THE DOWN LOW

August 9, 2007 | Link This | Email this | Comments (1)

For this year at least. Despite badgering by Blu-ray geeks, Universal home video pres Craig Kornblau is promising to stick to HD DVD in an interview with my former boss Scott Hettrick at his Blu-ray studio-backed Blu-ray site Hollywood in High Def.

It's an exhaustive piece on Kornblau's high noon stance, Kornblau says Uni's been offered incentives to go Blu, but is sticking to HD DVD because it offers consumers a better value. Uni is getting incentives to stick to HD DVD including an incentive from Xbox Live for its Heroes HD DVD release, which is also being promoted on the game service. 

Beyond that, Kornblau sticks to the company line that the studio is staying with HD DVD because it's a better value, and because ...Read More
Industries: Retail, Studios/Suppliers, Technology

August 9, 2007 | Link This | Email this | Comments (0)

Hackers have apparently figured out how to copy movies from Netflix's streaming movie service Watch Now, according to TV Squad. It's complicated and time consuming and according to a poster on a Wired blog about it, it's already been fixed. for now, I'm sure.

(Love that the ad that pops up alongside the story on TV Squad is for Netflix's Watch Now.)

Speaking of Watch Now, the BBC will make U.K. version of The Office available on Watch Now and through Vuze.

And speaking of the U.K., rumor is that Apple will begin ...Read More

August 2, 2007 | Link This | Email this | Comments (0)

Bloomberg's Jonathan Weil digs deeper into Netflix's churn numbers and finds that the company is losing more than half of its subscribers each year. Though, with the exception of the latest quarter, the retailer has generally added more new subscribers than it loses, allowing it to grow its subscriber base each quarter.

Weil notes that Netflix defines churn differently than most other companies including TiVo. That lowers the churn rate the online DVD retailer reports. By Netflix's estimation, churn in the latest quarter was 4.6%. By Weil's estimate, using the definition TiVo and others use, the retailer's churn was 16%. More surprising/disturbing was that Weil found that for the full year ending June 30, churn was 63%, meaning that the retailer lost two-thirds of ...Read More
Industries: Retail

August 2, 2007 | Link This | Email this | Comments (0)

More than 5,000 reviews of movies by from  TV show Siskel & Ebert and Ebert & Roeper go online today at the show's Web site At the Movies.

The Balcony Archives include all video reviews from the more than 20 years the shows have been on the air. Ebert will give a live introduction and do a Web chat this evening at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT.
Industries: Technology

July 31, 2007 | Link This | Email this | Comments (0)

Here's a clip from MyDamnChannel, another YouTube-like site backed by Hollywood types that launched today. Right now, it's mostly promos for MyDamnChannel (like the one below with Harry Shearer as Cheney) and some interviews with Slash and Duff McKagan about their days in Guns'N'Roses and working with Michael Jackson, which are fairly entertaining because Slash is pretty damn amusing.  I say keep these sites coming, it's a nice alternative to the cat videos dominating YouTube.


Industries: Technology