• Eight extra minutes of footage in the unrated version of Conquest of the Planet of the Apes
• Beyond the Forbidden Zone Adventure Game
• Science of the Apes: scientists, anthropologists and sociologists discuss the first film
• Evolution of the Apes: HD featurette that traces how the Planet of the Apes went from book to screen
• Impact of the Apes: HD featurette about how the story became a pop culture phenomenon
• HD “Making of” features for each sequel
• Commentary by composers, actors and make up artists.
• A Behind the Planet of the Apes documentary
• The original theatrical trailers
• Behind the scenes galleries

... and much much more! The five disk set will retail for roughly $160. [The HD Room]

Sure, this could be a novelty during their daily traffic reports, but more interestingly, the feed will be live any time that the chopper is in the air—including breaking news like fires, police chases and parade balloons gone amuck. WFLD will probably broadcast a better signal of these more intense moments as they go live to TV, but the point is more that viewers aren't defaulting to the choices of producers, directors or sponsors to get information from a major news outlet. Then again, it's such choices that save the average person from staring at webcams all day waiting for something to happen. [myfoxchicago via techcrunch]

Everybody Hurts
It's been discussed at length how brutal this contest was for Toshiba. But the Blu-ray members in the victory circle are licking some pretty serious wounds, too. Sony basically bet their entire company on the format—plowing over a billion dollars into the PS3 trojan horse, plus, as far as we know, another half billion on largesse for studios to put on Blu's stripes, for starters.

Chris Walker, Pioneer's senior product manager for Blu-ray told us he thought that the format war "affected Blu-ray prices substantially," and that "for a new technology to drop the prices by half within a year of coming out" seriously hurt everyone involved. People are still ready to complain about the relatively high price of Blu-ray players, but they are way lower than the manufacturers had planned, and now they can't recoup the high fixed development costs they would have with higher price tags during the first couple years on the market. DVD players were stratospherically priced for several years.

On the studio side, the drawn-out conflict was sapping both HD disc and DVD sales, as consumers waited for a victor and slowed down DVD purchases in anticipation. Everybody was losing, even the winners. It got so bad that we have reason to believe Sony didn't just urge Best Buy, Netflix and Wal-Mart to go exclusively Blu, but went so far as to ask Toshiba directly to please pull out.

Their pain, you're pay-ing
Point is, a lot of money was spent to hoist Blu-ray onto the winner's pedestal. Why do you care? Because it means manufacturers aren't rushing to drop player prices any further than they have already. Walker admitted the only reason players are as cheap as they are—calling $399 a year after the format's introduction a "bargain"—is because of the format war. Interestingly, Walker also told us that low hardware margins are part of the reason Toshiba mostly stood alone in standalone player production: "Why would Pioneer want to build one when Toshiba was selling them at $150?"

So, while Pioneer promises healthy competition between Blu-ray Disc Association members this year, don't expect it to be too healthy—the big price-killer among them is the PS3, ironically. The major force that drove down DVD-player prices years ago was the flood of cheap Chinese models at Wal-Mart, and the BDA is holding them at bay, refusing to license the tech to low-cost manufacturers for the time being. Piracy is implied as a concern, but the more obvious motive is to keep player prices as high as they can, while they can, to recoup the heavy losses incurred waging the format war in the first place. A $199 player with a Sony name on it is definitely at least a year away.

Spec Wars, SKU Times
We've already told you not to buy a Blu-ray player yet, citing the spec issue—if you buy a player without an Ethernet port, you're screwed when it comes to more updated specifications like BD-Live interactive content and picture-in-picture. But it's actually even crazier than we thought. When we finally see a geniune $199 Blu-ray player, it will more than likely be spec 1.1, so you'll get picture-in-picture, but there won't be any internet-fueled interaction, like that sweet-sounding AVP multiplayer game.

That's right, even after Blu-ray spec 2.0 players finally hit the market, new 1.1 spec players will continue to roll out as well, so the potential for consumer confusion will remain stratospheric. (Everyone should heed Sony CEO Stan Glasgow's own comment: "Any confusion curbs consumer demand.") See, the 2.0 spec is not mandatory for manufacturers, though 1.1 is. Consequently, the cheapest players we will see finally hitting shelves will be 1.1 (though all of Sony's actually will be 2.0 "capable" from here on out). Walker confirms that while he personally "would like to see BD-Live players only," even Pioneer "will be offering both types of players."

The different players will be labeled either "BonusView" or "BD-Live," not 1.1 or 2.0, which is good, because Glasgow doesn't "think consumers are that aware of 1.0, 2.0, whatever." Will they even know the difference between BonusView and BD-Live? Will they understand why a player they buy now won't access features on a disc they buy later, just because Sony says "that's the way it goes in the world"?

Content is King Queen
The spec issue is messy on the content front as well—and we're not just talking about clearly labeled discs. The 2.0 spec being optional on future players makes its feature set all the more frivolous—why spend a lot of money creating features only the richest Blu-ray users—a smaller fraction of an already tiny fraction—can access? For example, while Fox is definitely sporting wood for interactivity, others aren't as excited. Sony Home Entertainment biz dev VP Rich Marty told us it's "just the icing on the cake." Icing not everyone can lick.

On the other hand, things are mostly looking up on the new-release front for Blu—all of the major studios we talked to said that pretty much every major theatrical release will hit the format from here on out. It's the back catalog that's the prob, and it's going to be slow coming by most accounts. Not only will Universal probably take a very long time getting its current 150-disc HD DVD catalog out on Blu-ray, but other studios will most likely double dip, releasing the same movie a second time with better features and perhaps a cleaner transfer, before getting around to some of your favorite old chestnuts.

Speaking of Universal, we're currently looking at a months-long black hole of Universal, Dreamworks and Paramount's releases, thanks to their belated integration (or re-integration) into the Blu-ray fold. Not only will it be late spring or early summer before we see any of their flicks hit Blu, we're hearing that they might have trouble buying dual-layer 50GB Blu-ray discs to produce them on, because the more settled Blu-ray studios have already purchased the entire 2008 stock—not hard to do, thanks to the limited number of replication sites and lower yields. This means that they'll only have access to 25GB discs, which could mean fewer features and lower-quality video and audio.

If you don't think capacity is an issue—necessitating the dual-layer discs— a Disney spokesperson (not to mention Metal Gear guru Hideo Kojima) says otherwise: even 50GB isn't enough. Disney's upcoming Sleeping Beauty Platinum release is going to take up two discs: a 50GB double layer plus another 25GB one. While every release won't be a two-disc monster, the company tells us that "franchises like Pirates of the Caribbean or Narnia...also get similar kind of treatments." It also confirmed that, for the moment, Blu-ray disc replicators are "kinda limited."

The Real Enemy
Truthfully, these are all just minor issues. The biggest problem on Blu-ray's hands? DVD. It's entrenched, it's cheap, and for most people, it's good enough (especially upscaled on a 720p LCD from 8 or 10 feet away). Sony mouthpieces and execs laugh off the "threat" of video downloads, but they don't seem to laugh when you talk about the exact same content on DVD. Even while Glasgow assures us they "think [Blu-ray sales] can get up to DVD levels," he admits "there are some issues: upscaling DVDs is getting better and better." Sony continually must "convince people of the value of high definition."

In fact, everyone we talked to—in Hollywood or in hardware—emphasized the need to educate consumers about high def and convince them to make the switch. If it's so inevitable and obvious, why do they need to pour a load of money and ad time into it? Sony's major campaign for the entire year is "HDNA," all about educating consumers about HD.

The Sony brand might "hold up well during difficult economic times" but a recession will keep DVD looking pretty good to a lot of people, even ones who already bought an HDTV. Bundling players with HDTVs—which Glasgow said would happen soon—might spur adoption, but until the Wal-mart masses can easily (read: cheaply) adopt Blu-ray, it's not going to knock DVD players off shelves. That's several years out.

The Dim Light at the End of the Tunnel
Naturally, Blu-ray will only get better—the hardware will improve, the catalog will grow, the feature set will expand. Already standalone players load up much faster than craptastically slow players of yesteryear—one of Pioneer's new players, which will be announced shortly, already boasts a boot time of 14.8 seconds, nearly halving the time of the current fastest standalone player, Panasonic's BD-30, which stands at around 26 seconds. It's on those kind of things that Pioneer plans to compete on in the market, though it'll be asking a heavier price to get them.

Blu-ray will get cheaper though, slowly but surely. Competition between and among BDA members will nudge prices down to the $299 mark this year, and we'll see that mythic $199 mark within a year—with the Chinese cheap-player cavalry not far behind, ready to grind profit margins into oblivion. That's when we'll see mass adoption—when, from a consumer perspective, Blu-ray really "wins." Too bad, on the hardware side, there may not be any spoils left for the victors.

I mean, you can't have it both ways, studios. If you're going to restrict it to streaming and keep people from downloading to watch on their media extenders and portable devices, you can't try to protect your DVD sales by only tossing out a handful of episodes.

Just the other night I tried to watch an episode of Battlestar Galactica on there as I misplaced one of my DVDs and found that there were only a few episodes available, none of which from season 2, which I was looking for. I then poked around and tried to check out SNL and found that they only had four sketches and none of the musical performances from the most recent broadcast. And away to Bittorrent I went.

People can tell the difference between something designed only to tease and promote broadcast TV and DVD sales and something designed to be an actual entertainment destination. If you keep it gimped it's only ever going to be seen as the former, studios. Don't blow it. [Reuters]

Sony Pictures is also reaching in with both hands, though they're "not 100 percent sure [they're] going back on every disc" and will be looking at "different ways [they] can allow people to connect to a BD-Live site" for stuff that's already come out sans the BD Launcher. But they haven't figured that second part out yet.

To be fair, of all the Blu-ray studios, Fox is currently the most pumped about the interactive aspect—a big reason they helped build Blu along with Sony and friends. What Fox is adding doesn't make this a crap double dip, either: It's a multiplayer game woven into the film that you play as it progresses, attacking and killing other players in hopefully the most genuine film interaction to date. Not only do you upload your own avatar, it'll stay in memory and reappear when you buy future AVP titles. Sven Davison, Fox's VP of Worldwide Product Development and Production, said nothing he's seen on HD DVD has come close to this.

Davison also said Fox was looking at three other major franchises for a heavy interactive component. But other studios probably aren't going to be as scrupulous, because they primarily see interactivity as "icing on the cake" rather than potatoes to the 1080p-and-uncompressed-audio meat.

This of course opens the door for nearly everything already on BD to be double-dipped in the coming year—especially in cases like Warner's, since that studio has already launched more interactive versions of movies on HD DVD while simultaneously putting out lower-featured editions on BD. Would this have happened if the 2.0 spec had been mandatory from the start?

...carbonated and non-carbonated soft drinks; fruit drinks; fruit juices; mineral and aerated water; bottled drinking water; energy drinks; syrups and powders for making soft drinks and other beverages, namely soft drinks, fruit drinks and tea; coffee-flavored soft drinks; Ramune (Japanese soda pops); powders used in the preparation of isotonic sports drinks and sports beverages.

While the trademark filing could be defensive in nature, preventing others from marketing Slurms of their own, our stomachs are aflutter at the possibility of ingesting some giant slug ass juice. Who wants to lose some teeth? [trademork via bbgadgets]

We're not going to tell you that HD DVD will somehow come back from the grave to eat Blu-ray's brains or anything Romero-esque like that. Even China's CH-DVD—an easily mass-produced sibling to HD DVD—once a looming HD DVD mercenary force on the horizon, now seems to serve the opposite purpose. By keeping Chinese firms busy with something other than Blu-ray, Hollywood's movie content may be kept safe from piracy, and big electronics brands may be able to hold onto their profit margins—at least for a short while.

No, the earth is Blu, and we are at least grateful for having a winner. Now begins a different kind of shakeup, where once friendly compadres like Sony, Pioneer and Panasonic start to lock horns with one another. This will bring multiple benefits, but here's what all parties involved need to accomplish:

1. Get the Spec In Order
Now that Blu-ray is fully in the spotlight, it's got to get its act together spec-wise. You may recall that we lambasted many Blu-ray supporters for only building 1.0 spec players, including the $1000+ home-theater flagships from Sony and Pioneer. Except for Panasonic's DMP-BD30 and the PlayStation 3 with up-to-date firmware, no current Blu-ray player can even handle the 1.1 spec with picture-in-picture, already appearing in certain Blu-ray discs (and quite the handful of HD DVD titles—but we'll get to that).

The place to be is spec 2.0, referred to as "full profile." Suddenly, it's Sony who is looking the best here, with not only the amazingly upgradable PS3 but two new players announced this week, the BDP-S350 and S550. For $400 and $500 respectively, they are set to deliver all of the features promised in the Blu-ray palette, including both picture-in-picture and BD-Live internet connectivity (with USB storage for downloaded content). Nobody else, with the possible exception of Daewoo, has even muttered about a 2.0 spec player.

Samsung's BD-UP5000 dual-format player is purportedly compatible with 1.1, but besides the fact that it's pricey even at $550 and requires a firmware update for full compatibility, it'll soon be discontinued. Given our initial experience with it, we say that it's best to wait and see what its successor, the BD-UP5500, can do. Heck, dual-format playback may not be all that necessary for long. But that brings us to another reason why you should wait...

2. Finalize the Video Library
We only need dual-format players as long as the library is split down HD DVD and Blu-ray lines. We are waiting for Universal, Paramount and DreamWorks to jump to Blu, and even once they do, it's not a certainty that they can simply re-release everything currently out on HD DVD. Universal claims 150 titles—surely the Bournes will go Blu as soon as Uni does, but how long do I have to wait for a Blu-ray of The Big Lebowski? Hell, it's almost worth scooping up an ultracheap HD DVD player now just to enjoy that one movie alone, 47 or 48 times in a row. At any rate, some speculation suggests that the remaining HD DVD studios may not even come around until summer or fall, depending on weird smoke-filled-backroom negotiations with Toshiba.

Even when all the studios are on the Blu-ray tip, though, a new problem begins to surface: second-edition releases of movies already on Blu-ray. Think about it: a handful of big Warner titles like 300 and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix came out with more deluxe HD DVD versions which include picture-in-picture and certain online capabilities. Who's to say Warner won't re-release their 300 and Harry Potter Blu-ray discs with the same compelling extras, now that it's feasible on the Blu-ray platform? Warner is easy to single out because we have that comparison, but who's to say that half of the blockbuster movies out on Blu-ray now won't get a re-release with more interactive content when the spec 2.0 players saturate the market?

3. Bring On the Old-Fashioned Electronics Store Competition
Sony's more affordable new Blu-ray player will hit the market this summer for $400. Nothing built by Sony or anyone else should be considered before then, the one exception being the PS3. But even the Sony standalone at $400 is expensive, especially for a player whose capabilities are more or less the same as Toshiba's HD-A30 HD DVD player, now (in a price nose dive) selling for around $130. Only when Panasonic, Samsung and LG announce their own Blu-ray 2.0 players, will true competition finally exist. (Pioneer will launch a 2.0 player too, but it probably won't get involved in a price war.) It surely wouldn't be long after that that we see a full-spec Blu-ray player for $200 or maybe even less. Our bet is Christmas, since Sony doesn't seem like it will have anything on the market until "summer" and no one else is talking about their next Blu play.

There you have it, the three big reasons why you need to hold off on buying a standalone Blu-ray player, and amassing a library of Blu-ray to rival your intimidating DVD collection. Don't worry though. Your patience will have its rewards. And Christmas will be here again before you know it.

[Blu-ray on Giz; image source for "halt" parody graphic]

You pop in the special Digital Copy disc, and on a Mac, a window automatically pops open telling you to launch iTunes. In iTunes, you are directed to a page where—get this—you enter a code printed on slip inside the DVD case. The "download" completes, and you have a copy of the show that's identical in file format to anything you get from iTunes, and it's locked to your account in the same way. Only you copied it over from a disc. This just feels wrong.

As you might expect, the disc and code are useable just once. So why the hell was there a disc at all? I imagine this whole thing would be simpler if Fox would just print the slip and let you redeem it with a bonafide over-the-net download via iTunes.The version itself looks great, about equal to the DVD, quality wise, and far better than the downsized legal version that Toast 8 lets you move to your iPod if you TiVo'd it when it originally aired. (In case you're wondering, the DVD is good too, with a Seth MacFarlane/George Lucas interview and a reel showing all of the Family Guy Star Wars references throughout the years.)

I am a fan of this concept. DVD sales aren't doing so hot, and something like this could really perk them up. Think of all the TV series box sets that would be way more desirable if they came with an automatic iTunes version. Yes, I know there are ways to do it yourself, but those ways are time consuming, not to mention of legal dubiousness. (I think ripping a DVD for yourself is well within the fair-use doctrine, and that Roxio and Nero, not to mention iTunes, should be all over that, but I still worry that the legal squabbles will continually make it hard for mainstream software to embrace it. The music biz may be casting off DRM, but Hollywood is a much more organized, high-tech beast.)

Fox doesn't appear 100% committed to this. Maybe it was just the need to keep it hush-hush before the Jobsnote, but the case bears a single little sticker saying "Digital Copy," with no mention of iTunes anywhere. Nor was there a reference to this clearly valuable bonus feature anywhere on the case itself. Even on Amazon, there's no mention of the fact that you can rip it to your iTunes. That's why it was all the more surprising when I found the second disc inside: a whole disc wasted for something that they didn't even mention on the label. That's strange marketing, Fox. Very strange. [Official Site]

When we talked to Jodi Sally, Toshiba's VP of Digital AV Marketing, she said, "We still feel there's some value in HD DVD, but we're watching the market closely, waiting to see how sales go." Saying there's "still some value" in something is clutching at a reason not to throw it out, like your old bowling ball you haven't rolled in three years, or your dusty Laserdisc collection.

Consequently, we have a pretty good grip on where HD DVD and Universal stand. We think that rumors Universal's contract had expired and they're getting ready to jump are false for a couple of reasons, and not just because Graffeo told us: "Nobody talked to us. Everything that you see out there has never been substantiated."

We've heard on background from several insiders that Universal's contract with HD DVD runs through 2009, and that the contract is null only when the format is declared non-viable. Graffeo repeatedly placing the onus on Toshiba to declare HD DVD dead seems to confirm this. In addition to the above quote, we specifically asked him how HD DVD would react to Paramount jumping ship, and he responded "That's something you would have to ask Toshiba." In other words, everyone is basically waiting for the other shoe (or studio) to drop.

But several weeks ago, before Warner defected, things could have turned out quite different. One reliable source confirmed to us a few days before the Warner/Blu-ray deal went down, a Fox executive called Robbie Bach (Microsoft's head entertainment exec) confirming they were going exclusive to HD DVD, not Blu-ray. And if Fox went, the deal was that Warner would go, according to the same source. At the last minute, Fox decided to stick with Blu, effectively taking Warner with it. Toshiba's total surprise at the Warner shift corroborates that it was an 11th-hour move. Graffeo also confirmed that a bunch of HD DVD execs were on the plane to Vegas when the news dropped, so they had no idea.

So what happened? Don Lindich at the PIttsburgh Post-Gazette says Fox was handed $120 million by Sony to stay put, and Warner received around $500 million for painting itself Blu. BusinessWeek put the Warner number "closer to $400 million," which trumped the $100 million Toshiba was prepared to offer it. In our phone call with him, Warner's Kevin Tsujihara denied that a bidding war was a factor. While we believe money was on the table, we do believe that what Tsujihara is, strictly speaking, true.

Every studio wants the war to end—it's dragging down HD disc and regular DVD sales as people don't wanna buy Betamax 2 or get double-dipped with an HD version in a couple years. Warner Home Video is the biggest player in the video market, with a 19.7 percent market share, so it also had the most to lose with a drawn-out war slowly sapping away profits from both its foundation (DVD) and future platform (HD). Its market clout (plus Fox's follow-me plan) made it the Sandra Day O'Connor of the format war, allowing it tip the scales in favor of whichever side it landed on.

Let's talk about the timing. Another source told us that Warner had actually planned to make its announcement at CES. Making it just before CES effectively cut Toshiba and HD DVD off at the knees, and according to that source, led our man Billy G to chop out a 20-minute (?) portion of his keynote dedicated to HD DVD, in which Microsoft would declare a full-steam-ahead push.

The end result of the early announcement was the effective elimination of HD DVD from the show. Literally, the HD DVD camp canceled its own press event. The biggest beneficiary from the revised timeline was obviously the Blu-ray camp. The nagging detail here is that Warner's incentive to let the cat out of the bag early is seemingly only indirect—what did it directly gain from sucker punching Toshiba versus a slightly later announcement? Or would it have been more humiliating for Toshiba and the camp if Warner had smiled and hugged everybody through the show and then performed its judo chop?

The question of payouts is trickier. Why? Insiders tell us that the purported amounts—in the hundreds of millions, varying by camp and studio—are pittances in what is multi-billion-dollar game. It makes little sense to those in the know (on both sides) that the studios would be swayed to either side of the river by a drop in the bucket, or even a bucketful of money. (There is an exception or two, studios known for penny-pinching and an eagerness to jump at just a sliver of a profit.) More likely the payouts constituted good will or in some cases, just free money, as the commitment itself wasn't as hard as the coin.

We think the real power play, if there was one, came from within Sony, but it's hard to get to the bottom of it, given the number of Blu-ray proponents—i.e. mum cronies—in the CE business.

Where we officially are: The ball is in Toshiba's court, and Universal, Paramount and DreamWorks Animation are sticking with Toshiba until it calls it quits, which it may do if the market" for its players turns sour—according to Toshiba, the most recent price cuts may well lead to a sales bump before any kind of bitter end.

Where we actually are: Blu-ray execs are 100 percent confident they have won—publicly and privately in our conversations with them; dual-format swinger Samsung thinks HD DVD's back was broken on the Hollywood front and will be relegated to personally recorded content; an IDC analyst told us Toshiba may fall back on dual-format players, like Samsung and LG. It could have gone either way just a few weeks ago, but now it really is over for HD DVD.

Studios, execs and insiders: Wanna cut through the cloak-and-dagger BS and set the things straight for us and all consumers? Tell us the score, straight up, on the record.

–Additional reporting by Mark Wilson

Twentieth Century Fox & Apple Introduce iTunes Digital Copy

DVDs Include Free Copy of Movie for iTunes

MACWORLD SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 15 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Twentieth Century Fox and Apple(R) today announced Digital Copy for iTunes(R), which provides customers who purchase a DVD with an additional Digital Copy of the movie. Just like movies purchased from the iTunes Store, an iTunes Digital Copy can effortlessly be transferred to iTunes and then viewed on a PC or Mac(R), iPod(R) with video, iPhone(TM) or on Apple TV(R). The first DVD to make its debut with iTunes Digital Copy is the Special Edition DVD premiere of the Family Guy "Star Wars" parody, "Family Guy Presents: Blue Harvest," which is being released in stores today. Fox and Apple are planning to deliver many more DVDs with iTunes Digital Copy this year.

"One of the most requested features DVD buyers have been asking for is the ability to get the movies they bought into their iTunes library," said Jim Gianopulos, chairman and chief executive officer of Fox Filmed Entertainment. "We're thrilled to offer such an incredibly simple way for our customers to get even more out of their DVD purchase, and we look forward to releasing many more DVDs this year with iTunes Digital Copy."

"Now movie fans can easily transfer a free copy of the movie they purchase on DVD into iTunes," said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO. "DVDs containing an iTunes Digital Copy allow movie fans to get a copy of their movie which can be viewed on a computer, iPod, iPhone or on Apple TV."

The new iTunes Digital Copy provides a consumer friendly way to transfer a DVD purchase to a user's iTunes library. Once a customer buys the DVD, they insert it into their computer, enter a unique code into iTunes and iTunes automatically copies the movie to their iTunes library within minutes. Customers own the iTunes Digital Copy of the movie and it has all of the same great viewing options as other iTunes Store video content, including the ability to be viewed on a computer, iPod with video, iPhone and Apple TV. Each DVD will only transfer its iTunes Digital Copy to one iTunes library.

Lindich says it's because Fox received a reported $120 million payout from Sony to stay Blu-ray—Warner then switched and received between $400 and $500 million for its defection. BW says it's closer to $400 million. In our phone call with Warner Kevin Tsujihara said it wasn't a bidding war that brought them over—that's true, in the words of Ben Kenobi, from a certain point of view. [Post-Gazette]

Also interesting is the pricing scheme that Apple's unleashing. Movie rentals will be somewhere between $2 and $5, depending on the newness and goodness of the movie (they decide, not you) and will only be valid for 24 hours. That's it? Even Blockbuster lets you keep a movie for two days before slipping into their "no late fees late fees" period. And, to top it off, they've got movies from Sony, Universal and Warner Bros. as well. [Variety via Valleywag]

Back in early December, we saw a rumor that movie prices on iTunes were going up in order to pave the way for having iPod/AppleTV versions of movies on discs. Which studio did we tie to that rumor? Fox, the one that FT is saying already struck a deal. However, this new pre-ripped format is only really useful for people who don't already know how to rip their DVDs, and people who don't have the time to sit there for an hour while their computer does its thing.

As for the rentals, we've seen evidence of it for a long time, and what we've seen points out that it's going to be protected by FairPlay DRM, and is the first time Apple's licensed FairPlay to a third party.

It's also very similar to this Die Hard and Harry Potter deal that has PlaysForSure versions on the discs, and can be played on anything that supports Windows Media DRM. [Financial Times via Valleywag]

Since it ended in September, the count doesn't include Michael Bay's reluctantly sold 190,000 Transformers HD DVDs, a figure which will probably continue to rise, adding to the HD DVD camp's overall numbers. And the numbers may shift more favorably towards HD DVD as Paramount and Dreamworks maintain exclusivity for at least 17 more months.

Nevertheless, it does suggest that, still without serious pushes from Fox and Disney, the Blu-ray posse is maintaining its lead, and even growing it: Since the advent of high-definition discs back in spring 2006, just over 3 million Blu-ray discs have been purchased stateside, while only around 2 million HD DVD discs have sold. [Reuters]

Some titles that come out exclusively on HD DVD in the U.S. come out on Blu-ray overseas, such as Universal Pictures' "Bruce Almighty" and "Hollywoodland," but consumers must be sure they are buying from a region that works with U.S. players. For Blu-ray, the U.S. is in the same region as almost all of the Americas and Southeast Asia.

The bottom line as far as the format war is concerned:

Still, most major high-definition titles available overseas seem to reflect a switch to HD DVD, rather than the reverse.

UPDATE: Motorola is getting their pico projector from Microvision, a TI competitor.

DLP® Products Shows New Developments in Pico-Projection Three manufacturers announce support for DLP powered projection in mobile devices DALLAS - October 3, 2007: DLP® Products from Texas Instruments (TI) (NYSE: TXN) today demonstrated the second-generation pico-projector prototype at the SID (Society for Information Display) Mobile Display Conference in San Diego. DLP Products announced that three technical manufacturers, Foxconn, Sypro Optics and Young Optics, plan to design and build mobile products that utilize DLP Product's pico-projection technology. DLP pico-projectors, either as standalone projectors or as integrated components in mobile devices, will provide consumers and business professionals with the flexibility to share video and graphic content in a larger way. Building on the DLP pico-projector first shown at CTIA in March, DLP Product's second-generation prototype demonstrates significant advancements in form factor and picture quality from the earlier model. The streamlined prototype is thinner and smaller, which allows easier integration in many mobile devices such as cellular phones, digital cameras and portable media players. DLP's latest prototype is in the form factor of a contemporary slim cell phone, measuring in at around 10 millimeters in thickness, with no fan or other moving parts. DLP has enhanced picture quality of its smallest projector, the pico, by incorporating the first ever speckle-free solution, which delivers a clear and crisp image using the same DLP display technology that consumers have come to know from DLP HDTVs and projectors. Products powered by DLP pico-projector technology, will enable viewers to watch pristine images and video clips on most surfaces with an image the size of a standard piece of paper (8.5 x 11 inches). "The DLP pico-projector technology has serious potential to redefine the mobile display viewing experience," said Frank J. Moizio, Manager of Emerging Markets Business, TI DLP Front Projection. "Today there are approximately 1.4 billion mobile devices with screens that are less than 3.5 inches; our innovation opens the opportunity to have information and video displayed in a much more compelling way - without compromise to the size of current mobile devices." Foxconn, Sypro Optics, and Young Optics bring years of world class manufacturing and innovative design expertise to this new mobile device projection market space. Working together with end product companies and brands, these manufacturers will make compelling integrated and standalone products that are truly mobile, a reality. "As a leader in the cell phone design industry, Foxconn is a keen judge of concepts that will elevate the market. DLP's pico-projector is highly innovative and will help us differentiate our design in the market," said Boris Hsieh, General Manager Digital Projection Business Unit, Foxconn. "We are bullish on our projections of the market opportunity for mobile devices that improve on the viewing experience. With help from DLP, Young Optics plans to deliver a superior mobile product design to the global market," said Claude Hsu, Executive Vice President, Young Optics. "We highly value the pico-projection innovation and foresee new revenue opportunities in the near future as a result of our product development with DLP," said Hans-Joachim Stohr, Director of Business Development and Sales, Sypro Optics GmbH. Key benefits of DLP projectors include: smoother images with no "screen door" effect; crisp and clear presentation of fast motion video; vibrant colors created by its BrilliantColor™ technology; and proven reliability across all facets - picture reliability over time (no fading, yellowing or color decay over time as compared to other display technologies), overall performance and dust-resistance. For more information on DLP and DLP products please visit www.dlp.com.

According to an AP story, advertisers in this lucrative program currently include Warner Music, 20th Century Fox and New Line Cinema. They'll be paying $20 per 1,000 clicks. The first videos to run the ads will be from artists signed to Warner, and from a totally horrible band I only just heard about called Killswitch Engage (wish it were literal). People who host videos on YouTube will be able to opt into the program, though it's not yet clear what the revenue share is between YouTube and the content owner.

Why is this happening? Because Google bought YouTube for $1.76 billion, and yet last year it only generated about $15 million. Chump change, as they say in Silicon Valley. [AP]

As he prepared to demo the wonder device to the announcer a foolish would-be mugger jumped Levy and the camera man, taking them to the ground. As the Fox crew cut away, it was clear that police, the Fox crew and bystanders were taking care of the assailant. The in-studio Fox team appeared to fear (or hope for) the worse - full scale fanboy riot; the announcer was shaken. But Steven Levy, ever the pro, bounced up and delivered his prepared demo with sangfroid. For those concerned, neither the journalist nor the iPhone appeared to be harmed in anyway.

Did anyone capture video of the live, foiled mugging (either the Fox broadcast or live at the NYC Apple Store)? If so, please contact Gizmodo via the tipline: tips@gizmodo.com.

Guy Swipes Reporter's Mic During iPhone Live Shot [breitbart.tv]

The content? Well, it's going to have TV clips from NBC and Fox, plus films from their respective movie studios. You'll be able to watch ad-supported shows like 24 and Heroes for free, and they're working on more deals with Sony and Time Warner to supply shows and clips. Sounds like we've finally got someone to stand up with GooTube in a non-theoretical way. – Jason Chen

Squawk on the Street [CNBC]

Thanks Ray!

While it's pretty clearly against YouTube policy to upload copyrighted material, giving the accused not much to complain about, it's disappointing that Google didn't stick up for their user's privacy even a little bit seeing they have a history of resisting U.S. subpoenas. Oh well, now you know: stick to BitTorrent for your illicit video downloads. –Adam Frucci

Internet News [via Boing Boing]

Zucker whines that "YouTube needs to prove that it will implement its filtering technology across its online platform. It's proven it can do it when it wants to." It sounds strange, considering NBC has an official deal with YouTube, but not when you consider how wishy-washy NBC has been, pulling clips not officially uploaded by the channel.

Murdoch's criticism is more of the same old, same old: "How do you monetize it?" It's still the question du jour for sure. Then again YouTube's founders, who each walked away with over $320 million seem pretty monetized. – Matt Buchanan

NBC blasts Google's YouTube over copyright [CNET]
Murdoch the latest media mogul to take on YouTube [CNET]

That said, here are some numbers. Movies come in two sizes: the larger "PC" size and the smaller portable one. They dodged the question about the resolution of movies (supposedly they're getting back to us and when they do, we'll let you know) but the PC version is "near DVD quality," which is to say it has a bit rate of around 1.3-1.6 Mbps. TV shows, on the other hand, are decidedly focused on being quick downloads, with a bit rate of 500-800 Kbps for the file.

All of the files are WMV for the time being, and are encrypted with Windows Media DRM. You can burn them for back up—they encourage customers to do so—but right now they're stuck on a single PC with the option to move them to up to "three compatible portable devices." They are working to the expand that, however. Moreover, only PCs (XP and higher) and only IE 6 and up. Firefox support is coming.

As we said earlier, they offer "3000 productions." This is "about evenly split" between movie and TV content, with each episode of a show counting as a single production in that number. No ABC, Fox, CBS or NBC yet, but they're working on it and "would like to be in business with everybody."

The way they got to be in business with "everybody" in the movie business, we should note, is by closely following the studios' set prices for movie downloads, which are designed not to cannibalize physical DVD sales. (Steve Jobs's refusal to cater to that price point, along with the fear of an iTunes monopoly, is why he as of yet, only has Paramount and Disney on board with iTunes.) Strongly emphasized throughout the interview was Wal-Mart's committal to ensuring a strong DVD market.

To that end, we found out how the discounts for consumers who buy both DVDs and digital movies works. Basically, when you buy the physical DVD, you will get a code allowing you to download the "portable" version of the movie for $1.97, the PC version for $2.97, and both for $3.97. (Much like they did with Superman Returns back in November.) This will be the major way the service is pushed and utilized, at least initially. Obviously, the service isn't intended to disrupt traditional means of movie watching.

Part of the non-disruptiveness is given Wal-Mart's view that "the business is new now," and they (along with everyone else) still "need to figure out how it works." So no big marketing campaign, at least for a while. It'll be featured on the site, and there will be some in-store promotion, but nothing big. It's still very much all about the physical Wal-Mart store, but expanding into "multi-channel and multi-format" distribution.

Lastly, while we're not thrilled with the current price points, it was clearly stated that the studio "sets the price," and Wal-Mart is pursuing and will continue to advocate for "a good price for the customer," which we interpret to mean lower prices.

If this service fails, the blame rests mostly on Hollywood's shoulders, since most of these terms were dictated by the studios. Middle America isn't the target for this service, at least for right now, largely due to its beta status, but also, we think, because of the unnecessary restrictions placed on it by the studios, making it too complicated for Wal-Mart's core customers. And that is a big mistake on the part of the "Big Six," one they may soon pay for. – Matt Buchanan

Wal-Mart First to Offer Digital Movies From All "Big Six" Studios [Gizmodo]

Movies will run from $12.88 to $19.88 on the day the DVD drops, while older flicks start at $7.50. All movies will have roughly the same price as the actual DVD at Wal-Mart stores, though. This is also the deal's biggest flaw in our view—why pay almost what you'd pay for the actual DVD? Intriguingly mentioned is the possibility of discounts for people who buy both DVDs and digital videos.

It will also have TV shows from Comedy Central, CW, FX, Logo, MTV and Nickelodeon—all Viacom networks, so maybe we'll see CBS in the mix? TV shows run a bit cheaper than iTunes, at $1.96 a pop. Altogether, it will offer "access to 3,000 productions," though there's no indication as to how that's divided between movies and TV shows.

Topping it off, Wal-Mart has recruited HP to design the store and ostensibly make it more user-friendly than its standard site. We tried getting in to scope it out, but right now it appears to walled off. This is a huge win for Wal-Mart, but it remains to be seen if the Wal-Mart name can drive the market to new heights (with lower prices to boot), or conversely, if it winds up driving people away. Either way, begun the download wars have. – Matt Buchanan

Store? (Roadblocked as of 3 a.m. EST)
Wal-Mart and Studios in Film Deal [NYT]

"ECOtotal." YouTube usually responds by taking down the content and suspending the user's account, so it'll be interesting to see if they reveal ECOtotal's identity or help protect the little man from the corporate fat cats at Fox. We're hoping for the latter, if Fox is that concerned they should do an internal investigation to find out how the un-aired episode got leaked in the first place. – Louis Ramirez

Fox Seeks YouTube User's Identity [Hollywood Reporter]

Here's an example of technology revealing perhaps more than the players would like. Gizmodo readers are keenly aware of the advantages of HDTV, so what do you think? Many of you saw the HDTV coverage showing that brown-yellow stain on Rogers' pitching hand during the first inning of Sunday's game. Was it just a bit of dirt, or was it a bit of against-the-rules pine tar that added that extra snap to his pitches? – Charlie White

What's the dirt on Kenny Rogers? [USA Today]

The great diaspora online would make a whole lot more sense if all these companies would go nuts and offer HDTV versions of their content and distribute it all via BitTorrent. We would be willing to pay for that, we promise. – Charlie White

CinemaNow to offer Fox films, TV shows [Reuters]

Fox TV signs iTunes deal with Apple [MacNN] and NBA, Apple ink iTunes 2006 playoff deal [MacNN]

So after the success of CBS's March Madness NCAA tournament live Webfest, and NBC's offering of some of its programs on iTunes, we have quite a variety of television shows available via the Internet. Legitimately, that is.

Fox will put TV reruns on the Internet: report [Reuters]

Can't wait for Dennis Leary's next scathing performance on Rescue Me? Don't fret. Looks like DirecTV has bonded with FX and announced the ability to watch this show, as well as other FX faves such as The Shield, 24 to 48 hours before their network debut—all for just $3 each. Along with this news, which was spilled at CES, you'll also be able to watch five different shows from Fox, 6-7 days after they nationally air, for only $1. In March, DirecTV will add other shows from NBC, USA, Sci-Fi and Bravo to their $1 list as well. And all you'll need to get this is the new DirecTV PlusDVR.

DirecTV To Offer FX Shows Prior To Broadcast [TWICE]

Fox sees Blu-ray DVDs gaining edge [Reuters]