Arrested Development News For Canadians
It appears that we will get the new season of this television comedy on Netflix in Canada after all.
Filming on Season 4 begun in August this year and new episodes are scheduled to air in 2013.
CRTC Denies Bell’s Bid To Purchase Astral
The Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission has denied Bell Canada’s $3.4 billion takeover of media giant Astral.
Bell had planned to acquire them in order to provide content through their networks and internet services. But there was some concern in regards to access to this content by the competition.
Though some believe Bell may shelf their plan to offer a Netflix type service because of this decision, I believe they will eventually offer this service to compete with Shaw Go, a service offered by Shaw Communications.
Bell Canada has stated they will contest the decision by requesting “the federal cabinet to direct the CRTC to actually follow its own in-place policy”. But they have since been advised that the Federal Court of Appeal may be their only legal recourse.
More Free Content Promised
iTunes has announced that they will be adding more free content to their catalog, including full length albums and television episodes, which can be streamed to computers and devices using their software and apps.
Full length album previews and television episodes had been available from legal sources for years but I am hoping this will fill in some of the gaps.
For example, we still don’t have services like Hulu here in Canada and some television episodes are inaccessible to us because of distribution rights issues.
The availability of full length album previews may also reduce previewing on peer to peer networks and questionable foreign web sites. And Walmart’s Vudu service will soon be introduced into Canada so consumers should soon be able to access more content.
Neil Young’s New Music Service
Neil Young discussed the new Pono music service and device on David Letterman last night.
This service, which is scheduled to launch next year, will offer higher quality recordings and high resolution conversions from analogue recordings.
The Pono device will also play the current music formats and though Warner Music Group is the only label to have signed onto the project at this time, many other labels have shown some interest.
Neil Young’s memoirs, entitled “Waging Heavy Peace”, is available from Amazon.ca
. And Neil Young & Crazy Horse are currently on tour in Canada.
Music Unlimited Adds Another Tier
Sony’s Music Unlimited has added a more affordable tier to their music streaming service today.
The “Access” plan costs $4.99/month and was created for individuals who only use the service at home, via their MAC, PC or Playstation 3.
Click here for the August 29th, 2012 press release.
Physical CD Purchases On Cloud ?
Amazon.com
Billboard claims that this feature will be enabled for Americans sometime in the fall. But there is no news on a Canadian service yet.