You may have seen the advertising on TV for "FreeView". It promises what sounds like a new product that is "coming soon". Many channels, electronic program guide, no monthly fees!

In reality "FreeView" is a channel-wide brand for digital TV. The intention is to brand and market free-to-air digital TV to those who currently only have analogue TVs as a product that you buy. Digital set top boxes will be branded with a "FreeView" logo.

Nothing is changing. Nothing is new. Digital TV already comes with an (often inaccurate and randomly fluctuating) electronic program guide (EPG). New digital TV channels from the major networks have already been announced and are nothing new.

Regardless of their intention, all the "FreeView" branding has done is set of hundreds of threads on various digital TV related message boards all asking if consumer's current digital TV technology will be compatible with "FreeView".

Short answer, yes (if you have an HD tuner).

Because "FreeView" isn't anything new. To say it is "coming soon" as the advert claims is rather misleading. All that is "coming soon" are a few extra channels.

There is some hope that the free-to-air EPG will improve in quality as part of the FreeView branding push, but this seems rather unlikely.

In the latest 32 page JB HiFi calalog, less than three pages are for CDs. One and a bit pages are for music DVDs. This, despite the cover putting music first in their list of advertised merchandise ("Music, Movies, Games, Your One Stop Shop").

Meanwhile, six whole pages are taken for TV-on-DVD boxsets, another seven for movies (including Blue-ray), nine for games and consoles, and five for MP3 players and mobile phones.

I think it would be fair to say that JB HiFi is the default bricks-and-mortar CD store in Melbourne.

The new USB DDA format isn't mentioned, nor is JB HiFi's digital music store.

Remember that? Remember when you gave a crap?

Of the bands at this year's Big Day Out, the only ones I'm excited by are:

• Fantomas
• The Prodigy

So I bought side-show tickets to The Prodigy and Serj Tankian (supported by Fantomas).

Today I discovered Quan (of Regurgitator) has been added to the bill.

Hopefully he does a side-show.

Amazon MP3 launched in the UK this week.

Can Australia be far away?

Given there is no Amazon.com presence in Australia... I doubt it.

One thing I completely forgot yesterday. Emphasis in the quote below is mine.

Bonus content for fans on USB-stick albums

Sales of physical CDs are plummeting and, while digital downloads are experiencing explosive growth, they are not accounting for the loss of physical CD revenue. This suggests an increasing proportion of people are obtaining their tracks illegally from download sites.

No, it suggests that people, now that they have the option, are only buying some tracks of an album instead of the whole album, and that digital downloads are cheaper than physical CDs.