Level Orange

With all the deals to be had on Black Friday this past November, I couldn’t help but be tempted to finally jump into the Blu-ray format. Ever since HD DVD fell by the wayside earlier this year, I had been resigned to simply watching movies on DVD as I had been for the past decade. I had placed my bet on a fledgling technology and simply lost out, so in a fit of disappointment, I found that I was fine with kicking it old school for the foreseeable future.

There was the matter of the investment I had already made into HD DVD, including the add-on for my Xbox 360 (which at the time was the cheapest way to get into the format) and a growing collection that stopped at 35 titles. Maybe more importantly, there were the underlying principles behind the rival HD formats and their backers–Toshiba and the HD DVD Consortium versus Sony and the Blu-ray Disc Association. In my mind, these corporate giants were slugging it out for different reasons and ultimately, I think the interests of Hollywood and Silicon Valley won out over that of consumers and end-users.

While that aspect of it all is probably the hardest pill to swallow, I’ve been able to look past it and consider what’s really the heart of the matter–being able to enjoy movies in high definition again. There was simply no other choice for building an “ultimate” collection of movies that didn’t revolve around (or at least involve) Blu-ray.

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Last week, Paramount held a screening of the upcoming The Curious Case of Benjamin Button using a new 2K digital cinema system when problems with the presentation caused the show to come to a dead stop.

There was a problem with the digital server — which had been rented for the screening — that resulted in the absence of the color red from the projected image, giving the film a washed-out look.

With other silmilar incidents happening during recent screenings of Quantom of Solace and Soderberg’s Che, the theater industry is raising concerns over just how reliable the new digital rollout across the country will be, and studios are wondering how incidents like this could affect box office take and audiences alike

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OK, so this might not be the most accurate depiction of me, but then again, I did try to make it as accurate as possible. I’ve played around with the new Avatars with the new Xbox 360 dashboard (wisely being marketed as the New Xbox Experience, or NXE, for anyone not into gaming), and I have to say, it’s kinda neat.

I’m not particularly a fan of the plans to capitalize on things like clothes and accessories and whatnot for the Avatars by game publishers and licensors, but I can understand the business sense of it. And after personally tinkering around with the system, I can see where it’s starting to come up short, assumedly so that third parties can come in and add even greater value to it.

I’ll be interested to see just how much a Halo or Rock Band t-shirt costs for an Avatar. One can only hope that a whole new outfit wouldn’t be much more than say, a set of gamerpics (roughly a buck or two), but with some publishers eager to nickel-and-dime gamers for every little item, I wouldn’t be surprised to see purchases like this broken down even further. “Want a new bracelet? How about a new baseball cap? That’ll be $1 each, please.”

Yeah, let’s hope not.

Now in the iTunes App Store: The Iconfactory’s Frenzic! Looks like fun and at a good price point, especially with the quality that Iconfactory brings to their work.

Wolfgang Ante, the game’s creator and lead engineer explained, “The iPhone’s revolutionary touch-screen interface combined with a simple premise that takes only minutes to learn, makes Frenzic a compelling game for players of all ages.”

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Interesting that the President of all people in today’s world has to go without e-mail. People are constantly shocked that the last Bill Clinton and George W. Bush didn’t use computers much, and now we know why. Could it be Obama that changes this trend and builds an open, mobile line of communication with his presidency?

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Photographers, cinematographers, enthusiasts, everybody who’s ever captured an image on film or digital, REJOICE! RED has unveiled their DSMC camera system and man is it some heavy business. Coming in two flavors, the Scarlett and EPIC, RED’s new modular, highly-configurable approach means you can get exactly the camera you want and not lose a single bit of quality or reliability. LINK

The makers of the i.TV app for the iPhone and iPod touch announced today that now users will be able to manage their Netflix queue and rent movies for home delivery and instant playback on PCs, all directly from within the i.TV interface. On a related note, i.TV plans other big announcements with third parties in the future, so you can expect big things to come. If you haven’t already, you can download i.TV for free from the iTunes App Store.

This sounds like a pretty sweet setup, if you ask me. I downloaded the i.TV app a while back but rarely got any use out of it, especially when just about every TV service has a built-in guide. The addition of Netflix account management really makes this shine, though. I’ve been thinking about it for a while now, but I guess I really gotta get back into Netflix again.

According to MySpace, a recent study by Nielsen shows that the popular social networking site has risen above sites like Yahoo!, Google and AOL for 15-24 olds to become the top source of movie information, based on a recent survey of activity for The Dark Knight.

That’s right. One study based on the findings surrounding the biggest film of the summer and MySpace says “we’re number one!”. Never mind sites like IMDb or even Wikipedia that people might use to look up and reference information about movies. Thanks MySpace, maybe it’s because I’m not in the 15-24 age group, but I don’t really think I’ll be looking to you for movie information.

Just like Redbox did a couple of weeks ago, Houston-based TNR Entertainment Corp. have acquired legal counsel to take on Universal Studios’ new policy on kiosk-based DVD rental services. Operating kiosks under the names The New Release and MovieCube, TNR is preparing to address the same changes to Universal’s policy starting December 1st that would require a 45-day delay for new releases and number of items allowed in each kiosk among other ridiculous demands.

This after a week when the only two major new releases, The Incredible Hulk and The Strangers, were both from Universal and probably saw a fair amount of rental business. I picked up both of them over the weekend, but would Universal rather I have not rented those? Because if it were any other week with more appealing titles available and/or if there weren’t enough copies to go around, I probably wouldn’t have.

Apple recently swung its big legal stick at the Victoria School of Business and Technology claiming that the logo infringes their rights and suggests an affiliation with their company and/or products. While that’s currently up for debate, on thing that is clear is that Apple must’ve been chomping at the bit to rid the world of one more piece of crap logo design. Seriously, if it were me, I’d be more than eager to change my logo. To my Canadian friends, if you’re gonna try to align yourself with Apple, might as well do it justice, eh?