TechBytes: Wal-Mart's Video Deal
In TechBytes today, Heavy Rain review, YouTube college applications and more.
Feb. 23, 2010— -- Wal-Mart is taking aim at Netflix, Apple and all other video-on-demand services. The world's biggest retailer is buying online movie provider Vudu , giving it the ability to sell movies directly over the Internet.
Vudu rents and sells about 16,000 movies, and its service is built in to a growing number of televisions and Blu-ray players. Wal-Mart has tried video-on-demand before but failed.
With video games becoming more movie-like, a new game out today is really blurring the lines. Heavy Rain is an interactive murder mystery that's reinventing the way we control characters. CNET's Dan Ackerman says it's a sophisticated game that takes some patience.
"The most inventive thing about the game is it takes a whole new approach to controlling your character within the game and talking to other people who are also inside the game," Ackerman said.
It uses very complex dialogue trees, giving you several things you can say when you talk to another character. Each decision you make affects what happens next.
"While Heavy Rain is very inventive, it's still a little awkward in places, has some rough spots, but if you invest the time to kind of get used to the weird control scheme and how you interact with the game, I think you're gonna get a sneak peek of what the future of gaming may look like," Ackerman said.
Heavy Rain is only available on the PlayStation 3.
As if getting into college isn't hard enough already, now you may have to come up with the next viral video on YouTube. Tufts University in Massachusetts is accepting short YouTube videos for the first time this year, as a supplement to traditional applications.
The New York Times reports that about 1,000 of the 15,000 applicants have submitted these minute-long videos about themselves. Some are elaborate productions, others as simple as the student talking, or rapping, to the camera. The good news is that the school won't hold bad videos against students, unless it's something really disgusting.
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