AllThingsD » rent

Conan Lists His 25,000-Square-Foot TV Studio on Airbnb for $3

Tricia Duryee — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 00:33:50 +0000

Late-night TV comedian Conan O’Brien has listed his “cozy and charming” 25,000-square-foot Burbank, Calif., studio on Airbnb, the site that obviously helps rent out just about any type of housing to anyone.

Conan announced the stunt during his show, lauding the 25 LCD TV monitors (no HBO), a fully stocked kitchenette with intern and a shower shared by the four members of the house band.

It is available Oct. 10 to 13 for $1 a night for a total of three bucks.

The studio, which can accommodate up to four guests, lists sleeping accommodations, such as “celebrity-rubbed” sleeper sofas and an air mattress that needs repair. Linens are included, although it’s recommended bringing your own for undisclosed reasons.

What else? There’s free Wi-Fi, and it’s great for families!

Recently, Airbnb instituted a $50,000 guarantee in case anything goes wrong during a stay, but I’m not sure if that would cover the havoc that someone could create on a TV set that once filmed such classics as “The Goonies” and “Karate Kid Part 2.”

Conan declined to say whether the guests will be featured on the show, but you can pretty much bank on it. Jokes TBD.

I/O Ventures Returns to Train Second Class of Start-Ups

Liz Gannes — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 18:14:49 +0000

With a swarm of start-up accelerators in the mold of Y Combinator all hitting the tech scene last year, it’s inevitable that some will fall by the wayside. But I/O Ventures, based in San Francisco’s Mission District, will be back for another season, co-founder Paul Bragiel tells NetworkEffect.

Bragiel bragged that of the six I/O Ventures companies from last year, one has been acquired (Facebook fan page creator Damntheradio by FanBridge), one is in late-stage acquisition talks (online video monetization platform SocialVision), three have raised funding of at least $400,000 from investors such as Max Levchin and Dave McClure, and the last (experience marketplace Skyara) is closing a funding round.

While I/O Ventures will continue to run with a curriculum quite similar to other start-up programs–soliciting young folks who have an idea but not much else, for a few months of intensive mentorship and events, followed by a “Demo Day” for investors–it has a few characteristics that set it apart. Mainly, the program is located in a building owned by its founders in the happening Mission District, home to a newly opened cafe called The Summit, which has become a bustling space for techie meetings and laptop sessions.

Bragiel said he expects to accept five to six companies once more, rather than swelling to a larger class, as Y Combinator has done. The program pays $25,000 and waives rent in exchange for eight percent of a start-up’s common stock. This year’s edition will include more events and more hand-holding around the initial company formation process, Bragiel said.

I/O Ventures continues to be funded by its four founding partners: Bragiel (who recently sold his forum company, Lefora), as well as BitTorrent co-founder Ashwin Navin, HotorNot co-founder Jim Young and Myspace co-founder Aber Whitcomb. It will accept applications through Feb. 15, with the sessions starting March 1.

Make the Rent Check Out to "Google"

Peter Kafka — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 12:24:20 +0000

See? Google isn’t a one-trick pony, after all: The search giant is going to become a landlord, too.

Google is reportedly spending $1.9 billion to buy the New York City office building where it rents 500,000 square feet. And since the enormous property covers nearly three million square feet, that means Google is going to be cashing rent checks from all sorts of interesting tenants.

Barnes & Noble.com rents a big chunk of the building, which occupies an entire city block in Manhattan’s Chelsea district. So does Interpublic Group’s. Deutsch ad agency. And Sprint. And Nike.

And if Google ever wants to get a deal done with Spotify, the European music service that hasn’t made it to the U.S. yet, it won’t have to look hard to find the company: Spotify has a small outpost in the building, too.

Meanwhile, if you want to see Spotify founder Daniel Ek yourself, check out our D: Dive into Mobile conference next Tuesday, where I’ll be interviewing him onstage.

The Landlord from Will Ferrell

Apple TV: Streaming and Renting From Devices

Walter S. Mossberg — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 02:02:15 +0000

Of all the set-top boxes designed to bring online and computer content to your TV, perhaps the best known is Apple TV. But, unlike its maker’s other products, Apple TV hasn’t caught on in a big way. In fact, Apple CEO Steve Jobs calls it a “hobby.”

[ See post to watch video ]

Still, the company isn’t giving up. This fall it brought out a radically revamped Apple TV at a much lower price—$99, down from $229—and with a different philosophy. While earlier versions contained a hard disk and allowed you to purchase and store movies, music and TV shows, the new Apple TV is all about streaming and renting. It can’t store content, although, like its predecessors, it can transmit to your TV screen content stored on your networked home computers.

Perhaps the coolest feature of the new Apple TV is that it allows you to wirelessly beam video and audio from an iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch to the TV screen. A new feature called AirPlay in the latest software on these portable devices makes this possible. So, if you have a video or photos on, say, an iPad, you can just tap an icon on its screen to view them on a TV via Apple TV instead of on the device’s smaller screen. (AirPlay also works wirelessly from the free iTunes software on PCs and Macs.)

Apple’s Steve Jobs announcing the new release of Apple TV earlier this fall.

I’ve been testing the new Apple TV, including trying out AirPlay using various devices, and found that it performs as advertised. It has a clean, easy interface, does a great job of streaming content from your own computers, and it allows you to rent TV shows at just 99 cents an episode. It’s even almost invisible next to your TV—a 4-inch-square black box less than an inch tall. And setup is easy.

But it has some significant downsides. The most important of these is a very limited selection of Internet video sources. If you want a set-top box that allows you to watch a wide range of video from the Web, Apple TV isn’t it.

Apple TV is now essentially a modestly priced adapter that streams video, audio and photos to your HDTV from three main sources: your own computers, Apple’s iTunes service plus a few other online sources, and content on your portable Apple devices using AirPlay.

It’s the polar opposite of the new Google TV, which tries to encompass the entire Internet but is too complicated for mainstream users and costs hundreds of dollars. Apple is offering much less variety in content sources, but with a much simpler interface and a tiny remote with just seven buttons, versus the keyboard or minikeyboard used with Google TV.

Apple TV is still tied heavily to the company’s own iTunes service. The new model now also offers Netflix, which is nicely integrated into Apple’s user interface, but is very common on other set-top boxes, including the less expensive Roku models. YouTube is accessible from the new device, though it was present on the older model as well. The device can’t deliver other video services, nor is it designed to bring up Web pages on your TV.

And, even within Apple’s own iTunes service, which is Apple TV’s source for a la carte rental of TV shows and movies, the content is limited. For its 99-cent TV show rentals, the device mainly offers programs from ABC, Disney, Fox, PBS and the BBC. If your favorite show is on NBC, CBS or many other networks, you can’t rent it on Apple TV, nor can you get to the Web to view it. Alas, even within those networks, some of the programs are old and I couldn’t find some popular shows, like “Modern Family” on ABC or “American Idol” on Fox. (Fox, like The Wall Street Journal, is owned by News Corp.)

You can still buy TV shows from the excluded networks, or shows unavailable for rental, on your computers and stream them to the TV via Apple TV, but that is a more complicated process.

The Apple TV set-top box with TV showing 99-cent TV show rentals from iTunes.

Apple claims the largest selection of high-definition movies online, and says many are available the same day they appear on DVD. Movie rentals start at $2.99 for standard-definition versions and $3.99 for high definition, though many are $4.99. Both movies and TV shows can be kept for 30 days, but, once you start playing them, the clock starts on a short window before they expire. In the case of movies, the window is 24 hours; for TV shows, it’s 48 hours. You can pause and resume, or watch them repeatedly, within those windows.

In my tests, video and audio quality were excellent. Programs started rapidly, and I never saw any stuttering or buffering delays. Like the older Apple TV models, the new one did a very good job of streaming to the TV content from both PCs and Macs running iTunes on my home network. In fact, the process of setting this up has been made simpler. Watching slideshows of family photos was simple and rewarding.

Searching for a TV show or movie was tedious, because it requires you to peck out letters from an onscreen keyboard with the little remote. (This is why Google uses a keyboard, but that isn’t a welcome device in many living rooms.) However, there’s an alternative. Apple offers a free iPhone and iPad app that can control the Apple TV, and it has a built in virtual keyboard for much faster searching.

AirPlay worked well in my tests. I tried it on both an iPad and an iPhone, and was easily able to switch a video or song from the device itself to the Apple TV, and thus, to the TV screen and speakers. This requires merely clicking on an icon that looks like a wide-screen TV with an arrow beneath it, and then selecting “Apple TV” as a destination.

I also tried AirPlay on both a Mac and Windows laptop using the latest version of iTunes, and it worked fine. On all the AirPlay-equipped devices, you can also multitask. Once you’ve started beaming a video to the Apple TV, you can do other things on the originating device without interrupting the video. For instance, as I write this paragraph in Microsoft Word, I am watching a video beamed to my TV via AirPlay from iTunes on my laptop.

But AirPlay has some limitations. On the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch it will only beam video to the Apple TV from Apple’s own Video, iPod and Photos apps, plus the YouTube app. On computers, it only works with iTunes. Some third-party apps on the hand-held devices can use it with audio, though not video.

Also, switching the video stream to the Apple TV can take a few seconds, during which the video keeps playing, so you often have to rewind.

Overall, Apple TV is a reasonably priced, well-designed device. It is especially attractive for viewing videos and photos from your computers, and Apple devices, on your TV. But it doesn’t deliver most Internet video sources, or even all online network programs.

Find all of Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos at the All Things Digital Web site, walt.allthingsd.com. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.

Socializing Vacation Rentals: The AirBnB Guys Speak!

Kara Swisher — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 18:38:26 +0000

A few weeks ago, BoomTown sat down in a hipster coffee place in a hipster section of San Francisco to talk to the hipster trio of founders of AirBnB.

Which, if you think about it, is a very hipster name for what is essentially the ability to rent out your apartment, home or wack-a-doo space (such as a shoe-shaped hotel or Frank Sinatra’s Palm Springs estate).

AirBnB is an alternative to other fast-growing similar sites such as VRBO–Vacation Rentals By Owner, only with more style and niche cool.

But the former Y Combinator start-up is not without its more traditional aspects, such as a recent $7.2 million Series A funding from Greylock Partners.

Also on board, its initial Silicon Valley venture investor, Sequoia Capital, which forked over $600,000 in seed financing last year.

That came after AirBnB’s first foray for travelers to find inexpensive lodging–often no more than just a room for events, such as the U.S. Presidential conventions–turned into a wider and more pricey range of offerings, with 700,000 nights booked so far in 166 countries and 8,000 cities.

AirBnB also includes–of course–reputation and social networking elements–as well as a very slick mobile app with unusually lovely photos–and also easy booking logistics.

And, because it is also very hip to do so these days, there is a Groupon-like daily deal too. But of course there is!

It’s actually all very well done, an interesting way to find cool places to stay beyond the usual.

Here are its founders–Joe Gebbia, Nate Blecharczyk, and Brian Chesky–talking about it all in a video interview, as well as a slideshow of its Top 40 collection of its more unusual properties to rent, such as a plane stuck in a tree in Costa Rica:

[ See post to watch video ]

Another Googler Goes to AOL: YouTube Boss Dave Eun Replaces Bill Wilson as Content Boss

Peter Kafka — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 19:46:44 +0000

Former Google sales boss Tim Armstrong has brought a slew of former colleagues with him to AOL, but this may be his highest-profile hire so far: Dave Eun, who has been in charge of content deals at Google and YouTube, will replace Bill Wilson, one of the last high-profile AOL guys from the pre-Armstrong era.

The deal to bring Eun on board was finalized last night, Armstrong told employees in an all-hands email (see below). It’s not a huge shock to see him leave–he’s done a lot of heavy lifting there already, and sources say that like many Google (GOOG) executives who have left recently, Eun felt he couldn’t move much higher in the company.

Eun used to have a role that paralleled Armstrong’s at Google: Make peace with traditional content companies. But instead of trying to sell them ads or negotiate search deals, Eun was supposed to hammer out deals to help get their content onto Google. Most recently, he was focused on getting TV networks and movie studios to put stuff on YouTube, which involved new ad-supported deals (see: Turner, ESPN, etc.) as well as the possibility of renting clips by the stream.

Wilson is a longtime AOL (AOL) guy who rose up the ranks and was pushing for the original content strategy that Armstrong embraced even before the last regime change. He seems to be leaving on better terms than other pre-Armstrong executives, as he’ll be staying with the company until May to manage the transition.

By leaving just as AOL has spun off on its own, Wilson is giving up a chance at some significant upside via low-priced stock options. But sources say Wilson doesn’t have another job lined up.

In an interview this afternoon, Armstrong says that Wilson approached him about leaving the company “several weeks ago”. When I asked him if Eun’s last role–developing partnerships with big media outlets–signaled a shift in AOL’s “roll your own–cheaply” strategy, he made a point of saying that’s not the case. Eun’s hire will simply “supercharge” AOL content plans, he said.

Nonetheless, Armstrong did allow that AOL has some significant content partnerships to announce in the coming months.

Here’s an interview I conducted with Eun late last year, focused on YouTube’s efforts to turn a profit and add new content:

[ See post to watch video ]

And here’s Armstrong’s note to the troops:

As you know, content is at the core of our strategy and we have broad aspirations in this space. We’re focused on scaling our content platforms, production and partnerships to offer quality, original content that will engage consumers and bring them–and their friends–back to our properties time and again.

The fact that we have such a strong foundation in the content space is due to the determination and dedication of Bill Wilson. He saw the opportunity presented by audience fragmentation on the Web and positioned AOL’s content offerings in a number of key verticals. Early in the new year, Bill told me that although he remains committed to the vision and strategy of AOL, he’s ready for a break.

After nine years with the company and after the significant changes we made this year moving from licensing content to becoming a principle in content, he wants to take a step back. Bill built a strong management team and laid the groundwork for the content strategy that we’re now pursuing. While I’m disappointed by his decision, I respect his intent and have asked him to work with me, not only to find his replacement but also to transition with that person to ensure that, as a company, we don’t miss a beat on the execution of our content strategy.

Bill is a talented executive and great person, and I’ll be working with him closely and supporting his transition. Bill cares about AOL, he cares about the content and the products, and he has worked incredibly hard to keep AOL on the media map.

I’m pleased to announce that David Eun will be coming on board in March to head up our content business. Some of you may remember David from his tenure at Time Warner where he helped to oversee AOL as Vice President, Operations, for the Media & Communications Group reporting to Don Logan.

David, who joins us now from YouTube and Google, has had a long career in offline and online content and is the person responsible for managing Google and YouTube’s content partnerships. David brings an impressive breadth of media experience to AOL at an exciting juncture as AOL forges a new future as a high-scale producer and partner in the content space. He will be based in New York.

Bill will be staying on until May 1 to help ensure a smooth transition with David, who begins work March 1.

You may wonder why this topic wasn’t raised during yesterday’s Q4 employee call. My preference is always to share this type of news with you in person, but the facts are that there were elements of this announcement that were not finalized until last night. This drove us to announce this news this morning–to our employees first.

As we have discussed, AOL is now in a phase of transition from playing defense to playing offense. As I said on the employee earnings call yesterday, AOL’s back in the game and we’re playing to win. We have a lot of work to do, but we’re going to do it. Please join me in welcoming David back to AOL and in thanking Bill for his dedication and leadership at AOL – TA

And here’s the release:

AOL NAMES DAVID EUN PRESIDENT OF AOL MEDIA AND STUDIOS

Eun Will Oversee All AOL Content, SEED.com and Studio Operations

New York, NY, February 4, 2010 – AOL Inc. (NYSE: AOL) today announced that David Eun will join the company as President of AOL Media and Studios, effective March 1. As AOL’s chief content executive, Eun will be responsible for the company’s more than 80 content sites, its new SEED.com publishing platform, as well as the newly acquired StudioNow video platform and AOL’s NYC and LA studios.

Eun will report to AOL Chairman and CEO Tim Armstrong and will be based in New York. He succeeds Bill Wilson, President, AOL Media, who will transition out of the role after nine years with AOL.

Until 2006, Eun helped to oversee AOL as Vice President, Operations for the Media & Communications Group at Time Warner Inc. In that role, he helped provide operational oversight and develop new businesses, particularly in digital distribution and broadband content and services, for the company’s AOL, Time Warner Cable and Time, Inc. divisions. Eun joins AOL from Google, where as Vice President, Strategic Partnerships, he was responsible for managing global content partnerships with Google and YouTube.

“David brings an impressive breadth of media experience to AOL at an exciting juncture for the company as we focus on scaling our content platforms, production and partnerships to offer quality, original content that will engage consumers and bring them–and their friends–back to our properties time and again. I’m delighted to welcome him back to AOL as we continue to pursue our strategy and mission in digital content and journalism,” Armstrong said.

“Bill Wilson has been a driving force for content at AOL and under his leadership the quantity and quality of our premium branded and niche offerings have expanded significantly. On behalf of AOL, I want to thank Bill for the energy and dedication he has brought to the role. Bill has been an outstanding leader at AOL,” Armstrong added.

“AOL has a unique opportunity to bring together its core strengths in the key areas of content and journalism, distribution, and advertising to engage its users, partners and advertisers in a way very few companies can. These three elements will be fundamental to success as the media and technology industries evolve and converge,” Eun said. ”And after nearly 15 years of seeing this convergence approach, I couldn’t be more excited to be returning to AOL to help Tim and his team capture that great promise.”

AOL is one of the largest producers of original content on the Web, with more than 80 official AOL and custom-built sites including more than 20 which rank in the top five in their U.S. comScore Media Metrix category. Approximately 80 percent of AOL’s content is originally produced by a growing team of staff and freelance journalists, including nine Pulitzer Prize Winners. AOL also produces more than 50 original video productions a month at state-of-the-art studios in New York and Los Angeles as well as through a network of freelance video producers.

SEED.com, AOL’s premium content management system, assigns, buys and distributes work for all of AOL’s properties. StudioNow, which AOL acquired in January, allows the company to integrate a fully functional video creation platform into SEED and leverage a national network of creative professionals to develop and produce quality video in a way that is rapid, efficient and scalable.

Before joining Time Warner, Eun was a partner at Arts Alliance, a venture capital firm focusing on digital media, information technology and business services. He started his career in media at NBC, where he led some of NBC’s first cross-media initiatives involving television programming, the Internet, and retail consumer products. He is a former management consultant with Bain & Co., and attended Harvard Law School and Harvard College, where he graduated magna cum laude in government.

The ABCs of Wii, Xbox and PlayStation 3

Katherine Boehret — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 00:47:12 +0000

With holiday shopping comes anxiety about getting the right gifts. Does Dad already own a copy of “Frank Sinatra’s Greatest Hits”? Was Mom expecting a new pepper mill, or was that Aunt Carol? It’s even worse for people shopping for the video gamers in their lives: Understanding the technical specifications of each console can seem as difficult as getting to the highest level in a game of Halo.

This week, I’ve done the dirty work for you: I’ve amassed a collection of vital details about the three most popular systems—Microsoft’s (MSFT) Xbox 360, Sony’s (SNE) PlayStation 3 and Nintendo’s Wii—so that you can get a handle on what each offers and what it will cost you.

Nintendo Wii

Nintendo recently dropped the Wii’s price, for the first time, to $200 from $250. The Wii Console comes with a controller, an additional controller called a Nunchuk, and the Wii Sports game, which includes baseball, tennis, golf, bowling and boxing. It holds 512 megabytes of flash memory, but you can increase this by inserting SecureDigital memory cards. It also accepts high-capacity SD cards, or SDHCs, of up to 32 gigabytes.

The couch-potato world of videogamers was shaken up when the Wii, with its motion-sensitive remote control, was introduced about three years ago. Users can play Wii Golf, for instance, by swinging the remote like a golf club. In September, Nintendo added to its lineup a $20 remote-control accessory called Wii MotionPlus that was designed to add more precision to game motions. I tested this snap-on piece and found that it did make the Wii’s motions feel more realistic. But it works only with Wii MotionPlus games—and there are only six of them; 10 more are planned for 2010.

Wii encourages users to move around in more ways than just waving a remote: Its Wii Balance Board, which comes with the Wii Fit Plus game in a $100 bundle, works like a digital exercise step. It records the body’s weight shifts and movements for activities from yoga to wake-boarding.

The Wii accesses the Internet and lets users compete online against others. About 655 packaged games are available for between $30 and $50. Also, you can use pre-purchased Nintendo Points to buy and download about 150 WiiWare games and over 325 titles from the older Virtual Console library. Each game costs between 300 and 1,500 points, or between about $3 and $15.

WiiConnect24 can send messages from one Wii to another over the Internet, as long the two users exchange “Wii numbers.” Users can also surf the Web with Wii’s Opera browser. But beyond this, no other Web features—like downloadable movies, social-networking applications or streaming music—will work on this system.

Parental controls can be set on the Wii to restrict kids from using the Web browser, playing games that have a certain rating or communicating online.

Microsoft Xbox 360

Microsoft recently stepped up its game by adding features to its $200 Xbox 360 that make it well-rounded rather than strictly geared toward serious gamers. People who buy the Xbox LIVE Gold membership, for $50 a year, get applications for Facebook, Twitter, the Last.fm music-streaming service, online multiplayer game play, video chat, Netflix (Netflix subscription required), photo sharing via the Xbox, and movie or photo “parties” that allow users to watch a movie simultaneously with seven other friends.

Xbox LIVE Silver membership is free and includes basic features like voice and text chat, as well as access to the Zune video library’s 20,000 TV shows and movies to buy or rent. The Xbox also allows media-streaming over a home network. To wirelessly connect to the Internet on your Xbox, you’ll need to buy a $100 Wi-Fi adapter. By contrast, the Wii and PlayStation 3 have built-in Wi-Fi.

Anyone who owns a Microsoft Zune media player can buy a TV show or movie and download it to an Xbox or PC as well as the Zune. Zunes can be plugged into the Xbox to play music, as can Apple (AAPL) iPods.

The base Xbox comes with a wireless controller and 512 megabytes of memory. For $100 more, the Elite Holiday Bundle includes a 120-gigabyte hard drive, headset, wireless controller, and two games: “LEGO Batman: The Videogame” and “Pure.” More than 1,200 games are available for the Xbox, mostly costing between $29 and $60. About 350 of the games can be downloaded from the Xbox LIVE Arcade (costing 400 to 1,600 points, or $5 to $20) or the Games on Demand library.

Microsoft confirmed plans to introduce Project Natal, a system that lets people operate games with gestures and body movements rather than remote controls. Natal will work with all Xbox 360 consoles. Microsoft won’t confirm a date.

Family settings let parents control whether their kids play games online and with whom they play, as well as the ratings of the games. A Family Timer regulates how long kids play.

Sony PlayStation 3

Sony’s PlayStation, like the Xbox 360, is designed with serious gamers in mind. Its base version costs $300 and includes a 120-gigabyte hard drive and a DualShock 3 wireless controller; $50 more buys a version with a 250-gigabyte hard drive. Both systems can be upgraded with any standard 2.5-inch hard drive. The PlayStation is also a Blu-ray disc player.

Like the Xbox, the PlayStation 3, or PS3, now offers extra features, but these features are all included in the PlayStation Network, which is free (not $50 yearly like Xbox LIVE Gold). These PlayStation Network extras include Netflix (NFLX) instant streaming, a Web browser, photo slide shows, the ability to stream media over a home network to the PS3, a Facebook application that shares game information with friends and the PlayStation Network video-delivery service, where users can purchase 2,400 high- and standard-definition movies and 15,000 TV episodes.

The PS3 and the PlayStation Portable, Sony’s portable gaming device, are married in many ways. A new feature called Blu-ray Portable Copy lets users make a free standard-definition copy of some Blu-ray movies for transfer to a PlayStation Portable. Remote Play lets people stream media files from the PS3 to the PlayStation Portable in Wi-Fi hot spots or remotely turn the PS3 on or off using the PlayStation Portable. Movies and TV shows from the PlayStation Network can be transferred to either system, so you can start a movie on a big-screen TV and finish it on the PlayStation Portable; the same can be done for games.

About 400 games are available on Blu-ray for the PS3; these cost between $30 and $60. More than 150 titles, costing between $3 and $40, can be downloaded directly to the PS3. Sony confirmed that it will release a motion-sensing controller, but it hasn’t set a date.

Parental restrictions for the PS3 include the ability to restrict games, DVDs and Blu-ray discs with certain ratings. Parents can also limit monthly spending or Web browsing.

Games: A Cheat Sheet

Here are some of the key differences among three popular videogame systems.

	NINTENDO WII	XBOX 360	PLAYSTATION 3
Price	$200	200 or $300*	$300, $350
Includes	Wireless controller, Nunchuk, Wii Sports	Wireless controller/ Wireless controller, headset, 2 games	DualShock 3 wireless controller
Additional remotes	$40 wireless; Nunchuk is $20	$50 wireless, $40 wired, $20 headset	$55 DualShock 3 wireless controller, $50 Bluetooth headset, $40 PlayStation Eye, $25 Blu-ray disc remote control, $50 wireless keypad
Memory	512 MB, can be increased with SD cards	512 MB, $300 Xbox comes with 120 GB	120 GB or 250 GB
Built-in Wi-Fi?	Yes	No. $100 Wireless adapter sold separately	Yes
Games	1,100	1,200	550
Cost of Games	30-$50; $3-$15 for downloads	Most are $29-$60; $5-$20 for downloads	$30-$60; $3-$40 for downloads
Other features	Web browser, ability to message other Wii consoles	Netflix, Last.fm, movie parties, MSN Messenger, Facebook, Twitter, photo sharing, online multiplayer gaming	Netflix, Facebook integration, photo slide shows, PlayStation Network videos, online multiplayer gaming
Extras	$100 Wii Balance Board and Wii FitPlus, $20 Wii MotionPlus	Xbox LIVE Silver is free, Xbox LIVE Gold is $50/year	Blu-ray disc playing, multiple tie-ins with Playstation Portable
Family Settings	Restrict online browsing, communication, game ratings	Restrict online play, with whom users can play, game ratings, time spent playing	Restrict online play, games or movies with certain ratings, monthly expenses, Web browsing
Relationship w/portable device	Wireless, free demo downloads from Wii Channel onto DS or DSi	Play videos bought anywhere on Zune, PC or Xbox 360	Blu-ray Portable Copy gives free copy of some movies for transferring to PlayStation Portable
Media streamed to console over home network?	No	Yes	Yes
* for Elite Holiday Bundle

Email: mossbergsolution@wsj.com

Write to Katherine Boehret at mossbergsolution@wsj.com

Corrections & Amplifications

Xbox LIVE Gold costs $50 a year. A previous version of this story incorrectly stated in the second reference to the price that it costs $50 monthly. Also, the Xbox 360 can be connected to the Internet via an ethernet cable for free, as well as via Wi-Fi. A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that connecting your Xbox to the Internet would require the purchase of a Wi-Fi adapter.

While Microsoft Is Talking to Publishers, Paying Up to "Rent" Content for Bing to Thwart Google Is Unlikely

Kara Swisher — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 08:55:29 +0000

While it might be a dream of publishers–hard hit by the digital tsunami and blaming Google for the crisis–Microsoft is not likely to fork over the big bucks they’d need for exclusive indexing of their content.

“Microsoft isn’t the monopoly guy anymore,” joked one source close to ongoing talks between Microsoft and publishers, especially News Corp. (NWS) and Associated Press. “So, it’s not going to be the bank for publishers.”

While a spate of reports has Microsoft (MSFT) execs girding the globe offering gobs of cash to content companies to block Google (GOOG) and favor its Bing search service, sources close to the situation caution that it is extremely unlikely that the software giant would pay giant sums for that pricey privilege, which many inside the company think will not help it gain much search share.

“While there is a lot of mutual interest, it’s doubtful Microsoft is going to pay to ‘rent’ a corpus of content that it does not own,” said one source close to the situation. “The economics are not there for anyone.”

Nonetheless, that has not stopped AP and News Corp. from aggressive public agitating recently about how their content has been treated online, accusing Google of a wide range of crimes against them and threatening to “de-index” their content from the search giant.

For example, News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch–who has been on what seems like a televised campaign against the search giant–accused Google of pilfering stories from his publishing properties.

Presumably, by yanking Google’s access to them and offering them to Microsoft, balance will be restored in The Force.

Except, not so fast, since such a deal would end up costing Microsoft a fortune, which is why several sources said its execs don’t seem to be keen on doing that without getting a lot in return.

The swirl of chatter about it, these sources said, is coming from publishers–who initiated the very early-stage talks–who are keen on playing Microsoft and Google against each other in hopes the warring tech titans will loosen their fat wallets to battle each other.

News Corp., for instance, has been looking for ways to replace the three-year, $900 million (or less) Google/MySpace search deal that expires next year. The publisher has been talking to Microsoft about some sort of exclusivity since this summer, but News Corp. executives also say they’re happy to work with Google if Google is willing to pay up. But what would either company really be buying?

Another source used YouTube as an example of Google getting a mass of videos, when it paid $1.65 billion in 2006 for the online video company.

“That made sense, since Google got all that content to use,” said the source. “But it is hard to see publishers getting the advertising economics and revenue they want from Microsoft for lending their content out, even exclusively.”

Still a third source noted that the only way such a deal could be envisioned by Microsoft is if a majority of publishers was able to band together to block Google from indexing their sites.

“If it was everyone, that might become interesting,” said the source. “But even that has issues, since Microsoft is not interested in having exclusive news for a temporary period of time by overpaying for it.”

Added the source, noting how much money Microsoft has lost in its online efforts so far:

“It’s essentially a marketing expense, and there are a lot better ways to spend that money to win market share than giving it to publishers.”

(Full disclosure: News Corp. owns Dow Jones, which owns this site.)

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

Weighing Devices for Your Netflix Delivered via Web

Nick Wingfield — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 02:18:03 +0000

Netflix was a pioneer in the business of movie rentals — getting consumers to rent DVDs online and mailing them out in cheery red envelopes. Recently, it has put a lot of effort into a service that delivers movies digitally over the Internet to subscribers, preparing for a day when getting movies on a physical disc will become outmoded.

People today use the Netflix service on their computers, but Netflix (NFLX) has cut a series of deals with hardware partners to make the service available on TV sets through an array of devices.

Most of these devices were designed to do other things: a videogame console, high-definition Blu-ray disc players, a TiVo (TIVO) digital video recorder. So to see how well the service works on these devices, I’ve spent the past couple of weeks comparing the Netflix experience on Microsoft’s (MSFT) Xbox 360 game console, on LG Electronics’ BD300 Blu-ray disc player and on a set-top box from Roku called the Netflix Player. The last, as the name implies, is designed mainly for Netflix service.

The devices suffer from a relatively skimpy selection of videos on the Netflix Internet service. Netflix has more than 100,000 titles for rent on disc, but about 12,000 titles for viewing through its Internet service at the moment, and there’s often a months-long delay after a movie’s release before it shows up online. Television shows generally turn up more quickly, with a handful, like NBC’s “Heroes,” watchable the day after they air.

Still, I find the Netflix service very appealing, especially for catching up on episodes of TV series, such as “30 Rock,” that I missed when they aired. Unlike the iTunes Store and other sites that charge users $1.99 per TV episode and $3.99 to rent a movie online, the Netflix Internet service is free to subscribers to its DVD service on one of the company’s “unlimited” rental plans, which start at $8.99 a month.

Depending on how fast your Internet connection is, Netflix videos begin playing almost instantly, though you can’t keep permanent copies.

Connecting the devices to Netflix through my wired home network was easy in all three cases. I used a wireless home network — more common in homes than the wired variety — with the Roku device, the only one of three products that comes with built-in Wi-Fi (it worked well in this mode). People who want to use the Xbox 360 with a wireless network will have to spend $70 or so on an external Wi-Fi adapter. LG recommends people use only a wired home network to connect to Netflix from its player, including adapter kits that cost about $100 for transmitting data over home power lines.

All the devices require you to create a list of movies you want to watch from a computer, just like Netflix subscribers set up “queues” of DVDs to be delivered by mail. The Xbox 360 offered by far the most elegant-looking interface for browsing through videos in my Netflix queue, letting me glide through a long row of cover art representing the movies and TV shows I selected on my PC.

In contrast, the Netflix menu on the LG Blu-ray player and Roku device were more static, making it more awkward to navigate the expanse of titles. Netflix became available on the Xbox 360 in November as part of a more sweeping software upgrade, delivered over the Internet, that remade the graphical look of the system.

The quality of most of the videos on Netflix is, to my eyes, about DVD quality, though Netflix is adding some titles in high-definition to its Internet library. HD titles were available for viewing only through the Xbox 360 when I was testing the service. Roku and LG say they will make software updates available online this month that add HD support to their devices.

The Xbox 360 also has some annoying quirks when using it as a movie player — including a noisy fan I found distracting. The game controller that comes with the Xbox 360 is clunky for playing movies, so users will need to invest in an inexpensive additional remote-control design for media. The Roku and LG players, in contrast, were totally silent and had acceptable remote controls for watching Netflix videos.

I experienced the most serious glitches with the LG Blu-ray player, which occasionally dropped the video signal to my television set as I was watching a movie. LG says the loss of video signal could have been due to the connection I used to hook the player to my TV, though I’ve never had a problem with other devices using the same connection. The LG Blu-ray player also took the longest of all the devices to install software upgrades from the Internet.

While there are some differences in the Netflix experience on the Roku device, Xbox 360 and LG Blu-ray player, none of them is so great that they should trump other considerations — like a desire to play videogames or watch HD Blu-ray movies — in deciding which system is the best fit.

The LG Blu-ray player is available online for about $300. The cheapest Xbox 360 model is $199. (To get Netflix through the Xbox 360, users must be “gold” members to the $49.99-a-year Xbox Live game service.) But if what you’re after is primarily Netflix movies, and you’ve got room near your TV for another box, the $99.99 Roku product is the best value.

Walt Mossberg is on vacation.

Write to Nick Wingfield at nick.wingfield@wsj.com

Rent. Rip. Restraining Order.

John Paczkowski — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 18:38:41 +0000

The legal broadside Hollywood lobbed at RealNetworks (RNWK) last week has upset the company’s carefully prepared plans to offer a mainstream means of legally copying DVDs. A judge has issued a temporary ban on sales of Real’s RealDVD software in the wake of a lawsuit brought against it by the Motion Picture Association of America. Point your browser at the RealDVD site today and you’ll be greeted with the following message:

Due to recent legal action taken by the Hollywood movie studios against us, RealDVD is temporarily unavailable. Rest assured, we will continue to work diligently to provide you with software that allows you to make a legal copy of your DVDs for your own use.”

Good luck with that, folks.

As I’ve noted here before, RealDVD is a nice idea–a $30 software program that easily copies entire DVDs, right down to the menus, bonus features and cover art. And it does so in an ostensibly legal way. What it doesn’t do, though, is prohibit users from ripping DVDs that they rent. Effectively, users are on the honor system, which isn’t exactly a Hollywood-approved DRM scheme.