Film Music Weekly Magazine Launched – Film Music Weekly is a new electronic magazine about the world of music for film, TV and video games. It will be published each Monday, with industry news, soundtrack news, upcoming CD releases and special exclusive features, all at no cost. It is also available in pdf format for onscreen viewing or printing, and subscribers can receive special news updates by email between issues with late-breaking stories. To download the current issue, visit: https://www.filmmusicweekly.com
Costco Reduces Return Period for Electronics to 90 Days – From a previous policy of allowing its customers to return goods at any time for a full refund, Costco Wholesale Corp. has set a firm return period of only 90 days for all consumer electronics. In return, Costco will extended the manufacturers’ warranties on both TVs and computers from one year to two. Home electronics constituted about 5% (roughly $3 billion) of Costco’s sales last year. Costco was finding many customers encountered such difficulties trying to install home theater gear they had purchased that they returned them instead. Also, since the prices of flat-panel TVs have dropped greatly in the past year, some customers were returning them to pick up newer, cheaper versions.
Writer Lauds “Workarounds” to Hi-Def Format War – Jim Bray, writing in TechnoFile Magazine, observes that there may be some common sense breaking out finally in the home electronics marketplace. He describes the absurd situation of the warring Blu-ray and HD DVD camps but praises Warner Home Entertainment for their announcement of the Total Hi-Def disc which will combine both Blu-ray and HD DVD on the same disc – one on each side. He also cites the upcoming LG Electronics BH100 “Super Multi Blue” player which will play both hi-def formats. He’s impressed with these creative solutions to an intolerable situation. And he closes with this: “Now if we could only see an outbreak of sanity on the connectivity and copy protection/consumer rights issues!”
Windows Home Server – Further beta versions have been released of Microsoft’s Windows Home Server backup and media server application, which was originally introduced by Bill Gates at the January CES. The software is based on Windows Server 2003 and borrows technologies from other Microsoft products. It can act as a print, file and media server – streaming music and video to devices using Windows XP Media Center Edition.
