video

Electronic Arts is not alone in its interest in buying Grand Theft Auto publisher Take-Two, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal (subscription required to read entire article).

SEC filings show that Take-Two says it has received other offers, but has spurned those as well as the original $2 billion offer EA made last Friday and announced last Sunday, the Journal reports.

EA issued a public statement on Sunday saying it had made an earlier offer to Take-Two that was rejected and that it was boosting the per-share price it was willing to pay to make the deal … Read more

Sometimes, you just don't need the whole enchilada. Freeware video players like The KMPlayer, GOM Player, VLC Player, and others are excellent at what they do and are generally lightweight, but they look like top-heavy refrigerators compared with these nimble and zippy yet similarly named Flash players. But are Free FLV Player, FLV Player, Riva FLV Player, and BitComet FLV Player all the same, or does one pull ahead of the pack?

… Read more

Our review of the super-size Archos 705 WiFi portable video player is now up on CNET. If you've been squinting at your puny PVP and want to upgrade, you owe it to yourself to witness the screen size and features of the Archos 705 WiFi. You can also check out our Archos 705 WiFi slide show to see all its aluminum nooks and crannies.

Over the past decade, video game popularity has grown at an exponential rate. Instead of being the niche market that only a select few cared about, the industry is now worth billions of dollars and has become mainstream.

But as that has happened, video game developers like EA and Take-Two Interactive have become far more business-savvy and done their part in ensuring that they can maximize shareholder value and create an environment where video games are an extremely profitable product.

In the process, the video game industry has been damaged by a slew of mergers and acquisitions and in the process, some of the most profitable genres (first-person shooters and sports games, for example) have been copied and refreshed so many times over that gaming has quickly become derivative and bereft of innovation.

And although the main culprit for the lack of innovation is obviously the Almighty Dollar, another culprit is lurking in the shadows and quietly damaging the foundation of gaming as we know it--acquisitions.… Read more

This post was updated at 12:46 PM PT with comment from 'Quarterlife' co-creator Marshall Herskovitz.

It's undoubtedly a setback for those hoping to see Web video make a clean transition to the living room TV: Quarterlife, the hyped-up Web series from the co-creators of Thirtysomething and My So-Called Life, had a very disappointing network debut on NBC and may be on the chopping block.

The show, which premiered Tuesday night, managed to pull in only a tepid 3.1 million viewers, according to The Hollywood Reporter. While NBC hasn't formally decided to pull the plug, sources have … Read more

When e-mail was young (and dinosaurs ruled the earth), no doubt some IT managers swore that there was no way the people in their organization were ever going to have access to that time-waster. "Haven't we already provided them with telephones?" Same for Web browsers, which some workplaces still ban, or at least restrict severely.

I'm sure they have their reasons, but for most workers it would be difficult to deny the productivity boost these new technologies provide. Now the same restrictive IT mentality may be blocking the playback and recording of video. Yes, much corporate … Read more

We hadn't spotted it yet on MySpaceTV's "featured channels" list, but the Hollywood Reporter says that AOL's entertainment news site, TMZ, and the social network's video platform are scheduled on Wednesday to launch a branded channel that will feature two or three TMZ clips each week.

Each of the clips, culled from the TMZ arsenal of celebrity-oriented fare, will show for 24 hours on MySpaceTV after their TMZ airing. As many as 15 more TMZ clips will show on MySpaceTV each week on a nonexclusive basis.

MySpaceTV's inventory has been growing lately. On … Read more

That headline is my offhand way of mentioning that Creative just dropped Zen prices: You can now get the 8GB model for just $150, the same price as Apple's 4GB Nano. If that's your budget for a portable media player, which one should you choose?

It's practically a no-brainer: the Zen has a larger screen (2.5 inches), an FM tuner, twice the storage, and an SD card slot for adding even more storage. On the other hand, the Nano is way slimmer and sexier, and iTunes offers a much broader selection of TV, movies, audiobooks, etc., … Read more

Today we wax reminiscent as we always do, talking about the 15 most annoying video game characters. Jenkem... it's awful. Speaking of awful, some of us don't want to see "Bourne Legacy," and Seth Rogan has a new stoner comedy coming out. Shocker.

Listen now: Download today's podcast