Posts tagged with "movies"

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.

Netflix: More Viewing Hours on Apple TVs Than iPads

In today’s earnings release, movie streaming service Netflix has announced that viewing hours on Apple TV have surpassed those through the iPad. What’s interesting is that the Apple TV was released in September 2010 and has sold less than two million units since then; the iPad, on the other hand, was released in April and has sold almost 15 million units.

It has to be considered, though, that Netflix makes more sense on a TV’s big screen than a tablet’s, and Apple implemented a native Netflix front-end on the second-gen Apple TV. The iPad has access to Netflix through an app that has to be downloaded manually from the App Store.

In spite of the iPad’s bigger numbers, people still like to watch movies on their TVs, apparently. Perhaps the iPad is more meant for “web video”, rather than just movies. [TiPB via Yahoo]

Movie Player for iOS Plays Most Video Formats

If you feel sad about the removal of VLC from the App Store and you didn’t purchase the app in time before it got pulled, Movie Player is an interesting alternative I’ve been this past week you might consider for your portable movie needs. The app is universal for iPhone and iPad, it will cost you $2.99 and it’s got nice interface design and animations. Most of all, Movie Player can play most any video format you have on your hard drive, ready to be synced via iTunes.

The huge list of supported formats includes: divx, avi, flv, mov, wmv, mpg, mpeg, mpeg1, mpeg2, mpeg4, mp4, m4v , mpv, vob, ts, ogv, ogm, mkv, dv, asf, 3gp, m2p, m2ts, m2v, gxf, wm. I have tested the app with avi, mkv, mp4 and mov files.

In my tests, the app played most formats smoothly, launching files of 2GB in 2-3 seconds. I also would like to point out that I’ve run Movie Player against iOS 4.3 beta, which isn’t officially supported yet. I’ve only noticed slow downs with large movies that had .srt subtitles, also synced with iTunes’ file manager. The app recognized the subtitles but didn’t generate a thumbnail, and moving the scrubber through the movie was a little too slow. Anything else, however, worked perfectly under the new OS on the iPad and iPhone 4.

Movie Player allows you create playlists to watch videos one after the other without interruptions, very useful for TV shows and video podcasts. A small detail I particularly appreciated is the curtain-like animation that shows up when opening and closing a movie.

Movie Player definitely gets its job done, it hasn’t got many additional features but playback is smooth. At $2.99 in the App Store, give it a try. More screenshots below. Read more

Acclaimed Film Director Creates New Movie with an iPhone

South Korean film director Park Chan-wook has a new favorite gadget: an iPhone. The director of popular movies such as “Old Boy” and “Thirst”, in fact, managed to realize his latest short film using only an iPhone. The fantasy-horror movie, called “Paranmanjang”, was shot with an iPhone 4 and has a budget of around $130,000. It will debut in South Korean theaters on January 27.

Park Chan-wook says realizing the 30-minute with Apple’s smartphone was easy and fun, and minor edits were required in the post-processing stage. The only downside to the experiment is a little shakiness in the first minutes of footage – although this “real life” feeling of the film should help as far as “horror” and anxiety are concerned.

The short is a fantastical tale that begins with a middle-aged man fishing one afternoon and then, hours later at night, catches the body of a woman. The panicked man tries to undo the intertwined fishing line, but he gets more and more entangled. He faints, then wakes up to find himself in the white clothes that the woman was wearing. The movie’s point of view then shifts to the woman and it becomes a tale of life and death from a traditional Korean point of view.

Intriguing (and kind of insane) plot aside, it’s exciting to see filmmakers and directors exploring new ways to produce content using Apple devices. We know the iPad is already popular among directors at Hollywood, and we look forward to seein its little brother, the iPhone, in the credits of more movies and short films in the next months. [9to5mac via Wall Street Journal via Yahoo]