Universal Pictures has come up with a new service that enhances the possibilities of its customers of watching box-offices successes and favorite TV series on the go. The so-called downloads-to-own are available in three formats at the moment: they can be downloaded onto PC, portable media player and mobile phone.

Entertainment – take games and music – have been advancing towards digitizing versions. And the move of one of the central movie-making studios proves the fact. You do not have to go to the cinema – now cinema goes to you.

The services is expected to enter the U.K. market on April 10 with 3 movies “King Kong,” “Nanny McPhee” and “Pride and Prejudice” ready for public download. The price is not the strongest point here. For 19.99 pounds you can get a DVD, that will be posted to your place of residence, and two legitimate downloadable copies of a movie on the day of its release. One of the copies is for your portable media player, the other is for a mobile phone.

It should be noted that DVDs are not compatible with Apple iPODs and Macs, you can only view them on a PC with Windows applications installed.

http://tech.monstersandcritics.com that according to the recent poll conducted among 488 Starz Entertainment Group LLC subscribers, “70 percent of users admitted to no longer going to the video store and 72 percent said they rented fewer DVDs, while 60 percent bought fewer DVDs.”

Nevertheless, Universal Pictures are enthusiastic about the future and soon-growing popularity of the innovation. They believe that the step will promote legitimate content and will curb piracy. However, experts have voiced apprehensions that DVD-burners can conjure up some tricks that will break the safety barrier.

As you see, the movie-producing giant is now in competition with high-definition TVs and DVD players. Though the latter still enjoy greater credibility, the cinema bosses believe the future is in the download-to-own hands.

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The technologies are advancing and this time the mobile has formed a pact with the museum which resulted in the emergence of cell phone audio tours. Basically, to experience the beauty of a tour, you have to bring your mobile with you. Then you download the audio guide and off you go to learn more than the conventional museum tours can offer.

It is good and considered to be a step forward, because apart from language options, you can hear a lot of useful and interesting information about museum exhibits. All you need is to push the number of the artwork and you can learn about other masterpieces of the same artist. Generally, you insert a different number when you move on to view the next work of art. Besides, cell phones are lighter than their predecessors (heavy hand-held devices equipped with headsets) and you do not have to be afraid of getting germs wandered from the previous user.

Together with narrations, you can hear music and recordings from historical archives that enhance the experience of a visit. Not along ago, most of the museums across the USA did not welcome mobiles, while now the tables have turned.

According to http://www.wistv.com several museums in LA, Tacoma, Washington, Minneapolis and Greenwich, Connecticut have already implemented the service, while others are still mulling over the initiative. For example, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is the one that abstained. But still its visitors can have an audio tour. They just need to download a file from the museum web site on the iPODs or portable music players.

The trend has been with us for about 4 years now http://www.sun-sentinel.com. Cell phone audio tours are free of charge, but you will have to pay the minutes that you listen to your mobile updating you on this or that exhibit.

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VoIP (voice over Internet protocol) or Internet telephony has been making global headway in the recent months. With the advance of Internet technologies, more and more users are making extensive use of Internet and PCs. PC-to-Phone services are popular today both with individual and corporate users.

Yahoo! has just supplied its messenger with voice system and now Yahoo! subscribers are able to place phone calls from their personal computers. Yahoo! is not a pioneer in the VoIP space, similar services have already been launched by Deltathree, Peoplefone, Skype, Net2phone, Google Talk, Hotmail and other numerous services. PC-to-Phone services are quite attractive for many users because the costs of the calls are much lower than those made from the land-line phones.

Besides, you can calls to any part of the world: the list of correspondent countries varies depending on the provider. You can place a call directly from your PC while being online to a fixed phone or to a mobile one. PC-to-PC calling can be done for free if you run a special application and have an ID or SIP registry number.

Turning to Yahoo! voice over Internet protocol services, they can be used to reach a correspondent in any of the 180 countries on the list provided the phone call is made from a computer. You can also receive phone calls on your PC for additional $3 per month by installing Yahoo!’s phone feature (www.allheadlinenews.com). All you need is a broadband connection and a microphone-enabled PC. Outgoing calls to landline and mobile-phone users will cost as little as $0.02 a minute.

Yahoo!’s VoIP-based broadband solution expects to embrace about 18% of all U.S. telephony households by 2010. To make the more attractive for its customers, they offer links between Yahoo Messenger and other Yahoo services, for instance, the address book.

The new service underwent tests in Europe several months ago and a public beta version was launched on Wednesday this week.

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