streaming - page 10

Apple is said to be finalizing deals with major movie studios that will allow the Cupertino company to introduce movie streaming to iCloud for Macs and iOS devices.

Although it’s by no means immediately obvious, Mac OS X includes a handy tool built right into Safari that enables you to capture streaming video from most websites.  In this video I’ll show you how it’s done.

The music options on the iPhone have sure gotten exciting over the last few months. First Apple unveiled iTunes Match, then Spotify launched their app in the US, and now Turntable.fm has brought their amazing social music experience to the iPhone. Earlier this morning Turntable.fm released their new iPhone app that enables users to listen to Turntable.fm DJ Rooms wherever they go.

They’re running through the entire playbook over at Pogoplug for a touchdown (yeah, guess I’m jonesing for the football season to start). Their latest move is the Pogoplug Mobile ($80), out today.

Everyone seems to want some AirPlay action. The newest dock to crash onto the stage is this AirPlay-equipped, sleek-looking monolith from iHome, the iW1 ($300).

Apple released iTunes Match to registered developers last night, and many have been playing with the cloud service since then to figure out how it really works. We then showed you a video that demoed how Apple lets you “stream” music.

As it turns out, iTunes Match doesn’t actually ‘stream’ music in the purest sense of the word. Instead, Apple lets you download music on the fly, which basically means that you’re still locally storing songs on your device.

When Apple announced iTunes Match at WWDC back in June, it was a little unclear whether the service would allow you to stream your music library to your iOS devices as opposed to storing it locally — allowing you to access your tracks without actually taking up any of your precious storage space.

Following the launch of the iTunes Match developer beta yesterday, it has been confirmed that streaming is possible with Apple’s upcoming $25/year service.

It’s finally here — for U.S.-based developers, anyway. iTunes Match, Apple’s upcoming new service that takes your iTunes library and mirrors it in Apple’s cloud so it can be streamed has just dropped in Beta form.

Following this morning’s story that reveals Apple’s plans to launch a movie streaming service called iTunes Replay, one analyst believes that Apple has something more spectacular up its sleeve — a service that will take on Netflix.

If you are one of CNN’s 50 million subscribers, you now have access to 24/7 live streaming of the main and Headline News CNN channels on your iPhone and iPad.

CNN has announced that its customers can visit CNN.com for mobile streaming 24/7, and that this same feature has been made available to the CNN for iPad and CNN for iPhone and iPod touch app in the App Store.

Much beloved Spotify has been trying to launch in America for years now. During that time, they’ve faced considerable challenges in convincing a music industry worried about alienating Apple to give the greenlight to their excellent all-you-can-stream subscription service.

But it’s finally come together, and now there’s even a firm date being thrown around: the freemium music service will launch in the States between July 5th and july 15th.

Cloud Engines announced their new, software-only personal streaming service today for PogoPlug. While the free version of PogoPlug is pretty nice, their Premium service adds a few extra features, like being able to stream music and movies to your iOS device. Running out of room for new movies and music on your iPhone or iPad is always a downer, but PogoPlug ensures that will no longer happen. Lucky for our readers, PogoPlug graciously gave us a whopping 200 Promo codes for free Premium PogoPlug accounts.

We already gave out a couple codes to our loyal Twitter followers this morning, but we’re now opening the floodgates to all of our readers so that the first 195 people to come will get a free PogoPlug Premium account. Here’s how to get your promo code:

The race to the cloud just heated up today: Cloud Engines, most known for their white, instant-server-in-a-brick Pogoplug network-attached storage device, launches two software-only versions that turn your Mac into a home-based server.

No matter how many months of rumors and insider reports precede an anticipated Apple announcement, it’s probable that, when Steve Jobs actually reveals the product on stage, it’s going to be radically different than what people are expecting… but iCloud could be the most radical deviation yet between the fancy of pre-announcement hype and the reality of Apple’s finished product.

What people expected from iCloud was a streaming cloud locker for your media collection: iCloud would scan your iTunes library and automatically mirror them on a central server, allowing you to stream any song you owned to any device you owned without being bothered with local storage.

What people got? iTunes Match. It scans and matches your iTunes library in the cloud, sure, but there is no streaming: any time you want to listen to an album that’s not on your iPhone or iPad, you’ve got to download it from the cloud onto your device.

No streaming? What was Apple thinking?

Next week, Apple will finally confirm years of rumors of taking iTunes to the cloud and unveil iCloud, their media locker service that will automatically scan and match your existing iTunes library for streaming to any iOS device.

In some ways, though, iCloud’s taken too long to get here. The era of unlimited bandwidth is over. In the last year we’ve seen both mobile carriers and ISP broadband providers impose severe data caps on their users. The vast majority of iPhone and iPad customers only have 2GB of data per month to play with. How much media can you really stream with a 2GB data cap?

Let’s find out!

Apple’s iCloud music locker will not require users to laboriously upload all the music in their iTunes libraries, but will instead rely on “scan and match.”

A new web app soon to hit the iPhone will allow users to open torrent links in their mobile web browser and stream them directly to their device.

Cupertino now has three out of the four big music labels signed, but even so, could Apple’s iCloud music locker and streaming service be delayed even later than its rumored WWDC launch? The music business is a tricky one, and although Apple’s got most of the labels signed, the negotiations with publishers are still in their early stages.

Apple’s plans to bring music streaming to the upcoming iCloud service are coming together swiftly this week as the company signs up a third major record label.

As this year’s Worldwide Developers Conference approaches, it seems Apple’s plan to bring us a magical cloud filled with a never-ending collection of music called ‘iCloud’ is getting its final touches. Sources say a licensing deal with music label EMI is now in place, but what about the other labels?

AirMusic – ($0.99) iPhone – Utilities

AirMusic is a superb application for streaming your music over Wi-Fi to your PS3, Xbox 360, or PC, and allows you to wirelessly listen to your tunes through your TV without using an AppleTV. Its incredibly easy setup means your music is there the moment you want it – just ensure all of your devices are on the same Wi-Fi network, start AirMusic, then navigate to your music library on your console or PC and your tunes will be there – it couldn’t be easier.

Although I use an AppleTV in our living room, I downloaded this application for use with a PS3 in another room and so far I can’t fault it. The only downside to AirMusic is that it won’t play older iTunes purchases that are protected by DRM, but I’m yet to find a way of playing DRM-protected tunes on my PS3 without putting them onto a CD first. AirMusic setup takes literally a few minutes, streaming is effortless, and the quality is great. If you’re looking for a way to share your iPod library with your Xbox, PS3, or PC, I recommend you give AirMusic a go!

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Yesterday we reported that Google’s DNS service might be to blame for AppleTV’s slow HD streaming speeds on some devices.

Here was the problem, as we summarized it at the time:

Basically, iTunes streaming content is hosted by Akamai, which uses different local servers to route downloaders to the fastest available connection. Services like Google DNS, or other generic DNS providers, are trying to route all users the same way… the equivalent of trying to cram a few thousand people through a single door at the same time.

OpenDNS has just reached out to us, though, to assure both Cult of Mac and its readers that users of their service that they can expect fast AppleTV streaming, all the time.

Laura Oppenheimer of Open DNS writes:

OpenDNS has arrangements with a number of CDNs that make this a non-issue for the vast majority of OpenDNS + Apple TV users. That said, with Akamai, especially internationally, it’s still suboptimal. It’s entirely workable, but not as optimal as it could be.

In general, North America isn’t really an issue since we have a sufficiently dense network topology. That said, we’re very open to working to improve end-user CDN routing with Akamai, just as we have with other large CDNs.

In short, if you’re having problems with your AppleTV and you live in North America, give OpenDNS a try. If you’re an international user, though, Apple’s Akamai hosting isn’t what it could be… and you might experience problems no matter what DNS provider you use.

Although the second generation AppleTV is certainly sexy, it’s not quite as “magical” a device as we’ve come to expect from the wizards at Cupertino. Not only are the media offerings a bit limited compared to the competition, but the new AppleTV is prone to some technical problems… most notably reports of bog slow downloads.

It looks like a potential cause for those tortoising downloads on the Apple TV has been identified, though, and it’s not Apple’s fault: it’s Google’s.

After a decade’s absence from the most popular music store on earth, the Beatles have finally come to iTunes today… and to pay tribute to Beatlemania both past and present, Apple is celebrating the occasion by streaming The Fab Four’s history making concert at the Washington Coliseum back in February 11th 1964 on the official Apple.com website.

Is the writing on the wall for iTunes?

For the first time, U.S. music fans are streaming as much music as they download — and streaming is set to overtake downloading in a matter of months.

NPD Group says 30 percent of U.S. music consumers streamed music in August; the same percentage that downloaded music to their computers.

But streaming is growing fast. In a few months, it will far outstrip downloads, NPD Group spokesman Lee Martin told Evolver.fm.

Incredibly, the new numbers also include downloads from peer-to-peer file sharing networks as well as legal downloads from iTunes and Amazon.

Apparently, the convenience of streaming services, which now offer instant access to vast libraries of music of a wide variety of devices, even beats out piracy!

Good thing Apple has a $1 billion server farm coming online soon (if not already). But when are we going to see streaming from iTunes?

Evolver.fm: Americans Now Stream As Much Music As They Download