Starting August 1, the recent blockbuster "I Am Legend" starring Will Smith will be available in Blu-ray™ disc quality 1080p resolution, only on DISH Network's VOD service, DISH On Demand, at a discounted price.

Yes. Dish Network is actually promising I Am Legend in "Blu-ray™ disc quality 1080p resolution" over Video on Demand. Presumably streamed in real time, it would be a technological feat even if not part of normal programming. And while we bet Dish will make the image look as good as possible under the pressure to show off, whether or not it's truly as stunning as a Blu-ray disc or meets some minimum 1080p prerequisite is yet to be seen.

In other news, Dish Network is soldiering on with their promise of 150 HD channels by the end of the year, and tomorrow will add 17 must-see HDTV channels including Lifetime Movie Network HD and Starz Edge HD. Read the presser for all the details. [Dish]

ENGLEWOOD, Colo. – July 31, 2008 – DISH Network Corporation (NASDAQ: DISH) today set the bar for the next-generation HD standard by becoming the first in the pay-TV industry to offer high definition programming in 1080p, the highest and best HD resolution available.

This new functionality is part of DISH Network's latest and unprecedented expansion in HD services, which includes the rollout of TurboHD, the industry's first 100 percent, all-HD suite of programming packages. As previously announced, DISH Network will also launch 17 more national HD channels tomorrow, surpassing its goal of reaching 100 national HD channels five months ahead of schedule. DISH Network now plans to nearly double its national HD channel count in less than one year and offer up to 150 national HD channels by the end of 2008, made possible by the recent launch of Echo XI, the most powerful satellite in the company's fleet.

"Over the years, DISH Network has maintained a very competitive HD offering in the marketplace, providing customers with a premium HD product including the best technology, signal and experience – at the best value – that no other pay-TV provider can come close to matching," said Charlie Ergen, Chairman, CEO and President of DISH Network. "Our latest system upgrade coupled with the introduction of TurboHD further strengthens our position as the leader in digital television and high definition television, platforms we look forward to enhancing even more with mobile and portable options."

DISH Network's new HD services are supported by a proprietary "turbo-charged" system upgrade that, starting August 1, is being rolled out to all MPEG-4 HD and HD DVR receivers. The upgrade activates a unique feature of the set-top boxes, improving the current standard of HD delivery used by pay-TV providers such as the ability to output 1080p programming. By early August, all DISH Network customers with MPEG-4 HD and HD DVR receivers will have the only set-top boxes in the nation enabled to display 1080p content, allowing them to maximize the full potential of their 1080p-compatible HDTV sets.

To celebrate this new era in the HD viewing experience, DISH Network is offering subscribers a special deal in August to enjoy the unparalleled picture and sound of 1080p HD programming. Starting August 1, the recent blockbuster "I Am Legend" starring Will Smith will be available in Blu-ray™ disc quality 1080p resolution, only on DISH Network's VOD service, DISH On Demand, at a discounted price. Subscribers may order the movie on DISH Network Channel 501. This marks the first time in history a pay-TV provider offers movies in 1080p, the highest resolution format available for HD video enthusiasts.

Consumers can sign up for the best HD programming and service in the industry with DISH Network's new TurboHD programming packages, the only all-HD packages on the market, starting at $24.99 per month. TurboHD is available in three separate tiers and includes DISH Network's award-winning and industry-leading HD technology, advanced equipment enabled to display 1080p programming, and the most-watched HD channels that may be viewed on any TV – analog, digital or HD.

Current DISH Network customers with MPEG-4 HD and HD DVR receivers are being automatically upgraded and will have their systems "turbo-charged" by early August with all the features and benefits of TurboHD. DISH Network customers looking to add the industry's best HD experience can get a "turbo-charged" HD package for as little as $10 more per month.

The latest national HD channels added to DISH Network's programming line-up are: ActionMax HD (DISH Network Ch. 313), CBS College Sports HD (Ch. 152), Lifetime HD (Ch. 108), Lifetime Movie Network HD (Ch. 109), Planet Green HD (Ch. 194), Encore HD (Ch. 340), HBO 2 HD (Ch. 301), HBO Comedy HD (Ch. 307), HBO Family HD (Ch. 305), HBO Latino HD (Ch. 309), HBO Signature HD (Ch. 302), HBO West HD (Ch. 303), HBO Zone HD (Ch. 308), Starz Comedy HD (Ch. 354), Starz Edge HD (Ch. 352), Starz Kids & Family HD (Ch. 356), Starz West HD (Ch. 351).

For more information about DISH Network's 1080p programming, new HD channels and TurboHD system and packages, visit www.dishnetwork.com or call 1-800-333-DISH (3474).

Amazon sees this as a way to not only bypass set-top boxes and go directly for the TVs (even though Bravia Video Link is currently a $300 add-on) via platforms like Tru2way; the NYTimes also speculates on a move to get the whole Amazon store inside your TV, which makes a lot of sense, even though customers capable of setting up a VoD system directly on their TV are probably just fine with making orders on their laptop—while sitting on the couch. QVC killer! [NYTimes]

Silicon Valley Insider thinks that Unbox support is unlikely on account of its status as a direct competitor to Netflix streaming, but TiVo supports it so I wouldn't rule it out completely, plus a $99 provider-agnostic box would fill a conspicuously empty gap in the market, and my heart. [Forbes via Silicon Valley Insider]

The dongle near the box powers itself directly from the Vudu's USB jack , meaning no extra power brick. The other end, near your router, does need to plug in, but that's less of a hassle. Best of all, it requires no on-screen configuration and works without any visible degradation when delivering high-bandwidth video. (I can't say the same for the Roku Netflix box, which choked a bit when I tested its built-in Wi-Fi.) Vudu will sell the kit with the video box itself for $350—I think it's a wise addition, though this kit costs as much as the Netflix box in its entirety, and half of the price of an Apple TV. Clearly, a bridge is the most expensive way they could go, and you also have two more things to plug in. [Vudu]

Akimbo hit play in 2002 with a hardware-based VOD set top box that allowed consumers to download television shows from its 200 partners. When the hardware didn't work out, the company branched off into the PC software business with Akimbo for Media Center in the fall of 2005. It struggled until 2006, when the company received a much-needed shot in the arm from Cisco and at&t to the tune of $15 million.

In February 2008, Akimbo shifted, again, to a video service model, but failed to raise a targeted $8 million in funding. High-level executive squabbles earlier in the year also threatened to derail the fledgling company, and this week they apparently came to a boil. More than a dozen employees were terminated on May 22, with a three-person skeleton team staying on to oversee the company's final days. All told, Akimbo received approximately $56 million over the course of its existence for basically nothing. If only Gizmondo would take the hint. [TechCrunch]

As we mentioned when we first introduced the MatrixStream to you, the catch to obtaining this remarkable streaming H.264 video using MatrixStream's MX-1 set-top box (pictured above) is that you must have a 6Mbps (megabit-per-second) broadband connection. That's what it'll take to watch 1080p videos on the system, and not a megabit less. For 720p HD, you'll need 3Mb, and for regular old 480p DVD-looking stuff, that'll need 1.5Mb per second.

Well, and then there's that other catch, enticing content creators to allow their movies to be moved over the thing. We're not holding our collective breath waiting for that to happen. But it gives you a good look at what might be pretty commonplace two or three years from now.

Reminds us of Vudu, doing almost exactly the same thing with standard def, with HD (albeit 1080i) downloading available now and instant HD reportedly on the way. Even though the $400 Vudu set-top box also has content issues, still, the future looks bright for this kind of tech. [MatrixStream]

The setup experience is so amazingly simple, it makes TiVo look complex. (Of course, compared to what this simple, broadband-connected video server does, TiVo is complex.
Speaking of TiVo, Vudu's remote is incredible, with five buttons and a clickable jog dial that you can intuit in record time. It's weird how quickly you can use it without looking. By the way, the remote is RF, not IR, so you don't have to point it at the box for it to work.

One of Vudu's setbacks is that it is, alas, a set-top box. In a world where game consoles and cable boxes are inevitable, this box, though small, still presents a stacking challenge.
But there is a cool solution: since Vudu's remote is RF, and talks to that little metal antenna you see at the back of the box, you can stash the box anywhere that you'd stash any device with a video processor and a spinning 250GB hard drive. Like a cabinet drawer...
Hiding it away (with or without my cat Wade) means one less thing you have to look at. While we can thank the RF remote for this, an RF remote does mean one more thing (*cough*PS3 Blu-ray remote*cough*) that you can't replace with a standard universal.
The home screen, which pops on 20 seconds after you first power up, and is instantly on in most occasions, is a nice example of how organized the Vudu interface is.
Though it's the home screen that you see when you first get started, there are some tweaking options, should you dig into them. I loved the overscan adjustment—you'd be shocked how helpful it is.
When you scroll through the constantly changing promoted movies on the home screen, you can see which ones are for rent...
...and which ones you can buy.
I found that most studio films at this time are rentals, mostly at $3.99. There are plenty of foreign and/or "special interest" movies you can buy, and some of those that you can rent for less, say $1.99. Frankly, the rental aspect of this proprietary box appeals much more than the ownership one.

There are many easy ways to hunt for a movie in Vudu. The genre search is fun, because you can select more than one genre to find interesting combinations like Sci-Fi Documentary...
...and yes, Gay & Lesbian Horror. (You know you were curious.)
You can search for a director or actor by name. In this search of Spielberg, you can get a sense that the Vudu catalog is not totally up to snuff. Yes, that is the entire Vudu Spielberg collection.
Some actors and directors are missing entirely. Being a Back To The Future fan, I had to search for Robert Zemeckis, but typing in his name, or even just ZEME, yielded zilch.
My main criticism with the Vudu is that while there are plenty of extra-sweet options like these...
...there just aren't enough good hits when you go searching. Here's a clue: in a search for "Coppola," Sofia had two movies, and Francis Ford had 3, none of which were the Godfather.

The good news is, Vudu has designed an excellent interface and a very satisfying alternative platform for delivering movies. I love browsing and watching movies on this thing—the instant gratification is awesome!

As we told you before, the system operates with both a central server and a P2P network, balancing each other to ensure an instant on-demand experience. During my week-long testing over both DSL and cable connections, I never once had more than a tiny video hiccup, and though you can't fast-forward straight away, the video can get to be 20 or 30 minutes ahead of you as you continue watching, so eventually fast-forwarding is an option.

And the picture looks stupendous. Even though the source material is (currently) 480p, that little box upscales that stuff to your desired resolution. In both 720p and 1080p tests, it looked great, perhaps better than a DVD. Here's a look, though even Ben Stiller getting slapped by a monkey doesn't truly do this thing justice:
Beyond my loudly voiced complaints about content, all I can say is, I wish it were a lot cheaper. Yeah, that's right, Vudu is selling these things for $400. So you can pay more money to buy or rent movies from them.

You could save the money by connecting your PC to your TV and renting from CinemaNow or Movielink. At the moment, both have slightly better catalogs, though that will change. Normally I don't whine about high prices, but I think $400 is a little too much for a box that doesn't come with any free content. There's never been a better case for the razor-and-blades model. With a pricetag like that, Vudu is certainly not going to scare the bejeezus out of Blockbuster Video—not nearly as much as it rightly should.

Come July 1, when the government mandate that says all set-top-boxes need to have CableCARD support goes into effect, cable companies will be rolling out M-Card bi-directional cards that can activate dual-tuner DVRs from just one slot. But still, the problem is on the software side, which means TiVo Series 3s and Vista CableCARD machines won't be doing bi-directional support until a standard is there.

So the actual headline should probably be "There is no CableCARD 2.0...yet." – Jason Chen

There is no CableCARD 2.0 [Engadget HD]

Also part of the announced deal are several free, ad-supported on-demand shows, such as "Friday Night Lights," along with content from Bravo, SCI FI, USA, Telemundo and mun2 on five new ad-supported channels available to MobiTV subscribers. But who cares about that when you can get this kind of awesomeness?

While over-the-air on demand has great potential, the 24-hour rental period is a deal-killer, unfortunately. $1.99 makes a great impulse buy if you're stuck on a train or in a doctor's office and missed Sylar impaling ******** on the ceiling the night before, but not if the content magically disappears a day later, especially when you can buy it from iTunes for your iPod to keep for the same price. Or for no price from BitTorrent. – Matt Buchanan

Press Release [MobiTV]

• Log into Netflix.
• Click on "Your Account"
• Look for a small graphic on the right column that says "How can I watch movies on my PC?"
• Click the "Start Now" link, and voila, you have a new tab next to Queue.

We just clicked this link, and the Watch Now tab appeared on the Netflix site. Suddenly, we were able to watch streaming movies on demand, included free with our Netflix membership. You get an hour of streaming movie watching per month for each dollar your membership costs.

A couple of quick realizations: the service doesn't work with Firefox, so you have to use Internet Exploder. After downloading Netflix's proprietary playback software, we clicked on the movie Amadeus, and unfortunately it was in a 4x3 aspect ratio with mediocre video quality. So far, eh. – Charlie White

Skip The Wait For Netflix Movie Streaming [uneasysilence]

Not that we would encourage piracy or anything, but Movinflicks.com is offering a heckuva lot of links to movies—many of which you saw win Oscars last night—for free viewing, immediately and in all their full-screen glory. Find out more about our experience with the site:

The movies aren't actually offered in HD as they are purported to be, but we were able to get them to play back perfectly. Of course, now that we've mentioned this obviously soon-to-be-slam-dunked-by-the-MPAA service, it will quickly be overwhelmed with traffic and ultimately brought to its knees.

But the site is just providing links to the pirated movies, right? Well, that's illegal, too. Maybe linking to the linker is illegal, too. Uh-oh. You'll have to find Movinflicks.com on your own. Maybe even glancing at the Movinflicks.com site is illegal. Is that a knock at the door? – Charlie White

each company has their own hidden agenda/reason for launching a YouTube competitor. News Corp, for instance, is doing this to sink YouTube before it draws more traffic away from MySpace (which is owned by News Corp.), whereas CBS on the other hand sees this as a way of getting closer to Google, who they're trying to strike a separate deal with on a completely different venture. The YouTube "killer" could be announced as early as this week. The question is—do you care or will YouTube remain being your personal TiVo? – Louis Ramirez

Old Model Versus a Speedster [NYT]

The plan? Get one year of TiVo plus a one year subscription to Blockbuster online for $35.99—cheaper than the two services by themselves. If you cancel the Blockbuster portion of the subscription, your monthly fee drops down to $19.95.

This seems to be just a cross promotion strategy and not some kind of groundbreaking download-movies-to-your-TiVo package. That would have gotten us half-past-nine, if you know what we mean.

TiVo Offer Page

Blockbuster Leaks TiVo Partnership [Zatz not funny]

It's not surprising that TiVo would go running to Blockbuster for a deal, after its possible Netflix pact that held so much promise now seems dead in the water. We're just wondering what receiving a bunch of DVDs in the mail has to do with TiVo, unless, of course, this portends some movement with some sort of video-on-demand (VOD) deal with Blockbuster. Is it us, or is it dopey that Blockbuster and Netflix are not first movers in the VOD space? Bits instead of atoms, right?

TiVo Two Times Netflix, Promotes Blockbuster [Zatz Not Funny]

It seems there's no doubt in anyone's mind that video on demand is going to be hot for Internet users. But in Europe, the real problem isn't whether somebody will make money, but who that somebody will be. At a conference in Montpellier, France, telecom operators and media companies got together to haggle their way through business models that will hopefully mean on-demand programming for us sooner rather than later. Sure, there have been a few smaller deals brokered recently, like those between between U.S. TV and film-rights owners like Warner, and European telecom operators such as Fastweb, Deutsche Telekom AG and recently with France Telecom. But programming is limited and neither camp expects big profits from this just yet.

For their part, media companies say they are concerned online video on demand could increase their exposure to piracy.
Internet peer-to-peer software enables millions of web surfers every day to download films for free, even though piracy protection technology has improved. Films rented from online distributors can destroy themselves within a few hours.

Obviously, this draws a parallel with the music industry, which faltered on its business models, letting Apple's iTunes gain a huge lead. I don't think anyone wants to see that happen again.

Firms haggle over video on demand [Reuters]

"We will not fail!" he screams. "We will not fall!"

Slowly, the rhythmic thump of a million pasty feet in Tevas fills the hall. The Microsofties are rallying to their Master's cry, screaming for iPod Blood.

"We will use our connections with Hollywood to cut Apple off at the pass. Our spies even now are massing in Beverly Hills to undermine the Ministry of Movie Magic. Jobs must fail."

A throaty, if nasal, howl comes from the Inferi. The Microsoft Code Eaters are on the move.

Microsoft Courts Hollywood Allies [LA Times via Slashdot]

Regardless, it will be a very interesting time once a true VoD and iPod-branded piece of hardware hit the streets. Very interesting indeed.

Apple to expand video play? [News.com]

See also
The fall of Hollywood? [MarginalRevolution]