Audio/Video

I swear, these companies must be colluding with each other. Time-Warner Cable is trying out a tiered metered-use system; AT&T has said it’s considering the same, and meanwhile companies like HBO, Netflix and now Disney are offering us more goodies to download or stream online.

Guys, you can’t have it both ways. Well, maybe you can, if you drain our wallets.

On Tuesday Disney.com announced a new program, which will stream movies from The Wonderful World of Disney (OK, so we’re not talking about Spider-Man or Iron Man) the week following broadcast on ABC.

Nokia has launched new music store in Sweden. With millions of tracks from major artists, independent labels, and up-and-coming Swedish acts, the music store let's people enjoy music directly on their Nokia device or personal computer.

According to Nokia, with a single account, music lovers can access its music store via their desktop computer or directly from optimized Nokia devices such as Nokia N95 8GB, Nokia N82 and Nokia N81 and browse for new music, get recommendations or search for favorite artists, songs or albums.

Rocker Neil Young plans to release his entire music archive on Blu-ray discs, a sign that the discs' capabilities are building appeal among musicians as well as movie studios.

Blu-ray discs hold much more data than DVDs, are easily updated over the Internet and offer better picture and sound quality.

Young revealed his plans Tuesday at a Sun Microsystems Inc. conference in San Francisco. Santa Clara-based Sun makes the Java technology that gives Blu-ray discs their interactive menus and ability to accept updates over an Internet connection.

Coldplay will give away the first single from their new album over the internet, the British band said on its website.

A note posted on www.coldplay.com says that fans can download Violet Hill, from the album Viva La Vida or Death And All His Friends, free for one week from 1115 GMT (2115 AEST) on Tuesday. The album will be launched in Britain on June 12.

Ashley Highfield, the BBC's director of future media and technology, is leaving the corporation to launch a joint online video platform for the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 which the broadcasters hope will be "a Freeview for the internet".

Mr Highfield's move, expected to be announced today, will create a vacancy for the most senior position in the UK's digital media industry. The post controls a budget of £400m, or one eighth of the annual £3.2bn licence fee funding.

Paramount Pictures' film vault is opening up in the virtual world.

Thousands of video clips from Paramount's movie library -- ranging from "Footloose" to "Clueless" -- will be available inside the virtual 3-D online worlds of There.com and vMTV, Paramount Digital Entertainment and Makena Technologies Inc. announced Wednesday.

AT&T Inc has said it would launch mobile television services in May from MediaFlo USA, a unit of Qualcomm Inc, in an effort to bolster revenue from services other than phone calls.

AT&T, the biggest US mobile service, said it would offer MediaFlo to users of the Vu phone from LG Electronics Inc and the Access from Samsung Electronics Co Ltd and plans two exclusive channels it did not name.

First Radiohead, then Trent Reznor, now the boys of South Park are throwing their creations up on the web, free of charge. Fans of the foul-mouthed children can now catch every full episode online, brought to you by Matt Stone and Trey Parker’s new digital studio.

In a gray bunker of a building with a graveyard as its neighbor, a freshly hired strike force of Internet executives, programmers and advertising representatives is mounting a grand mission to take on a global behemoth: Google's YouTube.

CHINESE authorities have shuttered 25 online video websites and publicly warned 32 others about their content, including one of China's most popular sites, Tudou.com.

The notice, issued Thursday by the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, said an investigation of Chinese online audio-visual service providers conducted between December 20 and February 20 found five companies that were streaming video without content licenses, and that dozens of others had hosted illegal content.