Teosto (Finnish Composers’ Copyright Society) has officially requested that USB drives and mobile phones with MP3 playback function should join the products — such as DVDs and DVRs — with a recording/storage device royalty fee. Teosto has been fighting for the right to add the fees to mobile phones for two years now and now they want both external hard drives and thumb drives included as well. The proposal will now travel to Ministry of Education where the final decision is made.
Teosto has claimed that extensive amounts of copyrighted recordings are copied to both USB drives and mobile phones each year and therefore the composers have a right for a proper compensation. The fees would increase mobile phone prices up to 12,60 euros (approx. $16) for music phones such as the Nokia’s new touch-screen XpressMusic 5800 and presumably Apple iPhone.
Last year the same happened to HD DVD and Blu-ray discs that carry nowadays a fee of up to 1,89 euros per disc.
The proposed royalties for the year 2009 are as follows.
Mobile phones with MP3 playback:
1,4 euros for up to 512MB of internal memory
2,45 euros more than 512MB but up to 1GB of internal memory
3,45 euros more than 1GB but up to 20GB of internal memory
4,15 euros more than 20GB internal memory
Mobile phones that are advertised as music phones (eg. Nokia XpressMusic series, Sony Ericsson Walkman series):
2,4 euros for up to 512MB of internal memory
7,35 euros more than 512MB but up to 1GB of internal memory
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Result for: pmp
The Hong Kong based manufacturer Sunlink, using technologies adapted from iView, have claimed they have produced “the first portable commercial product in the world with a built-in pico-projector.”
The media device, dubbed the Sunview PMPP will have a 3.5-inch touchscreen and will have the ability to output images onto walls and projection screens using the integrated pico technology.
Other companies, such as MicroVision have been actively working on such projectors but have not been able to get them into commercial devices.
The Sunview will store file on removable SD cards and “due to its use of Windows CE 5.0 and Office Viewer, can play photos, movies and presentation files.” Each player has a remote so that users can control the player from up to 20 feet away.
There was no word on when the player would go on sale or a price tag.
Result for: pmp
The BBC has announced that its popular iPlayer service has gone portable and will be compatible with a large list of portable devices, including the Apple iPod Touch and iPhone.
“This is the first time that you can play BBC iPlayer TV programmes on a range of portable media devices,” says Anthony Rose on the official iPlayer blog.
Rose says the iPlayer will work on Sony Walkman E and S series, Archos 605 WIFI and Internet Media Tablet, Philips GoGear 52xx series, Samsung YP-P2 and YP-Q1 and Nokia N96 devices. The entire list, which is updated weekly, is available here.
If your device does not have Wi-Fi, you will have to download the shows and not stream, but Rose notes that any PMP that can play “PlaysForSure” media (now known as “Certified For Windows Vista”) is compatible.
“If the device packaging mentions ‘PlaysForSure’, that’s a good sign…for our Mac and Linux users, don’t despair: we have another release coming up very soon, aimed at improving your BBC iPlayer options - stay tuned for updates…” Rose adds.
