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Release Date: August 05, 2009
Genre: Games
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iTunes New Music Releases

Release Date: September 29, 2009
Genre: Rock
Release Date: September 20, 2009
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Genre: Rock
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Discover New Music

  • Guero

    • 10 out of 10
    • Beck
    • Beck is the modern master of the groove, and Guero is merely the latest example of this. From the opening power chords of "E-Pro," to the Pac-Man cuteness of "Girl," to the dirge-like lullab

  • Billy Miles

    • 10 out of 10
    • Billy Miles
    • Take the voice of a young Billie Holiday and stuff it into a svelte, petite body with the face of an angel, and you have some idea of what it's like to experience the music of Billy Miles in her self-
  • Machine Gun Etiquette

    • 8 out of 10
    • The Damned
    • Punk rock is mostly associated with three chords and a bad attitude, but the Damned were one of the few bands of the era bent on bringing musicianship and a good sense of humor to the scene. And while
  • The Stooges

    • 8 out of 10
    • The Stooges
    • Another pillar of my musical foundations, The Stooges' first album is one those records whose influence far outweighed its popularity. Like The Velvet Underground & Nico, hordes of people wh

  • War of the Worlds

    • 10 out of 10
    • Jeff Wayne
    • With the new movie adaptation of H.G Wells' classic Sci Fi invasion tale, War of the Worlds, currently on theater screens everywhere, there's new interest in Jeff Wayne's rock opera version, and it is

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News

BW: Apple TV Not the Answer in Consumer Search for TV Holy Grail

The provincialism and protectionism in the U.S. entertainment industry has created a mass of confusion, and even Apple can’t make it all go away, according to BusinessWeek.

The Holy Grail of home entertainment is a single box that provides access to everything: TV, movies on demand, YouTube videos, reruns, and the Internet. Unfortunately, every company that has a piece of the entertainment pie is holding on for dear life with patents and contracts to preserve their livelihood. Worse, other countries are surging ahead in flexibility and choice, leaving the U.S. in a mess of competing and incomplete services.

One of the effects this chaotic competition the U.S. is that every company believes the customer will want to install their box as the solution. Whether it’s a TiVo or DVR or Apple TV or Vudu, various vendors and carriers believe that if only their message is clear and marketing successful, people will flock to their box.

As a result consumers have found themselves becoming victims of "box fatigue." They tire of being human science experiments as they attempt to connect a myriad of digital boxes in their living room and get it all working right.

While Apple’s vision has been fairly clear with music, iPods, and even with the Apple TV, it too is just another box that customers fear. "Apple TV is the one product that even Jobs concedes isn’t a smash hit. It’s a neat idea, a box that lets you buy videos off the Web and play them on a TV. But the business model is flawed: You can only buy what’s on iTunes, 1,050 titles in all, vs. the 85,000 offered by Netflix. My whizzy $299 white, gray, and silver Apple TV box sits largely unused next to a big-screen television in my bedroom. The process is like running a Rube Goldberg contraption. Start with a Mac, where you download videos; wait for them to be transferred by wire or Wi-Fi to the somewhat limited storage on the Apple TV box. By then, you might as well have just watched the stuff on the computer screen," Business Week observed.

The industry’s latest gamble is Hulu. While critics have dismissed it as another beast foisted on the consumer by "Old Media dinosaurs," according to BW, the author’s first test with Hulu worked quite well, and he was left impressed.

"What works for consumers is that which removes the most friction," said Hulu CEO Jason Kilar. "The technology needs to be so good that it blends into the background, and nobody notices it."

Despite all his different solutions and boxes, the reviewer still couldn’t sit in front of his TV and call up just the movie he wanted. The search for the perfect "iTV" will have to continue.

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