TV, Movies & Home Theatre - Page 51

Episode 3 of the web-series for Mortal Kombat is out and this one features non other than Johnny Cage. The description for Episode 3 is below:

The man of many Lord of the Ring fans wet dreams, Peter Jackson, is currently shooting The Hobbit and has taken some time out of his busy schedule to update the official Facebook account with some info on The Hobbit. He posted some production photos and an article explaining why he has decided to shoot the two-part Lord of the Rings prequel at 48 frames per second. He even took time to address critics of the move to 48fps:

Superbowl 2011 is one of the most exciting times of the year for an Australian like me. I don't want the football action, but give me those $3 million, 30 second movie teasers that roll around each year and I'm a happy boy. This year is no different, we have the finale of Michael Bay's Transformers movies, JJ Abrams' Spielberg-ian Super 8 and Chris "Flame-On" Evans as Captain America. Check out the first trailer for Transformers: Dark of the Moon below:

I would bet that a bunch of you have watched shows on Hulu that you missed during the week. Hulu is a great way to catch up on the shows you miss or that your DVR can't record. The catch is that some of the shows don't show up for weeks after they air on TV making you even more behind.

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Hulu has announced that it has signed a new content agreement with Viacom. The agreement will get some Viacom shows back on Hulu the morning after they air. These shows include The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. The deal will also bring some of the cool older shows Viacom has to Hulu Plus subscribers. Any geek that was around in the 90's probably watched Beavis & Butthead. The deal will get the back episodes of the animated comedy on Hulu Plus along with Chappelle's Show (I'm Rick James Biatch!), The Hills, and Reno 911 as well.

Other new shows will hit Hulu Plus 21 days after they first air. These 21-day delay shows will include Jersey Shore, Teen Mom 2, and Tosh.0. A 21-day delay might as well be never in my book; I have forgotten about a show by that point and don't care to watch it.

The market for connected TVs and other devices like game consoles, set-top boxes, and Blu-ray players is booming. The ability to surf the web and stream content online from connected home theater gear is become common on many high-end and mid-range offerings. Not all of the devices will let the user actually explore the full internet though. Sony has announced that it has chosen Opera as the browser for its LCD TVs and connected Blu-ray players.

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The browser for the Sony hardware uses the Opera Devices Software Development kit as a framework for web-standards based solutions and web surfing on the connected devices. The browser will be able to deliver web apps, widgets, full web browsing, and supports standards like HTML5, HbbTV, and OIPF.

With the addition of the browser to the Sony TVs and Blu-ray players users will need one less device to access the web when watching TV on a big screen. Opera offers no exact date on when we will see the browser surface on Sony hardware.

"The Web as we know it is evolving, and we are committed to making it more accessible across diverse devices," said Christen Krogh, Chief Development Officer, Opera Software. "Our ability to address key hybrid broadcast-broadband initiatives in numerous markets makes us a natural fit with Sony. By delivering both a global viewpoint and the necessary technology, we are able to stay on the cutting edge of the industry."

Bang & Olufsen have been around for a long time and it makes some very high-end home theater and audio gear. B&O has been offering some expensive HDTVs for years now and the one thing that it really doesn't have is a connected TV. Connected TVs are the big thing from TV makers right now even if many consumers aren't ready to bite.

Next week marks the start of that wondrous time of year known as CES where all things geeky and electronic take the forefront online. The number of new gadgets and offerings that will be unveiled at the show is overwhelming and we are only days from the start so some of the gear is already being talked about by the manufacturers. One of the products that LG will be showing off at CES is a new 3D TV.

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This is no normal 3D TV though, LG claims that the set is the world's largest full LED backlit 3D TV. The screen is a whopping 72-inches and it supports 3D content and HD resolutions as well as 2D TV. The set is called the LZ9700 and LG hasn't offer up all the specs at this time. What we do know is that the TV has a 400Hz TruMotion panel for smooth images.

It also has Smart TV functionality with support for TV apps and streaming of content from online providers. The TV also ships with the LG Magic Motion Remote control. The full details of the set should be made official at CES next week. LG offers no pricing information and no indication of whether the set uses passive or active 3D glasses.

I think it really sucks that there are still very few 3D Blu-ray flicks on the market today and it sucks even more that the really cool 3D flick Avatar can't be purchased at all without buying Panasonic gear to get the flick. If you still want a 3D Blu-ray player despite the lack of content on the market right now and you like the Pioneer brand the company is shipping its 3D players now.

Any adult male that likes to be known as Tron Guy and wears a homemade replica of the original Tron suit for the 80's flick isn't all there in my book. I bet Jay Maynard peed his Tron Underoos when he heard that Legacy was coming to theaters. As the story goes, Tron Guy called up a local theater in Michigan and told them he was coming to watch Tron: Legacy in his Tron suit.

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The theater staff told him that he would not be allowed to watch the flick wearing his suit. Apparently, a middle aged, pudgy dude in a Tron suit is distracting. I took my son to see the flick last weekend when it opened and he liked it, though he asked me tons of questions and I didn't get to watch as close as I wanted.

It's a bit ironic that my son is nine and I was nine when the original flick came out at the theater. I still remember going to see it with my dad, maybe in 20-ish years when the third Tron flick comes out he can take his kid. Legacy has much better visuals (naturally) and it was a cool flick if you haven't seen it you should go.

Easily the biggest thing hurting 3D today is that you have to wear glasses to see the 3D effects. The need for glasses is why many consumers haven't adopted the tech and the glasses are often very expensive too. There are a few 3D sets hitting the market that use passive 3D glasses that are cheaper than the active glasses often required to watch 3D programs.

If you have ever watched TV you know that some commercials are about a thousand times louder than the show you are trying to watch. It always seems like the loudest and most obnoxious commercials came on when I would get up to go get a snack late at night when everyone else was sleeping. There are all sorts of gadgets on the market for home theater fans that seek to level that volume out.

Home theater is built on HDMI for the most part today. The move from multiple cables to a single cable for audio and video was huge for fans looking for an easy way to wire their home theaters and superior sound and video at the same time. Analog Devices has unveiled a couple new physically small and power sipping HDMI receivers for home theater hardware that have some nice features inside.

I live just outside of one of the largest cities in my part of Texas. Even with me so close to a metropolitan area, my house is on a rural power co-op and that means that the power goes out if a dog up the street farts twice in a row. The thing that really pisses me off about the power going to so much is that it always happens right in the middle of something I want to watch. More than power outages though the power will brown out for a bit and make the TV turn off. I really hate that.

Home theater fans that have multiple 3D sources like cable boxes, Blu-ray players and game consoles might have the need for a converter box that can handle those multiple inputs and shoot them out to a projector. If you are one of these folks a new offering from Optoma called the 3D-XL will ship in December.

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The product is called the 3D-XL and the thing is compatible with HDMI 1.4a inputs and supports multiple 3D devices. It can switch between 2D and 3D inputs and only works with DLP projectors. Those projectors don't have to be the Optoma brand, any DLP projector will work.

The 3D-XL supports 1080p 3D content and uses passive 3D glasses. It ships with one pair of 3D glasses and additional pairs of glasses are about $90. I wondering the glasses that we typically recycle after seeing a 3D flick in the theater will work for the device. The 3D-XL Converter box will sell for $499 at Amazon.

I am really looking forward to WiFi Direct being integrated into all sorts of products. WiFi Direct is a new spec that was officially launched not too long ago. It allows devices to directly connect to each other using WiFi giving lots of bandwidth and circumventing the need for a router and other tech usually needed for setting up a wireless network.

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The specification opens up some really cool possibilities. Things like connecting directly from your iPhone to an Android device to transfer a file or video. Streaming a video from your iPhone directly to a TV in the living room and sharing of web connections. It appears that the first product to use WiFi direct is the LG BD690 Blu-ray player.

The device has WiFi Direct Certification and which only one device needs to be WiFi Direct certified you would be able to connect any WiFi packing device directly to the Blu-ray player. You will be able to sit across the room, stream that video you made on your smartphone to the player and see the video on TC. Other than the WiFi direct support, specs for this machine are scant. This thing is very interesting.

NVIDIA has been pushing its 3D Vision stereoscopic support for what feels like a long while now and AMD got in on the game via its HD3D Technology open eco-system with the launch of its Radeon Catalyst 10.3 driver back in March. Who are we missing, though? Oh, Intel!

During our visit to the ASRock headquarters today, we got an early look at one of their Intel H67 Express based motherboards and noticed something interesting on the packaging. Something along the lines of "Intel" and "3D" in the same line got our attention pretty quickly.

Over the last year or so Netflix has gone from something I would have never considered joining after experienced years ago with never getting the DVDs I wanted to see to something that I am very interested in trying. The change for me is completely due to the streaming offerings that Netflix has today. Netflix has done so well with its streaming offerings that Netflix CEO Reed Hastings has stated previously that the company is a streaming firm that also ships DVDs.

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Hastings was on hand at the Web 2.0 Summit and offered some insights into the values of mobile apps for Netflix and what affect those mobile apps have had on the bottom line at the company. Hastings said in a nutshell, that mobile apps for the iPhone and iPad have had a minimal effect on the bottom line for Netflix. Hastings went so far as to say people aren't interested in streaming long-form video to mobile devices.

He did point out that when Netflix launched on the PS3 and Xbox 360 it made a huge improvement in the number of users that Netflix boasted. I would think that some of the hesitation in steaming content on the iPhone and iPad comes from the fact that data plans have horrible limits and streaming one flick on a tiered plan could mean you are out of data from the month. Mobile companies and their data limits have killed the streaming market for mobile devices in my opinion.

When it comes to the flat panel TV market in the US one of the leading companies is Vizio. The company has been selling HDTVs for a much shorter time than other makers have, but it is one of the most popular brands in the country. This is due to the low prices and nice features the TVs offer consumers. One of the most popular lines of TV that Vizio offers is the XVT brand. Vizio has announced that it has added three new 3D TV models to the XVT series.