Netflix has just released its second quarter 2012 earnings report, in which the video rental veteran outpaced estimates, improving on last quarter and meeting most expectations and even beating some. Revenue increased to $889 million compared to the same period for 2011. Earnings per share came in at $0.11 per share. In the weeks leading up to the release, analysts had been projected Netflix to… → Read More
Bam. If you’ve ever had to sit through a modern educational kids movie, you’ve realized they’re garbage. Junk like Diego and Baby Einstein are useless educationally and, in comparison to Looney Tunes and the like, absolute pablum. Now parents won’t feel guilty because little Mason and Kirsten aren’t learning how to say “monito” through video watching. It is written that 12- to 24-month olds get no… → Read More
Warner Bros. has agreed a new deal with Redbox that will give Redbox access to its DVDs, but only 28 days after the retail release. The move is designed to encourage people to actually buy the shiny, new DVDs when they come out. Why is that a problem? → Read More
As William Gibson said, “The future is already here – it is just unevenly distributed.” A few years ago I thought streaming video was an impossible dream. Networks were too slow, we said, and no one cared about streaming. A few us held the torch high and shouted in a stentorian voice “We shall stream!” but it was still not to be. We had TiVo, but that was securely ensconced on a hard drive in a… → Read More
Know that little button that pops up that lets you buy DVDs on Netflix. It’s going away. They’ll probably sell all their old DVDs to wholesalers and save on the cost of shipping unwanted DVDs at a significant discount. → Read More
In yet another ridiculous and short-sighted move, “the nation’s top movie companies” have filed suit against RealNetworks due to the release of RealDVD. Oh my god. Every time I think these heads of industry can’t get any more stupid, they do something like this. What are they going to accomplish here? They’re telling consumers that they can’t back up their own… → Read More
I know I start a lot of posts by saying that I’m skeptical about this or that, but this time I’m serious. The people attempting to popularize the scented DVD will, I think, encounter same obstacles as those who are attempting to make scented laptops the new thing. What are these obstacles, you ask? That depends, are delusions obstacles? Rub and Smell discs are created with scented inks… → Read More
Dell is apparently getting ready to offer a Qflix-compatible DVD burner as a $120 add-on to some of its computer packages. The technology works by burning DVDs with CSS copy protection so that they’re “functionally identical to standard retail DVDs,” according to the Qflix web site. The system is in use for many of those DVD-burning kiosks we’ve been hearing about. The drive will allow you… → Read More
In the sheer hopes that The Dude does, in fact, abide, Universal Studios will be releasing a 10th anniversary edition of The Big Lebowski. You can pre-order it from Amazon.com for a measly $24 if you want to get a head start. The two-disc set comes packed inside a bowling ball — a bowling ball! – and is “loaded with all-new bonus features that will take you beyond the movie!” The Big… → Read More
Dave Zatz of Zatz Not Funny! recently took a disposable Flexplay DVD for a spin and, although he’s “publicly poo-pooed the idea of disposable DVDs,” Zatz found that disposable DVDs might be able to gain favor with frequent travelers. He grabbed a copy of Disturbia for $6 before boarding a recent flight and was actually able to use the DVD past its 48-hour expiration limit (the discs are… → Read More
Welcome to the Unreasonable Stance, where our own John Biggs takes the minority opinion on a tech matter and defends it with convenient data, spun numbers, fanboyism, and insults until he proves, without a doubt, that those that disagree with him are filthy mouth-breathers. What was the first thing you bought in January 1990? If you said “Food” or “a tankful of gas,”… → Read More
In China, if you want to buy a legitimate DVD of a movie made by Paramount or Warner Brothers, it’ll soon cost you only $3 and will be available two weeks after the movie’s theatrical release. That being said, $3 is “more than double the typical price for illicit street copies of the same movies,” according to Ars Technica. And pirates don’t have much incentive to… → Read More
Thieves broke into Silver Platters, a Seattle video store, and made off with their entire Blu-ray selection. That’s right. They ignored the HD-DVD stuff completely. That’s basically the entire story (“Theives prefer Blu-ray.”), but I wonder why this is? Maybe because the PS3 is a subsidized Blu-ray player? I mean if you’re ganking DVDs you’re probably also not… → Read More
Well, now we’re getting somewhere in the war against piracy. Analysts at NPD have cracked the code to a pirates mind-set and discovered that people rarely “rip” or remove video from Digital Video Discs and instead “share” files on services like “Napstore” and “BitDonkey,” two “files sharing services.” “There is an urban myth… → Read More
As I was thinking about this week’s Help Key topic, I tried to remember a few things that really made me angry when I first started using computers and when I first started using a Mac. My biggest pet peeve? Dead DVDs and CDs that littered my home office like so many belly-up roaches. Optical disks are, at this point in the game, mostly being used to store media and, in a pinch, back-up… → Read More
In the odd world of high-end audio, everything is a factor. Take this little device, for example. It’s a media demagnetizer that allows you to demagnetize everything from your vinyl to your prized CDs. Why, you ask? I suppose it reduces crackle and prevents your Florgo 5000 $20,000 CD player from blowing up. How much does it cost to demagnetize your media? $2,900. A bit much, it seems, for… → Read More
I’ve been unloading a ton of old CDs and filling in holes in my collection through a site called Lala.com, a cheap-and-easy CD-trading site. Along the same line as Lala.com is BarterBee.com, which adds games and DVDs to the trading. The site, instead of just straight trades, lets you assign point totals to the stuff you’re trying to get rid of. Someone then pays you the points you… → Read More
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