Entertainment

All the recent speculation about a possible Apple television has prompted Jean-Louis Gassee, an Apple exec from way back who's now general partner of venture-capital firm Allegis Capital, to offer a provocative vision of what Apple's set might do.

For example, Gassee isn't so convinced that Apple will want to develop an "integrated television" that features many of its services. After all, he says, consumers don't typically replace televisions "after 18 months" like they do with a smartphone or tablet. What's more, he's not sure Apple will want to get … Read more

The alleged increases in Blu-ray sales that Hollywood is supposedly seeing weren't obvious in Time Warner's earnings report.

The conglomerate that operates such media properties as Warner Bros. Pictures, Time magazine, HBO, and Turner Broadcasting, reported today large drops in home-video revenue for the quarter ending September 30.

The New York-based company said quarterly revenue in home video and electronic delivery for television shows came in at $161 million, down from $215 million a year ago--a 25 percent decrease.

In home video and electronic delivery for films, revenue shrank 21 percent, from $534 million for the same quarter … Read more

LAS VEGAS--Vizualogic's Android rear-seat entertainment (RSE) system is not the first of its kind that we've seen, but it may yet end up being the first to market.

The replacement car seat headrest features an integrated full-color, 7-inch capacitive touch screen that allows rear-seat passengers to interact with the Android 2.3 operating system. When asked why Gingerbread was used rather than the newer and tablet-optimized Honeycomb (or Ice Cream Sandwich) versions of the Android OS, Vizualogic stated that the the unit would be updated to version 3.1 or better by the time it reaches production. However, … Read more

Around about this time in 2010, I blogged about WHDI and its potential to change the way we entertain ourselves in a big way when this wireless display is implemented in mobile devices. Now a year later, that reality is still in the distant future.

Fortunately, there's something else to take its place. It's already here, and chances are your phone and HDTV at home come with it. It does require a wire, however, but that's a good thing.… Read more

Music Unlimited, the streaming-audio service from Sony, has recently become available for Android tablets.

Originally debuting on Android phones, the Music Unlimited catalog of more than 10 million tracks joins Spotify, MOG, Rdio, and Rhapsody as one of the premiere on-demand music providers for owners of Android tablets. Music Unlimited is available in the U.S., France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Spain, the U.K., Australia, and New Zealand.

Version 1.2 of Music Unlimited also ushers in compatibility with the Sony Tablet S, and an enhanced user interface. The updated UI enables several improvements: faster playlist creation; easier discovery of related artists/songs; quicker navigation between album and catalog views; and enhanced search results.

Sony offers two types of monthly subscriptions for Music Unlimited, including $3.99 basic and $9.99 premium plans. "Sony Tablet users who are first-time subscribers to the Music Unlimited service can get a 180-day trial of the Basic subscription plan," according to the press release. A 30-day free trial is available to anyone. … Read more

Spotify's music-streaming service has proven quite popular in the U.S., Reuters reported yesterday.

According to the news service, citing sources, Spotify now has 250,000 U.S. subscribers that are paying for access to its service. That claim, which Spotify has not confirmed, follows comments made by the company's CEO Daniel Ek last month, who said that the number of total paid subscribers worldwide is now over 2 million.

Spotify launched in the U.S. in July. And although users can sign up for free, those who pay for Spotify Unlimited at $4.99 a month will … Read more

BlackBerry data disruptions hit North American users, Apple devices can update to iOS 5 today to get iCloud, Wall Street protesters are leveraging a new messaging app, and Sony locks down accounts to fight another hack attack.

Links from Wednesday's episode of Loaded:

Sony said today it had locked down 93,000 user accounts on its online gaming and entertainment networks after detecting a large number of unauthorized attempts to gain access to the accounts.

Intruders "using very large sets of sign-in IDs and passwords" had brief access to 60,000 accounts on the PlayStation Network and Sony Entertainment Network and another 33,000 accounts on Sony Online Entertainment's servers, Sony said.

The attacks occurred from Friday through Monday and affected "less than one-tenth of 1 percent" of PSN, SEN, and SOE consumers, Sony said in a statement. … Read more

ChannelCaster for Android lets users create and publish personalized "channels" that aggregate news from thousands of supported news sources. In addition to all of the expected big-name publications and blogs, ChannelCaster can pull feeds from Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, and Twitter. Its design is clean and visually appealing with its sharp, vibrant thumbnails, and its navigation is incredibly simple with only three main tabs along the top of the app.

The Favorites tab is really the heart of the ChannelCaster experience. This is where you save your most frequently visited channels, and presumably where you'll spend most of … Read more