Wow, I knew we were going to get a 3D offering from Sky but this is something else!  So fast…  Sky are broadcasting the first ever 3D sports match, a football (soccer for you US types) er on Sunday.

Yep, a world first, and in the UK the first ever 3D sports on TV and it’ll be between Arsenal and Manchester United in the Premier League this Sunday.  It’ll be available to anyone with a 3D TV (so no one then) and a bunch of pubs have been given some TVs to use for the show.  There’s one in Manchester for Ian to go to.

To support this landmark broadcast, the nine pubs – located in London, Manchester,  Cardiff, Edinburgh and Dublin – have been kitted out specially with some of the first ‘3D Ready’ TV sets to reach the UK and Ireland.   As 3D TVs become more widely available, Sky will roll out its 3D channel to hundreds of pubs from April, allowing football fans across the country the opportunity to experience a live Premier League match in 3D each week. 

And also interesting to read how they do it:

To make the 3D preview a reality, Sky Sports will produce two edits of its live coverage of Sunday’s game at the Emirates Stadium, one for its HD channel feed and another dedicated to 3D.  Eight specially engineered 3D camera rigs will house sixteen of Sky’s high definition cameras, to provide comprehensive stereoscopic coverage from all angles.  The 3D broadcast will be supported by Sky’s dedicated 3D production team and purpose built 3D outside broadcast truck, which will enable live mixing between camera positions, slow motion replays and the use of innovative 3D graphics. There will also be a dedicated commentary team to support the 3D edit.

This is gonna be very cool stuff folks this 3D lark.  Sky’s full consumer service launches in April, best get them 3DTVs on the market folks…

Full details in the press release

Wow, the design of this laptop has just blown me away… Asus and Bang and Olufsen have teamed up to produce this stunner.  It has all the usual premium features, blazing processor, tons of RAM, HDMI out and Blu-Ray but it’s also packing in B&O speakers and double touch pads.  Very nice.  Very premium.  The cost, very B&O, about £2,000.

Reg Hardware has the low down.

[via @databasejase]

Today BSkyB in the UK is launching their new subscription based music model carefully named Sky Songs, but I wonder how long the idea to call it SkyTunes was banded about in the office?  The subscription model they are introducing looks quite similar to the Zune model and to Spotify on the surface and looks set to really mix things up here in the UK music market. 

Sky have huge muscles and are certainly the biggest media distribution company to enter the field so far here.  Most of the major labels and quite a few independents have signed up and I don’t doubt that this will become a big player in the music market in the UK.

But I don’t like this one little bit, and here’s why

1. The subscription model is a too complicated though for my liking, but the gist is that you pay either £6.49 and get 1 album (that costs up to £6.49) or 10 tracks to download and keep per month and unlimited free streaming or £7.99 per month for 1 album (that costs up to £7.99) or 15 tracks to download and keep per month and unlimited free streaming.  Additional tracks will cost 65p.  
2. This seems to be a “buy an album and get a month of free streaming” deal to me, I mean, that’s the offering here isn’t it?  Individual tracks from Amazon are priced about the same, so there’s no benefit there in terms of a reduced cost for downloading tracks, and I have to buy an album to get access to the unlimited subs.  I already have free, unlimited streaming from Spotify (for example), so why buy an album?
3. In terms of a subscription based model Spotify has the best offering (in the UK) at under £10 per month for unlimited music, which I can listen to offline. 

I’m sticking with what I’ve got but I wonder how many people will be drawn to Sky’s offering?  It’s free for the first month for Sky Broadband customers, so with my bargain hunting hat on, if you have Sky Broadband go get your free album.  Then go elsewhere, save more money and get a more innovative service because this doesn’t look like one.  I wish Spotify worked in Media Center.

The service is available here: http://songs.sky.com/

And the full press release is here

File this one under impressive installations.  This little video, featured on Make magazine shows a superb kitchen installation of a touch screen EEE PC that’s been modded and had a touch screen added.  Looks like a good bit of installation work.  Play on full volume in the office on Monday for some interesting looks! (or play it on mute if you don’t want the funny looks).

This is a little off topic for Media Center but you’ll see the link in a little while.  One of my contacts on Twitter got in touch about the latest first Panasonic Blu-Ray recorder available in the UK and it looks like a very cool unit, in fact it’s not far off got most MCE features built in, which is an interesting move.  What this really shows is that there’s a very genuine consumer desire for the features we take for granted with Media Center and competition is good for spurring innovation – the compression that this box can do around HD content’s really interesting.

What got me interested though is that they’ve worked out just how much our digital memories are worth to us, using a very clever mathematical formula…in the UK 4 in 10 would sell their Christmas for less than £500 but a wedding would go for £3,000,000…I’ve already asked “D” if she’s willing to sell ours next year and she said  “yes, as long as we spend the money on another one!” any offers?

You can work out the value of your memories just here using the spreadsheet, and check out Panasonic’s Blu-Ray Media Centre worrier just here.  Take this into the context of how you can backup and archive those memories and suddenly you’ve got a business case built to use to sell it to the holder of your purse strings.

So folks, I’m guessing I know the answer, but would a box like this make you move away?  I know it wouldn’t make me move but it’s an interesting question for Sunday evening.