I've been playing with the Beta of the new ABC Playback service for about a week now, and thought I'd post some of my thoughts up here for you guys.

Firstly though, the service is still in beta, so some of the things I've encountered could be a result of that. I think that there's a lot of potential here, but there are also a lot of things that will need to happen before the site hits the mainstream.

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The University of Rochester has just devised a way of reproducing music in a file that's compressed 1,000 times smaller than an MP3 file. The way they do it—physically modelling an instrument in a computer and then feeding it input variables (breath, tongue, fingers) in order to generate the output tone—seems super obvious. People were making music with MOD files by recording one tone and generating different notes with it back in the '90s. But actually reproducing the instrument wholesale? That's amazing.

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The ABC (that's our ABC, not the US one) has followed in the footsteps of the BBC's iPlayer and launched its own Internet television streaming service.

Called ABC Playback, the service will offer three streaming Internet channels:

• - ABC Catch-up, which will have a range of programming culled from both of the network's free-to-air TV channels (ABC1 and the digital-only ABC2).
• - ABC Real, which will show documentaries and natural history programming
• - ABC Shop, a paid download service from which you will be able to both buy and rent programming. Initially, programs will be roughly $3 to rent for a week, and pay-to-own services will come later.

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