AFI BLOG: Media and Technology

Fortune
Those annoying set-top cable boxes may soon be a thing of the past. But, like it or not, they’ll be replaced by a different kind of device.
The announcement this week that Sony plans to work with other television makers to eliminate the need for set-top cable boxes could not have gained more affection at [...]

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Red Herring
Online music service Napster on Tuesday launched its first MP3 music store, free of restrictive digital rights management protection and free to compete head-to-head with Apple’s iTunes.
Napster is only the second MP3 music store to offer storewide DRM-free tracks. Amazon was the first to talk the major labels out of their wildly unpopular insistence [...]

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Silicon Alley Insider

PBS and its member stations distribute video on a variety of services, including iTunes (AAPL) Joost and Adobe Media Player (ADBE). But that distribution is about to get a lot wider.
The public broadcaster and hundreds of its local broadcast stations have adopted technology from The Platform (CMCSA) to syndicate and share video. Which [...]

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The Los Angeles Times
Apple closed two gaps today with its announcement about downloadable movies for sale through the iTunes Store. The one it emphasized was the agreement by six major studios to pony up their films the day they were available on DVD. This was a no-brainer for Hollywood. In fact, according to a publicist [...]

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The Los Angeles Times
The online entertainment store reels in one of the last holdouts among major channels, agreeing to a rare pricing concession to land hit shows like “The Sopranos,” “Sex and the City” and “The Wire.”
Apple Inc. has scooped up Time Warner Inc.’s HBO to feed television shows to its online iTunes store, reeling [...]

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Variety
Majors offer digital downloads of DVD releases
Pricing concessions paved the way for Apple’s sweeping movie sell-through deals with the majors.
Pacts were actually brokered several months ago, shortly after all six majors agreed to rent their movies through the iTunes Store, but not formally unveiled until Thursday. Apple, studio execs say, needed time to “ingest” an [...]

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The Hollywood Reporter
Apple expected to announce deal with major studios
Apple is expected to announce Thursday that it has struck a deal with a wide array of major and mini studios to offer many new releases for purchase at its iTunes Store.
The move would allow a broad slate of top-shelf films to be offered day-and-date with [...]

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Variety
Oscar-winning comedy available for download
At least two more majors have joined Disney in allowing their new releases to be sold via Apple’s iTunes Store.
Fox decided to go all the way on “Juno,” offering it for purchase on Tuesday, the same day that the DVD and Blu-ray versions hit shelves. Paramount has begun testing download sales [...]

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Business Week
With CD sales plummeting and music fans swiping songs off the Internet, the major record labels can use all the friends they can get. So Michael Nash, incoming head of digital strategy at Warner Music Group (WMG), is trying to make a few new ones. On Apr. 3, Warner is expected to team up [...]

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PBS, Local Stations Launch iTunes U Content - Press Release
Newly Available on iTunes U: K-12 Educational Resources, Video Lectures and More
Teachers, students and lifelong learners now have a new source for free, educational multimedia, as PBS and local PBS stations KQED (San Francisco), WETA (Washington, D.C.), WGBH (Boston) and WNET (New York) begin offering high-quality [...]

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