Whether you’re traveling or staying at home this holiday season, most people will end up with some time in front of the television. And while it was common in our house to record holiday specials on VHS tapes years ago, getting a little TV holiday cheer is a lot easier now that VOD has picked up steam. I scanned through Comcast’s on-demand selections today and found everything from classic movies, to T’giving turkey tips, to snowy screensaver scenes. Here are a few examples from the grab bag:

1. How To – Comcast’s VOD menu includes instructional clips for kids and adults alike. Martha Stewart is on hand in the Life and Home section for help decorating the house or preparing Thanksgiving dinner, and the Holiday Fun for Kids category (under the main Kids section) provides suggestions for kid treats and kid crafts.
2. Holiday Movies – The holiday movies available in the on-demand section aren’t free, but many can be had for only $2.99. There are classics like Miracle on 34th Street, and more recent flicks like the Hugh Grant film Love Actually. There are also plenty of selections for children, from Barney to Rudolph.
3. The Yule Log – No holiday season would be complete without a burning log in the fire, but if you’re lacking the fireplace, you can still get an HD simulation on the big screen in your living room. The Comcast VOD screensaver choices (in the Top Picks section) include the popular crackling Yule Log along with wintery snow scenes.

On an unrelated note, I just discovered that there is an entire Lego channel available through VOD, complete with animated Lego recreations of famous movie scenes. In case the holidays aren’t really your thing.

Happy Thanksgiving, All.

VirginMedia has announced that DVR giant TiVo will supply the software for its upcoming set-top boxes. TiVo is extremely popular in the US but pulled out of the UK market a few years ago. TiVo launched in the UK at the same time as Sky+ but failed to attract subscribers.

TiVo’s technology is based arround recommendations for programmes and a clean user interface. More recently, TiVo has built-in functionality for web-based streaming that allows users to watch content from Netflix, Amazon and Youtube.

Neil Berkett, CEO of Virgin Media said:

“TiVo’s proven track record of innovation, strength of its patented technology and experience in developing best in class user environments, make it an ideal strategic partner for Virgin Media as we move aggressively to bring our next generation TV service to market.”

Tech-savvy consumers hoping for a FreeSat or FreeView TiVo will sadly be disappointed as VirginMedia will be the exclusive provider in the UK. VirginMedia expects to lauch its first co-branded box in 2010.

Via: TiVo

When I was on the beat, I was never sure what to make of Ryan Kavanaugh. He always had a million financial deals going, but didn’t talk like one. He was always running late, and seemed a bit scattered. And there were rumors about his finances, a couple drunk driving incidents….

Yet studios like Universal and Sony kept doing big slate deals with him.

A couple weeks ago, I had a chance to sit down with Ryan for this Billion Dollar Producer section Variety ran in last Friday’s paper. Ryan was running late, of course, but once the interview began he was all mine. The interview stretched several hours as he showed off several projects he’s working on. Just as I suspected: He’s always running late because he gets caught up in the moment.

Here’s my feature story, which addresses his remarkable energy and those pesky rumors about his business, a story about Rogue, and his ambitions for VOD. At 34, he’s already a mogul.

24/7 Wall St. sat down with Dan Hesse, CEO of Sprint Nextel (NYSE:S) to talk about the company’s current subscriber growth issues, the firm’s WiMax roll-out, and the future of broadband telecommunications.

The interview:

24/7 Wall St: It’s obvious that Wall Street’s perception of Sprint has changed  markedly in just the last week, and obviously you all have watched that.  Are there one or two things that you think have changed in terms of perception in the direction of what’s going on in the company that were not as easily visible before?
 
Hesse:  Well I can’t speak for why the shares have gone up in the past week.  What I will say is that I hope that investors have seen continued improvement at Sprint in terms of the customer experience.  We’ve reported seven consecutive quarters of improved customer satisfaction, improved first-call resolution, improved customer satisfaction at retail, improved network performance, so an overall improved overall customer experience.  And the past quarter, the 3rd quarter, we saw the largest sequential improvement in gross adds, which is the industry vernacular for new customers, since we’ve been keeping records, which is over 5 years.   So perhaps these are being noticed by the Street.  In addition, as you know, we recently bought down another $1 billion of Sprint debt, which perhaps is viewed as increasing confidence in our ability to generate free cash flow and improve the balance sheet. 
 
24/7 Wall St:  One of the things that I’ve seen in writing, and I wanted to get your reaction to this, there’s certainly a perception that you make more money per customer than your major competitors in terms of the data that people use from their phones to the people they’re talking to or doing business with.  Is that a fair perception?
 
Hesse:  We have a higher average revenue per user that is attributed to data.  And Sprint has been effective at attracting customers that want to use their phone for more than just voice.  So we have very simple pricing plans, like Simply Everything which we introduced in the 1st quarter of 2008, and our Everything data plans have recently been enhanced by adding Any Mobile Any Time to them so that the data-centric customer who’s looking for a great 3G network, as you know we have the most dependable 3G network, we have the first 4G network, and we have very good rate plans for those data and text-centric customers that we tend to attract.  And as a result our ARPU, or average revenue per user, that is attributable to data for our CDMA customer base.  We have two networks.  We have a CDMA and we have an iDEN network.   But the customers that go to the CDMA network are very heavy data users so we do have the highest average revenue per user among those customers in the industry. 
 
24/7 Wall St:  I suspect that if we asked 99 out of 100 analysts and institutional investors what they think will be the tipping point for Sprint, it will be when you start to add subscribers the way that AT&T (NYSE:T) and Verizon Wireless NYSE:VZ)(NYSE:VOD) have.  Do you have a feel for when that may start to happen or what the triggers are for that?
 
Hesse:  Our focus is on increasing revenue and getting to the point where our revenues as a company grow.  We have post-paid wireless customers, pre-paid wireless customers, wholesale wireless customers, and then we also have a wireline division.  We have made a lot of progress in growing our pre-paid customer base this year in 2009.  As a matter of fact in the first three quarters of 2009 we’ve added 2.1 million net adds, or net new subscribers in pre-paid, which is more new customers than any U.S. pre-paid provider added on all of 2008.  On the post-paid side, we are still lose losing customers, but at an improving rate.  We’re losing fewer customers than we have in previous quarters, which we believe is attributable to the fact that we’ve improved customer service and network quality immensely.  We do have a goal of getting to total subscriber growth.  We want our customers to choose what is the best rate plan or service for them.  For some customers, they prefer prepaid which means there is no contract.  And some customers prefer post-paid, where they get a subsidized phone and in exchange they sign a 2-year contract.  We want the customer to make that choice.  And I think that the Street sometimes can tend to over-emphasize one area over another.   We tend to take a more balanced view.  So the appropriate way of looking at our turnaround is total revenue.   And that is still declining, but we do have clear goals to get that moving in a positive direction.  
 
24/7 Wall St:  so just as a quick follow-up, the notion that adding a 1 or 1.5 million net total subscribers every quarter is an incredibly important benchmark for you or any or your competitors is somewhat overstated? 
 
Hesse:  No I think the way look at it is that you have to walk before you run.  For us the goal is to grow revenues.  And whether that comes from post-paid subscribers of pre-paid subscribers isn’t the issue a much as just growing the revenue stream.  So we do have a goal to grow and obviously the more the revenues or the more new subscribers you’re adding the better.  Your question may have been is there a particular number of subscribers that you’ll guide to as a goal going forward.  And our number one goal is to get to revenue growth.   And later on perhaps we’ll have goals around the particular number of subscribers that we’re growing.  But right now our pre-paid business is growing subscribers in a very healthy way.  We need to get where the combination of our pre-paid business, post-paid business, our wholesale customer base, as well as our wire line business are working together to growth the overall revenue stream?
 
24/7 Wall St: You’re currently building out your WiMax network with your partner Clearwire (NASDAQ:CLWR).  At what point will you be able to aggressively offer that service in the top 20 markets, be able to really market it throughout that area?
 
Hesse:  Well, it takes a while to build a national 4G market.  Our target is to have 25 markets, not the top 25, but 25 markets covering 30 million people operating by then of this year, 2009.  And 80 markets, covering about 120 million people, which will cover most of the major markets by the end of next year, 2010.  This year we’ve already launched Chicago, Philadelphia, Portland, Dallas, Ft. Worth, Atlanta, Las Vegas, very major markets.  And of course there are very big markets planned for launching in 2010.  And as we get more markets build it becomes easier to market 4G because the national coverage gets better.   Because it does take a long time to build a national 4G footprint, very much like we did when we built 2G and when we built our 3G, we’ll offer dual-mode devices that operate on the existing large coverage network that we have in 3G.  We have a very large 3G network at Sprint, 14 times larger than T-Mobile’s for example.  So our devices will operate on 3G and also 4G so that if you happen to be in a market or location where 4G isn’t built out yet it will downshift, if you will, to 3G.  So we have begun marketing Sprint 4G services in the markets that indicated have already been launched this year, in 2009.  But you’ll be seeing much more market of 4G services in 2010 as we get more of a critical mass of markets.  And again by the end of 2010 our goal is to have 120 million what we call pops covered, which is equivalent to 120 million people that could get the service if they choose.    
 
24/7 Wall St: Your partner Clearwire obviously just got a new round of funding.  Is there any assumption that gets them to profitability or is the assumption that just in essence gets them more runway as you build our WiMax?
 
Hesse:  Well I’ll let Clearwire, which is a separate public company, talk about what the funding means.  It depends upon how rapidly Clearwire builds out the network.  The more rapidly they build out the network the more likely they are to need funding to build it out more aggressively before the revenue comes in from new customers.  So it is a corporate decision that Clearwire makes on whether time the funding of capex investment or market expansion with revenues coming in, which would mean they may not have to go out and get additional funding, or if in fact they intend to aggressively build out the network so that the cash or capital requirements go out before the revenues come in, which would mean they would need to raise additional capital.  But there is a significant likelihood that Clearwire would need to raise additional money, whether that be debt or equity, in the future.
 
24/7 Wall St:  how important in terms of picking up net new customers that WiMax is being deployed well ahead of the LTE technology that people like AT&T and Verizon will offer?
 
Hesse:  We think it’s quite important, because as opposed to any other new generations of wireless technology where it took a while for the market to develop, because the applications needed to developed.   3G is a good case and point.  3G technology was available really before a lot of the applications where there, and on the network side available before the devices for 3G were out on the markets place.  The beauty of 4G is that in a very short period of time data growth has exploded on the mobile networks.  A lot is being written about, for example, AT&T’s network not being able to handle the heavy data users on the iPhones.  So need for additional speed and capacity on the wireless networks is there, that’s number one.  So the applications don’t need to be developed; it’s not like we’re waiting for those to come.  Secondly, we’re not really waiting for the new 4G devices to come either.  Because with what we call a MyFi, we offer a 3G MyFi which is like a small wireless router that’s about the size of a thick credit card, the 3G versions.  And we have a 4G version that operates on 4G and 3G that’s larger, but the size will come down over time.  This means that anything that anything that I have has WiFi on it can be a 4G device.   So any of my 3G or 2G cell phones that have WiFi can operate at 4G as long as I have one of these mobile hot spots with me.  So can my MP3 player, or my iTouch, or my gaming device, or my camera, or my video camera, or my PC, or my netbook.  These can all be mobile 4G devices as long as they have WiFi on them because what these small routers do is they take that WiFi signal from all these devices that are out there on the market today that I’ve just described, and it goes WiFi to this mini-router and then 4G, or 3G depending on what’s available, out to the internet.  So the hot spot now is no longer the size of a WiFi hot spot, no longer the size of a coffee shop or your apartment, but it’s the size of the entire city.  So both the applications are there and the devices are there for 4G now.  So we can take real advantage of time-to-market advantage for 4G.  So we think it will make a very big difference to be first to market. 
 
24/7 Wall St:  Is WiMax, once it’s broadly distributed, a fast enough technology so that it will actually compete with wired broadband to the home.  So as an example could there be a set-top box that in essence operates wirelessly that allows for broadband and TV to come in the way they might with cable or fiber now? 
 
Hesse:  Well there are landline technologies that are capable of faster speeds than wireless 4G, like WiMax.  WiMax of course is theoretical capable of going at 40 megabits per second and is faster, but that in the real world with the number of users sharing bandwidth thing of something more in the range of 4 megabits per second, maybe 5 megabits per second, as being the kinds of speeds that customers might expect on 4G.  It will compete very effectively against, from a speed point of view, with DSL.  There are cable modem speeds, and as you mentioned fiber, that are capable of going faster than that.  The real question is from a price performance perspective, if I’m a customer and I have 4G service available at let’s say 4 megabits per second, that’s very fast for most applications.  Is it worth it to also buy a landline on top of that, because we believe that everybody will want to have and need to have that capability from a mobile point of view.   So the real question is “is it worth the extra money when I’m home to buy another subscription to another service to get what could go faster?”.  So the question is a good one.  There will be landline solutions available to everyone that’s within service range, because everybody can’t get high-speed cable modem service for example, or fiber service like a Fios or a U-Verse.  They may not have that available to them.  But those services are capable of even faster transmission speeds than wireless 4G.  
 
24/7 Wall St.:  Thank you.

Microsoft lance,en Belgique, le service Zune au travers de sa console de jeux Xbox 360. Le joueur de Xbox 360 Live pourra désormais downloader des films streaming en qualité HD. Microsoft a un accord avec les principaux distributeurs de film (Paramount, Universal, MGM et Warner Brothers) et devient par conséquent un concurrent direct à Telenet et Belgacom TV. Les video seront disponibles au moment de leur sortie en DVD.

Arrête ton cinoche !

La Vidéo à la Demande est désormais disponible sur PlayStation3 et PSP. Avec un catalogue de 390 films au lancement, les mecs, vous allez laisser tomber Youporn et vous concentrer sur des titres extrêmement pointues, tels que Transporteur 3, Da Vinci Code, Harry Potter, mais aussi sur des gros navets comme Slum Dog Millionnaire, The Dark Knight ou Gran Torino…

Outre les promos de lancement pour se faire plaisir sans fissurer le cochon, comptez 2,99€ à 9,99€ la projo maison. Bueno !

Adieu sublime Dolce Elektra, bonjour Harry Potter

C’est aujourd’hui qu’a eu lieu la mise à jour de la 360 avec l’arrivée de Facebook et Twitter. Ce n’était d’ailleurs pas vraiment une mise à jour vu qu’à l’allumage de la console, ces nouvelles fonctionnalités étaient présentes. J’ai donc testé ces deux services de plus en plus populaires et même si l’absence de clavier est handicapante, cela reste toujours pratique pour pouvoir regarder ses photos sur sa télé. Rien de révolutionnaire donc mais des ajouts qui tendent à faire de la 360 une console avec des fonctionnalités multimédia plus grandes, et comme toute chose inutile, elle en devient indispensable. La VOD a enfin droit au streaming ce qui n’est vraiment pas de refus.

Sony va aussi faire de même en proposant Facebook et la VOD sur PS3. Les gazouillis de l’oiseau bleu resteront donc sur 360.

Photographed by VOD Cars

Going through time

– License

Motorola Home and Networks Mobility went through a big acquisition phase a couple years back, but since then things have been somewhat quiet on the M&A front. That changed today with the announcement that Motorola is in the process of acquiring BitBand. As with previous acquisitions, the BitBand purchase fills out a critical segment of Motorola’s video portfolio. BitBand is a content management and CDN provider focused on IP video on demand.

There are several ways that BitBand ties in with Motorola’s existing business:

1. As an extension of the company’s on-demand portfolio
   Remember, Motorola’s focused a lot of attention on VOD this past year, introducing the Adaptive Media Management framework and passing the  milestone of one million on-demand streams shipped
2. As an extension to Motorola’s IP video portfolio
   This includes IP set-tops, DOCSIS video delivery, the transport gateway, the Storefront service delivery platform, and Microsoft Mediaroom integration expertise
3. As a bridge to the next generation of TV delivery
   Television of the future includes both traditional TV and over-the-top video

BitBand brings an impressive CV with it to the Motorola family. The IP video specialist has more than 60 commercial IPTV deployments worldwide, with a particularly strong base in Europe (a useful complement to Motorola’s access network customer footprint there). BitBand has also won a number of awards in its ten-year history, including the World Economic Forum’s Technology Pioneer award, a listing among Harvard Business School Alumni Club’s “25 companies that will transform the world,” and the VentureWire Investors’ Choice award.

More to come after the deal closes. The acquisition is expected to be complete by the end of the year.

Jusqu’à présent, visionner un film en VoD (vidéo à la demande) sur une téléviseur n’était offert qu’aux abonnés aux services de TV par ADSL (ou câble ou satellite). La VOD constitue donc pour les opérateurs des revenus additionnels intéressants mais pour l’instant encore assez minimes : l’abonné loue son film (entre 3,99 et 4,99€), le film est ajouté à sa facture et l’opérateur touche au final entre 50 à 60% du montant (le reste revenant aux ayants droits). 2 ans après le lancement des 1er services en France, les ventes de VOD sont encore modestes, 10% des abonnés aux services de TV par ADSL sont clients d’un service de VOD, Orange enregistre chaque mois environ 600 000 ventes quand SFR (Neuf TV) doit dépasser les 300 000. Ventes modestes certes mais qui expliquent – en partie – la chute des ventes de DVD depuis cette même période.

Le marché de la VOD est donc prometteur… suffisamment pour que les fabriquants de TV s’intéressent à la distribution en direct de ce type de contenu. Fin juin, Philips annonçait le lancement de ses premières télé connectées, la série Philips NET TV permettant de se connecter (sans décodeur) à Internet pour accéder à un portail de services interactifs. Pas de VOD encore mais cela ne saurait tarder ! Plus récemment, TCL-Thomson a dévoilé son offre Mywish TV, la 1ère télévision permettant d’accéder (en France) à un service de VOD directement depuis son téléviseur. Le téléviseur (écran LCD), connecté à Internet, offre un accès à la plateforme VOD du groupe Canal+. Le catalogue de Canalplay propose plus de 7000 titres, dont 3500 films et de nombreuses séries.

Mywish TV” est doté du wifi intégré afin de se connecter à Internet et de télécharger les films, il dispose d’une mémoire flash de 4 Go intégrée lui permettant de stocker automatiquement les films téléchargés (un film fait en moyenne 1,5 Go). Si cela ne suffit pas, l’appareil est équipé d’un lecteur de carte SD. Par ailleurs, il permet la consultation directe de contenus multimédia (photos, vidéos ou musique) stockés sur carte mémoire, l’accès à un bouquet de radios et podcasts du monde entier ainsi que l’accès à la TNT HD. Pour un prix allant de 750€ (pour le modèle 82 cm) à 900€ (pour le modèle 102 cm), voila une piste intéressante pour résoudre vos problèmes de cordons et d’empilage de box ! Et pour ce prix, 5 fims en VOD sont offerts, yuppi !

View Sonic, a manufacturer and provider of visual technology, has introduced its new VPD 400 MovieBook, all-in-one portable entertainment player that enables users to watch HD movies, listen to music, view photo albums, read digital books or even record voice memos at a very affordable price.

 Stylish and ultra thin Viewsonic VD400 comes with 4.3-inch screen (800 x 480), larger screen format with HD 720p. It has wide range of video, photo and audio format compatibilities, which includes JPEG, BMP, PNG, GIF, AVI, RM/RMVB, FLV, MP4, MOV, PMP, MPG, VOD, DAT, H.264, H.263, MP3, WMA, WAV, FLAC, APE, OGG

 The device comes with internal memory (NAND Flash Memory) of 8GB. In addition, Viewsonic VPD400 also supports micro SD cards slot for expandable storage.

 The VD400 has long battery life (1800mAH Li-Ion), which supports playback of up to 12 hours (audio), 6 hours (video), and 3 hours HD video on a single charge. The device weighs only 0.3 lb. (140 g).

 The VPD400 MovieBook is compatible with Windows® 98/2000/SE/ME/XP/Vista and available at a price tag of $129.99.

 The firstreporter

The House of Lords has told culture secretary Ben Bradshaw to ’strong arm’ the competition commission into giving Project Canvas the go-ahead. Project Canvas is a joint venture between the BBC, ITV, BT and Five that would create a standard platform for internet based on-demand TV. Think of it as a Freeview for the Internet.

The Competition Commission blocked a similar project, known as Kangaroo, earlier this year. Lord MacDonald told Bradshaw that ‘many people in media believe the Commission lives on a different planet’. The US have had Hulu, a single site for on-demand TV, since 2007. Bradshaw has said that the team behind Project Canvas will have to adapt their proposal to meet UK competition rules and the national interest. He did say he was aware of the risk that US players, such as Hulu, could come in and dominate the UK market.

It was reported earlier this week that Hulu were finalising a deal with ITV ahead of their UK launch. The deal would see ITV hold a 25% equity steak in the company.

Via: DigitalSpy

A quick round up of some TV topics I am watching unfold.

Since the demise of video-on-demand TV platform planned between the BBC, C4 and ITV titled ‘Project Kangaroo, which was bought down by the monopolies commssion in 2008 , the idea of  IPTV collaborations between the major UK brodcasters has been on a rollercoaster of reinvention in preperation for online and overseas competitors making a bid to seduce your eyes across an array of IPTV and VoD viewing platforms.

Following hot on the very well connected heels of BBC i-player which has already been rolled out across partnerships with Nokia handsets and Virgin Media – cue Project Canvas.

Described as Freeview MKII – this on demand service would be viewable through a set top box. It proposes to bring together content from some a wider selection of  UK channels including the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Five. Its possibly only a matter of time before this would be rolled out across partner broadband network’s and other TV platforms. This causes great debate about the BBC overstepping its remit, killing competition and potentially profiting from the overseas export of content paid for by UK licence fee payer which in turn could be a threat to the BBC licence fee itself. Critics also observe that while the BBC’s digital strategy is powerful, leading the charge for accessible content across multi-platform, their programme making has suffered incredibly. USA TV series producers and channel HBO is arguably making the best TV content in the world at present.

Who’d of thought that a British public instiitution could be too succesful – maybe rasing hope for the concept of a working nationalised industries!

Also in the news, Media Week reports that ITV and the much talked about overseas IPTV competitor Hula are ready to sign a deal. Currently only available in the USA but with an imminent launch in the UK soon to be announced, Hulu is a website that offers commercially-supported streaming  of TV shows and movies from NBC, Fox, ABC and many other networks and studios.

Meanwhile Sky has launched a live TV i-phone app reported as the first of its  kind, and C4 has signed up its first roster of brands to advertise on its landmark full-length programming deal with YouTube.

Markets in Asia were slightly higher

The Nikkei rose .6% to 9,871. Mitsubishi UFJ NYSE:MTU) rose.

The Hang Seng was up .3% to 22,269.

The Shanghai Composite rose .1% to 3,178.

At the open in Europe, the FTSE rose .2% to 5,246. Vodafone (NYSE:VOD) and HSBC (NYSE:HBC) both reported earnings. The Dax was up .1% to 5,626. The CAC 40 rose a fraction to 3,785.

Data from Reuters and MarketWatch

Douglas A. McIntyre

I am terribly disappointed by XBOX360’s Skyplayer offering. Where I was looking forward to being able to watch a bit of TVOD, it turned out that i had to pay, not only for the Skyplayer subscription (which only offers the entertainment pack) but also signup to XBOX Live GOLD to even be able to use the Skyplayer.

It went like this. I was up for watching Robocop (the first one) after someone at the Halloween party on friday dressed up as the ED209 so I thought I would check the XBOX Live’s Video Marketplace, since I had found a few movies I liked there before and I seemed to remember seeing Robocop in the list. Scrolling through the list of films starting with “R” I come accross “Robocop 3″ but not 2 or 1. I found this Very annoying but I remain patient. Looking around the marketplace I come accross the promotion of Skyplayer on the XBOX and, being quite happy with the experience from the PS3’s BBC IPlayer implementation and the Vidzone service, I thought I would give it a go.

After pressing “A” on it, the first message I get says that I must have an XBOX Live Gold membership to be able to use it, so, fair enough, I upgrade my membership to gold for £15 for 3 months. Thinking that this would allow me to, at least, watch the basic Sky channels, I continue to install the application only to find that, to be able to use the application, I now need to be registered on the skyplayer website (annoyance levels increase). But this is fine, I understand the need for this so I click to the skyplayer website and follow the registration instructions ignoring all “subscription” related messages.

I excitedly head to the skyplayer menu to try and find something to watch, but I find myself facing yet another fail. The only channel you can watch without subscription is Sky’s “Sample channel”. Staying very patient, I browse through the content to find something I can pay to watch On Demand. I am shown the middle finger yet again, as none of the movies seem to be accessible and only tv episodes for things such as “Ross Kemp in Afghanistan” can be “rented” for about £0.98 an episode. And that’s it for me, I have canceled my Sky registration and I am definitely NOT going to renew my Xbox Gold membership. It’s an utter shame but, the savings I was expecting of a web based service such as this are not only not there but also seems even more expensive than the dish alternative: Phone line + Broadband + XBOX + Live Gold Membership + Skyplayer subscription and, to be honest, very weak tv content. Value for money wise, the PS3, with it’s basic web based implementation of the BBCi Player and Vidzone’s music channel is superior to Microsoft’s poor offering. I am really looking forward to Sony launching their film renting service on the PS3, because if its anywhere near as good as what they have done so far, I am never again buying a movie from the Xbox’s marketplace. Maybe I should talk to the people from the ads and ask them to have a word with Microsoft and get them to fix this.

And when are we going to see a decent Anime offering!!!!???? Always playing it safe with Ghost in the Shell and Akira…