. Once the best friend of every cheapskate ... music fan, Napster was forced by the Record Industry Association of America to charge customers money for the very songs they once shared for free. This was all received with a mass exodus of former "loyal" users from the company. Napster now hopes to attract subscribers by making their platform more flexible and compatible with any Internet-enabled ... (view more)

Media Rights Technology (MRT) has sent cease-and-desist letters to Apple, Microsoft, Adobe and Real, claiming that they have been infringing products under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. "Together these four companies are responsible for 98 ... percent of the media players in the marketplace; CNN, NPR, Clear Channel, MySpace, Yahoo, and YouTube all use these infringing devices to distribute copyrighted works," said MRT CEO Hank Risan. "We will hold the responsible parties accountable. The time of suing John Doe is over." (Source: arstechnica.com ) But MRT is not a content owner, so why is ... (view more)

The rapid decline in digital music revenue, stemming from the rampant file-sharing continually done by consumers, has finally forced the major record labels to take notice. Many of the same record labels that vowed never to release their music on ... the Internet without copyright restrictions are now actually reconsidering this option. (Source: iht.com ) At Midem, the name for the annual international music trade exhibition held in France, many within the industry estimate that at least one out of the four major record companies are considering the sale of their unrestricted music files in MP3 ... (view more)

Microsoft recently announced a big change to the MSN Music website: as of November 14th (the launch date of the much-hyped Zune), the website will no longer be offering music downloads. While the MSN Music website will still remain, its focus will ... change toward offering information such as interviews with musicians and industry news, as well as hosting live concerts. The biggest change is that the "Buy Song" buttons will be taken off and replaced by links to the Zune and Real Rhapsody websites. In addition, the MSN Radio service will be free. (Source: news.com ) MSN Music was launched in ... (view more)

Continued from Part 1 . Surveying the hundreds of new products introduced at the Photo Marketing Associations (PMA) trade show (Feburary 27 ~ March 1, 2006) revealed that technology companies have finally ended their fight for "the largest mega ... pixel" camera. The truth is that an average shooter only needs a 6 mega pixel camera for 5x7 or 8x10 to develop quality prints. So what's next? There are too many choices when camera makers introduce 15 new models and the competition is increasing as Samsung introduces it's first SLR with interchangeable lenses at the PMA showing Orlando ... (view more)

Synopsis: Turn your digital camera photos into a spectacular slideshow screensaver for your Windows desktop! With Photo Slideshow Screensaver, simply point to the location of the photos folder, set a few transition effect options, and then sit back ... and enjoy your slideshow! PictureRiver Photo Slideshow Screensaver includes over 40 stunning special effects and is always being updated. In fact, Photo Slideshow Screensaver is so easy to use that even an inexperienced user can turn plain, old, and boring digital pictures into a stunning mosaic masterpiece -- guaranteed! PictureRiver Photo ... (view more)

A modem (a portmanteau word constructed from modulator and demodulator) is a device that modulates an analog carrier signal (sound) to encode digital information, and also demodulates such a carrier signal to decode the transmitted information. The ... goal is to produce a signal that can be transmitted easily and decoded to reproduce the original digital data. The most familiar example of a modem turns the digital '1s and 0s' of a personal computer into sounds that can be transmitted over the telephone lines of Plain Old Telephone System (POTS), and once received on the other side, converts ... (view more)

Synopsis: Need a way to share streaming video and pictures over the Internet? Video Caster is the solution! Video Caster is a feature packed video content creation and publishing software, capable of capturing video footage from an attached digital ... camera, creating animated slideshows automatically from your photo images, converting existing video and audio files and publishing them to streaming servers. Using these features, you can create high quality videos in Windows Media-9 format (WMV/WMA) or AVI. VideoCaster: Screenshots Click to view: Page 1 | Page 2 | Page 3 | Page 4 | Page 5. ... (view more)

The Moving Picture Experts Group ( MPEG ) is a working group of ISO/IEC charged with the development of video and audio encoding standards. Since its first meeting in 1988, MPEG has grown to include approximately 350 members from various industries ... and universities. MPEG's official designation is ISO/IEC JTC1/SC29 WG11. MPEG (pronounced EM-peg) has standardized the following compression formats and ancillary standards: MPEG-1: Initial video and audio compression standard. Later used as the standard for Video CD, and includes the popular Layer 3 (MP3) audio compression format. MPEG-2: ... (view more)