Hannover, YouTube make streaming deal
Hannover House, the video and film distributor has announced today a new deal with Google that will launch a video rental and VOD channel for Hannover on YouTube.
Starting this week, the channel will have 100 films from Hannover House, Elite Entertainment, FOCUSFilms, and Plaza Entertainment.
“YouTube and Google are uniquely positioned to reinvent the entire video-on-demand consumer model,” says Eric Parkinson, C.E.O. “Their reach is unsurpassed, and their consumer pricing model is extremely competitive, in many cases beating traditional video rental costs. With more and more consumers moving toward video-on-demand as a convenient way to view movies, the Hannover House movie channel venture with YouTube will prove invaluable to our company.”
“We believe that video-on-demand will continue to grow over the next few years into a major revenue source for the company. The technology has reached the point where films can be quickly and safely streamed directly to consumers, and this creates an immediacy not previously available. Additionally, video-on-demand eliminates the inventory, freight and storage costs associated with hard goods items such as DVDs and Blu-ray units.”
China shuts down large hacker ring
Chinese officials have announced this week the bust of a large hacking ring that was allegedly the nation’s largest distributor of hacking tools.
The Black Hawk Safety Net, which used the site 3800cc.com as a front, allegedly made $1 million in income in 2009 from 12,000 subscribers.
Three admins were arrested as part of the raid. Strangely, the arrests are said to have taken place three months ago, but only reported this week.
Black Hawk was known more as a hacking “training” group, mainly through the sale of malicious software and instructions on how to use them. In 2007, the group made the news for helping create a virus that took down corporate and government systems in Hubei.
Along with the arrest of 29-year-old Li Qiang and 28-year-old Zhang Lei (the third man was not identified), 1.7 million yuan ($250,000 USD) in assets were seized, mainly in cash and computer equipment.
Sharp and Samsung settle LCD patent disputes
Sharp and Samsung have decided to end all ongoing patent infringement disputes over LCD displays this week, although it is unclear what the financial details are of the agreement.
“We have a confidentiality agreement but we can say these conditions will be in favor of Sharp,” added Sharp spokeswoman Miyuki Nakayama.
Sharp filed the first suit in 2007, in the U.S., claiming that Samsung infringed on five of its patents relating to LCD modules. The suit then expanded to South Korea, wherein Samsung countersued for patent infringement, as well. The suits expanded to Europe in 2008, before finally being taken in front of the International Trade Commission.
The new settlement includes patent cross-licensing agreements.
Verizon confirms block of 4chan sites
Christopher Poole, founder of the infamous meme site 4chan came out this week claiming that Verizon was “explicitly blocking” access to the site, and it appears Poole may have been right.
Jeff Nelson, a public relations employee for the ISP said via Twitter this morning: “2 of 4Chan affiliates were staging for attacks.” However, “They’re green-lighted for tonight’s network update.”
Poole’s full post earlier had read: “Over the past 72 hours, we’ve been receiving reports from Verizon Wireless customers having difficulty accessing the image boards,” Poole wrote. “After investigating, we found that Verizon is dropping traffic… only on port 80 (HTTP). No other subdomain/IP/port is affected, which leads us to believe this block is intentional. After an hour and a half on the phone, we’ve received confirmation from Verizon’s Network Repair Bureau (NRB) that we are “explicitly blocked.”
Verizon had refused comment until today except to say that they were being bombarded with calls about the issue, adds PCWorld.
Google slashes Nexus One early termination fee after FCC investigation
Following an FCC investigation into the overall industry, Google has slashed the fee for Nexus One owners who decide to drop their contract early.
The early termination fee, or as Google calls it, the “equipment recovery fee,” is now dropped from $350 USD to $150 USD for T-Mobile users who purchased the phone but no longer want their T-Mobile contract. The $150 is on top of the $200 that T-Mobile charges for breaking the contract early.
Says Google: “Google’s overall financial philosophy with regard to operator service plans remains unchanged: We make no profit from commissions from operators or from equipment recovery fees, and our recovery fees are based on operator charges to Google for early termination of service.”
Music disappearing from Zune Pass
According to a pretty long thread over at Zune.net, it appears that Zune Pass subscription holders have seen their music disappear in the last week, for no reason whatsoever.
Says the first post of the thread:
“Anyone else finding more content either not available, album only or music that was offered (Spoon/Arcade Fire) now just gone? This seems to be happening more and more over the past few months. Just wondering if anyone else has been having the same issues when looking for music?
Seems to defeat the purpose of paying $15 a month for a subscription and purchase service.”
If you are a Zune Pass owner, check the full thread here and any responses from Microsoft.
Xbox 360 120GB HDD has price slashed in U.S. as well
Yesterday we reported that Microsoft had slashed the price of the 120GB Xbox 360 HDD in Europe, while at the same time releasing a 250GB HDD in Japan.
Today they have announced the same offer for the United States, with the price officially dropping from $149.99 to $129.99 “while supplies last.”
The software giant would not elaborate on whether this was the end of the 120GB model HDD, but it appears that way. Expect a 250GB HDD release in the EU and US territories soon enough.
Google Maps 3.4 adds multi-touch support to DROID
The latest update to Google Maps 3.4 has enabled multi-touch for the Motorola DROID, with pinch-to-zoom now available for the device, at least while using the popular app.
Last week Google updated the Nexus One to have multi-touch, silencing critics who had claimed that Google was purposely leaving out multi-touch for a number of different reasons including not wanting to pay patent royalties to rival Apple.
I updated my G1 to Maps 3.4 today and pinch-to-zoom didn’t work so it seems as though this may be DROID-only for time being.
Motorola Devour to launch with Flash support
More details have been released on the upcoming Motorola Devour from Verizon, and it appears that the Android device will launch with Adobe Flash Lite, giving the phone the Flash support that no other Android device has had yet, including more expensive brother phone, the Verizon Motorola DROID.
Flash Lite works with Flash 9 content and will work using the built-in browser.
Smartphone shipments hits record in Q4 2009
According to the latest IDC numbers, vendors shipped 54.5 million smartphones in the Q4 2009, a record, and a 39 percent increase year-on-year.
Nokia led the pack with 67.7 million for all of 2009, 39 percent of the market. RIM came in second with 34.5 million shipments for the year, good for 20 percent share. Apple rode a strong Q3 and Q4 to come in third, with 14 percent share and 25 million units shipped.
Overall, 2009 shipments totaled 174 million, up 15 percent year-on-year.
Thanks to the DROID, Motorola was number four for the Q4, but still came in 7th overall for the year.
