The television set has to be the most loved device in the house. After all, how many hours do you spend in front of the toaster each day? Despite all of that adoration, though, the boob tube no longer corners the market when it comes to audiovisual excitement. Thanks to advancements in online multimedia delivery, services such as YouTube, Picasa and iTunes also offer a lot of Web-based entertainment to get you through the wee hours of the morning. Still, no matter how much you can contort your body, sitting in an office chair is definitely not a “sweet spot” when it comes to enjoying your favorite film or soap opera. Mercifully, these days, there are plenty of ways to get audio, video and photos off the computer and into any room of the home. Here are a few of our favorite streaming devices that let you enjoy music, movies and more anytime, anywhere.
Tag Archive: RHAPSODY
Rhapsody Launches DRM-Free Music Store
RealNetworks’ streaming music service Rhapsody—developed in partnership with MTV—has long offered an all-you-can-eat music subscription service starting at $12.99 a month. However, the biggest hurdle to broad adoption of Rhapsody has been one simple problem: none of the service’s DRM-protected tracks with work with Apple’s market-dominating iPod. Today, Rhapsody hopes to crack into the iPod market with its Rhapsody MP3 Store—dubbed “Music Without Limits”—offering more than 5 million tracks from the four major music labels and a ton of indies. Most tracks are priced at $0.99, more albums cost $9.99, and because they’re in DRM-free MP3 format, the tracks will work seamlessly with virtually any media player or music-capable phone on the market. Yes, even the iPod.
Haier Wi-Fi Enabled MP3 Player Hits US
Now that LG has done the hard work of getting US consumers to accept buying their refrigerators and MP3 players from the some company, appliance-maker Haier shouldn’t really run up against too much resistance with its new ibiza Rhapsody MP3 player. The MP3 player made its US debut through Amazon on Monday, bringing with it a set of unusual features.
Real Networks, iriver Launch clix Rhapsody
Real Networks and iriver have launched the clix Rhapsody, a new version of iriver’s clix portable media player with integrated support for Real’s Rhapsody music service. The Rhapsody-specific version of the clix follows on the well-received launch of the Rhapsody-enabled SanDisk Sansa players last year.
"We are excited to be launching the new clix Rhapsody," said Mr. Sean Kim, CEO of Reigncom, Ltd., iriver’s parent company, in a statement. "With Rhapsody DNA technologies, we are able to introduce a number of new features to enhance the consumer’s digital music experience by providing intuitive ways to discover and enjoy new music directly on the device."
Best Buy, Real, and SanDisk Make Music
The leading U.S. consumer electronics retailer, Best Buy, announced today that it is partnering with RealNetworks and SanDisk to launch a new online music service October 15, competing with Apple’s market-leading iTunes, as well as a number of other online music services such as Microsoft and MTV’s Urge, Napster, Yahoo Music, and eMusic.
Squeezebox Waxes Rhapsodic
Slim Devices has added support for Real Networks’ Rhapsody digital music subscription service to its SlimServer media management and distribution software, letting owners of its SqueezeBox 2 and Squeezebox 3 play music from the Rhapsody service over any home stereo or darn near any other music system.
Once the software is downloaded and installed, SqueezeBox users can try the Rhapsody service for free for 30 days; after that, the service costs $14.95 per month. Rhapsody provides “all you can eat” streaming digital music from a library of over 2 million tracks from major and independent music labels.
Rhapsody to Replace iTunes on HP PCs
RealNetworks has announced an agreement with computer maker Hewlett-Packard to make RealNetworks’ Rhapsody the default player for all major audio formats (MPC, AAC, WMA, and RealAudio) on HP Pavilion PCs, HP Pavilion Media Center TV PCs, and Compaq Presario PCs.
Once in place, opening an audio file in any of these formats will launch the Rhapsody music jukebox, which has built-in functions tied to both the Rhapsody music subscription service and music store. And, in a shot back to the old Microsoft antitrust days, Real’s Rhapsody software will get a coveted spot on the Windows desktop.
RealNetworks Unveils Browser-based Rhapsody
RealNetworks has announced a beta launch of a browser-based version of its Rhapsody music subscription service. Dubbed Rhapsody.com, the site lets customers access Rhapsody’s music library—which includes more than 1.4 million tracks from all five major labels plus independents—and popular features of the Rhapsody service from a Web browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Apple’s Safari) rather than from a Windows-only jukebox application. For the first time, the move makes the Rhapsody service accessible to Mac and Linux users.
“With Rhapsody.com, we’re bringing the jukebox-in-the-sky to every internet user in America,” said Rob Glaser, RealNetworks’ CEO.
Real Launches To-Go Music Service
Real Networks is announcing a couple new services today. Here is what we were able to find:
“Rhapsody Unlimited
Rhapsody Unlimited is a dramatically enhanced version of the highly acclaimed Rhapsody service. In addition to streaming an unlimited amount of music, Rhapsody Unlimited subscribers can now download an unlimited number of songs to their PC’s hard drive from Rhapsody’s library of more than one million songs, and enjoy them offline for as long as they remain subscribers. Rhapsody Unlimited subscribers can also create custom internet radio stations based on their favorite artists, access over 50,000 artist based radio stations or nearly 100 free pre-programmed Internet radio stations, and view more than 1,500 music videos within the application.
GoVideo Launches WiFi DVD player
The D2740 is also capable of streaming the Rhapsody music service from RealNetworks.
The new D2740 features onboard wireless 802.11g networking and wired Ethernet for one touch connection to the home network. Owners of the D2740 can enjoy their stored audio and video content or personal Rhapsody library on the TV screen in the comfort of their living room, and enjoy their favorite music on any stereo or home theater system. D2740 owners can browse their personal Rhapsody library by artist, album, and song title, and can also review the custom radio stations and playlists they have created using Rhapsody.
