Digital Audio/Video News

In its latest move to bring some commercial order to the YouTube chaos, Google has begun showing a brief video show called Poptub with perky hosts, amusing videos, promotional interviews, and a prominent Pepsi sponsorship.

SAN FRANCISCO - If voters see problems on Election Day, YouTube and PBS want them to whip out their video cameras and throw the footage onto a new Web site for documenting voters' experiences on Nov. 4.

SanDisk is keeping good on its promise to bring music to its consumers. On Wednesday, the Milpitas, Calif.-based company, along with four music giants, said consumers this week can begin buying its SlotMusic microSD cards to be used in slot-enabled mobile phones, portable media players, computers and car stereos.

The hotly contested 2008 presidential election is spilling over into yet another corner of cyberspace. The McCain/Palin Republican campaign is challenging a decision by YouTube to pull several of its videos and election advertisements from the popular video-sharing site, an action YouTube says was necessary under terms of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

NEW YORK - A combination of weak consumer spending and a peak in manufacturing capacity will push prices for flat-panel TVs down to unprecedented lows this holiday season, according to analysts.

LONDON (Reuters) - Britons who have only ever used Apple's iTunes to buy digital music suddenly have a new and attractive toy: a Nokia mobile music service which offers thousands of tracks for free.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - YouTube is urging US voters to shoot video at the polls during the November 4 presidential election and upload it to a new channel on the popular video-sharing site called "Video Your Vote."

TOKYO (AFP) - Japan's Sharp Corp. on Wednesday launched what it billed as the world's first liquid crystal display television with a built-in next-generation Blu-ray DVD recorder.

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Google is mounting another experiment in content distribution that might be even more ambitious than its recent launch of original animation from "Family Guy" creator Seth MacFarlane.

We've been able to see trailers, interviews and special features on the Nintendo Wii, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360 for a while now. Now Sony wants to take the idea a little further, and they're enlisting YouTube to help.

The company also announced cooperation with virtually every major label to distribute DRM-free MP3s via microSD cards.

SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) - MySpace has launched an overhauled karaoke channel that lets amateur crooners post online video of themselves in all their vocal glory.

Google continues to move quickly to monetize YouTube. In the latest effort for one of the most popular video sites on the Web, Google-owned YouTube has launched Google-style search ads.

TOKYO (Reuters) - Making music just got easier. A Japanese game maker has teamed up with the nation's leading mobile phone network carrier to enable users to play an orchestra with their fingertips.

FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Distributing digital versions of books online for free can boost rather than damage traditional book sales, best-selling author Paulo Coelho said on Tuesday at the Frankfurt Book Fair.

LONDON (Reuters) - Mobile operator 3 UK is to sell Nokia's N95 Comes With Music handset which offers unlimited music downloads, an industry source told Reuters on Tuesday.

Brightcove, the maker of online-video tools, released its new Brightcove 3 video publishing platform on Monday.

LONDON (AFP) - Former Beatles drummer Ringo Starr has told his fans in a bizarre online video message to stop sending him fan mail as he is too busy to sign or read it, and it will only be "tossed".

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Millions of youngsters across Europe could suffer permanent hearing loss after five years if they listen to MP3 players at too high a volume for more than five hours a week, EU scientists warned Monday.

In the second of a back-to-back move to generate more ad revenue from YouTube, Google is serving up what it calls "full-length TV dinners." A new deal with CBS makes it possible, with episodes of Dexter, Beverly Hills 90210, and Star Trek on deck.

While the possibility of the iPod having an integrated solar cell remains a patent application on paper for now, a company from Singapore, Shiro, offers an alternative for those who can't wait.

Doug Morris, chairman and CEO of Universal Music Group, confirmed that his company is considering a plan to build a Web site to showcase its music videos instead of posting them to YouTube.

People who listen to personal music players for only five hours a week at a high volume may be doing permanent damage to their hearing.

NEW YORK (Billboard) - Connie Talbot's first release, "Over the Rainbow," has already gone gold in the United Kingdom (100,000 copies) and platinum in Korea (15,000 copies) and has logged more than 46 million hits on YouTube. Not bad for a 7-year-old.

LOS ANGELES - Now that Sony Corp. and Bertelsmann AG have broken off their troubled relationship, known as Sony BMG, the Japanese company hopes to harmonize its consumer electronics and its music, a duo that was badly out of sync.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - YouTube, the largest video-sharing Website, has started to run full-length TV shows from CBS Corp's archive, in its latest step to boost advertising revenue by adding professional programing.

SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) - Computer security specialists warn that hackers are using fake YouTube pages to trick people into opening their machines to diabolical software.

On Thursday, Sling Media pushed out its latest innovation -- the SlingCatcher. The SlingCatcher lets customers watch online video from a diverse spectrum of sites on the Internet, including network television venues like ABC.com, video content sites like Hulu.com and CollegeHumor.com, community video sites like YouTube, and even online movie rentals from popular services like Netflix.