Review: Roku 2 Streaming Player

via SoldierKnowsBest on YouTube

The Roku 2 Streaming Player looks like a terrific source of Internet content to stream to your TV via a very small, compact box. SoldierKnowsBest does a great video review of the steaming player.

Just what is music stored "in the clouds" anyway?

With Apple readying to announce its iCloud streaming music service on Monday, you may be wondering what all the excitement is about all this music being stored "in the clouds" anyway. Well, since Amazon.com came out of the gates first, they developed this quick and easy explanation of what Amazon Cloud Player and Cloud Drive can do for YOU!

Apple to beat Google on cloud music: source

Exclusive: Apple to beat Google on cloud music: sources - Yahoo! News: "Apple Inc has completed work on an online music storage service and is set to launch it ahead of Google Inc, whose own music efforts have stalled, according to several people familiar with both companies' plans.

Apple's plans will allow iTunes customers to store their songs on a remote server, and then access them from wherever they have an Internet connection, said two of these people who asked not to be named as the talks are still confidential.

The maker of the wildly popular iPhone and iPod, Apple has yet to sign any new licenses for the service and major music labels are hoping to secure deals before the service is launched, three of the sources said. Apple has not told its music partners of when it intends to introduce its music locker, they said.

An Apple spokesman declined to comment.

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Apple unveils new box for streaming movies, TV

Apple unveils new box for streaming movies, TV - Yahoo! News

"Apple Inc. announced a smaller, cheaper version of its Apple TV device for streaming movies and television shows over the Internet and into the living room. It also unveiled a new line of iPods, including a touch-screen Nano model.

The tiny new Apple TV system announced Wednesday will only let people rent, not buy, content. For first-run high-definition movies the day they come out on DVD, people will have to pay $4.99. High-definition TV show rentals will be 99 cents.

The price of the box is also being cut to $99, from $229. Cheaper options for streaming video had been available, including Roku's set-top boxes that start at $60.

Apple TV has been around since 2007, but it hasn't caught on with the mainstream. For one thing, it doesn't record shows the way TiVo and other digital video recorders do. And the need to sync the box with a computer was too complicated for most consumers, Apple CEO Steve Jobs said.

'We've sold a lot of them, but it's never been a huge hit,' Jobs said.

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Sneak Peek: Rhapsody’s Upcoming iPhone App

READ more on Wired.com

"Subscription music service Rhapsody showed us a new version of its iPhone app that includes the feature we’ve been clamoring for: the ability to store music on the iPhone so that it can play even when you’re on the subway, plane, highway or another location where it’s difficult or impossible to get a strong enough signal to support high-quality music streaming.

Company spokesman Ryan Luckin said Rhapsody expects Apple to approve the app — after all, Apple allows Spotify to cache playlists on the iPhone’s memory in countries where it’s available.

Not only will this offline playback feature make it possible to listen to thousands of Rhapsody songs without a strong wireless data connection, but it also significantly extends battery life — a crucial consideration for any portable device, seeing as how batteries appear to be the only area of technology not subject to Moore’s Law.

Rhapsody adds another twist that has yet to appear in the Spotify iPhone app: a “force offline mode” that temporarily removes all non-cached songs from the Rhapsody app’s library. The utility of this feature may not be readily apparent, but it’s actually useful, because it lets you shuffle through your library, playing only the music contained in cached playlists."

Music downloads giving way to streaming services

Music downloads giving way to streaming services - Yahoo! News: "Apple remains the world's dominant digital music retailer, but it's a distinction that might be of decreasing significance as the digital market transforms from a model based on a la carte downloads to one of streaming access. Indeed, Apple's late-year acquisition of streaming music provider Lala points to the company's own expected shift in that direction.

The migration from downloads to streams is driven by several factors. First is the realization that the digital download market is beginning to level off.

While digital downloads account for the vast majority of digital music revenue, they aren't even close to making up for the lost revenue from falling CD sales. That's why labels and digital music services are turning more attention to streaming music access services that carry either a monthly fee or provide opportunities to 'upsell' to other products.

The download-to-own model has trumped streaming in part because only downloads give music fans the kind of control over their music that they want. Want to listen to downloads on a PC and a hand-held media player? Until recently, the only way for most consumers to do so was to buy a download.

That's changing with new advancements like smart-phone apps that allow on-demand streaming of music not stored on the device, Web-connected TVs and stereo systems like the Sonos and such services as Spotify, MOG and Lala that have emerged to take advantage of this evolution.

The ease of use and flexibility of this music-in-the-cloud paradigm makes the old iTunes model of downloading proprietary software and transferring files from device to device seem archaic."