Apple sells first movie
The first full-length film has appeared on the iTunes Music Store. Plus: An end to the DVD format wars.
SAN FRANCISCO (Business 2.0) - If you missed "High School Musical" on the Disney Channel, you can now buy it on iTunes for $9.99, MacRumors reports. The made-for-TV movie is the first full-length film offered on the service. Previously, Apple (Research) had only carried short films from Disney (Research), Pixar (Research), and a selection of a selection of Academy Award-winning shorts. It's not surprising that a Disney movie is the first from Apple, since Disney's ABC network was the first to sell video content on iTunes, and Apple CEO Steve Jobs is slated to join the Disney board after the acquisition of Pixar, where Jobs is also CEO, closes. If Apple expands its movie offerings, it would meet earlier expectations that it would get into the business of selling Hollywood fare. Can LG puts an end to the DVD format wars? The rivalry between HD-DVD and Blu-Ray, the two competing high-definition DVD formats, has been sizzling, leaving the industry faced with a recap of the VHS-Betamax debacle. Now LG has come out with a truce proposal: A device that will play both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD discs. The player is expected in stores this fall. LG isn't the only company straddling the fence: Hewlett-Packard (Research) has said it will support both formats. Ericsson looking at Juniper Networks In the telecom world, rumors abound that Ericsson (Research), the Swedish telecom-equipment maker, is interested in Juniper Networks (Research), a U.S. maker of routers and other computer-networking gear. While analysts were quick to discount the rumors, saying Juniper was too expensive for Ericsson, buying a company like Juniper would help Ericsson expand its presence in the fast-growing Internet networking market. A UBS analyst says Juniper is set to win a $100 million contract from Microsoft for networking gear. Netscape.com relaunch planned One of the legacies of Netscape, the pioneering Web-browser company bought by AOL in 1999, is Netscape.com, a Web portal that still attracts a sizeable audience. Now PaidContent.org says that Jason Calacanis, the entrepreneur who sold Weblogs Inc. to AOL last year and now works for the online service, is set to take charge of Netscape.com and relaunch it as a news Web site like Digg, where articles are displayed based on users' rankings, rather than an editor's choices. Calacanis hasn't commented on the rumors other than to say he doesn't have anything to announce. To send a letter to the editor about The Browser, click here. |
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