In an interesting piece for the Times Online, Ruth Gledhill writes, "The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, has criticised the new web-based media for “paranoid fantasy, self-indulgent nonsense and dangerous bigotry”. He described the atmosphere on the world wide web as a free-for-all that was “close to that of unpoliced conversation”.

In a lecture to media professionals, politicians and church leaders at Lambeth Palace in London last night, Dr Williams wondered whether a balance could be struck between the professionalism of the classical media and the relative disorder of online communication."  [ more... ]

"The Bush administration asked a federal appeals court Friday to restore its ability to compel Internet service providers to turn over information about their customers or subscribers as part of its fight against terrorism.

The legal filing with the 2nd Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in New York comes amid a debate in Congress over renewal of the Patriot Act and whether to expand the FBI's power to seek records without the approval of a judge or grand jury.

U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero of New York last year blocked the government from conducting secret searches of communications records, saying the law that authorized them wrongly barred legal challenges and imposed a gag order on affected businesses.

The ruling came in a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union and an internet access firm that received a national security letter from the FBI demanding records. The identity of the firm remains secret."  [ more... ]

InterVideo, Inc. , announced today that more than 125 million copies of WinDVD, have been sold worldwide since its first release in 1999, making it the world's most popular software solution for watching DVDs on a PC.  [ more... ]

Apple called 2005 “The year of HD,” saying that besides just feeling it in their bones, they pointed out there are 16 million households with HDTV sets driving the exodus from the confines of standard definition. Also fanning the flames is the new HDV format, which is arguably the most popular HD format ever introduced—Apple supported this assertion with the fact that 37,000 HDV products have been sold as of March, 2005. Enabling the HDV format from Apple is its native HDV support in Final Cut Pro 5.0, which works with long-gop MPEG 2 and supports both 1080i/60 and 720p/30 formats. In the evangelical demo, Apple’s hyper-enthusiastic demo artists showed Final Cut Pro 5.0 previewing all kinds of HDV effects and transitions in real time. Chanting the slogan “edit anything, wait for nothing,” later in the backroom reporters noticed that there is rendering involved if you want to actually play out all these wonderful edits, effects and filters to HDV tape or anything else, for that matter. So just like it was a decade ago, real time means different things to different people. Even so, Apple’s Dynamic RT Extreme technology was able to play back all kinds of effects, while smartly dropping the frame rate and image quality for previews as the layers got thicker.   [ more... ]

An anonymous reader writes,  "The New York Post is reporting that two NYPD officers are being investigated for taking illegal payoffs from the MPAA for busting sellers of pirated DVDs. According to the article, MPAA investigators would tell the cops where pirated movies were being sold, which is perfectly legal, but, after the bust, they'd give them several hundred dollars in gratuities, which is illegal." [ more... ]

Television took another step toward the mobile handheld market at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) conference in Las Vegas when a handful of industry players announced their support for the Digital Video Broadcast – Handheld (DVB-H) standard.  [ more... ]

"The House of Representatives passed copyright legislation on Tuesday that would dole out criminal penalties to those who make unauthorized recordings of films in movie theaters.

The Family Entertainment and Copyright Act of 2005 (HR357) also would permit technologies that allow users to skip objectionable content in movies viewed at home.

The bill passed by voice vote and now heads to the president, who is expected to sign it into law. An identical bill (S167) already passed in the Senate earlier this year.

"We're thrilled that it passed," said Bill Aho, CEO of ClearPlay, a company that sells software enabling parents to skip over the sex and violence in Hollywood DVDs. "I think it's a great bill for families. I think it's great for parents and I think it's great for the technology sector."

People should be allowed to use technology to watch movies "their way" in their own home, he said.

ClearPlay and other similar services were sued by the movie studios, the Director's Guild of America and 13 individual directors for copyright violations and for altering their work. The technology companies filed a motion for summary judgment and were awaiting a ruling in the 10th District Court in Colorado.

The technology company plans to introduce two new DVD machines with filtering capabilities this summer. Aho said that ClearPlay looks forward to integrating its technology into more devices.

"We have multiple companies that we've been talking to that have been waiting for resolution (on the lawsuit)," Aho said."  [ more... ]

"PC hardware and components suppliers are now involved in a rapid re-orientation towards consumer electronics, where it’s hoped that the Media Center PC will give a much-needed boost to the global IT industry. The media PC will be the center, so the thinking goes, of a complete multimedia environment, the digital home. Large flat-panel displays, digital imaging, wireless networking and multi-channel audio will all play their part. But so also will multimedia software, which will enable the authoring and the editing of video, not simply its playback, along with slideshow and album functionality for still photos."  [ more... ]

On Wednesday Apple Computer Inc. reported, "record quarterly earnings and revenue on significant increases in Macintosh computer and iPod digital media player shipments.

The Cupertino, California-based company posted a net profit of US$290 million, or $0.34 per share for its fiscal 2005 second quarter, which ended March 26. That compares with earnings of $46 million, or $0.06 per share, in the year-earlier period, the company said in a statement.

In the second quarter, Apple shipped 1.07 million Macintosh computers and 5.31 million iPod players, it said. That's up 43 percent year-on-year in computer shipments and up 558 percent on the iPods, according to Apple."  [ more... ]

Media Excel has released a Press Release stating that they are announcing, "a new product line targeted at the IPTV and digital home markets; all new products will be showcased at NAB in Las Vegas April 16th - 21st, booth #SL 5826. Visitors will experience live demos of end to end IPTV Solutions for Live Broadcast, Video-on-Demand (VoD), IP-Set-top boxes and mobile devices powered by Media Excel's SoftStream® products based on advanced compression standards such as H.264.

With today's announcement, the company is expanding the SoftStream® product line to include software and hardware compression, streaming, and decoding technologies. "SoftStream® is Media Excel's product line for end to end IPTV deployments, which is the culmination of Media Excel's in-house development of advanced software compression and streaming technologies combined with our experience from live IPTV deployments in America, Europe, and Asia for major telecommunications companies," said Thanasis Iatrou, the company's President."  [ more... ]

"Apple Computer (Profile, Products, Articles) reported record quarterly earnings and revenue on significant increases in Macintosh computer and iPod digital media player shipments.

The Cupertino, California-based company posted a net profit of $290 million, or $0.34 per share for its fiscal 2005 second quarter, which ended March 26. That compares with earnings of $46 million, or $0.06 per share, in the year-earlier period, the company said in a statement.

In the second quarter, Apple shipped 1.07 million Macintosh computers and 5.31 million iPod players, it said. That's up 43 percent year-on-year in computer shipments and up 558 percent on the iPods, according to Apple.

Revenue for the quarter hit $3.24 billion, up 70 percent from $1.9 billion in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 40 percent of Apple's revenue in the quarter, the company said."  [ more... ]

The results are records in both earnings and revenue, Apple Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs said in the statement."

Australian IT is carrying an article by Chris Jenkins and Michael Sainsbury reporting that, "TELSTRA is banking on its Broadband Multi-Service project to save $500 million over five years and deliver the so-called "triple play" of voice, video and data services to residential customers via a single broadband connection, according to sources within the company.

The project, which is designed to give the company an "aggregation layer" for a range of broadband network types, is a key plank of Telstra's overall Future Network strategy.

"The objective is to provide economical, simplified and ubiquitous access to all customers across all Telstra broadband network assets, regardless of the delivery medium," a request for information issued to suppliers earlier obtained by The Australian said.

As part of its multibillion-dollar Future Network strategy, Telstra is also considering expanding the number of suppliers of broadband infrastructure.

Low-cost Chinese makers Huawei and ZTE are the contenders most likely to join Alcatel and NEC as Telstra's DSLAM suppliers, observers said.

Such a move would help Telstra defend its broadband operations against emerging threats from Optus and a range of smaller players that are installing their own DSL equipment, freeing themselves from having to buy services wholesale from Telstra."  [ more... ] 

"As telephone and cable TV companies battle to be America's information and entertainment providers, Silicon Valley companies are becoming self-described "arms merchants," selling to both sides in the ongoing war.

Cable companies are advancing on phone company turf by delivering voice services over cable lines. And phone companies are invading cable company territory by delivering TV programs over phone lines.

The arms merchants to these battling behemoths are the smaller companies that sell network equipment, software and system integration services. They were among the exhibitors during the National Cable Television Association convention held April 3-5 at San Francisco's Moscone Center.

While some of these companies got their start selling either to the cable industry or to telco companies, many are now pursuing both markets. While they theoretically can double their business pursuing both markets, their long-term success depends on how well cable and telcos pursue their rival's core business, analysts say, and which technology partners they choose to help them do that."   [ more... ]