News and other tidbits that Chad Cloman finds interesting enough to share
Chad’s News has previously discussed the Blu-Ray/HD-DVD format war, but we thought it worth noting that Blu-Ray has recently received an unexpected vote of confidence. Thieves broke into a video store and stole the entire stock of Blu-Ray discs while ignoring the HD-DVD section.
Link: http://www.engadget.com/…
(via digg)
According to this article there are plans for an additional three Terminator movies, although they won’t include Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Link: http://www.darkhorizons.com/…
(via digg)
Thursday, May 22, 2008 is the official release date for Indiana Jones IV. This, despite the fact they haven’t started filming and don’t even have a complete script. Also, there is some question as to whether or not Sean Connery will be reprising his role as Jones’ father. And, to top it all off, Harrison Ford has threatened to pull out of the project because he may not be allowed to use a real whip.
This is an insightful article about the clash between fair use and the DMCA. The MPAA is suing a company that will copy your DVD to an iPod for you. The MPAA contends that circumventing the DVD copy protection is illegal, and that users must re-purchase the movie via the iTunes store in order to watch it on an iPod. The worst part is that they may be right.
Link: http://arstechnica.com/…
Can’t decide between DVD, Blu-Ray, or HD-DVD? Researchers have developed technology that can combine all three on one disc.
In the first week or so after making 75 of its movies available on iTunes, Disney sold an impressive 125,000 copies. Total revenue was $1 million.
If you haven’t seen it before, the “How It Should Have Ended” web site has short, animated videos of how various movies should have ended. There are quite a few that I don’t particularly like (e.g., ‘Saving Private Ryan‘), but the ‘Lord of the Rings‘ and ‘Star Wars‘ clips are hysterical (and ‘Superman‘ isn’t too bad either).
This really comes as no surprise to me. The DVD-R vs. DVD+R format war was resolved by simply making the players compatible with both formats, and now Ricoh has managed to do the same with HD-DVD and Blu-ray. Expect to see a lot more dual-format players.
If you blinked, you may have missed it, but the first Blu-ray movies were released last week, with the first Blu-ray player released a few days later. Initial impressions of the Samsung player were underwhelming, as was the review of one of the few available movies. Expect players to get better and cheaper, and ditto with the movies. We’re in the midst of a format war between Toshiba’s HD-DVD and Sony’s Blu-ray, but as far as I can tell, the general level of apathy over this subject is pretty high.
I really enjoyed the Fight Club movie, once a roommate convinced me to watch it. (The previews did the movie an injustice.) Now we’re seeing life imitate art with the advent of real-life fight clubs. The linked article details one such club in Silicon Valley where tech workers compose the group. As weird as it may sound, this makes a lot of sense to me, and the concept holds a certain attraction.
As of this time last year, Colorado had exactly one theater with digital projection. It must be a 2K or less projector, because I was able to see pixellation in Attack of the Clones (I was sitting in the first row of the stadium seating section). Here’s hoping digital projection comes into widespread use.
