One of the most significant advances in the entertainment industry last year was the exponential boom of streaming content. Netflix in particular, originally a disc rental service, was at the forefront of focusing all attention on that front by increasing their catalogs, adding original content and charging more for it all. On a seemingly daily basis, more people are deciding they want to consume content via streaming and several companies are competing for the best product.
Right now, Netflix Instant’s bread and butter is television. They have multiple seasons, or in some case the entirety, of shows like The Wonder Years, Arrested Development, Breaking Bad and Mad Men. However, the one blazing, glaring omission from their impressive collection are the hugely popular shows from HBO.
Shows like The Sopranos, The Wire, Sex and the City or Entourage are not available to stream anywhere besides HBO’s latest project, HBO Go. The only way to watch those shows on Netflix is to rent the discs themselves and now reports are that HBO won’t sell Netflix any more copies. What exactly does this mean? Read more after the jump. Read More »
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I purchase and watch a lot of streaming content, tv shows and movies, be it on Netflix, AppleTV and iPad (which I use at the gym and while traveling). This week, ABC launched a promotion allowing users to download all 9-episodes of Pan-Am for free. The move is a desperate last chance attempt to drive interest in the series, which is on the edge of cancellation. Will it work? I’m not sure — it could be too late. But it is a smart move and it got me thinking. Why don’t networks offer the first episode of every television series for free?
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iPad users who have the Netflix app should head into the App Store immediately and download the latest update. It’s being billed at Netflix 2.0 and has a vastly improved user interface as well as support for Latin America. Read more after the jump. Read More »
When discussing Nicolas Winding Refn‘s awesome crime drama, Drive, several things can be singled out as exceptional. Ryan Gosling‘s performance for one. His relationship with his neighbor played by Carey Mulligan. The film’s refusal to give you a straight answer and, of course, the collected soundtrack. The music selected, the score as well as the sound mix, which features some incredibly blown out gunshots, screeching tires and blows to the head, are all totally off the charts. The SoundWorks Collection has put together a little video highlighting this highlight of Drive and you can check it out after the jump. Read More »
Many airlines have already done away with paper tickets and now one of the largest sellers of movie tickets is finally making the digital leap. After almost two years of development and smaller test runs, Fandango‘s Mobile Ticket initiative begins its major roll out this weekend at select Regal Cinemas with the release of The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1. People who buy tickets online (not just for Twilight, for any movie) can have a message sent to their phone with a barcode that theaters scan, allowing people to skip lines at ticket booths and kiosks. Find out which theaters are first adopting this after the jump. Read More »
As it has been widely known and rumored for a while now, Apple has been working to revolutionize the television set. Steve Jobs’ final project was trying to create a product that would change the tv world, the same way the iphone changed the world of mobile smart phones. Jobs told Walter Isaacson in his recently published biography that he had finally “cracked it” after years of trying to solve the problem:
“‘I’d like to create an integrated television set that is completely easy to use,’ he told me. ‘It would be seamlessly synced with all of your devices and with iCloud.’ No longer would users have to fiddle with complex remotes for DVD players and cable channels. ‘It will have the simplest user interface you could imagine. I finally cracked it.’”
The recent release of the iPhone 4s has gotten some to believe that the voice powered Siri software might be part of the solution, which may be true, but I believe it is much more complex than that. Now Sony has come forward and announced that they have also been developing a “different kind of TV set” in their race to beat Steve Jobs to the new television revolution.
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The moral of this story is two fold. First, sound totally makes a movie. And second, always do your best, you never know where it might take you. That second point applies because, a few weeks ago, I wrote a story about how Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides was the first film ever released to a streaming site encoded with Dolby 7.1 Surround Sound. At the time, I didn’t know what that entailed specifically, just that it was a cool technological advancement. Fast forward a few days later and I’m in San Francisco at Dolby’s World Headquarters, sitting in their beyond state of the art screening room, about to watch an action sports snowboarding movie called The Art of Flight that will demonstrate exactly what Dolby 7.1 can do. Along the way, I also learned a bit more about Dolby as a brand and the overall theatrical experience as a whole. Read more about it after the jump. Read More »
Sometimes death can make a famous person even more famous. When a music artist dies, their album sales go to the top of the charts. When an actor dies, their movies are all rented on Netflix. And when the billionaire CEO of the world’s most successful technology company dies, he, apparently, becomes a movie star.
Since the untimely death of Apple founder Steve Jobs in October at the age of 56, interviews and books about the entrepreneur have been in high demand. Now, an unaired 70-minute interview Jobs conduced in 1996 retitled Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview will play in select Landmark Theaters November 16 and 17. Find out more about it and where you can see it after the jump. Read More »
