Filed under: Home Entertainment

Good news, folks: Time Warner (disclosure: our parent company’s parent company is owned by Time Warner) is facing a future of “download-to-burn” DVD movies with grim determination, and expects said apocalypse to occur sometime in 2007. Sure, a few services have started offering a some movies here and there, most of which have been late, overpriced and plagued with problems, but it sounds like Time Warner is getting ready to do this thing for reals next year, with that fancy new Wal-Mart download service as a potential partner in such doings. Of course, pioneers like Movielink and CinemaNow can’t be really blamed for their failures: most of the problems arose from studios like Time Warner practically forbidding them to provide a decent user experience to those potential criminals customers of theirs. The new word is from none other than Richard Parsons, the chief exec and chairman of Time Warner, who says “I expect we will be in a download-to-burn mode in 2007 — It will be a part of next year’s offerings.” We’ll be waiting to see how well Time Warner fulfills that promise.

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BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time

Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Features, Home Entertainment

Stephen Speicher contributes The Clicker, an opinion column on entertainment and technology:

Riddle me this — what do you get when you cross the cost savings of a peer-to-peer network with the stability, reliability, and security of a traditional CDN (Content Delivery Network)? The answer, if one Seattle startup has its way, might just be on-demand DVD-quality video at a fraction of the current cost.

Sitting atop Seattle’s famed FX McRory’s building in the picturesque Pioneer Square, a group of 15 dedicated employees at GridNetworks is attempting to go where many have ventured but few have succeeded; they’re attempting to morph the concept of peer-to-peer into a business.

Last week I sat down with GridNetworks CEO, Jeff Payne, and VP of Sales and Marketing, Bo Wandell, to get the lowdown on their new service. Click on to find out what I gleaned from their vision for Grid.

Continue reading The Clicker: Living on the Grid

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BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time

Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Features, Gaming, HDTV, Home Entertainment

There are wild rumors, and there are interesting rumors, but here’s a doozy for ya: Xbox Live could soon start vending HD movie content, according to one freshly minted WordPress blog (take that for what it’s worth). According to Shsibae (huh?), over 1000+ hours of video will make its way onto Live for rental at about $4 a go, or for purchase (at an unstated price). Hard to imagine Xbox 360 doing for PC-free online movie downloads what all the other companies couldn’t or haven’t (we’re looking at you TiVo, Netflix, iTV, etc.), but then again Microsoft did start up with that Xbox Live music video download thing last year. Seriously though, what a coup would that be if Microsoft swooped in to make the Xbox 360 the premier digital content hub — with or without HD DVD — right underneath Sony’s nose at the eve of their PlayStation 3 launch? We just hope Microsoft would have a larger drive waiting in the wings if this one turns up roses though, our 20GB is already packed to the gills with game demos.

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BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time

Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Home Entertainment, Portable Video

We’ve heard rumblings for a while — and Wal-Mart’s purported intense opposition to the iTunes Movie Store might’ve had something to do with it as well — but now the rumors are coming hot and heavy in regards to a movie download store from the retail giant. First off, we have a new job listing from Wal-Mart in regards to a business manager for a digital video division who can sort out “pricing strategies to maximize market share.” And then there’s a report by CNN Money citing “sources” that say Wal-Mart is hoping to launch in the coming months, and is currently debating pricing structures. (If only they had a business manager who could sort out “pricing strategies to maximize market share.”) Wal-Mart is also supposedly considering in-store kiosks, and a deal to allow for a free digital version of a movie with the purchase of a physical DVD, or at least for a few dollars more. Wal-Mart of course wouldn’t confirm or deny these report, but dropped some big juicy hints such as: “Our customers want to watch movies and they want to be able to make the choice when and how they want to view them.” Right now it looks like a natural move for Wal-Mart, and we sure wouldn’t complain if they manage to drive prices down — as seems to be their way — but we’ll let them and that business manager figure things out for now while we head over to iTunes for a bit of The Princess Diaries.

[Via Techcrunch]

Read – Wal-Mart sets stage for digital action
Read – Wal-Mart moves on digital movie downloads

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SPONSORED BY: BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time.

Filed under: Home Entertainment

Somehow we had a feeling CinemaNow wouldn’t take the news sitting down with regard to the claims espoused by an anonymous engineer who claims their new pseudo-DRMed download-to-burn DVD service is horribly, fatally flawed, and won’t play but in any but the most robust standalone DVD boxes. CinemaNow shot back stating that the service has been “well received by our customers and studios alike,” (ah, isn’t that the trick?) and that tests had the burned DVDs working on “94 percent of DVD players.” Which tests and using what DVD players we don’t know, but somehow we don’t expect to have that data readily divulged. Guess there’s only one way to find out though, right? Download a marginally overpriced flick for about ten bucks, get yourself a spindle of DVD-Rs, and go to town. And while you’re at hit, howsabout letting us now how it worked out for ya by shouting it out in the comments, yeah?

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Filed under: Home Entertainment

We have a pretty good idea why it’s taking Netflix so long to put the net flicks in, um, Netflix, but it’s good to hear they’re still working toward internet distributed content. According to a BusinessWeek profile of the company, despite the fact that ‘flix boss Reed Hastings “doesn’t buy the idea that Web movie downloads will wipe Netflix out,” they’ll still be launching downloadable content by year’s end. We all know their limitations are more Hollywood-political than technical by this point — this is 2006, remember? — which is why we’re hoping that with their own entertainment group buying exclusive rights to movies left and right, even if they can’t sway the studios like CinemaNow or MovieLink, they’ll still be able to play the game. Now the real question is will it be fair and flexible DRM, or will it be the typical ridiculous, arcane walled-garden experience we’re seeing now? well, with any luck we’ll be finding out in 2006.

[Via Zatz Not Funny]

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