Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Audio / Video
  3. News

Vongo 2.0 Supports More Portable Players

By

Starz Entertainment has announced Vongo 2.0, adding new functionality and support for additional portable media players to its Vongo broadband video subscription service offering. Available for Windows XP and Vista (all other operating systems don’t even need to bother viewing the Vongo site), the new application now supports a total of seven portable players from Archos, Creative, and Toshiba, and offers compatibility with announced extenders for Windows Media Center.

“Since Vongo’s inception, our goal has been consistently to provide an entertainment service and ecosystem that allows movie lovers to enjoy content on their terms,” said Starz Entertainment executive VP Bob Greene, in a statement. The top request voiced is the ability to watch our movies on the TV, and the next request was more choices for portable devices. Vongo 2.0 and the associated support for all of these new devices addresses many of these needs.”

Recommended Videos

The Vongo broadband video service is priced at $9.99 a month, and offers more than 2,500 video and movie titles that can be viewed on PCs, including new blockbusters, anime, concerts, and extreme sports programming. Vongo users can register up to three devices to view Vongo video—including both PCS and supported portable media players. Vongo will also work with recently announced Extenders for Windows Media Center, so users can access content stored on a PC from other locations in the home, including to the Xbox 360. Wireless extenders have been announced by companies like D-Link, Linksys, and Niveus Media.

Related

The new version of the Vongo application also offers better performance, the ability to resize and pin the Vongo video player, offers updated personalized recommendations, and a new device management system which makes it easier for users to swap out old devices in favor of the latest and greatest.

Vongo’s subscription model has yet to gain significant traction against pay-to-download video services like Xbox Live MarketPlace, Amazon Unbox, and (of course) Apple’s iTunes store, but the growing ubiquity of broadband and video capable portable media players might make a subscription service a viable option for some folks, especially if Vongo can expand out to the wider world of Windows Mobile-based smartphones. Unfortunately for Vongo, the service doesn’t offer support for the most popular video-capable portable media players on the planet: Apple’s iPods, new iPod nano, and the ever-popular iPhone.

Editors’ Recommendations

Geoff Duncan
Geoff Duncan
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Geoff Duncan writes, programs, edits, plays music, and delights in making software misbehave. He's probably the only member…
Sonos Move 2: Sonos’ biggest portable speaker gets a big update
Sonos Move 2 in olive.

Sonos has unveiled the latest version of its Move portable smart speaker -- the Move 2. It looks nearly identical to the original Sonos Move, yet contains several updates that bring it in line with the company's recently released Era 100 and Era 300 speakers. The Move 2 has been priced at $449, a $50 increase over the previous model, and will be available starting September 20, 2023, in a wide selection of countries. The Move 2 replaces the first-gen speaker, though Sonos will continue to sell the original Move while inventory remains, so you may want to keep an eye open for some deep discounts.

At a distance, you can't tell the Move and Move 2 apart, well, unless the Move 2 shows up in its new color option -- olive. The Move 2 is a hair bigger, but it still weighs the same 6.61 pounds. Sonos has kept the same rubberized no-slip base as well as the integrated carry handle on the back. As with the original, the Move 2 is built for the outdoors with an IP56 rating for dust and water resistance.

Read more
Apple AirPlay 2 supports 24-bit lossless audio, but you can’t use it
An Apple AirPlay icon hovering above an Apple HomePod speaker.

Apple's wireless platform for audio and video streaming -- AirPlay -- is one of the best ways to play music from an Apple device to a wireless speaker. When at home, on a Wi-Fi network, it outperforms Bluetooth thanks to its wider bandwidth. The conventional wisdom has always been that AirPlay sets a hard limit on audio quality: iPhones and other Apple devices can only transmit lossless CD-quality audio, at 16-bit/44.1kHz, to an AirPlay-enabled speaker, leaving the technology incapable of supporting the higher-res streams now being offered by Apple Music and others.  But it seems that AirPlay can actually do 24-bit audio. Sort of.

The new second-gen HomePod, which Apple released in January, can stream lossless 24-bit/48kHz audio directly from Apple Music, using its own Wi-Fi connection to the internet. This isn't news: Apple added 24-bit lossless playback (via Apple's ALAC codec) to the first-gen HomePod and HomePod mini in 2021, along with Dolby Atmos support.

Read more
OnePlus Buds Pro 2 to support Android’s new spatial audio feature
The OnePlus Buds Pro 2 in black and green.

OnePlus has already let it be known that its next wireless earbuds, the OnePlus Buds Pro 2, are just around the corner. The new buds, as well as the OnePlus 11 smartphone, will officially launch at the OnePlus Cloud 11 event on February 7, 2023. But until now, we've been in the dark on almost all of the details. And while we still don't know key facts like pricing and battery life, OnePlus has announced that the new noise-canceling buds will be among the first to support Android 13's spatial audio feature.

OnePlus says the OnePlus Buds Pro 2 -- the successors to the OnePlus Buds Pro -- will "set a new standard for spatial audio stability and compatibility" when they launch outside China on February 7, 2023. The feature will work with audio that is spatial-ready, like Dolby Atmos Music, but OnePlus is also integrating the ability to up-mix standard two-channel stereo into a virtualized spatial presentation.

Read more