NBC Universal

Microsoft launched its New Xbox Experience on Wednesday, expanding the existing service to compete with Sony in turning the video-game console into an entertainment hub.

Don Mattrick, senior vice president of Microsoft's Interactive Entertainment Business, said the New Xbox Experience is the future for home entertainment. "It's on-demand, it's high-definition, it's always social, it's all in one place," he said.

A 'Personal Game Room'

Microsoft is raising Xbox 360 forecasts in Japan amid rumors Sony might drop the price of its PlayStation 3 even more. Meanwhile, Microsoft is planning to release an Xbox 360 with a Blu-ray drive, putting it on more equal digital-media footing with its main rival.

And as the holiday shopping season approaches, Sony and Microsoft are preparing to launch virtual communities. Sony has delayed its Home virtual world for the PS3 twice already, but company officials said it will be launched later this year. Microsoft plans to start its New Xbox Experience virtual world on Nov. 19.

RealNetworks is feeling heat from the movie studios involving its just-released RealDVD software, and is firing back with a lawsuit.

RealDVD lets consumers store, manage and play DVDs on computers. Think of it as a DVD backup, since the software does not let users distribute copies of DVDs.

The digital-content landscape could look very different in the months ahead if a group of more than 20 companies has its way.

The Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem (DECE), a consortium that includes seemingly all the major players except Apple, officially announced Monday plans to define and build a new digital-media framework using industry standards. The goal is to allow consumers to acquire and play content across a wide range of services and devices.

Google will begin selling ads on some cable networks owned by NBC Universal in a new partnership that will expand Google's efforts to become a force in television advertising.

Under the agreement, NBC Universal will make a relatively small amount of advertising time on networks like MSNBC, CNBC, Sci Fi and Oxygen available for sale through Google's TV Ads program in the coming months, the companies said. The partnership could later be extended to other NBC Universal properties.

About half of the people who are using mobile phones to pull down video or information about the Olympics have been trying out that technology for the first time, NBC said on Wednesday.

NBC Universal, a unit of General Electric Co., has been using the Olympics as something of a research lab to track the adoption of new media technology. Since the opening ceremony last Friday, the company has made content available online, through video on demand and via cell phones along with traditional TV.

Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert fans can now watch their Comedy Central shows until the cows come home. Video site Hulu.com has announced that the two politically oriented, "fake news" shows will be available on that site.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report are among the first TV shows on the Hulu site that did not originate with the site's two parent companies, NBC Universal and News Corp. The Comedy Central network is owned by Viacom.

Just in Time for Election

Microsoft Corp. said late Monday it will now sell TV shows, including popular NBC series, on the Zune Marketplace, a move that brings its selection of content for the digital media player a step closer to what Apple Inc.'s iTunes offers for Apple's much more popular iPod.

Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft said it also planned to send out software updates overnight that add new features to the Zune devices and the PC software used to buy and manage digital content.

In the wake of Thursday's announcement by Adobe Systems that it is launching the Open Screen Project to make it easier for developers to use the company's Flash technology on a variety of devices, the lingering question is whether the move simply comes too late.

Over the last few years, the mobile market has burgeoned into a multibillion-dollar industry, but Adobe has struggled to match its desktop market share. Its Flash software is installed on an estimated 98 percent of desktop systems, but only on 30 percent or so of mobile devices.