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Tag: dvd

  • Best Buy Brings On-Demand Entertainment to Its Customers

    Best Buy and Sonic Solutions announced a strategic relationship that will result in a new Best Buy customer offering in its line-up of digital entertainment products.

    The new on-demand movie and entertainment service will be powered by Sonic’s Roxio CinemaNow.

    To power this offering, Best Buy has entered into a multi-year agreement in which the company plans to license and deploy Sonic’s Roxio CinemaNow technology and services platform to make on-demand digital content delivery a standard feature on connected consumer electronics devices sold throughout U.S. Best Buy retail stores and BestBuy.com.

    Roxio CinemaNow is a part of Sonic’s Roxio family products that enable consumers to manage personal digital media content and give an access to premium Hollywood entertainment on a broad range of connected devices. It is also powering internet movie delivery for Blockbuster.

    Under the terms of the agreement, Best Buy acquired warrants enabling it to purchase shares of Sonic Solutions common stock.

    To foster the consumer appetite for obtaining on-demand premium content electronically, Best Buy intends to embed the Roxio CinemaNow technology on a wide array of devices – web-connected television sets, portable media players, PCs, Blu-ray Disc players, set-top boxes, and mobile phones – from a variety of manufacturers.

    The company says they expect to undertake a marketing program to educate consumers about the increased convenience, flexibility, and choice digital content delivery affords.

    With the new Best Buy service, consumers will have access to buy or rent an extensive library of content including new movies, TV shows, independent films, and older catalog movies, which they will be able to access on devices in the broad ecosystem.

    It is anticipated that new titles will often be available on the same day they become available on DVDs in retail outlets. Together with their Studio partners, Best Buy and Sonic plan to also collaborate on new service and content offerings, including those that leverage digital copies to bridge physical disc sales and electronic sell through.

    "With Best Buy’s focus, we expect on-demand entertainment to quickly grow into a mass market activity, with digital sell-through and rental becoming a significant new revenue stream for content owners," said Dave Habiger, president and CEO of Sonic Solutions.

  • Netflix Coming to PlayStation3

    Sony and Netflix – the two of the fastest growing home entertainment brands in the U.S. – are joining forces to make movies and TV episodes from Netflix available to be streamed instantly to TVs via the PlayStation3.

    The streaming via the PS3 system will begin next month at no additional cost to Netflix members in the United States who have a PS3 system.

    Initially, watching movies instantly streamed from Netflix via the PS3 system will be enabled by a free, instant streaming Blu-ray disc that is being made available to all Netflix members.

    The free instant streaming disc leverages Blu-ray’s BD-Live technology to access the Internet and activate the Netflix user interface on the PS3 system, which must be online via Wi-Fi or Ethernet.

    The disc will be required for streaming at least until a PS3 software update sometime in late 2010.

    Netflix members slide the disc into their PS3 systems to reveal movies and TV episodes that can be watched instantly. They can use the Netflix Web site or navigate directly on their PS3 systems to add movies and TV shows to their Queues.

    PS3 system enables consumers to play high-definition games, watch Blu-ray movies, listen to music, view photos, browse the internet, and download content from PlayStation Network.

    Netflix, one of the world’s largest online movie rental services, enables to stream movies and TV episodes to a TVs and computers via Netflix ready devices (such as the PS3) and delivers DVDs to homes.

    According to the companies, the PS3 system’s installed base has reached close to 9 million units in the United States, and Netflix recently reported 11.1 million U.S. subscribers as of September 30.

  • IFA 2009: Hybrid Blu-Ray/HD Media Player


    VIDEO INTERVIEW. “After watching Blu-ray video or other HD content, you will never go back to Standard Definition,” assured Konstantin Dyshlevoy, Chairmain of HDI Dune, interviewed by Biz-news.com at IFA 2009.

    During this year’s Berlin exhibition HDI Dune was showing its new versions of hybrid Blu-ray/HD media players that have been recognized as “IFA 2009 INNOVATION”.

    Don’t miss the part of the video in which Konstantin gives his own explanation on why the world economic crisis has positively affected the HD market.

    HDI Dune was the first to presente hybrid Blu-ray/HD media player solution nearly one year ago, at IFA 2008. New 3.0 players come with all the features of hybrid devices developed and polished during this year on Prime/Base 1.0/2.0 products on 8634 chip, including full support of Blu-ray and DVD ISO images and directory structures (inc. menu, subtitles, sound tracks, BD-J, BD-Live features, etc), auto frame-rate feature, full support of MKV (inc. high bit-rate) and SMB/UPnP resources browser.

    The BD Prime model includes Blu-ray drive and is capable of playing Blu-ray and DVD discs as long as nearly any files from a diversity of storage types which can be connected via USB, eSATA or Ethernet/Wi-Fi. The HD Base model doesn’t contain Blu-ray drive but has a compartment for easy changeable 3.5" DATA HDD.

  • Online Video Viewing Rates "Grossly Overstated"


    The amount of time US viewers spend watching online video and mobile video is growing rapidly – but still accounts for a small fraction of total video content viewing.

    That’s the conclusion of a study into how people spend their time consuming media, including live TV programming, time-shifted television, DVDs, video games.

    Another key finding was that households buying a new HDTV viewed more live TV – up to double – initially, but that over time, this increased usage began to subside.

    Jim Spaeth, of Sequent Partners, which collaborated with Ball State University’s Center for Media Design on the Video Consumer Mapping Study on behalf of the Nielsen-funded Council for Research Excellence, said the results showed that the amount of time Americans spend watching online video is vastly overstated.

    He told MediaPost that the new findings indicate that even the relatively small amount of time Americans spend watching online video has been, on average, grossly overstated by conventional forms of media research and audience measurement.

    "This may be the first study to document the dramatic overstatement of online video and mobile video," he said.

    The project, which cost USD $3.5 million to field, directly observed how people spent their day using media.

    Conversely, Spaeth said traditional TV viewing has been "pretty drastically under-reported" by research that asks people how they consume video.

  • LG Offers First DivX HD 1080p Certified Blu-ray player


    LG has launched the first DivX HD 1080p certified Blu-ray player.

    The BD390 – originally displayed at CES in January – has an 802.11n WiFi module and support for DivX streaming from a DLNA server.

    It includes BD-Live support, 7.1-channel audio output, 1GB of inbuilt memory and a USB 2.0 socket.

    The BD390 also features support for Netflix, CinemaNow, NetCast, and YouTube streaming, and comes bundled with Nero MediaHome Essentials to connect the player to household PCs and media servers.

    In April, LG announced that its new range of HDTVs will be capable of playing full DivX HD 1080p videos.

    While DivX support may not be on everyone’s wish-list it will certainly appeal to the more tech-minded consumer.

    With DivX 7, a full two-hour HD film can be compressed to around 8 GB – so capable of being stored on a double-layer DVD.

    It also sets LG’s latest high-def player apart from the competition – certainly not a bad thing in today’s busy marketplace.

    Simon Kang, CEO and President of LG Home Entertainment, said incorporating support for DivX HD 1080p video is a key product differentiator.

    The player is available now for USD $399.95.

  • Consumers Prefer Discs Over Downloads At Home


    Watching movies and other video content on DVD and Blu-ray Disc accounts for 88 per cent of home entertainment spending – even although newer digital methods are beginning to gain a foothold in the consumer market.

    The average US home video consumer reported spending an average of USD $25 per month on all types of home video purchases and rentals, according to NPD Group.

    The researchers found that when it comes to spending on home video content: 63 per cent was spent on DVD purchases; 7 per cent on BD purchases; 18 per cent on DVD/BD rentals from retail stores, subscriptions or kiosks; 9 per cent on video on-demand (VOD); and 3 per cent on digital downloads and online streaming.

    Most consumers don’t use digital options to watch a full-length movie, although the numbers have grown over the last year.

    Digital movie downloaders also tend to buy and rent Blu-ray Discs more than the average consumer: 25 per cent of them bought or rented a Blu-ray Disc in the last three months, versus 5 per cent overall.

    Russ Crupnick, entertainment industry analyst for NPD, said discs are still and by far the dominant way Americans enjoy home video.

    "But there is an increasing appetite for digital options," he said. "The good news is that the consumers engaging with digital video today also tend to be heavy consumers of DVDs and Blu-ray Disc, but it remains to be seen just how long physical discs and digital formats can co-exist."

  • Consumer Storage Demand Continues To Soar


    Digital content in the average US household could reach 12 terabytes by 2014, according to researchers.

    A joint report by Coughlin Associates and Objective Analysis includes DVD libraries, which accounts for a large chunk of the 12TB total.

    Tom Coughlin, president of Coughlin Associates, estimates that half of the data is commercial content, like DVDs.

    Making up the remaining content is user generated data, such as photos, music, and videos, and downloaded material such as video on demand.

    It’s not surprising that since increasing numbers of people are downloading HD content from the likes of Netflix and iTunes this requires even greater storage capacity.

    Coughlin said that the trend was also for more physical media, like DVDs and music CDs, to end up being stored on disk.

    The reports suggest that key differentiators for storage vendors looking to service the home include:

    • remote storage access
    • privacy protection
    • disaster recovery
    • automatic backup
    • metadata
    • automated metadata generation of content

  • Can Blu-Ray Now Be Called Mainstream?


    The drop in the average price of Blu-Ray players is, not surprisingly, fuelling sales of the high-def disks.

    But figures out from NPD show that the effect of cheaper players could finally be giving the format mass market appeal.

    High hardware prices has long been given as a barrier to Blu-Ray technology becoming widely accepted.

    The average price of Blu-ray players dropped nearly 34 per cent over the last year, falling from USD $393 in Q1 2008 to USD $261 in Q1 2009.

    This, according to NPD’s Blu-ray Report, helped Q1 2009 sales of standalone Blu-ray players (not including PS3) to reach more than 400,000 units, marking a 72 per cent increase over Q1 2008.

    Sales totaled USD $107.2 million in the first quarter.

    Ross Rubin, director of industry analysis at NPD, said the rising penetration of high-definition televisions and lower Blu-ray player prices are broadening the format’s market opportunity.

    "Even as options expand for accessing movies digitally, Blu-ray is carrying forward the widespread appeal of DVD into the high-definition marketplace."

    Amidst these positive notes for Blu-Ray, NPD reports that 58 per cent of adults surveyed were still "not very familiar" with Blu-ray.

    Some work still to be done then.

  • ArcSoft Plug-in Upscales Standard DVDs to HD-Like Quality on the PC


    ArcSoft today announced a plug-in for its universal high-definition multimedia player which it says brings most standard-definition video to near HD quality.

    Called SimHD, ArcSoft’s in-house upscaling technology uses NVIDIA CUDA parallel computing architecture to upscale standard DVD movies to up to 1,920 x 1,080.

    The company says it also sharpens and enhances the picture with vivid colours.

    To use the plug-in a copy of ArcSoft’s TotalMedia Theatre software and a sufficiently powerful CUDA-compatible GPU.

    Michael Steele, general manager of visual consumer solutions at NVIDIA, said the solution was a great way to upgrade an existing collection of DVDs into near-HD quality.

  • Panasonic's VHS/Blu-ray Combo Upconverts SD Video to 1080p


    The world’s first Blu-ray-VHS dual player is to go on sale in the US from next month.

    Made by Panasonic, the DMP-BD70V has a multi-format playback that allows users to play VHS, CD, DVD and 1080p high definition Blu-ray Discs.

    It also allows standard DVDs and VHS tapes to be up-converted to 1080p resolution.

    While the picture quality of VHS tapes obviously doesn’t rival Blu-ray, it does produce an impressive picture – something certain to appeal to the many households with stacks of VHS tapes lying around.

    The DMP-BD70V has been available in Japan since last year.

    The combo VHS/DVD/Blu-ray/SD Card Player is to be priced at USD $399.