Looking into their crystal ball, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg predicted the imminent arrival of a radically different entertainment landscape, including pricey movie tickets, a vast migration of content to video-on-demand and even programmable dreams.

Speaking on a panel at the USC School of Cinematic Arts, Spielberg and Lucas took a grim view of the future of the majors and predicted theatrical motion pictures will become a niche market.

“They’re  going for the gold,” said Lucas of the studios. “But that isn’t going to work forever. And as a result they’re getting narrower and narrower in their focus. People are going to get tired of it. They’re not going to know how to do anything else.”

Spielberg noted that because so many forms of entertainment are competing for attention, they would rather spend $250 million on a single film than make several personal, quirky projects. Continue Reading

A Japanese telecoms company is carrying out tests to try to prove 4K-resolution video can be streamed over the internet to television set-top boxes.

NTT West is hosting the trial – which runs until Friday – and says it believes it is the first of its kind.

A new video compression standard is being used to reduce the amount of data that needs to be transmitted.

4K broadcasts offer four times the amount of detail as 1080p high-definition content.

Compressing technologies allow broadcasters to transmit material using much less data than would otherwise be required while minimising the loss of picture quality.

In regards to video, instead of sending data describing each pixel of each frame as if it were a standalone entity, a variety of algorithms are used to analyse how colour is distributed across each image and what changes occur between each frame.

This is then used to allow redundant information to be discarded, providing instead only the information needed to reconstruct a sequence based on an understanding of how each pixel and frame are related to each other.

At present the H.264/MPEG-4 codec is commonly used to broadcast digital TV – including the UK’s Freeview HD and Sky HD satellite services – as well as the vast majority of video clips on the web. Continue Reading

M

any industries have transitioned into our present Internet-driven world of 24/7 connectedness, but cable TV is one that still lags behind. While the technology is making strides toward reaching its potential, the business side of things isn’t making a whole lot of progress thanks to cable providers. Bloomberg published a report today stating that one provider, Time Warner Cable, has been paying media companies to keep their TV shows off of the Web — an attempt to make cable TV more attractive and remove options for those who want to cut the cord.

And if money doesn’t work, Time Warner Cable reportedly threatens to drop a company’s channels from its lineup. It’s yet another illustration of how twisted the relationships are between media companies and cable TV providers, and just how far cable providers are willing to go to protect their business.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise. Cable companies have long been suspicious of any attempts to change the cable TV status quo — after all, these services are cash cows, forcing customers to pay over $100 or month for dozens of channels they might never even watch. And these providers have been particularly resistant to suggestions of a la carte models that might save customers money but could cause a decrease in revenue.

Online pay TV services like iTunes, Google Play, Amazon and others offer some shows the day after airing, pricing episodes around $2 or $3 each. While you can’t watch the episodes live, you can buy them individually. This comes pretty close to a la carte programming, so it’s no wonder that a company like Time Warner would try to offer incentives to media companies in order to keep those shows on cable exclusively.

It’s worth noting that, as part of its NBC Universal acquisition, Comcast had to agree not to strike these kinds of deals with media companies. But that doesn’t mean other providers aren’t doing it.

Worried about filling up your DVR? The nation’s largest cable TV provider, Comcast Corp., is unveiling a new, compact set-top box that does away with the hard drive and saves your TV shows online.

The as-yet-unnamed box, running on a platform it calls X2, was unveiled Tuesday at the annual gathering of cable TV companies, The Cable Show, and will be available to customers later this year.

Three times smaller than traditional set-top boxes, the box is one of many offerings from cable TV companies seeking to improve the living room experience. Time Warner Cable Inc. is also showing off an updated channel guide with personalized recommendations that it plans to roll out on new set-top boxes this year.

Pay TV companies have faced criticism for offering hundreds of channels but providing clunky guides that make it difficult to find shows. As they seek to keep customers, cable providers are updating channel grids. Newer guides do a better job of showing off what’s available on-demand, what’s saved on the digital video recorder, and what’s on live TV.

The X2′s channel guide acts more like a website than traditional channel guides. Customers can customize the view to include weather and road traffic apps. Program listings include movie ratings from Rotten Tomatoes, as well as a “buzz” meter showing how many posts from Twitter a particular show is getting each hour. The guide also displays video from the Web for the first time.

“The whole look and feel is meant to be easy, personal, smart, fast and fun,” Comcast CEO Brian Roberts said. “And I think we’re just scratching the surface.”

The company says that because its new guides rely on Internet technology, they can be changed as easily as updating a website. Comcast has updated its guide 1,200 times since the X1 set-top box was introduced in May 2012. Its new guide will work on tablet computers and smartphones as well.  Continue Reading

Comic actors Kelly Coffield Park and Stephen Park met while starring in “In Living Color” the Fox Network sketch comedy television series created by Keenen and Damon Wayans, which ran for four seasons from 1990 to 1994. Since that time, Coffield and Park were married, and relocated from Los Angeles to Brooklyn to raise their two children. Their active careers have continued to include television, films and New York theater. Most recently, the duo have developed and begun filming a new web video series that they are co-creating together. Titled “So… that just happened,” the series was born out of unique live performances that the pair has staged in New York City. The performances evolve out of recordings that the couple makes of their own, idiosyncratic, daily personal conversations – which are then performed as staged readings for live audiences. “It’s sort of like inviting people into our living room and allowing them to eavesdrop on our most spontaneous thoughts and ideas,” explains Coffield Park, “It has been really extraordinary to feel more connected to our audience than ever before while doing this work that is so intimate and close to ourselves.” Park agreed, noting “It seemed like we really needed to take this to the next level!” The couple then began filming these conversations, as well as the ensuing live performances, and adding to the mix editing and writing a third ‘layer’ of reality, which in the case of their soon to be released preview ‘minisode,’ takes the form of a darkly comic nightmare sequence.  Continue Reading