A new startup dubbed Prescreen launched this week as a marketing platform for independent films.
Since indies typically find it challenging to gain exposure, Prescreen provides an alternative for filmmakers and distributors to generate buzz and potentially find an audience for their projects.
“Basically, Prescreen offers users the ability to subscribe to a daily email alert, which will inform them of one indie film per day,” reports TechCrunch. “The user can then visit Prescreen to view trailers for free and if interested, can rent movies to stream on demand for up to 60 days. Users can also earn rewards and discounts for sharing movie information on their social networks.”
Additionally, the service provides filmmakers and distributors with audience demographic data.
In response to the trend regarding more mainstream services such as Netflix and Hulu starting to feature independent movies, Prescreen founder Shawn Bercuson explains that the discovery mechanism for finding and marketing these titles remains weak. He hopes that Prescreen’s email model and social features will help address this issue.
Netgear will roll out its smart TV box, the $80 NeoTV Streaming Player, which provides streaming media from Netflix, Vudu, YouTube, Pandora, Napster, Picasa, blip.tv, Crunchyroll, Revision3 and others.
“Looks like Netgear is taking what it learned from licensing Roku’s tech last year and streamlining its connected TV offerings,” suggests Engadget.
The company’s press release indicates the device “opens up a world of Internet entertainment with streaming movies, TV shows, music, videos, news clips and games.” Users can also connect to friends through Facebook and Twitter channels.
“On the hardware side you’re looking at a glossy black box with a 300Mbps Wi-Fi radio, Ethernet, optical audio out and, of course, HDMI,” reports Engadget. The media player also includes a regular remote control for those who opt not to use the NeoTV Remote app via their smartphone.
The Roku 2 XS is currently the CNET pick for best media streaming solution under $100, but NeoTV may provide some competition.
Members of the International 3D Society from South Korea and the U.S. announced they would work together to advance 3D technology through joint development, production, marketing and distribution.
The signing ceremony took place at DreamWorks Animation last week.
As part of the agreement Sony, Disney and DreamWorks Animation will cooperate with Korean companies such as Korea Telecom, EBS and Skylife in an international effort to boost 3D adoption.
“A second agreement was signed between the two I3DS chapters and the Korea Radio Promotion Association to encourage educational programs and exchanges,” reports Variety. “Dr. Doo Hwan Choi, chairman of Korea’s I3DS chapter and CTO of Korea Telecom, which co-sponsored the ceremony, said the society’s educational programs will provide the kinds of opportunities and program development required by the burgeoning business.”
“CSI: Miami” editor and creator of 2-pop FCP informational site, Lawrence Jordan A.C.E., provides an alternative analysis of Apple’s much maligned Final Cut Pro X release.
In his recent Editors Guild Magazine article, Jordan discusses the history of FCP emerging as an affordable alternative to Avid, the unveiling of FCP X at the SuperMeet in Las Vegas, the subsequent negative backlash and comparisons to iMovie, Apple’s response to the debacle, and a refreshingly optimistic view of FCP’s future.
“Marketing debacles aside, once you dig in and start to really understand the breadth and depth of the things it can do, it’s hard to argue that Final Cut Pro X is not groundbreaking,” he writes. “It’s a slick, sophisticated and innovative rethinking of the editing paradigm that, considering Apple’s weight and power in the marketplace, will very likely be embraced by an entire new generation of media creators — people who will be crafting stories into the future, for platforms and devices that don’t even exist yet.”
Jordan concludes on a promising note: “Although I can’t recommend it to my fellow editors for editing features or television in its current incarnation (after all, it is only version 1.0), I look forward to what Final Cut Pro X will have to offer as it matures and as Apple begins to deliver on promises of a professional-level product that meets the needs and expectations of both its new and experienced users. I guess we will just all have to wait and see.”
French company Movea is looking to provide motion control options for TV and set-top box manufacturers.
The company’s MoveTV platform offers remote control technology to OEMs, and “opens up the company’s tools to developers for building games and apps,” reports Engadget.
The post lists early partners: Korean cable provider C&M Media — and Remote Solution, which “will be licensing Movea’s SmartMotion and integrating MoveTV into the set-tops provided to C&M.”
“MoveTV is the first platform that takes an ecosystem approach, offering an integrated suite of SmartMotion technology components tailored to the needs of service providers, application developers and the different PayTV ecosystem partners. MoveTV platform components work together seamlessly on the backend and are designed to be modular, giving ecosystem partners the flexibility to adopt different levels of motion-driven functionality and capabilities,” says Sam Guilaumé, CEO of Movea.
Intel introduced its new Haswell architecture this week at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco. The Haswell technology is a few generations away, but is already impressing analysts.
John Brownlee, writing for Cult of Mac, explains that Haswell was created using a 22 nanometer 3D transistor process, which makes possible ARM-like power consumption on an x86 chip. “That means all day battery life, as well as ten days of connected standby,” writes Brownlee.
The architecture reportedly uses up to 20 times less power than current Intel chips, and can actually run on a solar cell, suggesting that future MacBooks would theoretically have no constraints on battery life.
According to Brownlee, the Haswell architecture has some serious potential: “You think those new Sandy Bridge MacBook Pros are beasts? Just wait a couple years. That’s when Apple will be able of releasing bleeding edge MacBooks capable of not only running for 24 hours on a single charge, but of recharging their cells as they run by sucking up the ambient light in the room around them. Wow.”
Facebook has unveiled improvements to its “friends” lists with a new feature dubbed “Smart Lists” that automatically generates friend groups so that users no longer need to manage their own lists.
The improvement — which follows the lead of popular Google+ features — is currently based on categories that create lists based on workplace, school, family and city. “For example, if a user lists their college on their profile, Smart Lists will automatically find all their friends that did the same, and group them together for easier sharing of content between them,” reports CNET.
While the social networker has previously made list creation available, the company explains that users complained about “how time-consuming it is to organize lists for different parts of your life and keep them up to date.” These improvements should address this concern. Facebook also points out that users can still manually add or remove friends from their lists.
Additionally, a new “Close Friends and Acquaintances Lists” component has been added. The option allows users to categorize friends into either their “Close Friends” list or mere “Acquaintances.” The distinction will help funnel updates through the news feeds; users will see all updates from close friends and just important updates from acquaintances.
Americans currently spend more than 22 percent of their online time engaged with some form of social media, indicates a new report from Nielsen.
According to the research company’s “State of the Media: The Social Media Report,” these networkers spent 53.5 billion minutes on Facebook in May of this year (following Facebook was Blogger, Tumblr, Twitter and LinkedIn).
With 70 percent of users now shopping online, social media has become a crucial tool for many companies, says Nielsen executive Radha Subramanyam. “Social media is becoming increasingly mainstream,” she notes, and as a result, “there’s a need for companies to engage even more strategically in the space” than they already do.
It is interesting to point out that in regards to the Facebook tracking, 62 percent of the visitors were females. Additionally, while more women than men were reported to watch video clips on blogs and social networks, men streamed more videos and spent more time actively watching them.
Part of President Obama’s proposed American Jobs Act includes exempting small businesses that receive startup funds through “crowdfunding” from having to pay the Securities and Exchange Commission.
If the newly proposed $447 billion plan was to pass through Congress, it could impact services such as Kickstarter, possibly turning the “crowdfunding” model into an “investment mechanism for a whole new generation of small business,” suggests Digital Trends.
The plan would allow individuals to invest in a piece of the company (instead of the current model that offers rewards such as an early-run edition of the product), but without the company having to pay SEC fees.
“…[G]adget-makers are already using crowdfunding platforms to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars in pure donations – imagine the possibilities if these small-dollar donors became investors with a stake in the venture,” reads a post on WhiteHouse.gov.
Kickstarter, for example, has already helped more than 10,000 projects by raising more than $75 million in pledges. Digital Trends indicates that currently, “Out of all projects submitted to Kickstarter, 44 percent go on to meet their fundraising goals.”
Details of the plan can be found in a White House website post on innovation and entrepreneurship.
Adobe announced at IBC in Amsterdam that it has acquired certain assets of IRIDAS, “a leader in high-performance tools for digital color grading and enhancement of professional film and video content, including stereoscopic technology.”
The deal is part of Adobe’s efforts to invest in its own video software solutions, Premiere Pro and After Effects, at a time when videography is democratizing (especially with the arrival of video SLRs) and some consumers are frustrated by changes to Final Cut Pro.
“The IRIDAS Speedgrade software offers the ability to refine video in a number of ways, notably what’s called color grading, which can shift a video’s color tones to give a particular look,” reports CNET.
According to Adobe’s press release: “With the addition of IRIDAS technology, Adobe Creative Suite Production Premium and Adobe Creative Suite Master Collection, the world’s leading video tools for professionals, are expected to gain a comprehensive set of tools so video editors can manipulate color and light for any type of content, including professional film and television. The addition of premier color grading tools exemplifies Adobe’s commitment and leadership in the digital film and video space.”
Adobe also explained that the deal will help the company move forward in regards to the growing trend in 3D video.
The first BitTorrent certified HDTV was demonstrated at the IFA trade show in Berlin last week, although ZDNet points out that torrent fans will be “hard-pressed to get their hands on one (especially in the U.S.).”
The Vestel prototype uses BitTorrent’s Chrysalis platform to simplify the process of downloading and converting torrents to view.
Although the idea may be exciting to many, it’s a bit early to celebrate. “Not surprisingly, there’s no information about any kind of release dates or distribution model for the TV (or even basic specs like screen sizes, etc.),” reports ZDNet. “Vestel is obviously not a household name, and past BitTorrent-based networking products from the likes of Netgear haven’t been runaway successes.”
“Major retailers might not want to stock a BitTorrent TV for fear of offending their digital content partners,” adds the post, “so this might be a niche product that you’d have to track down online. Or it could wind up being vaporware altogether.”
ZDNet asks its readers if they would consider buying a BitTorrent TV — a good question for our ETCentric crowd. What are your thoughts?
Viewsonic announced it will axe the launch of its planned smart HDTV, which would have run Boxee’s media center software. Coupled with Logitech’s price cut for Google TV, it seems there is little demand for smart TVs that are connected to the Internet.
However, some analysts believe that may change.
“The Logitech Revue and Boxee were both originally priced considerably higher than the $99 Apple TV, which has sold relatively well on Amazon, despite only being what Steve Jobs famously referred to as a ‘hobby’ for the company,” reports ReadWriteWeb.
We’re all expecting the future living room to be Web-connected and interactive — as initial steps are taken by mobile technology, social networking and second screen apps — but what we don’t know is exactly how this will play out. Apple has long been rumored to be working on a smart HDTV that would possibly play a more prominent role in our living rooms.
Will Apple TV jumpstart the smart TV market? ReadWriteWeb points out: “If Apple’s impact on the markets for smartphones and tablets is any indication, an Apple-branded HDTV may serve to popularize connected TVs in a way that Boxee and Google TV have failed to thus far.”
YouTube co-founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen are taking over Delicious from Yahoo and will attempt to breathe new life into the social bookmarking service.
“Created in 2003, Delicious lets people save links from around the Web and organize them using a simple tagging system, assigning keywords like ‘neuroscience’ or ‘recipes,'” reports the New York Times. “It was praised for the way it allowed easy sharing of those topical links. The site’s early popularity spurred Yahoo to snap it up in 2005 — but in the years after that Yahoo did little with it.”
The two men want to change that. “Twitter sees something like 200 million tweets a day, but I bet I can’t even read 1,000 a day,” explains Chen. “There’s a waterfall of content that you’re missing out on.”
“You’re Googling around and have eight to 10 browser tabs of results, links to forums and message boards, all related to your search,” he said. The new Delicious, he added, provides “a very easy way to save those links in a collection that someone else can browse.”
Despite the lack of attention from Yahoo, Delicious still draws about half a million visitors a month, according to comScore. Chen and Hurley plan to “invite the earliest users to test a version of the new site and solicit feedback about the designs and features,” indicates the article.
Liberty Global unveiled a new video delivery platform at IBC in Amsterdam that the company claims will reinvent television by combining the interactivity of the Web with cable and personalized content.
The multimedia gateway will create a wireless network that connects the TV to personal devices such as computers, tablets and smartphones, reports Communications Technology.
The technology, dubbed Horizon, centers on a PC as “the heart of the digital home,” includes a 3D user interface, and is presently undergoing field trials in the Netherlands. Liberty Global suggests it will be commercially available next year.
Sixty content providers — including YouTube, Facebook and Twitter — have already signed up to develop applications for the platform.
The platform has a number of tech partners including Samsung, which built the multimedia home gateway, powered by the Intel Atom CE Media Processor.
NAGRA Media Access will provide the conditional access solution that will support MoCA and Wi-Fi, and participate in the Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) ecosystem.
Facebook’s revenues have doubled the first half of 2011 to $1.6 billion, putting the social network on course to possibly earn $4 billion this year.
“It’s simply too late for anyone, perhaps even Google, to create a social network that can compete with Facebook,” writes Robert Hof in a related story.
Reuters suggests this news underscores the social networker’s appeal to advertisers. “We really see Facebook as becoming like the operating system for delivering ads on the Internet,” said Dave Williams, CEO of Blinq Media.
Williams added that Facebook’s “like” feature, that now helps endorse products and companies, provides valuable data that other online services can’t match.
“Companies like Yahoo are relying on third party user behavioral data based on things like cookies. On Facebook that’s data that users have revealed about themselves,” he said.
“The price that companies pay for every consumer that clicks on a Facebook ad increased 62 percent between the fourth quarter of 2010 and the second quarter of 2011, according to Efficient Frontier, another firm that helps companies deliver ad campaigns on Facebook,” reports Reuters.
