OPINION: Web wars By Paul Sweeting - 02/20/2009 Paul Sweeting is editor of Content Agenda FEB. 20 | There is war brewing in the emerging-market territory of online video.
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OPINION: DVD tent pole By Paul Sweeting - 02/13/2009 Paul Sweeting is editor of Content Agenda FEB. 13 | Concern over declining DVD sales is now driving creative decisions.
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OPINION: Ups and downs By Paul Sweeting - 02/06/2009 Paul Sweeting is editor of Content Agenda FEB. 06 | Cyclical, or secular? That is the question preoccupying studio minds these days as they stare into the abyss of plunging DVD sales.
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OPINION: Biz building By Paul Sweeting - 01/30/2009 Paul Sweeting is editor of Content Agenda JAN. 30 | Netflix provided a rare bit of good news last week amid the gathering economic gloom.
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OPINION: Device management By Paul Sweeting - 01/16/2009 Paul Sweeting is editor of Content Agenda JAN. 16 | The Associated Press came out with a review last month of the new Blockbuster MediaPoint set-top box made by 2Wire. The verdict: It’s no Roku.
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OPINION: Mixed Year By Paul Sweeting - 12/31/2008 Paul Sweeting is editor of Content Agenda DEC. 31 | The fact that Las Vegas hotels were slashing their Consumer Electronics Show room rates a month before the annual technology fair was scheduled to open next week can’t have been a good sign for the venerable tradeshow or the industry it’s meant to showcase.
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OPINION: Next for Blu By Paul Sweeting - 12/23/2008 Paul Sweeting is editor of Content Agenda DEC. 23 |Having staggered through a long and bruising format war with HD DVD, it would have been no real surprise had Blu-ray Disc crumpled like a spent fighter when hit with an abrupt slowdown in consumer spending in that latter part of 2008. More
OPINION: Standing out By Paul Sweeting - 12/12/2008 Paul Sweeting is editor of Content Agenda DEC. 12 | Recommendation engines have long been a feature of online retail sites, from Amazon.com to Netflix to iTunes. Yet for the most part, they’ve been regarded as a tool for customer retention and improving the user experience. Rarely have they been the focus of a competitive arms race themselves.
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OPINION: DMCA redux By Paul Sweeting - 12/05/2008 Paul Sweeting is editor of Content Agenda DEC. 5 | Blockbuster’s roll out of a set-top box for playing digitally delivered movies will inevitably draw comparisons with Netflix and its partnerships, but the two DVD retailers’ approaches to digital delivery are not the same, reflecting both their different histories and different views of life without DVDs.
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OPINION: Big Blue's big box By Paul Sweeting - 11/25/2008 Paul Sweeting is editor of Content Agenda NOV. 25 | Blockbuster’s roll out of a set-top box for playing digitally delivered movies will inevitably draw comparisons with Netflix and its partnerships, but the two DVD retailers’ approaches to digital delivery are not the same, reflecting both their different histories and different views of life without DVDs.
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OPINION: Keeping downloads open By Paul Sweeting - 11/21/2008 Paul Sweeting is editor of Content Agenda NOV. 21 | Two seemingly unrelated events last week nonetheless each reflect a telling pattern in the development of the movie download market.
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OPINION: New President, new rules? By Paul Sweeting - 11/14/2008 Paul Sweeting is editor of Content Agenda NOV. 14 | Beyond its already-historic nature, the election of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States presages the most sweeping changes in the laws and regulations shaping the media and technology industries in at least a decade and perhaps longer.
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OPINION: Stock block By Paul Sweeting - 11/07/2008 Paul Sweeting is editor of Content Agenda NOV. 7 | Blockbuster has never been much of a Wall Street darling. Not since the go-go years of the video rental business in the ’80s and early ’90s has it been able to capture much of a premium in its share price.
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OPINION: Grab and grow By Paul Sweeting - 10/31/2008 Paul Sweeting is editor of Content Agenda OCT. 31 | The railroads are broadband Internet connections, whether wired or wireless. Leading the land-grab right now are Netflix and CinemaNow.
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OPINION: Jobs blue on Blu By Paul Sweeting - 10/17/2008 Paul Sweeting is editor of Content Agenda OCT. 17 | It can’t have thrilled the folks at Disney, who have worked so hard to establish Blu-ray Disc as the next-generation optical disc standard, to hear their largest shareholder call the format “a bag of hurt.”
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OPINION: Blu stock By Paul Sweeting - 10/10/2008 Paul Sweeting is editor of Content Agenda OCT. 10 | With global stock markets cratering and credit markets freezing, the U.S. and much of the rest of the world appears on the brink—if not already in the midst—of a serious economic recession.
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OPINION: Use of fair By Paul Sweeting - 10/03/2008 Paul Sweeting is editor of Content Agenda OCT. 3 | In the end, I suspect, the studios felt they had no choice but to bring a lawsuit against RealNetworks in an effort to shut down sales of its RealDVD copying program.More
OPINION: Need this? By Paul Sweeting - 09/26/2008 Paul Sweeting is editor of Content Agenda SEPT. 26 | Does the world need another physical format for music and video? That’s what analysts and commentators are wondering in the wake of announcements last week from SanDisk and Toshiba regarding the use of NAND flash-based memory cards for storing recorded music and downloaded video.
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OPINION: Good, bad news By Paul Sweeting - 09/19/2008 Paul Sweeting is editor of Content Agenda SEPT. 19 | There was good news and bad news for the studios at last week’s HDTV 2008 conference sponsored by DisplaySearch.
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