“The Motion Picture Association of America released statistics today saying that Chinese theatrical revenue grew 35 percent to nearly $2 billion last year, making China the world’s third biggest film market behind the U.S. and Japan,” reports paidContent. “More quietly, though, a U.S.-based upstart VOD distributor, YOU On Demand, might be emerging as an even greater force for U.S. studio profits in China.”
YOU On Demand entered China under a 20-year exclusive contract from the government to run national VOD services.
The New York-based company, run by former professional wrestler Shane McMahon, drew attention last year when it signed Warner Bros. to the first VOD deal in China. Within the last month, the company announced agreements with Disney, Lionsgate and Magnolia Pictures. More studio partnerships are expected.
“YOU On Demand has been able to entice American studios with a ‘anything is better than nothing’ proposition, given the traditionally rampant piracy of U.S. video content in the region,” suggests the article. “Going forward, the company projects sizable revenue for its U.S. partners, who provide their video content on a revenue share basis under which they control a majority interest.”
Market research firm Penn Schoen Berland recently polled 750 social network users ages 13 to 49 regarding their interests in social media and entertainment.
According to THR, 90 percent of respondents “view social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook as a new form of entertainment, and more than half say social media sites are important tastemakers in determining what to watch and buy. Perhaps more surprising, 80 percent of television viewers visit Facebook while they watch.”
“The poll found that a majority of 18-to-34-year-olds believe using social media while watching a movie in a theater would add to their experience, and nearly half would be interested in going to theaters that allowed texting and Web surfing,” reports THR.
“Millennials want their public moviegoing experience to replicate their own private media experiences,” says pollster Jon Penn. “Having dedicated social-media-friendly seats, or even entire theaters, can make the moviegoing experience more relevant and enjoyable for them.”
Adobe is currently offering a free beta download of Photoshop CS6 for both Mac and Windows. The first major upgrade in two years, CS6 is expected to hit the market by June.
“Adobe says highlights of the next version of CS6 include an addition to its content-aware component called Patch, similar to Clone, where users can choose a sample area they want to patch and then blend pixels ‘for a stunning result,’” reports Digital Trends.
Adobe is emphasizing dramatic enhancements to speed and performance for the new release.
“The final product will come in two versions — the standard Photoshop CS6 and the more expensive Extended edition with its extra features,” explains the post. “The free beta version offers users the full Photoshop experience.”
The latest Android tablet from Acer is the quad-core Iconia Tab A510, which the company claims is its fastest tablet to date.
According to Acer, the upgraded processor offers “three times the graphics performance compared to previous generation processors.”
The A510 will include the latest Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. Additional features: 10.1-inch screen, 1280 x 800 resolution, 1080p video playback, Dolby Digital sound, 32GB memory and two cameras.
Pre-installed apps include Polaris Office 3.5, Evernote, Netflix, Kindle and Google Music.
Pre-orders for the $450 tablet began yesterday. “While there are no words yet on when the tablet will ship, the special edition models will celebrate and sponsor the upcoming 2012 Olympic games in London by featuring the five Olympic rings on the back of the tablet,” reports Digital Trends.
Spotify has added 12 new tools to its app approach to music streaming, including: TweetVine, Def Jam, Filtr, Digster, Classify, Hot or Not, Domino and more.
According to Digital Trends, Spotify “now has more than 10 million active users and over three million paying subscribers.”
“For all its faults (and it isn’t faultless), the service is capitalizing on its idea of being ‘the OS of music,’ and consumers are liking it,” indicates the post.
The majority of the new apps address music search and discovery, tour dates, new releases, curated playlists, other related data and social interaction. Digital Trends provides a brief description of each app.
Competition in this space has seen numerous changes of late, more of which is expected to play out this year. “We think there’s room to grow — and we think there’s room for multiple services,” Rdio CEO Drew Larner recently explained in an interview. “It’s inevitable we’re going to see a shakeout, probably in the next 12 to 16 months. There’s going to be some consolidation.”
Cameron Pace Group is focusing on 3D workflow and business models, and joining groups to rally support for their efforts. The Sports Video Group this week welcomed CPG as a platinum sponsor.
“When Cameron and Pace joined forces 12 years ago, their mission was to create a new entertainment experience for feature films,” reports SVG. “More recently, the mission of their company, which was formed last year, has expanded to include the non-theatrical broadcast world.”
CPG has been extending this mission to include sports broadcasting. The company supports “ESPN 3D and CBS Sports, with their 3D sports productions, including US Open tennis, The Masters golf, NBA All-Star Game, and MLB Home Run Derby.”
CPG’s sports production is centered on the company’s Shadow D technology, an integrated 2D/3D camera system that captures both 2D and 3D images at the same time.
“By combining the 2D and 3D deliverables, CPG hopes to push the ubiquity of 3D in all markets, whether feature film, episodic television, or sports broadcast,” explains SVG.
At the Adobe Digital Marketing Summit in Salt Lake City, Viacom unveiled a new ad service called Surround Sound.
The service will enable advertisers to reach audiences across every screen on which Viacom has a presence — from television and online video to premium displays, mobile or other digital platforms.
Surround Sound will be available for Viacom media networks such as MTV, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, Spike and VH1. It is powered by Adobe’s AudienceManager platform.
“With Surround Sound we’re able to extend those audience buys across all of our properties, find those individual unique audience segments — what we’re calling ‘pinpoint accuracy’ — to be able to serve them targeted and most relevant ad experiences,” explains Josh Cogswell, SVP of digital products at Viacom.
Surround Sound offers advertisers scalable media buys across nearly 100 million homes on-air, more than 80 million unique visitors online, and the mobile and email users the company reaches globally.
According to Centris Research, one in four U.S. homes had a Blu-ray player in Q4 of 2011, an increase of 47 percent from the previous year.
DVD player ownership also showed gains, increasing to 91 percent of households, a 4 percent increase over 2010. And DVR household penetration rose 4 percent during the time period, to 38 percent.
The Centris report, which was based on 2,000 monthly survey respondents, also found that HDTV penetration grew 6 percent to 63 percent, and “high-definition TV service from multichannel video program distributors increased 11 percent to 42 percent of households,” reports Home Media Magazine.
“It is the Blu-ray market that continues to drive packaged media sales and generate higher margins for studios than standard DVD, disc rentals, transactional video-on-demand and electronic sellthrough,” explains the article. “The format also is a foundation in Hollywood’s effort to launch cloud-based digital locker UltraViolet.”
Casting and production has begun for a new media project called “Cybergeddon,” intended to serve as “a groundbreaking motion picture event which will bring to life the growing threat of cybercrime,” according to a BusinessWire press release.
Anthony E. Zuiker and his production company Dare to Pass teamed with Yahoo! and Dolphin Digital Studios to launch the project. Zuiker turned to Norton by Symantec for “technical credibility and security insights to help inform and guide the narrative.”
From the press release: “’Cybergeddon’ is the evolution of the crime genre,” says Zuiker. “Through an invaluable partnership with Norton and embracing the forward-thinking vision of Dolphin Entertainment, ‘Cybergeddon’ will be a motion picture event released through Yahoo!’s global online distribution. Instead of opening ‘wide’ at 5000 screens, ‘Cybergeddon’ has the potential to premiere on 50 million online screens all over the world at the same time. This global distribution model is the future of storytelling with unprecedented scale.”
“Cybergeddon” is scheduled to launch on Yahoo! this Fall as a series of sequential installments, “through an immersive storytelling, social media and gaming experience,” explains the release.
Smithsonian provides an interesting overview of the “transhumanist” movement that suggests we are becoming the engineers of our own evolution through tools such as gene manipulation, nanomedicine and the replacement of body parts with manmade devices.
“Enhanced humans might inject themselves with artificial, oxygen-carrying blood cells, enabling them to sprint for 15 minutes straight,” reports the article. “They could live long enough to taste a slice of their own 250th birthday cake. Or they might abandon their bodies entirely, translating the neurons of their brains into a digital consciousness.”
The article cites a bionic eye and magnetic sensors to augment the sense of touch as examples of technologies that fuel the movement.
Transhumanism is described as largely secular for those who believe technological change will gradually become a part of everyday life.
Others, however, suggest there are religious undertones, especially for those who believe there will come a time when only the humans that can merge their minds with intelligent machines will survive.
“Transhumanists say we are morally obligated to help the human race transcend its biological limits; those who disagree are sometimes called Bio-Luddites,” notes the article.
Nintendo announced it has sold 4.5 million 3DS handhelds in the U.S during its first year of availability, numbers that exceed the launch of the Nintendo DS.
According to Digital Trends, the figure marks “a very impressive turnaround” for the handheld gaming system, which had a “very rocky start.”
“How has Nintendo managed to turn the 3DS around?” asks the article. “Two ways: pricing and content.”
Since early criticism focused on unit cost and lack of compelling games, Nintendo reduced the retail price from $250 to $170 in the U.S. This was followed by the long-promised availability of new 3D content, including versions of Nintendo’s own Zelda and Mario franchises.
The result was a sharp increase in sales, placing the 3DS neck-and-neck with the Nintendo Wii console during the same year.
Video has most likely been an additional factor in the 3DS turnaround, since the device also features access to Nintendo Video and Netflix streaming.
Hulu announced an update to its user interface with a video player that is 55 percent larger than the previous version.
This won’t necessarily impact those users who regularly view movies or TV shows in the full screen mode, but should prove to be a useful upgrade for others.
The interface design also features “a new frame and a drop-shadow, and it sits over a large, dark gray video matte,” reports The Next Web.
“In addition to the larger size player, the site also implemented a number of design changes to emphasize the content,” notes VentureBeat in a related post. “All the details — like the name of the show, episode title, running time, etc. — have been moved underneath the video player. It seems odd at first but I’m guessing the majority of people won’t even notice once their show starts playing. Also, the background surrounding the video player is much darker.”
The number of job opportunities for cloud-computing professionals is increasing at a rapid rate, and the current talent pool may not be large enough to meet the demand.
According to Wanted Analytics, there has been a 92 percent rise in cloud-related job postings compared with a year ago and more than four times the level in 2010.
Job listings with the highest demand include software engineers, systems engineers and network administrators. Companies advertising the highest number of postings include VMware, Microsoft, Amazon.com, URS Corp. and Google.
Leading locations for cloud-based jobs: San Jose, Seattle, Washington DC, San Francisco and New York City.
“With the demand for cloud skills growing so quickly, the gap between hiring demand and talent supply across the United States is getting larger and causing more difficulties in sourcing candidates,” the report states.
“Microsoft has been working on ‘Lifebrowser,’ a software akin to an intelligent search engine that collects, organizes and curates your virtual life,” reports Digital Trends.
The prototype curation software is essentially a “scaled down and personal solution” of the approach companies are taking with their “big data.”
“You can think of it as a smart search engine of your virtual proclivities,” adds Digital Trends. “Lifebrowser’s machine-learning algorithm will crawl through all of your online and offline activities, find only what it discerns as significant events in your life, and save the information in chronological order for later perusal.”
The software is designed to emulate how humans recall information. “You always think that machine learning is kind of cold,” explains Microsoft researcher Eric Horvitz. “This is showing that a model is not only learning about how I think, it’s also very warmly understanding what it means to capture humanity.”
No word on when the algorithm and timeline design may go public, although Digital Trends suggests it would be a nice addition to Windows 9.
DirecTV announced this week that it plans to adopt Ultra HDTV in the future and is already working on its spectrum needs.
According to Philip Goswitz, SVP Space and Communications R&D: “At DirecTV we see a couple of things happening. First, our subscribers are migrating away from Ku-band, and upgrading themselves to Ka-band and its HDTV services. In four or five years, our Ku-band [transmissions] could end. We are also developing the so-called Reverse Band for DBS services, and these are on our Road Map for future international services. 4000-line is exciting to us because of its image quality, and the potential for glasses-free 3D.”
Advanced Television reports that Japan’s introduction of Ultra HDTV is slated for 2020 and will use Ka-band. DirecTV is already using Ka-band in North America.
“But Ka-band doesn’t just mean broadband. To us it means broadcasting. The truth is that as our Ku-band transmissions end, then increasingly every dollar in revenue is attributable to Ka-band. We’ll be entirely Ka-band in about five years. Currently, of our total $27 billion in annual revenues, about $20 billion comes from Ka-band,” said Goswitz.
