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Intel Corp has announced its collaboration with media and entertainment company, Eros, to launch on- demand Bollywood service on Intel Viiv technology-based PCs. Eros and Intel demonstrated the new service at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), which delivers access to online selections of Bollywood entertainment content, such as high definition movies, music videos, day and date premieres andclassics, from the Web to Intel Viiv technology-based PCs on large screen TVs. The Eros service will offer rental, subscription, download to own at launch and even download to burn models in the future.

Kishore Lulla, Chairman and CEO of Eros, “Our effort with Intel will give us the opportunity to serve an even broader audience worldwide, enter new markets and gain new revenue streams, while exploring and embracing a variety of exciting new digital distribution technologies, such as Intel Viiv technology. We are a content company that believes in empowering consumers so they can watch what they want, when they want, how they want.”
Intel Viiv technology-based PCs powered by Intel Core 2 Duo processors helps connect the PC and TV, and enables consumers to access, manage, share and enjoy a growing assortment of digital entertainment, including Hollywood movies, TV shows, music videos, sports, games among others.

Kevin Corbett, Vice President, Intel’s Digital Home Group and general manager of the Content Services Group said, “Intel’s goal is to accelerate the availability of broadband-delivered entertainment into every home. And, with Intel Viiv technology, we’re helping to change the economics of distribution and allow more people around the world to enjoy exciting content, irrespective of their physical location.”

Building on the availability of the ‘Bollywood’ service, Eros will debut the broadband premiere of ‘I See You’ on Intel Viiv technology-based PCs within a few weeks of its global theatrical release on Dec. 29 and ahead of its release on DVD.

Google has moved another step in creating a 3D virtual model of the Earth with

its latest version of Google Earth that is Google Earth 4.

The application will now feature a mixture of textured 3D renderings of famous architectural sites and terrain but obviously you will have to turn on the proper layers.

The company has started developing some parts of the earth with some rich 3D renderings of some famous landmarks. But still the mission of a complete model of the earth is a far fetched dream.

To make the dream possible in time Google will also users to create rich 3D renderings of buildings as KML or KMZ files and share them as overlays on Google Earth.

Users can also search for these structures without downloading Google Earth 4. They will also be allowed to rate and comment on the structures.

So far there are many important landmarks that have to be added into the imagery for completing the 3D model.

Source: Cnet

It combines the multi-touch touchscreen interface we’ve all heard whispers of for over a year now, with a fully fledged widescreen video iPod. 

The device comes with either 4GB or 8GB of flash-based storage and will sell for an introductory price of $499 and $599, respectively. Expect it in June 2007 within the US, and a tentative ‘end of 2007′ for us Europeans - a long wait for those of us who are already drooling.

The phone has been confirmed as a Cingular Wireless exclusive in the US and it will be interesting to see who picks it up in the UK.

The phone features a rich HTML email client and in-built Safari web browser - which Apple purports as being the most advanced browser on portable device. We imagine Opera may have something to say about that.

This is all running on the ‘OSX’ operating system, presumably a very cut-down, thin client version, built for the device’s proprietary hardware.

The iPhone OS allows for the use of widgets which are the same applications found on OSX’s Dashboard.

Steve Jobs was recorded using the Google maps widget which looks like an exact copy of Google maps on the web.

Expect up to five hours phone talk time and around 16 hours of audio playback - but knowing manufacturers battery life specs, you should take this with a pinch of salt.

A range of accessories have also been announced including stereo headphones, headphones with a microphone, and a Bluetooth headset.

Here’s a quick rundown of the currently known specs:

Specification overview

Source : Theinquirer

DAMMIT LIVED up to it’s name today with a bunch of media related launches, some interesting, some so DRM infected as to be useless. Of the four, there are some high points though.

First lets got to mobile where they expand the Live! brand to notebooks with the stunningly named AMD Live! notebook PC. It does what it says, it is a sticker on a box that probably carries a marketing incentive. See Viiv for more details there.(1)

Next up is the Home Media Server, basically a NAS box running Windows home media server. This one is really neat tech, it is an appliance that lets you store your files, stream them around the house, and theoretically do all those things you want to do with your media. The problem is that it is so DRM infected as to be worthless.

No, it is worse than worthless, the problem is that when you pull your media into things like this, it is next to impossible to do anything with them any more. If you have the DRM’d media center extenders, hey great, it may work, but that is your problem. The example they held up was an HP home media server, what a negative value that box brings.

The next bit is the AMD home cinema, basically a media center PC prototype that is an all in one media center system. Rather than getting all the parts in different boxes and hoping that it works, the home cinema rolls a lot of it into a single box and theoretically simplifies installation.

Since it is media center saddled, it has the full compliment of DRM technologies waiting to remove your rights. Luckily, I don’t think AMD adds to this happy mix, so you can’t fault them too much. It is a reference box PC with an OCER card, other than the DRM, nothing you can’t do on your own.

Last up is an ATI announcement, but they don’t technically exist, so it is an AMD product now. It is the ATI TV Wonder Digital Cable Tuner, available January 30. This one is so bad as to hurt humanity as a whole, but not out of line with other things in it’s class.

Basically it is a tuner that the cable companies approved of. It only works with Vista, hence the 1/30 launch date, because you can’t use it without having DRM baked into your infrastructure. You will lose many rights if you are dumb enough to buy this one folks.

It allows you to put your PC into the evil that is the cablecard infrastructure, basically you spend money to screw yourself. What a great combo, buy two, the kids of the Warner execs need a new Porsche after sitting through a stern talking to over downloading music, fund them now.

The announcements from today sadden me. Like Intel, AMD does not have the guts to stand up to this mess, and we all pay the price. Intel was spineless, AMD is spineless and late to the game. Four products, one a label, three are negative values and dangerous. Great.

Source: THEINQUIRER

MICROSOFT JUST HASN’T stopped with cracking the holes in PlayStation 3 armour. First it knocked the 1080p discussion, and now, an IPTV service is being prepared in order to make the Xbox the TiVo device for the late first decade of the 21st century. Unlike the thing Steve Jobs will allegedly be unveiling at his MacWorld keynote - opening exactly the same day as CES this year - IPTV content isn’t provided by Microsoft. However, it is working with existing content providers that run their services. Robbie Bach used the CES Keynote to launch the service with an intelligent name: IPTV for the Xbox 360. Since companies are only talking about social networking blah blah, it’s no wonder that this service will feature a sort of joint commenting on content, all with the aim of having as deep a social impact as possible. Just imagine heated arguments over a “scientific error” in one of the sci-fi series [Sheesh, let's hope not. Ed.]. All that, courtesy of IPTV on Xbox 360. We have seen the demo and we have to say that Microsoft has added a lot of headroom with the console, because software just keeps on being developed. The amount of official modding has just been incredible. You’re still thinking that a larger hard drive isn’t on the way? Think of 120GB local storage and hundreds of gigabytes at your local media server. Or a terabyte or two?

Source: THEINQUIRER