tech, news, productivity, views and stuff
So this afternoon Apple have an iTunes announcement.
Rumours indicate that this is probably going to be an announcement that the Beatles will now be available in the iTunes Store.
Another rumour indicates that Apple will announce live streaming for iTunes.
I wonder if the wording of the “invitation” is significant? It does say iTunes and not iTunes Store. Does that make a difference?
I have managed to borrow a Mac mini, one of the new ones, and I have connected it up to my HD TV using an HDMI cable.
After realising that I needed to change the audio output from the built in speakers to the HDMI output I was very impressed with how well it looked and worked.
I haven’t put any content on the Mac mini so far, just streaming content from my home iMac across our 802.11n wireless network.
The first thing I tried was EyeTV, using EyeTV 3 on both computers I was easily able to stream recordings from the iMac to the Mac mini. I was quite impressed with the picture quality, even though it is SD television. There was no buffering or stuttering which impressed me.
I then tried Front Row and browsed my shared photographs, which looked lovely on the big 40″ HD TV.
I then was able to browse my iMac iTunes Library from the Mac mini and was again impressed, though it made me realise I need to be better at playlists. Then I tried to stream some HD iTunes content from my iMac to the TV and fingers crossed, was it going to work?
Yes, worked really well.
Very impressed.
I may have to get one for myself.
There are times that I wonder if those that design software actually ever use it? I usually lay this charge against Microsoft, but last night Apple in their wisdom really annoyed me.
I have a very poor internet connection and as a result if I download any big files I generally try and do it overnight, partly as these downloads take so long and mainly that if I am downloading files, it sucks up my bandwidth making the internet unusable for anything else.
So last night I set iTunes on my iMac to download a HD episode of Doctor Who and a couple of very large iPad Apps. About 2-3GB of data.
I went to bed, came down this morning to find a message from iTunes asking me if I wanted to download the latest version. Well I do have this setup in preferences, so that iTunes checks for updates.
So what’s the problem?
Well due to this unanswered dialogue (I was asleep in bed) iTunes had stopped downloading my downloads. It was waiting for me to say yes or no to downloading the new version of iTunes!
As a result I had only downloaded one of my downloads, all the rest were waiting…
Why can’t iTunes continue to download the files in the background, why does it have to wait until I answer the dialogue box?
In my mind this is poor design. If I decide that I do want to update iTunes, I can always stop the downloads, in fact I would probably want to finish them first before updating. So iTunes should really keep downloading even if it is asking me if I want to update.
So the end result is that I have to turn off “checking for updates” so this doesn’t happen again.
Apple’s iTunes Store is offering twelve days of giveaways from the 26th December to the 6th January.
From December 26th to January 6th you and your friends can download a free song or music video, app, TV episode or film from some of the biggest star performers on iTunes. Each free download will be valid for 24 hours only.
Back in June 2008 when Apple put movies into the UK iTunes Store I had a go and didn’t have a huge success.
So my first proper attempt to get films off the iTunes Store was not a great success, ah well maybe next time.
So now over a year later, what’s the situation?
Well I am downloading a fair few movies from the iTunes Store now, buying and renting.
I do like how quick and easy it is, and sometimes how much cheaper it is too (and annoyed by how expensive it can be too).
I usually watch the movies via an iPod through the TV, as I still haven’t got round to buying an Apple TV, but then I still don’t have that HD TV to watch them on (and I am pretty sure I can’t easily connect an Apple TV to my current TV).
I will probably get an Apple TV if I get an HD TV as I would prefer to watch HD movies on an HD screen.
I was impressed with HD on the TV Shows and downloaded Lost in HD and the newest Doctor Who special in HD too.
So is everything working?
Well not really.
My ADSL is still way too slow, which means it takes hours to download a movie. Also I have a monthly bandwidth limit which means I usually plan my iTunes downloads overnight as Plusnet my ISP gives me a “free” download time between midnight and eight in the morning.
Also now and again iTunes fails to download the movie “properly”, so it downloads it again! As a result I have two versions in my iTunes library.
However despite a few minor issues I am pleased with movies and TV on the iTunes store and use it on a regular basis.
One of the big criticisms of the introduction of the widespread use of iTunes Plus on the iTunes Store (ie the removal of DRM) which was announced at MacWorld 2009 was the fact that you had to do an all or nothing upgrade.
That has now changed.
Upgrades now no longer have to be on a whole library basis they can be now done on an iTunes Plus upgrades now à la carte basis as seen in Apple’s FAQ (note opens in iTunes). You can now do single songs.
As a result I can upgrade my Prince songs, but not necessarily the Steps track I must have bought when I was not really with it!
Apple’s iTunes Store is offering twelve days of giveaways from the 26th December to the 6th January.
For iTunes 12 Days Of Christmas, we’ve delved deep into our catalogue to pull out some real treats for the holiday season. Check back here every day for rare singles, exclusive live tracks and free music videos from some of the biggest artists in the world today. Plus classic TV programmes that you just won’t want to miss. Consider them little stocking fillers for your new iPod.
I have finally got round to not just renting a movie from iTunes, but also taking the time to watch it as well.
Basically I wanted a film I could watch on an ipod on the train and it was one of those 99p films, “A Guy Thing“.
Not sure how I feel about renting movies, it’s not as though I have never rented a movie (as in a physical DVD) from Blockbuster before, but felt more pressure to watch a rented film from iTunes.
The terms are quite generous, you have thirty days to watch and once you start watching you have two days to watch and finish (or even watch it again).
I just felt that I had to watch it (having watched half) even though I wasn’t in the mood for it.
Will I rent again, possibly.
I have been playing about with video on my iPod and have downloaded video from the iTunes Store including television shows and movies. It has been relatively simple and painfree (for me). So I was intrigued when I got an e-mail from Sony (or was it Sky) about the new GO!VIEW service for the PSP
I was interested less so in the free month’s trial, but more in the fact that season one of both Hustle and Spooks were available, as was some classic Doctor Who. They aren’t available (yet) on the iTunes store.
Now yes I could go out and buy the DVD box sets, but GO!VIEW looked really interesting as (yes a free month) and the Entertainment package was only £5 ($10) per month.
Now that struck me as much better value than the £1.89 ($4) per episode I have to pay at iTunes… and I know I get to “keep” the episodes at iTunes, but sometimes you don’t want to pay a huge amount to see an old series.
So was the process going to be as easy as iTunes was?
Well no it wasn’t.
Firstly you have to be running Windows, so there was no way I was going to do this on my Mac except through Parallels.
To be honest I should have kind of expected that especially as they were probably going to use some form of Windows Media DRM.
So went through Parallels and ensured that I could connect to my PSP through the USB port as the process did require you to do this.
So according to the website GO!VIEW is “so simple to use”, well let’s put that to the test!
I then tried to sign up and found I was required to download a GO!VIEW application, well I can’t complain about that if I download iTunes can I?
Once I downloaded I tried to get the free trial, but it would seem you have to subscribe first and then that gets you the free trial. You do need to give a credit or debit card however this is quite normal with any subscription service that I have seen.
Everytime though I filled in the registration data, it found an error and then “wiped” out a fair few of the fields, so after three attempts at pressing the submit button I was getting annoyed.
Eventually I was registered, so you can guess that I got even more annoyed when I clicked the download button for the episode I wanted to watch and I got an error message. Nothing about it in the FAQ or even in a Google search.
Hmm. One of the FAQs did mention Firewall issues, so I checked my Firewall settings in Windows and actually made it more restrictive, but this seemed to do the trick!
So now I could download.
Yay!
Well it’s slow so I haven’t yet managed to download an episode without impacting on my internet connection as GO!VIEW uses a peer-to-peer download manager based on the same Kontiki software that powers Channel 4’s 4oD and the BBC’s iPlayer download service.
Unlike those two services though, GO!VIEW programmes can only actually be watched once transferred to a PSP.
I’ll let you know how I get on.
I got the following weird iPhone error in iTunes on my iMac.
It’s weird (very weird) as I don’t have an iPhone and have never connected an iPhone to my iMac. I have connected an iPod touch, so that might be it!
Weird.