HTC could take on Spotify and Pandora with a streaming music service for its mobile devices, sources indicate, building on its Beats Audio investment with more unique features to differentiate its smartphones. The company is working with music producer and Beats co-founder Jimmy Iovine on the unnamed streaming service, GigaOm‘s sources claim, in addition to new music-centric hardware such as Bluetooth-connected speakers that might debut as soon as Mobile World Congress later this month.
Subscription TV service Aereo wants to cut your cable connection, and it plans to use thousands of tiny antennas hooked up to internet connections to do it; that is, if broadcasters don't litigate it to death first. Set to launch in New York City on March 14, streaming free-to-air content to your phone, tablet or computer for a $12 monthly fee, Aereo also offers a cloud-based DVR and the ability to pause live TV. Rather than snap a TV tuner onto your iPad, however, Aereo clusters antennas together in individual data center blocks.
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Smart TV company Boxee promised to consider DVR functionality when it launched its Live TV adapter, and it seems a paid add-on service delivering just that might be in the pipeline. A survey fired out to Live TV dongle owners over the weekend questioned whether they would be willing to pay between $5 and $15 per month for the ability to record live TV for later playback, GigaOm reports, or indeed if they were uninterested in the functionality at all.
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Google continues to refine its Google TV smart home entertainment platform, with a new YouTube app released that promises easier content discovery, better topic hubs and streamlined control for users streaming to their TV. The app - available in the Android Market on Google TV 2.0 boxes - introduces a new Discover feature that filters YouTube channels by categories, including cooking, comedy, science and gaming.
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Roku has made a couple announcements that fans streaming media in the UK may get excited about. The first is that the Roku players are now shipping to customers in the UK. The other announcement is that the selection of entertainment content for fans in the UK has increased. The UK versions of the players previously allowed users to access content like Netflix and a lot more.
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A new set of tips have come through WSJ's author Amir Efrati on what Google will soon be presenting for families across the earth: a Google Home Entertainment System. We've previously heard about this system and hypothesized that it could be the Android@Home we heard about at Google I/O 2011. What we saw back then and what's being tipped today seems to line up fairly well: a home-based system of devices that connect with your media to bring you one immersive experience, based on Android as an operating system that makes it all run.
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As the 2012 election season for the President of the United States comes down upon is in a hailstorm of advertisements and pushes to do the right thing, so too do the brand collaborations begin - right here with Spotify. Though we've already seen the President go on Google+ to do a fireside chat after his State of the Union address just a few days ago, this is the first real place, I'd say, we're seeing Obama really jam on the youth-tip to get back in touch with the citizens of the United States so they can vote for him in 2012. While Barack Obama has never been one to get too far away from this environment, you're going to see one whole heck of a lot more of this tech-related business as the elections come up - what better way to start than with some Spotify music?
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Apple's much-anticipated Siri-powered television is already in testing at Canadian telecoms firms Rogers and Bell, sources claim, offering a combination of voice, gesture and on-screen keyboard control. The company is chasing deals with telecommunications firms with fingers in both broadcast and broadband pies, insiders tell The Globe and Mail, Apple hoping to capitalize on live and on-demand content with a naturalistic interface using the voice control system.
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The fine folks over at Raspberry Pi have announced that they expect fans of their tiny little media streaming system will be able to purchase the device by the end of February. The company had apparently hoped the device would be ready to purchase before the end of the month, but ran into an issue in manufacturing. The manufacturing issue was with the quartz crystal package that the company had chosen.
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Verizon and Redbox have announced plans to take on Netflix, with an on-demand video streaming service set to launch in the second half of 2012. The as-yet-unnamed service will accompany Redbox's existing DVD and Blu-ray rental kiosks, with subscription services "and more" for streamed video using Verizon's on-demand and download system.
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If you have a Netflix account and are a fan of streaming media yesterday marked an important occasion for Netflix. Netflix debuted its first original program yesterday, and all episodes are now available for viewing via the streaming service. Netflix's first original program is called Lilyhammer. The program went live yesterday and is the first original program from Netflix and more original content is coming in the future.
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Apple television obsessed analyst Gene Munster claims the Cupertino company has entered negotiations with a "major TV component supplier" over the possibility of using its parts for the much-rumored smart TV. The supplier itself is unnamed, but the Piper Jaffray analyst claims to have been informed by employees that Apple had been in contact "regarding various capabilities of their television display components."
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