Telco giant Vodafone has extended its range of entertainment products with a new online music service offering 600,000 songs for download.

Although the company already had an online music store, songs were only transferred to Vodafone customers' 3G mobile phones; the new service is a step forward in that while users still purchase songs for their phones, they also receive a (DRM protected) WMA music file, which is delivered to their computer, at no extra cost. And unlike Vodafone's previous music download effort, songs cost a pretty reasonable $1.99 each, compared with the vastly overpriced $3.50 of yore.

Another advantage of the new service is that Vodafone's customers won't actually have to own a 3G phone. Although anyone who wants to listen to the music on their cellphone will require a 3G model, those without these phones can still play the song on their computers.

However, according to the Vodafone Music Store FAQ you'll need Windows 2000+ and IE 6.0+ to use the site, so it appears Firefox and Linux users may have difficulties.

We had a look at the store and found it reasonably comprehensive, if not as user-friendly as rival sites such as Digirama - music wasn't particularly well categorised and pages were very slow to load, for example. We were nevertheless impressed to find a number of tunes unavailable on any of the other legal New Zealand download sites.

And speaking of rival sites, it's unclear how the Vodafone store will affect the company's relationship with Satellite Media. Satellite was heavily involved in Vodafone's original music store, but also runs the Coketunes website. According to a Vodafone spokesperson, "It's Vodafone's policy not to comment on the details of commercial agreements and we do continue to enjoy a working relationship with Satellite." Hmm.

Vodafone enters the market at an interesting time. Not only are there established players such as Coketunes, Digirama and the kiwi music-based Amplifier, but with Microsoft's Zune player and accompanying music service due in the new year, and rumours that Apple will finally open an iTunes Music Store here any day now, it looks like there will soon be an awful lot of competition for your music download dollar.

More: Vodafone Music Store

Posted by Scott Bartley at 5:21 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 )

Nvidia strikes first in the race to get Direct X 10 compatible video cards to market following the announcement of their new GeForce 8800 GTX and GTS cards. Of course since there aren't actually any Direct X10 games or operating systems available just yet perhaps the term "race" isn't really appropriate. We won't know their full capabilities until Windows Vista and some appropriately coded games are available early next year, nevertheless, these cards prove to be exciting stuff even when running under DirectX 9.

XFX were first to send us samples of the new cards and right away you can tell these are serious pieces kit. The 8800GTX ($1299) features a core clock speed of 575MHz along with 768MB of GDDR3 RAM and sports a heat sink and fan so big it takes up two slots inside your PC. The rear end of the GTX actually overhangs the end of the motherboard by a good couple of centimetres so if your case is already tight for space watch out. The GTS ($1099) has a core clock speed of 500MHz, 640MB of GDDR3 RAM and is just a tad shorter but no less impressive looking.
Performance is exceptional with the GTX nailing a 3DMark 06 score of 11,462 in our Intel Core 2 Quad testbed. That's nearly twice as fast as ATI's current top of the line card the Radeon X1950TX which scored 6264 in the same system. The GTS was close behind at 9323.
So even though these are early days and there's plenty of real-world game testing still to be done, things are certainly looking bright for gamers seeking the ultimate in performance.

Posted by Scott Bartley at 3:09 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 1 )

By Martyn Williams

TOKYO (11/11/2006) - Sony Computer Entertainment Inc's (SCEI) PlayStation 3 games console made its worldwide debut in Japan on Saturday morning.

Electronics stores in Tokyo and other cities began selling the console at 7 a.m. At the Bic Camera outlet in Tokyo's Yurakucho district, Ken Kutaragi, president and CEO of SCEI, turned up to hand a console to the first customer in line.

The celebratory scene was different from that an hour earlier, when pushing and shoving threatened safety and shop officials had a hard time keeping customers calm. The shop had refused to let customers queue for the console until 4 a.m., so a large and unorganized crowd of about 1,000 people had built up by three hours ahead of the launch.

Competition to buy the PlayStation 3 is particularly fierce because of the small number of consoles that have been shipped to retailers across Japan for launch. Sony originally planned to have 2 million consoles ready for launches in Japan, North America, Europe and Australasia over the next seven days, but component shortages forced the company to slash launch shipments to 500,000 consoles. It also postponed the European and Australasian launches until March next year.

The component in question is the laser that sits at the heart of the PS3's Blu-ray Disc drive. Sony decided early on to outfit the new console with a Blu-ray Disc drive for two main reasons: The first is extra data storage capacity offered by Blu-ray Disc, which is five times that of DVD at 25GB. The second is the kick it could give the Blu-ray Disc format as a medium for high-definition movies. By the end of the year, the Sony-backed Blu-ray Disc will undoubtedly be in more homes than the rival HD-DVD thanks to its place in the PlayStation 3, although whether a significant number of gamers make use of the HD movie function remains to be seen.

At the heart of the console is the Cell processor. The product of several years of development by Sony, Toshiba Corp. and IBM Corp., the chip provides the processing power to deliver the stunning graphics that are the main selling point of the console. Other improvements over Sony's current console, the PlayStation 2, include the addition of a hard-disk drive and an upgraded network gaming and communication function. Users can browse the Web on the PS3 and also add other users to a buddy list and see when they are online. It's also possible to send short messages to other users.

With the launch of Sony's product, the high-definition console battle has officially begun. Microsoft launched its Xbox 360, which is also high definition, just under a year ago, and Microsoft expects worldwide shipments to reach 10 million units by the end of this year. The company recently announced an HD-DVD drive add-on and this week said it would offer TV shows and movies for download to the unit's hard-disk drive.

Also taking part in the competition is Nintendo, which will launch its Wii console in North America next week. The Wii doesn't do high definition but is attracting a lot of attention for an innovative wireless remote control that can be swung like a baseball bat or jabbed like a fist to interact with games.

It will be some time before a winner emerges, although some analysts expect that Microsoft's year-long lead in the market and Nintendo's new controller will mean Sony concedes some market share to its competitors.

What's almost certain is that the PlayStation 3 won't be the top selling piece of games hardware during its launch week in Japan. That crown is likely to remain with Nintendo's handheld DS machine. The DS, which is a fraction of the price of the PlayStation 3, sold 180,000 units during the week from Oct. 23 to 29, according to data compiled by Japanese gaming magazine Famitsu. The top console was the PlayStation 2, which sold 22,000 units.

Posted by Scott Bartley at 10:18 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 )