May 10, 2003

Microsoft will announce its $40 US Music Mixer software for the Xbox at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles next week. The software will enable a user to listen to music and view photos stored on their PCs on televisions and stereos hooked up to their Xboxes. The XboxMediaPlayer is a similar and possibly illegal open source program, while broadq’s QCast Tuner provides a similar ability for the Sony Playstation 2. Another competitor on a different type of platform is TiVo’s new Home Media Option. 12:28:08 AM

TiVo has announced a limited TiVo Basic service for purchasers of Digital Video Recorders (DVRs) and DVD and DVD recorder equipped DVRs made by third part licensees such as Toshiba. While much more limited than the regular TiVo service – it has manual recording only and a three-day program grid, not seven days it will be free to users. TiVo says that the Basic service can be upgraded to the full service for the regular $12.95 a month or $299 product lifetime subscription fee. TiVo is probably giving the service way for free or only charging the licensees for the slight cost of sending the programming grid out to the purchasers. They realize that people who would not buy from their relatively unknown company are more likely to buy a Toshiba machine. The hope is then that they would then be willing to upgrade to the full service – which might be questionable – are the advanced services worth $299.  (via CNet) Maybe some these third party machines will be sold and supported in Canada! 12:16:32 AM

While announcing a 31% drop in revenue for its fiscal first quarter, Nvidia was bullish about orders from Microsoft for the graphics chips that power the Xbox which are picking up sooner than expected. It also stated that the NV35 should be announced soon to replace the disappointing GeForce FX 5800 (NV30) that was too costly and slow compared to ATI’s Radeon 9700 Pro. Meanwhile the name the NV35 will sale under seems to change day by day. 12:02:28 AM