TV, Movies & Home Theatre - Page 48

Intel is working very hard on a top-secret project that has the potential to greatly shake up the pay-TV market. Known as "Project Black Box," the set-top box and associated television service are poised to take advertisers by storm by paying as much as 75 percent more than traditional content providers.

Intel is able to do this because the box is said to utilize a built-in camera that will collect data on viewers' habits. Yes, you read that correctly, Intel's set-top box will record everything you do in front of your TV, and then feed that information back to its advertisers to help better target you with ads.

CNET reported today that more than 2,000 Intel employees in the Northern California, Arizona, and Oregon areas are currently testing the new pay-TV service. It is unknown when the set-top box and service will launch, but Intel does say that there will be substantial changes made to the final version such as how users navigate the system and how content is served.

We've had a handful of trailers to Zack Snyder's reboot of Superman, Man of Steel, but this new 'Fate of Your Planet' trailer is filled to the brim with action. Check it out below, and then we'll go through what we can see in the trailer.

The beginning starts of with Zod's message to Earth, then the fun really begins. We get a better look at Laurence Fishburne's Perry White, Amy Adams' Lois Lane, Michael Shannon's General Zod, and of course, UK born Henry Cavill's Superman. The trailer has General Zod threatening Earth for harboring Kal-El, where he states that "the fate of your planet rests in your hands" unless they give Kal-El up.

Zod says that Kal-El has 24 hours to surrender, "or watch this world suffer the consequences". Things ramp up a bit, and we have a death stare from Zod, a huge punch to Zod by Superman, Faora threatening someone (Superman, or the military), Superman receiving a huge smackdown by some robot or person in a suit, a fighter jet crashing into buildings in Metropolis, Superman being dragged into countless skulls, Lois going into some form of a suit, more of Superman flying, Zod hitting Superman with a steel girder (girly scream from me), Superman screaming, some utterly awesome heat vision being shot from Superman's eyes, and bam - the El symbol, end.

Rovio announced that they have partnered with Sony Pictures for their upcoming Angry Birds movie. We've previously covered details of the Angry Birds movie that was originally announced back in December 2012. At that time, I asked what the movie would consist of. That question still needs to be answered.

The Angry Birds movie will be a 3-D animated comedy coming out sometime in 2016. It will be produced by John Cohen, the producer for Despicable Me. The partnership between Rovio and Sony Pictures was announced via tweet earlier today. Rovio CEO Mikael Hed said the following in a press release:

According to a report by the Wall Street Journal, Google will unveil a music-streaming service at this year's Google I/O. The event, which kicks off tomorrow, will reportedly focus on services instead of hardware, which would tie in nicely with a new music-streaming service.

Google already offers a music product, but it requires users upload their own music to stream or buy new songs. This new service would be more like Spotify's offering. According to people familiar with the matter, Google has already signed deals with Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, and Warner Music Group. These deals will allow unlimited streaming of certain libraries for a fee.

It's not clear what the fee would be, though it would have to be competitive with current offerings. This means we could expect the fee to be less than $10 for unlimited streaming on any device.

US ambassador to Australia, Jeffrey Bleich, has reached out to his official Facebook page telling Australians to stop pirating popular HBO show, Game of Thrones. He wrote:

The comments came on April 23, marking the 17th annual UN World Book and Copyright Day. He added:

In anticipation of the upcoming movie Star Trek Into Darkness, J.J. Abrams' production company, Bad Robot, has released some breathtaking HD images of the Enterprise's Bridge used in the 2009 blockbuster Star Trek.

The images (source #1) show off the beauty of the Enterprise Reboot designed by Scott Chambliss, and display a remarkable level of detail that many fans just chalked up to being CGI creations. Bad Robot has also released a Star Trek Into Darkness app that will let you scan these high resolution images to earn extra points that will help you move up within the Starfleet ranks.

Star Trek Into Darkness releases on May 17th and I for one will be first in line to see it. In case you missed them, Paramount has released several Into Darkness trailers, and I have listed three of them below.

If you're like me, you've been waiting patiently for Neill Blomkamp's second movie, Elysium. His first movie, District 9, was a smash hit, and now the director is ready to launch his second movie which is due out in August.

It also stars District 9 actor Sharlto Copley, with Jodie Foster playing a government official. The trailer above doesn't show you too much, but what it does show you is enough to impress, that's for sure. Elysium is set in the year 2159, where two classes of people that exist, the extremely wealthy (today's equivalent of the 1%) who live on a perfect, man-made space station called Elysium. The rest? They live on an overpopulated, ruined Earth.

The full synopsis, is below:

When Finding Dory arrives in 2015, it will have taken Disney just 13 years to make the sequel to the widely popular Finding Nemo movie. Ellen DeGeneres confirmed that Finding Dory would be arriving at a theater near you on November 25, 2015 with DeGeneres remaining the voice of Dory.

"I have waited for this day for a long, long, long, long, long, long time," DeGeneres said in a statement Tuesday. Some might say that she just kept swimming for this day. References aside, she says that she isn't "mad it took this long." With her usual humor, she added, "I know the people at Pixar were busy creating Toy Story 16."

It's about time the Wachowski's (who are now longer the 'Wachowski Brothers', as Larry is now Lana) got into TV. Netflix have just announced an original new series for late-2014, Sense8.

Sense8 is being developed by the Wachowskis, as well as J. Michael Straczynski, the creator of Babylon 5. There aren't many details at all on the show, but it's a global tale of minds linked and souls hunted with a ten-episode run for its first season.

The idea of the Wachowskis and Straczynski working together has been something the creators have wanted for nearly ten years now, with the idea starting from a late night conversation about "the ways technology simultaneously unites and divides us."

In a weird twist of a rumor that is built off of another rumor, we are hearing reports this morning that the Apple iTV does exist and that it could be getting a 4K resolution. Reports are suggesting that the long-anticipated Apple iTV will arrive by the end of 2013.

In an interview with Bloomberg, renowned Apple analyst Gene Munster said that we will see an iTV device launched in Q4 of 2013, stating that there is "no question whether it's a set-top box versus a TV, it's an actual TV".

Bolstering these rumors is DigiTimes who is suggesting that the iTV will be getting a 4K resolution refresh shortly after launch. The 3840 x 2160 resolution screen could make its way into the iTV sometime in the first half of 2014, if rumors ring true. Additionally, DigiTimes cited sources familiar with Apple's supply chain stating that the internet connected TV will be voice controlled and feature a Kinect like motion sensor.

It looks like we can expect premium interactive TV shows from Microsoft by the end of the year, where we'll see the new TV shows launch on their Xbox Live service. This is all according to a top executive from Microsoft during All Things Digital's Dive into Media conference, in Dana Point, California.

Back in September 2012, Microsoft hired former CBS Network Television Entertainment Group president, Nancy Tellem, who would be responsible for a new production studio in LA and creating interactive content for the Xbox 360. We're now seeing the fruits of her labor, and the first things to grow from this seed.

We should expect the interactivity side of things to include Kinect compatibility, but it won't just be there to be 'cool', Tellem says "it has to be organic and a natural extension of what we are doing". She also declined to state just how much Microsoft are pumping into their original content, adding "we are certainly looking at a very robust content production schedule".

The brains behind Lost, Person of Interest and the latest two Star Trek movies, J.J. Abrams, will take the directors seat on Star Wars: Episode VII. Because of Abrams' work on Star Trek, it temporarily kicked him out of the race as director of the new Star Wars film.

But, obviously this has been pushed to the side, as Abrams was a fan favorite to direct the new Star Wars movie. During an interview last month, Abrams said that he was asked by Lucasfilm to direct the new Star Wars movie, but passed previously on it due to his loyalty to Star Trek, he elaborates:

There are leagues of fans of Band of Brothers and The Pacific, but now HBO have confirmed that producers Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg are on-board for a third series set during WWII.

The duo will reportedly tap Donald L. Miller's Masters of the Air as their source material, with the miniseries currently not titled. Miller's book is a narrative non-fiction work which tells the story of American bombers in their air campaign against Nazi Germany, focusing on the "Mighty Eighth" Air Force.

There's no ETA on the miniseries, but we should expect the production budget to be absolutely huge. Band of Brothers had a mammoth production budget of $125 and The Pacific blew its budget out to $200 million. So we should expect some big things from the third miniseries and I for one can't wait for it.

Samsung have unveiled some of their new home theater products ahead of the Consumer Electronics Show 2013 in Las Vegas, included with the announcement is Samsung coming out with what they're claiming to be the world's first sound bar system to sport a vacuum tube. We're also greeted by a new way of Bluetooth for TV audio reproduction, gyros that improve sound quality and finally an all-in-one home theater system that features an amplifier made with Gallium Nitrade.

HW-F750 Vacuum Tube Soundbar

Samsung's HW-F750 Vacuum Tube Soundcar is a sound bar and wireless subwoofer product, and is the South Korean company's latest digital audio product that sports a vacuum tube in the pre-amp stage. Not only does it look great, but it should sound great too. The sound bar will also sport Bluetooth for wireless audio streaming from supported Samsung TVs, and also comes with a built-in gyroscope which is used to help adjust the speakers' sound for optimal results based on the speaker's positioning.

Almost everyone owns an HDTV by this point, lets face it, HDTV has become one of those must have things that we can't live without. Those of us who are not satisfied with a plain old run of the mill HDTV will be happy to hear that Sharp will be releasing a monstrous 60" HDTV with 4k resolution in February of 2013.

With a resolution of 3,840,2,160 pixels, it offers much more detail than current HD 1080p TVs and even besets Apple's famed retina displays. First previewed at CES 2012, the 60″ LCD dubbed "Integrated Cognitive Creation," (or by its product number, LC-60HQ10) is sure to wind up in the homes of early adopters world wide.

With a price tag of $31,000 (£19,000), Sharp is building these to order as no doubt it won't be expecting many to be sold. We are predicting that CES 2013 is likely to hold some much more cost effective systems at the same size or larger than this offering from sharp.

People may want to stay away from the Kinect if they like watching movies on their Xbox 360. Well, at least if Microsoft decides to implement a patent that was just issued to them last week. The patent in question is titled "Content Distribution Regulation by Viewing User" and deals with adjusting prices based upon the number of viewers.

The Kinect, or equivalent, sensor could monitor the number of people in a room and adjust the pricing for movie according to how many people are there. The system could even, theoretically, detect when more people walk into the room and pause playback until more money was provided or some people left the room.

Another thought is that this could be used to control the owner of content so that the person who purchased the video must be present. This patent could also tie in with one Microsoft received last September, called "Parental Control Settings Based on Body Dimensions," which uses various body shapes and ratios to estimate a user's age.

Avengers fans rejoice! Disney has confirmed that the sequel to the massively successful movie, The Avengers, will indeed hit theaters on May 1, 2015. About two weeks ago, a rumor hit the scene that pegged this as the day that the sequel would hit theaters, but most doubted it as the person claiming this, MTV, didn't name sources.

This morning, Disney unleashed the following press release:

It looks like The Hobbit, which is now a trilogy by the way, will only be shown in limited amounts of cinemas in 48 fps. Variety reports that according to a source familiar with Warner's release plans for the first Hobbit movie, is that the HFR version will only hit select locations, and maybe not even major cities.

Though, people who have had the pleasure of eyeballing the 48 fps version of the movie have said that it now looks much better than the test footage shown at CinemaCon back in April, which had not "undergone post-production polishing" and received a mixed reception from viewers. Warner's wants to protect the HFR format, where they'll be going into a limited release for the HFR version of the movie, hoping that they'll be able to test the marketplace and expand the HFR release for the second, and third Hobbit movies.

Right now, there are no HFR-ready theaters, with some requiring a simple software upgrade that will be ready next month. It also looks like HFR is the future, where myself, and many people in the industry seem to think its going to take off. Does someone want to find me a theater, and fly me over to the US to watch it at 48 fps? Drool.

Despite the disparity in cost and convenience, DVD and Blu-ray rentals through mail and physical retailers still outnumbers streaming. Rentals through retail stores, kiosks, and Netflix's mail service made up more than 62 percent of all movie rentals in the first half of the year according to NPD Group.

In stark contrast to the figure above, subscription streaming, pay TV video on demand, and Internet VOD made up only 38 percent of movie rentals. Even though rentals are still the majority, the size of their majority has been shrinking. Rentals are down 17 percent from last year and stores continue to be replaced with kiosks.

45 percent of rentals came from kiosks, up 5 percent from last year. Netflix's push to streaming has also contributed to the decline in physical rentals. Netflix announced 530,000 new streaming customers while at the same time losing 850,000 of its DVD service. Part of what is keeping streaming down is the lack of extra features and availability of all movies. Often times a movie is only available as a physical copy.

Computex 2012 - We've just walked through AverMedia's booth here in the halls of Nangang at Computex, and their Game Capture HD device is definitely looking great. If you haven't seen AverMedia's Game Capture HD, it's a small device that can connect up to your gaming console and record footage with no delay or lag.

Of course, taking pictures is just as easy and you can also use those taken pictures and use them as your background on your PC or PlayStation 3. This means if you beat your friend or break a record, you could rub it in their face whenever they see you by using it as your background. Something else that caught our eye was AverMedia's Live Gamer HD.

Live Gamer HD is a PCI-Express based card that has a H.264 hardware encoder built in, meaning you can record gameplay without much strain on your CPU and other bits. Live Gamer HD sports both input and output, HDMI and DVI ports and a dedicated 'record' button for instant response. It captures video right up to 1080p@60 which is not too bad at all.