TTL - The Tech Link Blog

Dell

Recently, Dell started offering pre-installed movies on their computers during online checkout. They are now pushing the media distribution further by offering pre-installed “music packs” on their PCs.

Dell’s agreement with Universal enables the computer maker to offer attractively priced music when a customer buys a new computer. A 50-song pack will cost $25, and a 100-song pack will cost $50. That’s half of what it would cost if the same amount of songs were bough on iTunes!

All songs will be DRM-free. Users will be able to use and listen to the purchased songs anywhere, anytime. As of now, the XPS One and Dell Mini 9 netbook are excluded from the offering.

The Boston Globe

Netflix

Netflix, the company that started out as an online over-the-mail DVD renting service, is expanding rapidly towards online streaming and promising high definition (HD) content delivered directly on the Xbox 360.

Netflix has chosen to make the HD service available only on the Xbox 360 at first and then turn to the PC market. The service will be available through a dashboard update scheduled in mid-November.

Subscribers of the Netflix service will also have to be subscribed to Xbox Live! to be able to enjoy over 10,000 standard definition titles along with the new HD content. If you’re a big movie watcher, this offer might be very interesting…

The Boy Genius Report

YouTube

Like what you see? Then “Click to Buy”. You will see a lot of this on YouTube from now on.

It’s no secret, Google has been loosing a lot of money with YouTube because it’s not profitable enough. Sure, it’s popular, but it doesn’t bring profits to the company. As a first step in transforming YouTube into a money-making venture, Google started integrating non-intrusive links within certain video pages that promote different type of products and media.

Users will be able to buy the music tracks of certain music videos they like to watch, or buy a game or movie right after watching the preview or teaser. Partnerships have already been made with iTunes and Amazon.

BetaNews

Sling Media

Still in Beta mode, Sling Media is launching their new TV Web Service/Portal to the public.

Dubbed “Sling.com”, this new service will provide video streaming of quality movies, tv shows, reports, etc. and also allow SlingBox owners to view their home TV right on the web site!

We don’t know exactly when the service will be fully ready but we’re looking forward to it!

TechCrunch
Sling.com

Dell

After Nokia’s “Comes with music” phones, Dell is introducing something similar with their computers.

Shoppers will now be able to add movies to their computer purchases right on the Dell website during checkout. The movies will be pre-loaded on the hard drive with all the extras that would normally come with the DVD version of the same movie.

For now, only “Iron Man” is available but more titles are to come. Count $20 per movie.

TechCrunch

AppleTV

Rumors, rumors. Because of Apple’s announcement to their retail stores to “destroy all advertising material related to AppleTV”, speculations on what is going on have been pourring on the Internet.

Some say it’s nothing, some say that they might be removing the product from the shelves and replacing it with something else, others say it might just be an update to the existing product.

I’ll stick with the third theory as it is quite possible to see new AppleTVs with full 1080p HD capabilities and bigger hard drives (also SATA instead of PATA). When will that happen? Nobody knows for certain.

MacDailyNews

Hulu

Universal’s Hulu is a huge success both in terms of subscribed users and also in terms of revenues for the company.

As of now, Hulu is offering video-on-demand streaming of movies and tv shows and this content can be viewed for free over the Internet. Profits to Universal come from advertisement from various companies.

Universal is now looking into offering the same service but this time it would be focused on the music industry. From cNet: The new venture would offer professionally produced music videos as well as other original programming that features the label’s artists.

cNet
Hulu

The Pirate Bay

15 million surfers are using The Pirate Bay regularly to download content using the bitTorrent protocol. This news was announced by a co-founder of the site yesterday.

Also, it seems that The Pirate Bay has another project on their hands. Indeed, they are looking into movie/video streaming using a sister site called The Pirate City. You will find links to the current site and the cached Google site before it was taken down for testing.

According to the message on the home page, the site should be ready in a few days… Promising!

washingtonpost.com
The Pirate City | Cached Site

Sony PlayStation Store

The Sony PlayStation Store is really nice for renting and buying movies. You will be able to watch a rented movie for 24 hours, which should be enough to enjoy it once or twice.

Buying movies should be as enjoyable as renting. So how long can you keep your purchased movies? As long as you don’t delete them! What happens if you delete them accidentally? Well, according to the T&C, you are scre*ed.

However, if you contact Sony’s customer service, you might get a redownload autorisation code to get your payed-for-movie back on your hard drive once again.

Word to the wise: ”don’t delete!”

ars technica

IMDB

You heard right, IMDb in association with CBS, Hulu, Sony Pictures Television, and over 500 independent producers will be offering free full-length movies and tv shows.

As of now, there is only one movie available (Old Friends) but IMDb plans on offering more than 6,000 videos in rotation including movies like Some Like It Hot and Fever Pitch, as well as tv shows like 24, Heroes and Buffy The Vampire Slayer.

On the 24th and the 29th of September, they will offer premieres of tv series even before they are released on the small screen including Knight Rider, Chuck an 30 Rock.

IMDb Featuring