A couple of Zune news items for today. ClicZune reported earlier that the Zune Marketplace DRM has been hacked! BoingBoing has the details:

Abdul sez, “A new version of FairUse4WM v1.3 Fix2 from Doom9 is available that claims to remove the DRM license protection from songs and music downloaded from Microsoft’s Zune Marketplace allowing you to play them on any portable media player.”

You can read the doom9 posting here. Users are reporting mixed results, but for the most part, it seems legit.

Also today, a press release from Microsoft announcing that Zune will “have a significant presence at 28 Live Nation concert venues” in the US this summer.

Zune will have a strong on-site presence with its Zune Spots, inviting consumers to try the devices and see the latest summer colors. The innovative Zune Spots are actually converted freight containers that have been redesigned to bring the brand to life for concertgoers.

For more information, check out Zune.net and LiveNation.com. Also, here’s the Wikipedia entry for Live Nation.

E3 is now underway, so expect lots of Xbox-related news over the next few days. Though I don’t know how it could get much better than what was announced tonight! For starters, Disney is now offering movie rentals via Xbox Live effective immediately. Their catalogue of content will add to the already impressive 2350 hours of entertainment available at the Xbox Live Marketplace.

The best stuff though, was announced by VP of Marketing Jeff Bell, as Twittered live by majornelson:

Jeff just announced that by the end of this year, Video Marketplace is coming to Canada and Europe. (link)

125 Million dollars from Video Marketplace. (link)

Jeff just announced that Xbox LIVE is now at 7-million members..that is one new Live member every 8 seconds. (link)

It sounds like the Xbox Live Video Marketplace is doing very well. As a Canadian I am particularly happy to hear that the service will finally be available in my country.

Check out Xbox.com for complete coverage of E3.

It was confirmed last week that Bill Gates will once again keynote at CES 2008, and it now appears as though Silverlight will be making an appearance too. Well, as much of an appearance as a technology can make, anyway! iStreamPlanet Co., which provides webcasting services to CES, World Series of Poker, American Express, and other major clients, announced today plans to use Silverlight:

“We are very excited about the benefits the new plug-in has to offer and intend to release a full suite of applications integrated with Microsoft Silverlight by late summer of this year,” said Mio Babic, Founder and CEO of iStreamPlanet Co.

That seems like a very aggressive timeline to me, but I hope they pull it off! Microsoft is apparently working with iStreamPlanet on the integration, so any problems or other issues that crop up will likely be fixed very quickly. And that’s good news for the rest of us who are interested in implementing Silverlight.

You can learn more about iStreamPlanet here, and more about Silverlight here.

Microsoft announced today a series of summer events called Zune Live at the BBQ which aim to “celebrate hip-hop music and the community that surrounds it.” Here are the details on tickets and artists:

The concert hits Los Angeles on July 12, Chicago on July 22, and New York City on Aug. 4. Viral invitations will be sent to fans, and they will be asked to register at a special Web site to receive their ticket.

Artists confirmed to participate in Live at the BBQ include Common, David Banner, UGK, Mos Def, Bilal, Clipse, Collie Budz, E-40, Cham, and Large Professor.

Viral invitations? What does that even mean?

Looks like it doesn’t matter. All you have to do is register at the Zune Live at the BBQ website. You need to give your name, email, date of birth, and phone number.

If you’re in one of the three lucky cities, have fun!

In about an hour (at 3:30 PM PDT) Boeing will premiere their brand new airplane, the 787 Dreamliner. You can watch the event live via 35 international satellite networks, or over the web. And guess what? They’re using Windows Media:

The 787 Rollout live streaming event is encoded in the Windows Media format.

If you are using the Mozilla Firefox browser, you must have the Windows Media Player Firefox plug-in in order to view the live broadcast.

I haven’t really seen anyone but Microsoft mention the Firefox plug-in, so that’s kind of neat! You can download it here.

The live 787 Dreamliner Premiere site is here. More information on the new plane can be found here.

Enjoy!

Microsoft has released a press release saying that as of 3 PM EDT today, they had received a total of more than 10 million video streams for the Live Earth concerts at MSN. Additionally, they’ve had the most simultaneous viewers of any online concert ever.

“History is being made today,” said Joanne Bradford, corporate vice president and chief media officer of MSN. “Millions of people around the world have joined together to fight the climate crisis. The over 10 million streams MSN has delivered so far today represent a milestone in live Internet broadcasting. We expect to see an even greater number of streams after the concerts are over as people return to watch their favorite performances or enjoy them for the first time if they missed the concerts live.”

I will definitely be one of the individuals going back to watch performances again, as I missed both Linkin Park and Rihanna in Tokyo. I watched some of the streams online this afternoon, and I was really impressed with the quality and performance.

We’ve come a long way from the “heyday” of streaming in the late 90s. It’s actually possible to have an enjoyable streaming experience over the web now!

Well done, MSN.

We’re less than five days away from one of the biggest musical events in history - Live Earth. Here’s a description of the event, spearheaded by Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore:

Live Earth is a 24-hour, 7-continent concert series taking place on 7/7/07 that will bring together more than 100 music artists and 2 billion people to trigger a global movement to solve the climate crisis.

If you can’t attend one of the concerts in person, don’t worry. In addition to being broadcast on television and satellite radio, the concerts will be streamed online at MSN. About an hour ago a press release was issued that sheds some light on the technology behind the streaming. Incited Media has been contracted to provide the streams:

Incited’s team of roughly 80 technicians will be streaming nine live feeds (eight stages plus a world feed) to liveearth.msn.com. Incited will have 7 EVS systems editing individual songs and 27 servers in a VOD encoding “farm” going at all times as well as 24 live encoders for the Windows Media and QuickTime streams.

I find it hard to believe that MSN would feature QuickTime streams on the site, but you never know. They have a nice Zune logo on the site, as well as some big ads! In any case, you’ll be able to watch Live Earth online using Windows Media.

I’ll be watching!