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A new report by Forrester Research declares that the paid video download market is going to come to a grinding halt in 2008, despite growing rapidly into 2007. Why? Forrester analyst James McQuivey thinks we’re going to withhold our credit card numbers and migrate to free content—besides, according to McQuivey, despite Apple’s best efforts to make it easy for all, it’s only us “media addicts” who’ve jumped in.
The shaky manifesto wavers a bit into believability, however, when he says that the current geek-heaviness owes to “the average consumer still being confused about different video formats and DRM rights, getting downloaded video onto the TV, and premium content being slow to arrive to the digital market.” On that much, he’s right.
But is that enough to reason to think paid downloads are doomed to imminent oblivion in the wake of say, Joost? Or a subscription service attached to your 360 or Apple TV? As Ars points out, people occasionally do like to own the content they watch. You know, sometimes. And the market’s still in its relative infancy, with potentially lots of room to grow into the proper niches to fit users’ tastes.
Have guys paid for a video download? From who? – Matt Buchanan
Forrester: Paid video downloads, Apple TV a “dead end” [Ars Technica] Image via Flickr
We’re big fans of the online game rental company Gamefly here, so this deal is both fantastic and devious, depending on how ethical you are. Gamefly has a deal going that will give you either a Wii or one year of Gamefly if you get five of your friends to sign up for a month of service.
Well, instead getting five people who want Gamefly, just pay five friends $10 each (that’s the cheapest Gamefly subscription) and have them sign up for a month before cancelling. You get a Wii for $50 and your five friends get a month’s worth of free rentals. Win/win. Except for Gamefly, that is. – Jason Chen
Gamefly Deal [Gamefly via The Last Boss]
Architect, David Fisher, has envisioned a new tower that includes one part wind turbines and one part independently motorized floors. Together they create a spinning generator of doom.
The tower is based around a concrete center core and then each floor will be placed one on top of another (like a sandwich). This format will allow every level to have its very own wind turbine. When all of the turbines are harnessed together the tower will not only be able to power itself, but up to ten other similarly sized ones as well. Darn, I thought Captain Planet was going to show up.
Jump ahead to see a fun fanciful choreographed video of the proposed tower.
Are you an “audiophile system installer” frustrated by cabinet speakers that don’t perform in your living room like they did in the lab? Do you like feeling a constant sense of vague paranoia, like someone’s watching you? Then Proclaim Audiworks’ DMT-1000 speakers just might be the speakers for you. While the spherical shape is ostensibly for sound quality, the design screams “look at me!” (’cause it’s looking at you, duh) rather than “listen to me!” For $26,000, you had better be doing a lot of both. – Matt Buchanan
Product Page [via Crave]
Did you hear that dpreview.com was just bought out by Amazon? If you’re not familiar with dpreview, it’s the largest database for digital camera reviews and news on the internet. Hell, it’s even the first result if you type “cameras” into Google.
But how does the purchase of the biggest camera review site by the biggest online retailer affect you? Well, we (and the rest of the tech community) are still debating this internally, but the fact that Amazon is now owner and watcher of the site may call into question its impartiality towards camera reviews. Will Amazon pass down edicts for the reviewers telling them to pimp cameras with higher margins? Who knows. But something like this is akin say, CNET being bought out by Fry’s.
In the meantime, we’ll still give them the benefit of the doubt and believe they can give honest and unbiased reviews until they prove otherwise. We hope they stay true to their number one Google ranking. – Jason Chen
Press Release [dpreview]
PSU has the latest details on the upcoming version 2.00 update your PlayStation 3 is getting, and it looks like a big one. One of the main features Sony’s adding—and that users have been asking in order to catch up to the Xbox 360—is access to the Cross Media Bar when inside a game. Now you can hop to any other PS3 area or just change settings without quitting your game. Score.
Other items of note are energy saver settings, fast forwarding through music, CD information, password protecting accounts, and some backward compatibility changes. The update should hit relatively soon, but we’ll let you know when it’s up. – Jason Chen
Mother’s day has passed, but that doesn’t mean you still won’t enjoy these Mommy’s Chairs. Yes, these are actual chairs—not sketches—that look like a retarded child drew them. They come in short bus yellow, slow learning blue, “gifted” green, and of course, retarded red. Plus, they cost you about $564 a chair and they only ship to the UK.
p.s. apologies to any disabled kids or parents of disabled kids for the overuse of the word retard in this post. And many of my other posts. – Jason Chen
galleryPost('retardchair', 4, 'Retard Chair');
Product Page [Wheredidyoubuythat via Nerd Approved]
If you’re one of the few people (like us) still eagerly awaiting the summer blockbuster spectacular Transformers, you’ll love these transformers watches from Seiko.
They may be goofy, and they may be supremely low tech, but they’re definitely made for the nine-year-old boy inside of you. Note: we said the nine-year-old inside of you, not the nineteen-year-old co-ed you have locked up in the basement. By the way, we’ve called the cops on you Mark Wilson.
More pics after the jump.
Rumors are already flying about BlackBerry’s next Pearl revision, appropriately deemed the 8120. This BlackBerry is rumored for a late summer release and will be a significant update to the already existing 8100 “Pearl.” Most notable is the addition of GPS, Wi-Fi, a 2-megapixel camera and three new colors (titanium, blue and gold). The latest news is that the phone will officially be hitting Rogers in Canada this September with U.S. carriers (none confirmed) getting it a week earlier, so if you are in the market for a Pearl it may be better to chill for a bit.
GPS and Wi-Fi? Bye-bye battery life. –Travis Hudson
Don’t wanna pay $12 to see Spider-Man 3 in theaters? The folks at Comcast wanna stream the movie straight to your living room provided you pay ‘em between $29 to $49/per movie. That’s right, for the price of a movie ticket and the DVD, Comcast will stream new releases to your home.
Personally, I think the idea is crazy. Yeah, it’d be nice to see new releases at home, but to cough up $49 for the “privilege,” no thanks. Even if you own one of these, the experience won’t be the same and it’s just too much money to fork over for a movie which may or may not be good. What do you guys think? How much would you be willing to pay for the ability to stream new theater releases at home? Do you even wanna do that to begin with? – Louis Ramirez
Comcast Wants to Charge Up to $49.95 to Stream Movies to Your Home [Consumerist]
