Dear Netflix CEO: We Accept Your Apology. Love, DVDs

Dear Reed,

We were delighted to learn that Qwikster is no more this morning. You finally came to your senses, shuttered that DVD ghetto you had planned and admitted us back into the Netflix family.

After our last letter, we’ll admit, we didn’t hold out much hope of you changing your mind. You seemed so hell-bent on washing your hands of us, so certain we were tainting your chances to create that dynamic, forward-looking streaming service of your dreams. And we don’t flatter ourselves that we changed your mind. It was the subscribers — or more likely, it was Wall Street, which has sent your stock plunging more than 60% since July.

Still, if there’s one thing movies have taught us, it’s forgiveness. Well, okay, Unforgiven taught us the opposite, but we’ll let that go. By the way, did you know that Unforgiven is one of many thousands of movies you can currently only see on Netflix DVD, and is nowhere to be found on streaming? Just thought we’d mention that.

Seriously, though, that’s kind of the point. If you want Netflix to be comprehensive — and that does seem to be what the customers want — you can’t possibly forget about us. You need us, like it or not. So you just got Breaking Bad and Walking Dead on streaming? Bully for them. But if you want to see The King’s Speech, or Inception, or Thor, or Avatar or Weeds season 6, streaming can’t satisfy you. Only we can. Sorry, but that’s just the way it is.

The fact that you ever thought otherwise suggests you haven’t been thinking like a movie fan for a while. So here’s a suggestion: take a couple of us home tonight. Any of us will be happy to accompany you; we’re not jealous. We suggest something big and brash in Blu-Ray, or some major release of the last year you’ve been meaning to see. Let your gaze linger over our special features, our deleted scenes, our director’s commentaries. Then tell us: can streaming do that for you?

And if we might make one more suggestion: Before you radically restructure the company again, focus on the user experience. For instance, we couldn’t help but notice that the Netflix iPad app is a little limited. We’re not mentioned at all on it, for one thing! What are we, chopped liver? There’s no way to reorder your queues, either, and customers do like to do that — play with the order in which they’re going to get us. They like to push the good stuff to the top of their streaming queue, too. It’s kind of a Christmas morning experience, if you will. By the way, remember A Christmas Story? Totally not available on streaming. Just FYI.

Alright, we’ll stop rubbing it in. We’re truly grateful you came to your senses, and we’re looking forward to our date. And please, let us never mention that awful “Q” word again.

Love,

Your DVDs

Source is
http://mashable.com/2011/10/10/dear-netflix-ceo-qwikster-apology-dvds/

Video Stream: Bosses, Lantern Benefit From UV Technology

The big news coming out of Warner Bros. this week doesn’t relate to the two summer titles they’re releasing, but rather the technology associated with them.

Horrible Bosses (Rated R, Warner Bros., $35.99 on blu-ray combo pack, $28.98 on DVD, 3.5 out of 5 stars) and the Green Lantern (Rated PG-13, Warner Bros., $40.99 3-D blu-ray combo pack, $35.99 blu-ray combo packs, $28.98 DVD, 3-out-of-5 stars) represent some of the first discs to be released with UltraViolet technology.

UV is allows streaming by six people on multiple devices for what should ultimately be a three-screen experience.  It’s currently available for many mobile devices, but not for TVs.  The studios – Sony, Paramount, Lionsgate, and 20th Century Fox - promise that will come soon. Notice the absence of Walt Disney Studios and Universal. Until then, what’s the upside?  Complete portability as long as you have an Internet connection and the right device.

I set up Bosses on my HTC EVO 4G smartphone run through the WiFi on my home and boom, a quality streaming experience – albeit in standard definition.  I put the flick through its paces via the Flixster movies app that I download from the Android Market and there were no noticeable problems.  Flixster is required for use on portable devices. For the record, I also own an HTC Flyer tablet, but current software limitations prevent using it there.

The primary advantage of this technology?  For anyone familiar with getting digital copies from iTunes, you know that you’re limited to a single device. That’s not the case here.   Although iCloud will probably eventually take care of that.

Is this system perfect?  Nope, but in a world of complicated digital rights management issues, I’m willing to give it a shot.  The only downside is ensuring that your UV account information doesn’t get out. In short: read privacy notices regarding sharing of information, etc.

And what about the films themselves?

Green Lantern, which will hit store shelves Friday, can’t be labeled anything but a disappointment, creatively and financially.

The blu-ray contains an extended cut of the movie that adds some perspective overall, but not enough to save it from two weak villains, a cardboard performance from Blake Lively and direction from Martin Campbell who doesn’t seem to know what to do with the characters or a script that feels a bit messy.  What’s there to recommend?  Ryan Reynolds as Hal Jordan/Green Lantern.

Here’s hoping that he gets another shot at another Green Lantern film that corrects these problems.

Extras:  For comics fanboys and sci-fi geeks such as me there is a smorgasbord of extras to enjoy here.  Most notably is the Maximum Movie Mode in-film experience.  Right now in the world of home disc releases, no one does this better than Warner Bros. studios.  It lends a movie perspective, even when it’s of questionable quality such as this.  Surprisingly enough, I also enjoyed the sneak peek of the upcoming Green Lantern: Animated Series.

Horrible Bosses proved a more enjoyable flick for yours truly.  It’s that wallow-in-inappropriateness kinda of movie that you watch with your buds while enjoying some cold beverages.

The story of dealing with bosses who are complete and utter d-bags is a universal one.  Everyone has had such a boss at some point in their careers. It’s how you deal with him or her that makes the difference.  In this flick, three friends decide to kill off theirs.  Jason Bateman, Charlie Day and Jason Sudeikis are hilarious as the put-upon underlings while Colin Farrell and Kevin Spacey deserve, a slow torturous death given their characters overall scumminess.  However, it’s Jennifer Aniston who takes the prize as the sexy boss who needs an itch scratched and refuses to take no for an answer.

Extras: The extended version – dubbed The Totally Inappropriate Edition – adds some uproarious moments to the mix.   Beyond that, the extras prove pedestrian – deleted scenes and a couple of documentaries about bad bosses and being mean.

Source is
http://www.examiner.com/movie-in-cleveland/video-stream-bosses-lantern-benefit-from-uv-technology

Movie studios launch view-everywhere system

LOS ANGELES – A Hollywood initiative that aims to revive home video sales by enabling you to watch your purchased movies on multiple devices had a soft start Tuesday as Warner Bros. released Horrible Bosses without many of the hoped-for partnerships in place.

Several movie studios had intended to launch the UltraViolet system with an array of retailers and gadget makers to form an interconnected web of shared commerce. The concept was that you could buy a Blu-ray disc from Wal-Mart and have a digital version streamed to you by cable giant Comcast without even removing the shrink wrap.

Today, when you buy a digital movie, you are typically restricted to watching on specific devices. Movies bought on Apple's iTunes work only on Apple devices, and those bought on Amazon can be watched on computers and TVs but not iPhones or iPads. The idea behind UltraViolet is to unshackle movies from those constraints.

In reality, a back-end system to allow such seamless viewing across devices hasn't been created. The early version of UltraViolet lives inside a walled garden that is owned entirely by one movie studio — in this case, Warner Bros.

Sony's movie studio launches its first UltraViolet titles, including The Smurfs, on Dec. 2, but it also has no third-party digital streaming partner lined up. It, too, plans to have customers redeem online copies from a website it owns.

Still, the early trial is meant to familiarize people with the notion of owning something that doesn't sit on a shelf — in part to jump-start sluggish sales of digital downloads of movies. That is something Hollywood needs to counter shrinking sales of discs.

"We are at the very beginning of the rollout of UltraViolet. It's a first step," said Thomas Gewecke, Warner Bros.' president of digital distribution. "You'll see more and more services launching with every coming month."

Netflix kills off idea for splitting streaming, DVD-by-mail

Last month, Netflix outraged subscribers by announcing that they would be splitting the DVD-by-mail and streaming services of their company.

The new company for DVDs, called Qwikster, would have its own login portal and would require subscribers to log in to both Netflix and Qwikster if they want to change their respective queues.

This move came on top of the already unpopular decision by Netflix to raise prices on those that wanted both services, from $9 to $16.

Today, Netflix has shut down the idea for Qwikster, based on user feedback.

Says CEO Reed Hastings (via Bloomberg):

Consumers value the simplicity Netflix has always offered and we respect that. There is a difference between moving quickly -- which Netflix has done very well for years -- and moving too fast, which is what we did in this case.

Users can switch their DVD and streaming queue from Netflix.com as usual, with their usual login. 

 

Source is 

http://www.afterdawn.com/news/article.cfm/2011/10/10/netflix_kills_off_idea_for_splitting_streaming_dvd-by-mail

WD reveals updated TV Live set-top box

Western Digital has introduced its updated TV Live set-top box today, this time adding support for Spotify.

For Spotify, premium subscribers can stream 15 million songs in 320 kbps quality.

The 802.11n Wi-Fi device also has streaming access to Netflix, Hulu Plus, Pandora, YouTube and many other channels. As in the past, the WD TV Live will play a wide variety of file formats, notably MKV, in full 1080p.

Additionally, WD has shown off their updated WD TV Live Hub, a similar set-top box that also includes 1TB of internal storage. The Hub will require ethernet, however.

Both boxes will also launch with a new "intuitive user interface."

Says WD:

    WD incorporates Spotify's popular features in the new service, including the ability to create and manage Spotify playlists, share songs to Spotify friends, and see and subscribe to friends' playlists via their Spotify profiles. Users can also share tracks by sending songs directly to other Spotify users' inboxes. Spotify for WD TV Live and WD TV Live Hub delivers an exciting new way to enjoy and share music on the best sound system in your home.

The Live costs $99 and the Hub costs $199.

Source is http://www.afterdawn.com/news/article.cfm/2011/10/07/wd_reveals_updated_tv_live_set-top_box

YouTube Now Offering 2D to 3D Video Conversion

In the wake of adding an in-browser editor so users can edit video on the go, YouTube is now rolling out a beta feature that will allow you to convert your videos from 2D to 3D. Yeah, that’s happening. YouTube, aware that 3D video is a thing and that hardly anyone has hardware capable of actually shooting it, decided that they might as well try their hand at 2D to 3D conversion, and although it’s still in beta, it seems like it might be pretty legit.

In an attempt to make this feature as widely accessible as possible, YouTube is supporting pretty much every 3D option available, 3 colored-glasses options, interleaved, even cross-your-eyes side-by-side view. Unfortunately, I don’t have the capability of testing anything except the cross-your-eyes version, but that seemed pretty alright despite the fact that it gives you a little bit of a headache by its very nature.

Videos that have been 3D-converted will have a little 3D icon at the bottom that, when clicked, will bring up the 3D options menu. From there you can test out all the different methods and settings and see how it feels. It’s easy to convert a video you uploaded to 3D as well. All that you need to do is look at the video, hit “Edit Info,” enable 3D, and YouTube’s conversion algorithm does the rest. Beware though, when you’re enabling 3D on the user side, the menu can get a little annoying and you may find yourself scrubbing or pausing the video when you didn’t intend to.

I definitely recommending playing around with it and at least seeing what all the 3D options are, even if you can’t necessarily use them all. While it probably isn’t going to look professional grade (because it really isn’t) this is a step in the right direction for 3D video footage, I think. If we can find a way to make 2D to 3D conversion work well, it means that 3D videos won’t have to define themselves by being 3D and throw baseballs at the camera or whatever. Should be interesting to see where this goes. Play with a 3D-enabled video here.

Source is http://www.geekosystem.com/youtube-adds-3d-converter/

UK set to legalize CD and DVD copying for personal use

DVD Copy

The fact that it hasn't technically been legal may not have stopped many folks in the UK from ripping their CDs all these years, but it looks like there may soon be a tad less anarchy involved in that process. Reuters is reporting that the British government will announce tomorrow that it plans to legalize the copying of CDs and DVDs onto computers or portable media players for personal use -- a move that will bring it up to speed with most other European countries (and the US and Canada). Of course, the key words there are "personal use." You still won't be legally allowed to share that music over the internet after you copy it without permission, and it's not yet clear how the new rules will apply to DVDs (or Blu-rays) with copy protection measures -- although the British Video Association unsurprisingly doesn't seem too pleased with the changes regardless, calling them "extremely damaging."

Source is http://www.engadget.com/2011/08/02/uk-set-to-legalize-cd-and-dvd-copying-for-personal-use/