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Posts tagged with "movies"

iCloud To Feature Films and TV Shows Too?

After today’s press release that confirmed Apple will hold a WWDC opening keynote on Monday, June 6, to officially unveil Mac OS X, iOS 5 and iCloud, Cnet reports the launch of the new cloud service from Apple next week may see a last-minute surprise that will make movies and TV shows available on the online “locker”. No details on how users would be able to upload, stream or purchase films and TV shows they don’t own have been posted, but it sounds like iCloud would provide a solution to store files on Apple’s servers to stream them later to a variety of devices.

Feature films could be part of Apple’s iCloud launch next week.

In the past several weeks, Apple executives have stepped up their attempts to convince some of the major Hollywood film studios to issue licenses that would enable Apple to store its customers’ movies on the company’s servers, two sources close to the negotiations told CNET. Apple began discussing a cloud service with the studios over a year ago.

An Apple spokesman declined to comment.

Cnet also reports content providers and Hollywood studios will be harder to convince than record labels and publishers, mainly because of the deals that in the US tie some studios exclusively to a cable company that airs films and shows. For instance, Warner Bros. Pictures, 20th Century Fox, and NBC Universal have an exclusive distribution deal with HBO that would prevent Apple from making their films available through iCloud immediately. As Time Warner’s CEO Bewkes (Time Warner is parent company of HBO and Warner Bros) has made several positive remarks on the new Ultraviolet video standard in the past, however, industry sources claim a deal with Apple and other cloud services could get done, and the exclusive HBO deal reworked to accommodate more distribution methods.

So if Bewkes is a believer what is the holdup? Film-industry sources have say that there’s nothing to worry about, that a deal with Time Warner to relax the HBO window will get done. But can something be completed before June 6?

Whether it can or not, Apple could still roll something out with the other three studios that are without HBO blackout agreements: Disney, Paramount Pictures and Sony Pictures.

Apple has officially announced the iCloud name today, referring to it as “upcoming cloud services offering” that seems to suggest it will go beyond music to offer a broader set of tools for online sync and storage. With the launch of the Apple TV 2nd-gen last September, Apple began offering rentals from ABC and Fox at $0.99 only through streaming, as the Apple TV doesn’t allow for local movie storage.

Phone, Tablet Owners Willing to Pay for Media Subscription Services

With rumors floating around about Apple’s upcoming cloud music service (especially after last night’s report on the company signing a deal with EMI) and others like Google and Amazon moving forward on the streaming bandwagon with products to upload and stream music at any time with smartphones, tablets and desktop web browsers, subscription-based payment systems are often seen as the only feasible solution to guarantee a continuos cloud service without interruptions, always available anywhere you go. Just like Spotify and Rdio let users stream large collections of music they don’t necessarily own by paying a monthly or annual fee, Apple is rumored to extend the iTunes subscription system it created for magazines to music, movies, and a combination of both for the ultimate iTunes Store cloud experience. But just how much are phone and tablet people willing to pay for these new cloud services based on subscriptions? That’s what research firm Nielsen takes a look at in its latest survey, asking users of “connected devices” how much they would pay for media subscriptions that would give them access to a variety of content on their mobile devices.

It turns out, music, movies, magazines, books and TV shows are something people would pay for – sure, there are different results, but take a look at the graph above and you’ll see that these 5 categories are the ones with less orange, which stands for “not willing to pay.” On the other side, sports content, streaming radio and news are something people would be less prone to subscribe to. Overall, the sweet spot for subscriptions seems to be around $4.99 - $9.99 per month, which is what most cloud services ask for these days. There’s an interesting difference about music, however: people would pay for “downloaded music”, and not for “streaming radio.” Assuming “downloaded music” stands for “music you own”, and people care about having online access to music that’s ultimately theirs, services like Amazon Cloud Player and Google Music Beta should be exactly what people are looking for, as they let you upload your own music to the cloud. Also assuming Apple is working on a similar solution, this survey suggests the company should allow for both uploads and Spotify-like streaming, enabling users to lock their own collections in the cloud, and get access to stuff they didn’t buy as well. Maybe that’s what these deals with music labels are all about.

Tablet and smartphone owners with proper Internet access on the go are willing to pay for online media available through apps, and if that’s their own media, there’s an incentive to subscribe. A report in the past weeks suggested Apple was considering offering a free initial trial for its new cloud music service, with a $20 yearly subscription once the demo is over.

Sony Releases Official Crackle App for iOS

In spite of previous rumors suggesting Sony would never consider releasing an iOS app again after the rejection of their eBook reader application a few months ago, the company pulled the trigger today on the official Crackle app for iPhone and iPad. Crackle, a growing digital entertainment platform that offers movies and TV shows from Sony’s library (including series from Columbia Pictures and Sony Pictures Classics), allows you to stream content over WiFi and 3G, it’s universal and has “unlimited, on demand viewing.” Crackle, however, is only available in the United States and with “selected content” to viewers from the UK, Canada and Australia.

You can browse by Movies, TV shows, Originals and Genres, or build your queue to organize the content you want to watch later. The design looks decent from the screenshots, and there are some sharing options as well. Alternatively, you can buy movies and episodes on iTunes with the tap of a button.

You can find Crackle in the App Store here. [via Cult Of Mac]

Rediscovering A Must-Have Movie Utility: Air Video

In the sea of App Store releases and updates, it’s easy to get lost and forget about that great app you used to love. New apps come around, better alternatives for just about anything are provided by developers and, especially if you’re geek, you know what it means to constantly tweaking your workflow to accomodate the latest offering in the iOS or OS X panorama. In the past week, I’ve rediscovered an app I had for a long time, but somehow managed to leave unused in my iTunes app library: Air Video.

I’ve always been a fan of Air Video and have been following the development (and updates) closely. Yet, for the reasons mentioned above, during the past months I kind of forgot how useful this app used to be, and how greatly it could improve my media consumption experience. So when the iPad 2 showed up at my doorstep and the thinner design made it crystal clear that it was easier (for me) to hold with one hand, I remembered about Air Video. And I’ve fallen in love with it all over again. Read more

IMDb App Adds AirPlay Support, Watchlist - Lets You Buy Movie Tickets

Back in November, IMDb released an improved version of its official iOS app introducing a major redesign and several new functionalities like ratings, entertainment news and international showtimes. Today IMDb is releasing another update to the app, which reaches version 2.1 and adds several new features like the much-requested AirPlay compatibility.

The IMDb app can now beam movie trailers from your iPad or iPhone to the Apple TV, or to another iOS device using an app like the AirTuner receiver. Being AirPlay one of consumers’ favorite features in the latest versions of iOS, it’s nice to see IMDb has adopted the streaming technology as a way to share content in a local network. IMDb 2.1 also improves several aspects of the previous update: there’s a ratings history menu now that lets you see all the movies and TV shows you rated on IMDb and entertainment news have been improved to display more content.

IMDb 2.1 introduces a watchlist to keep track of the movies and TV shows you’re interested in: from now on, instead of maintaining a text note with the shows you want to follow, you can just do it with the Watchlist on the iOS app. This update brings other enhancements as well, such as search results as-you-type and possibility to purchase movie tickets in the US, UK, Canada and Spain.

IMDb for iOS is available for free in the App Store.

Apple Releases iMovie for iPad

As announced in a press releases earlier today, Apple has just released the new iMovie for iPad. It is available now in the App Store at $4.99 here. iMovie is a universal app for iPhone 4 and iPad 2, a free update for existing customers.

iMovie for iPad takes where the Mac and iPhone versions left off to bring a powerful yet easy to use movie editing experience to the iPad, deeply based on multitouch technology. Users of iMovie for iPad can easily import their photos shot on the iPad 2, or iPhone or iPod touch (or any other camera) through the Camera Connection Kit; movies recorded at 720p through the iPad 2’s back camera can be accessed from a Library popup menu to start editing right away. With a split-screen interface you can visualize the movie you’re editing in the top section, and manage or trim video and photo segments in the lower part of the iPad’s screen. You can pinch to zoom to additional parts of a video, use the precision editor to adjust videos with accuracy.

You can import songs from your iPod library to use for background audio, or use the built-in effects in iMovie. You can share videos on the web through Facebook, Youtube and a variety of other services, beam your creations to the Apple TV via AirPlay, or simply export to iTunes.

Go get the new iMovie 1.2 here. Read more

Why Do Movie Trailers Debut on Apple.com?→

Why Do Movie Trailers Debut on Apple.com?

If you’ve ever wondered why so many movie trailers become available on Apple’s website and not anywhere else, the answer is provided on Quora by a former Apple employee. It’s got Star Wars in it:

It started as a showcase for QuickTime, at the time of first launch we only had a handful of trailers and one or two studios. It was really the Phantom Menace trailer that put apple.com/trailers into the spotlight. Lucasfilm had posted a rather crappy trailer on their site, the team at Apple was appalled. Through DNS records, the web team at Apple managed to contact the Star Wars web team and set up a meeting. That single trailer showcased QuickTime’s quality over RealVideo by leaps and bounds, and quickly surpassed over 1 million downloads to become the most popular web video of the internet in that time.

He also mentions the Akamai distribution technology (a little startup at the time) made the difference when talking to movie executives and showing them the speed and reliability of Apple’s network. Plus, the webpage design is also pretty sweet these days. [via]

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Warner Bros’ Ingenious Move: Sell Movies As Apps

A day after the release of the updated iOS App Store Review Guidelines, it appears that Warner Bros. has already figured out a better way to avoid the iTunes Movie Store’s country limitations and offer content for all mobile devices and users: they are selling movies as apps. The apps, Inception: App Edition and The Dark Night: App Edition, are actually quite interesting as they pack a lot of extras like interactive video trivia, soundboard, ringtones and art galleries, thus seemingly respecting Apple’s new rule on songs, movies and books sold as applications:

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Apps that are simply a song or movie should be submitted to the iTunes store. Apps that are simply a book should be submitted to the iBookstore.

These are not “simply a movie”. Warner Bros. has built two apps that offer a native interface for iPhone and iPad, they are available for free in the App Store and allow you to stream a movie or download it for $11.99 and $9.99, respectively. The Inception app, for instance, even comes with movie posters,” behind the scenes” content and music by Hans Zimmer that you can stream via AirPlay. No details on resolution / quality, but it appears that everything can be streamed on 3G as well – perhaps the apps adjust quality automatically basing on your connection’s speed.

This is interesting, as Warner Bros. has cleverly implemented in-app purchases and the features offered by building a native app to bypass Apple’s guidelines and, overall, provide a great experience to customers. We would like to see more of these experiments in the future. [Inception, The Dark Knight via 9to5mac]

From Russia With Love: Old Films Become Illegal Apps

For as much as Apple wants to curate the content of its App Store, it’s becoming increasingly difficult for the app review team at Cupertino to filter apps based on illegal content with no copyrights from the genuine ones. A new report on the BBC points to several apps being sold in the App Store with no consent from the Russian company that has rights on the content of these apps. The apps, in fact, are based on old Russian films like Gentlemen of Fortune, Assa, The Diamond Arm, Kin-dza-dza and Cheburashka.

The films and cartoons, as noted by the BBC, are still protected by copyright. Russian film studio Mosfilm and the Joint State Film Collection confirmed that they didn’t approve the release of those apps in Apple’s App Store:

It is illegal to present our films as applications either in iTunes or on any other internet site. It is permitted only on our own Mosfilm site”, Svetlana Pyleva, Mosfilm’s deputy director-general, said in an interview with bbcrussian.com.

“The only official internet site where you can watch legal Mosfilm content is the Mosfilm site.,” she said. “There are no third parties which we have permitted to use our content.

An Apple spokesperson told the Russian BBC that the company “understands the importance of protecting intellectual property”, so it won’t be a surprise to see the apps pulled soon. After all, this is not an isolated case of apps sold without consent of the original copyright owners: just open the App Store and look for clones of Nintendo’s Super Mario, Angry Birds or other 1980’s hits. The truth is most companies don’t care about the rip-offs, and some file complaints to get the apps removed. Overall, the App Store is a crowded place with more than 350,000 apps and it’s incredibly difficult, if not impossible, for Apple to check on every copyright agreement ahead of the app’s approval. At least it’s fairly easy to contact the iTunes team and claim copyright infringement.