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Royal wedding livestream breaks hearts, records
No frogs transformed into princes and no wicked stepmothers were vanquished -- not on camera, at least -- but today's royal wedding managed to capture the world's imagination. Thanks to partnerships with CBS, the Associated Press, UK Press Association, and Entertainment Tonight, the marriage between Prince William and Kate Middleton broke viewing records on Livestream.com, maxing out at 300,000 simultaneous viewers and a total of "at least 2 million" unique users, according to Max Haot, the site's CEO. We reached out to YouTube and Facebook to see how they did on the streaming front, but neither site has a final tally -- though a Facebook spokesperson did tell us that 6,819,072 people have commented on the wedding in the past 24 hours. We don't want to rain on anyone's parade, but we hear News Corp. has secured the rights to the Royal Divorce -- just in case.
Buckingham Palace orders 100 Samsung flat panels to watch UK's three channels
Apparently the Queen is in the gift-giving mood, as she's blessing, um, herself with a smorgasbord of LCD and plasma HDTVs from Samsung. While the royal dwelling previously held sets that were either loaned or donated from various companies, this marks the first time anyone has paid "good money" for TVs to be installed in the domicile. The Korean giant will reportedly supply 100 televisions to scatter throughout the 775 rooms, with the ratio of LCDs to plasmas being a mystery right along with the size assortment. While the Royal family had requested brochures on the sets way back in June, they apparently waited to see how much of that luxury budget was leftover before blowing it all in a very good way. Notably, a Samsung spokesperson said that "the company will be entitled to use the seals of the British royal family for its products if the deal remains effective for more than five years," which could lead to a svelte (albeit gimmicky) lineup of limited edition sets a half decade from now. Nevertheless, Samsung purportedly stands to make around $217,000 from this order alone, which should make European taxpayers just jolly.P.S. Yes, we're well aware that the UK has many more than three stations, although that was not the case when we visited back in the 80's and had nothing to watch. Freeview rules![Via RegHardware]
