Amazon's latest DVD offer: Buy a disc, stream it instantly

By Ben Patterson : Yahoo! Tech (CLICK to read more)

"The giant online retailer is clearly looking to boost sagging DVD sales with its new 'Disc+ On Demand' program, which lets you instantly watch selected purchased movies over Amazon's Video on Demand service. It's a tempting offer for movie lovers like me, but as usual, there's a catch (or two).

So here's the scoop (courtesy of NewTeeVee): If you buy a movie (and/or TV show) from this list of 300-odd titles, Amazon will immediate add the Video on Demand version of the movie to your Amazon digital locker for instant viewing over the Web, TiVo, or any other TV set-top box that supports Amazon Video on Demand.

The titles include both DVD and Blu-ray discs, ranging from new fare such as 'Land of the Lost,' 'Funny People,' and 'Bruno' (sorry, no 'Star Trek' or 'Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince') to old favorites like 'Goodfellas,' 'Cool Hand Luke,' '2001,' and 'North by Northwest.'

That's kind of a cool deal; indeed, I'd been meaning to pick up the Blu-ray of 'Silence of the Lambs' to replace my old, non-anamorphic DVD from Criterion, and hey ... $9.99 for the 'Lambs' Blu-ray, plus a streaming copy in my Amazon digital locker? I was seriously considering it this morning.

But, as I said, there are a couple of catches involved."

Barnes & Noble Nook (CNET Product Review)

When Barnes & Noble unveiled the Nook, the first Android-powered e-book reader, a lot of people were excited, because it appeared to offer some key competitive advantages over Amazon's Kindle e-reader.

First and foremost, while the Nook features the same 6-inch E-ink screen (600x800 pixels; 16 shades of gray) as the Kindle, it includes a separate color capacitive touch screen (144 x 480 pixels) that allows you to navigate content and use a virtual keyboard for typing searches and annotations. Furthermore, on top of its free AT&T 3G wireless connection, the Nook packs in Wi-Fi connectivity and a memory expansion slot; you get 2GB of internal memory, but can add up to an additional 16GB via the microSD card slot. And finally, Barnes & Noble offers an e-book-lending option (for participating titles) and the capability to browse the full text of e-books on your Nook if you're in a Barnes & Noble brick-and-mortar store (the latter feature is due to launch in early 2010). Unfortunately, both the lending and in-store browsing features come with some significant restrictions, which we'll detail below.

Caveats notwithstanding, those features are nice extras, but the big questions are: how much of a difference do they really make in the overall user experience, and are they enough to push the Nook to the top of the e-book reader heap? Alas, the answer, you'll soon find out, isn't as clear cut as it might seem.

Your Motorola Droid questions, answered

By Ben Patterson / Yahoo! Tech

"I asked in yesterday's hands-on post if you had any Droid questions I hadn't addressed, and you hit me with some good ones. Read on for the answers.

Note: Click here for details on Verizon Wireless's Motorola Droid announcement from yesterday, including info on specs, pricing, and release date; then click here for my initial hands-on impressions of the Droid."