Hollywood is finally starting to make good on its promise to allow consumers to buy a movie once and watch it anywhere. But in my latest piece on GigaOM Pro, I argue that UltraViolet does little to combat a visible shift in consumer behavior. Read More »
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The Pirate Bay announced Wednesday morning that it is now in the business of offering 3-D movies, destroying the hopes of Hollywood that 3-D would be something of an automatic piracy deterrent. With prices for 3-D TVs declining, the phenomenon is poised to become more popular. Read More »
H.264 remains the dominant force in online video, as the video codec now accounts for more than two-thirds of online video, according to a blog post by MeFeedia. Meanwhile, Google’s WebM format has yet to gain any significant traction after being released a year ago. Read More »
It may have taken consumers a while to warm up to Blu-ray, but now they’re buying both players and discs. Lower prices may be part of the reason for that trend, but many consumers cite Netflix as the primary reason to buy a Blu-ray player. Read More »
With the Blu-ray release of Unstoppable, 20th Century Fox is unveiling a new feature that will allow owners of the Blu-ray disc to copy the movie to their Android mobile devices. But will the feature actually make people want to own physical movies again? Read More »
There’s no perfect solution yet to watching all the content you want on your TV, but for me, the PS3 has become invaluable. When you look at all the features gaming consoles offer on top of basic set-top services, it makes the extra money worthwhile. Read More »
Microsoft UK head of gaming and entertainment Stephen McGill isn’t a fan of the Blu-ray format. The exec believes that “Blu-ray is going to be passed by,” meaning he agrees with both Steve Jobs and Bill Gates on physical media potentially becoming obsolete. Read More »
This week, we learned that the HDCP copy protection scheme is now essentially broken. HDCP’s failure is just one of many examples of copy protection technology not living up to its promises of security. Read on for five of the most glorious examples of DRM FAIL. Read More »
Owners of Samsung’s Blu-ray players have been unable to play dozens of Blu-ray titles from Warner and Universal due to copy protection gone awry. Some have been struggling with these issues for months, and Samsung’s customer suport told one caller a fix could take a year. Read More »
Consumers can now rent Blu-ray discs at more than 13,000 Redbox kiosks around the country. They’ll have to pay a premium to watch their rentals in high-def, however; Blu-ray discs cost $1.50 a pop, as opposed to the $1 per night that Redbox is famous for. Read More »
Apple could skip Blu-ray discs altogether and head straight to streaming video online, if we believe two reports that have popped up over the past few days. Considering Apple’s history of picking winning technologies, that could signal bad news for Blu-ray’s future. Read More »
Redbox will soon get into the Blu-ray rental market, according to company president Mitch Lowe. Speaking at an industry trade show, he said Redbox would use its existing footprint to rent higher-value Blu-ray discs at a premium to its $1 a night DVD rentals. Read More »
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