Zune HD
Microsoft is introducing the fourth generation of its digital media player devices today, September 15th, 2009. Taking center stage is Zune HD, a product positioned as a direct rival for Apple’s iPod touch, and which is now available for purchase via retail channels. Zune HD models have been available for pre-order since the first half of August 2009. The 16GB flavor of Zune HD costs $219.99, while the Zune HD 32GB features a price of $289.99. At the end of the past week, leaked video demonstrations/advertisements of Zune HD offered an insight into what the digital media player brings to the market.
“Our research indicates that there’s strong consumer demand for dedicated media players and Zune HD offers visible differentiation in this market,” noted Michael Gartenberg, vice president of strategy and analysis at Interpret LLC. “Microsoft is also offering some compelling software and services with the Zune ecosystem that will help Zune HD stand out from other offerings.”
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VLC Media Player 1.0.0 for Windows 7
VLC media player 1.0.0 final is now available for download. Built by the VideoLAN project, the media player comes with support for a variety of operating systems including Linux, Mac OS X and Windows. In this regard, even before version 1.0.0 was finalized, VLC was playing nice with the next iteration of the Windows client, Windows 7, in addition to releases such as Windows Vista Service Pack 2 and Windows XP SP3. Version 1.0.0 continues in the same tradition as past releases from VideoLAN, meaning that the media player is free and open source. In this regard, while end users can access, download and install the VLC 1.0.0 bits, developers can also grab the source code and modify it according to their preferences.
“The VideoLAN project is pleased to announce the release of the first version of the Goldeneye branch of VLC: 1.0.0. This major release introduces many new features, new formats and new codecs to the VLC multimedia framework and fixes a very high number of bugs that were present in the 0.9.x or 0.8.6 versions. The VLC project only lives with volunteers and would love help from new users and contributors: time, code, hardware and money would help us a lot,” VideoLAN revealed. Read more
XNA Game Studio 3.1 for Vista SP1 and XP SP3
Microsoft has released and made available for download the latest iteration of its gaming development solution designed to permit developers to build video games for Windows-based PCs, Xbox 360 consoles, but also Zune digital media player devices. XNA Game Studio 3.1 went live on the Microsoft Download Center on June 11, 2009, and is now up for grabs for free. According to the Redmond company, Windows Vista SP1 and Windows XP SP3 are the supported operating systems for XNA Game Studio 3.1.
“This release is incremental to XNA Game Studio 3.0 and contains many new features, including avatars, Xbox LIVE Party support, and video as well as enhancements to existing features. For the full list of improvements in this release, see the “What’s New in XNA Game Studio 3.1” section of the documentation once you have installed the product,” revealed Rob Cameron, Microsoft industry evangelist. Read more
Zune HD Goes Against iPod Touch
Microsoft is planning to release an alternative to Apple’s iPod Touch devices in the fall of 2009 under the Zune brand umbrella. At least for 2009, the Redmond company will continue to sell the now traditional versions of its digital music player along with the new device, but it indicated that moving forward the evolution of Zune would be synonymous with Zune HD. The Zune HD portable media player would be made available exclusively in the US this fall, Microsoft revealed.
“The Zune music player is an integral part of the overall Zune experience, and we’re proud to be growing and extending our offering beyond the device,” revealed Enrique Rodriguez, corporate vice president of the Microsoft TV, Video and Music Business Group. “Delivering on Microsoft’s connected entertainment vision, this news marks a turning point for Zune as it brings cross-platform experiences and premium video content to living rooms around the world.” Read more
Windows 7 New Decoders and Media Formats
Microsoft is pointing to Windows 7 as a panacea for scenarios in which end users go hunting for codecs on the Internet struggling with file formats that are not natively supported by the Windows operating system. The promise from the Redmond company is that, with the next iteration of the Windows client, the necessary decoders will already be in place and ready to handle the formats that users will throw at them, of course with some exceptions. MPEG-4, 3GPP/3GPP2, AAC, ASP in AVI, AVCHD, HDV are the generic names for the formats supported in Windows 7.
The video decoders associated with them are H.264, MPEG-4, ASP and SP. The specific file extensions that will not present a problem when it comes down to Windows 7 are .mp4 (A, V, A + V), .m4a (A), .mov, .3gp, .3g2 (A, V, A + V), .aac (A), .avi, (V, A + V), .m2t, .m2ts, .mts (A, V, A + V). Still, Microsoft indicated that Windows 7 would not be limited to playing back local files. Read more
LG GT810 and LG BL40 Spotted
One LG mobile phone that returned into the spotlight is the LG GT810. The handset, expected to come with a touchscreen display, has been spotted in the wild for the first time at the beginning of the ongoing year, and now we learn that it should be heading towards the Central and South America.
The device sports GSM, GPRS, EDGE, HSDPA connectivity, and should come with Windows Mobile 6.1 as its operating system. In addition, there is the 3-inch touch screen that can offer a 240 x 400 pixel resolution, along with Wi-Fi connectivity, a 3-megapixel camera with video recording capabilities, and 256 MB of internal memory coupled with a memory card slot with support for up to 8 GB of additional storage space. Read more
Windows 7 Codec Packs
After installing windows 7 Beta on your computer you might face some error while playing some formats of video in windows 7 media payer and in media center.
However windows 7 Beta comes with some more additional codec’s bundled with it like DIVX, H.264 video and AAC audio, but still multimedia files cannot be played in windows 7 with out installing the right codec’s, so you can play any Divx or MP4 video. Windows 7 Beta has windows media player 12 and media center which cannot play most of the formats of video with out installing the codec packs.
So, we are going to list all the codec packs available on the web to resolve the video not playing problem in windows 7. Read more
Windows Media Player 12 for Vista
Windows Media Player 12, the upcoming Windows media player software that will be released on Windows 7. The interface of Windows Media Player 12 is similar like Windows Media Player 11 which Windows media Player 12 has brighter look and lighter processing than WMP11plus more advance WMP features included.
If you have seen Window Media Player 12 screen shot before, you will definitely run Windows Media Player 12 on your current Windows platform. However, Microsoft is not planning to release Windows Media Player 12 yet. Read more
Kwik Kool Kantaris
It’s been a while since we featured a media player but it’s been worth the wait. Hot out of the box is Kataris a free Open Source player based on a past favourite, VLC, but all you really need to know is that it can play just about any type of multimedia file, Here’s the highlights: AAC, AC3, AVI, FLAC, MID, MIDI, MP2, MP3, MPEG, MGEG-AVC, WMV, MOV, MKV, OGG, QuickTime, Matroska, DIVX, XVID, H264, MP3, WAV WMA and many, many more. There’s also integration with Apple Movie Trailers and Last FM, plus some really freaky visualisations.
Introducing Zune 2.5
Microsoft continues to hammer away at its Zune digital media player and the services built around the device, but the evolution is largely a case of going where Apple has already taken the iPod and iTunes. On May 5, 2008, Microsoft introduced the latest update to Zune, not only adding new features and enhancements to the device itself but also evolving the Zune software, Zune Social and the Zune Marketplace. The focus of the update is to build on top of what the company started with “Zune Social” in November 2007, namely to extend the social networking community created around the device.
“Zune owners are pretty passionate, and they had a lot of great ideas for making the community more valuable to music fans. And I definitely fall into that category myself – the main reason we’re all here is we love the music,” stated Brian Seitz, a Group Marketing Manager for Zune. Zune Social offers users the possibility to interact in terms of music discovery, comments, playlist browsing, with the update bringing to the table additional capabilities including the ability to send messages to friends, explore their music collections and even drag-and-drop Zune Cards. Read more
