40Tech

You might remember the whole “iPhone 4 prototype swiped in a bar” fiasco. You’re probably aware that history has recently repeated itself with the iPhone 5. What you might not know is what Apple is planning to do about it. Never fear, however! Conan O’Brien and the good folks at Team Coco have put together a commercial that shows exactly what fate awaits the intrepid thief — and it ain’t gonna be pretty.

Recently, Netflix angered a large amount of its US subscriber-base by announcing changes to its pricing model. It used to be that, if you wanted to do the Neflix videos-by-mail thing and stream content as well, it would only cost you an extra couple of bucks per month. Now (as of two days ago, in fact), if you want both, you need to pay double — $7.99 for each service. While the Netflix move may be understandable, and part of a potentially larger plan to phase out physical delivery altogether, the customer backlash was also unsurprising — and significant.

To make matters worse for Netflix, on the very day that the new pricing came into effect, Starz, the distributor of Sony and Disney content decided not to renew their contract with Netflix. This is probably going to hurt Netflix customer relationships even more, but believe it or not, it happened as a result of Netflix attempting to preserve their pricing model, and, presumably, to keep their customers from imploding.

After a (very) long wait, Netflix has finally opened up in Canada. Well, mostly, anyway. For starters, the Canadian arm of the service is streaming only, no delivery, so that that immediately cuts down the amount of possible content available to Canadians. That was just the first content cut, however… Canadian usage rights for entertainment content have always been an added difficulty with any mainstream media service, and Netflix proves to be no different. Even though the service has finally found its way to Canada, when Hulu, Pandora, and even YouTube content is still restricted, the selection of movies and television episodes have been met with groans of disappointment by many.

We don’t often cover news stories here at 40Tech, but this one bears mentioning. A recent FCC decision now allows the movie industry to disable analog outputs on your equipment in certain situations. Say what? Yes, you heard that right- in some cases, a content provider can reach in and mess with your gear. What is the practical effect of this? It really has three ramifications, two of which are bad.

If you haven’t already heard, or discovered for yourself: Monster cables are a rip off — especially when it comes to the world of high definition digital cables. Salespeople at your local electronics store (and Monster itself) will do their best to convince you that, to get optimal video and audio quality out of your new hi-def system or video card, you need that top of the line, $150 6-foot hdmi cable. What most probably won’t tell you is that the store gets a much higher profit (and salespeople get more commission) on your expensive cable purchase than they do from your new LCD TV or Playstation 3. What they also won’t tell you is that you will get the exact same results from a $10-$20 HDMI cable that you will from it’s super-expensive counterpart…

  Recently, I was lucky enough to get an invitation to the beta of real-time video-sharing service, Redux. So far, the experience has been awesome! Redux has provided me with an easy way to discover and share video from all over the web. By connecting me with multiple users and groups sharing all manner of [...]

Over at Technologizer, Harry McCracken recently contemplated whether Comcast’s On Demand Online service was reason enough to stick with Comcast, if you are considering dropping your television service.   On Demand Online is a Hulu-like service still in development that, once released, will allow Comcast subscribers to view shows and other content online.  There are at [...]