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Last Updated on Thursday, 18 March 2010 08:33 Written by Chris Hunter Wednesday, 19 March 2008 02:34

Following an early report, high quality copies of a Canadian show will be uploaded the day after airing on TV, and without any of those "friendly" DRM restrictions.

The CBC is not alone, European broadcasters, such as the BBC, are currently working on a bit torrent client of the next generation kind, allowing broadcasting companies to distribute their media online. By using bit torrent, productions costs are reduced dramatically, and are distributed in a form the public are consistently using.

Approximately 50% of all bit torrent downloads are of TV-shows, and episodes of popular shows such as "Lost", "Prison Break" and "Heroes" get up to 10 million downloads per episode, spread over thousands of sites.

It is promising to see broadcasters coming around to the benefits of both dropping DRM additives on their media, and using Bit Torrent for low-cost distribution. Last month Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK) made the popular TV-show "Nordkalotten 365″ available in a DRM-free format. This experiment turned out to be a huge success, while the distribution costs were close to zero. Thumbs are going up all over the community for these companies willing to brave the possible losses, and try their hand at offering legitimate sources of media that people will actually use.

Last Updated on Thursday, 18 March 2010 08:34 Written by Chris Hunter Tuesday, 12 February 2008 06:30

Our Legal Editor, Jerry, pointed out to us today that Apple has had lots of activity at the US PTO. Apple has had a large number of patents published in the past week(both applications and issued), some say 47. Jerry has found 30 so far. These patents were probably part of the 200+ patents Steve Jobs announced last year at the 2007 Mac Expo. Some Mac sites picked up on the developement last week. Macnn has some coverage, as well as MacWorld.

In Addition, Apple has a trademark application for “iGame”. This trademark raises an eyebrow, but what exactly it is for is the question. Is it perhaps a hand held device, or an Internet channel for the iPhone? The potential is broad. We will update when more information comes in.

**update**

The trademark covers a broad spectrum.

"Toys, games and playthings, namely, handheld units for playing electronic games; handheld units for playing videogames; stand alone videogame machines; electronic games other than those adapted for use with televisions receivers only; LCD games machines, electronic educational game machines; toys, namely battery-powered computer games."

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Last Updated on Tuesday, 19 February 2008 11:57 Friday, 01 February 2008 09:09

In an unsolicited proposal, Microsoft has offered to buy Yahoo today for 44.6 billion USD. Yahoo! has been swatting away Microsoft's courtship since early 2006, including turning down a partnership offer last February. This new offer would be a 61% premium over Thursday's (YHOO) stock value. Read on for more information.

Last Updated on Thursday, 21 February 2008 08:07 Sunday, 27 January 2008 21:43

Rumors stating NVIDIA's woes with their 9600GT are confirmed. In a memo, NVIDIA talks about why the release date was pushed back to February 21, 2008. It looks like both companies had some hiccups relating to their new product releases. Let us hope ATi has their driver issue solved as well.

NVIDIA's engineering team has identified the necessary modifications and they are in the process of verification. I will communicate the exact modifications to you as soon as they have been verified and we will communicate the new shipping schedule in the next few days.

Since we are now running into the Chinese New Year holiday NVIDIA have decided to move the launch date out a week in order to ensure that our partners have enough time to get product on shelves at the time of launch.

***New GeForce 9600 GT launch date is Feb. 21st***..."

Last Updated on Thursday, 24 January 2008 07:46 Wednesday, 23 January 2008 22:49

Via was able to give their C7 Platform a boost in performance today. The normal processors found in mobile devices, such as the OQO 02, use the Centaur C7 line. VIA released their new Isaiah, which is two to four times as powerful. The major breakthrough is that they managed to do this while maintaining drop-in compatibility. This processor is twice as fast as its predecessor is, but uses the same resources. They accomplished this engineering feat by designing an entirely new architecture from scratch. Glenn Henry, lead CPU Designer at VIA (centaur), explains his project. More information can also be found in Glenn's Architecture brief.

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Last Updated on Wednesday, 16 January 2008 10:57 Wednesday, 16 January 2008 07:40

Samsung Electronics America has unveiled a new series of 1080P 24" and 25.5" displays in a press release today. Samsung intends for the models to the cover all consumer and commercial related tasks. It has some impressive specs and versatility. read on for more.