Hasta La Gadget!

If the fact that Target announced that they wont be carrying Beyonce‘s 2013 self-titled album weren’t enough, the writing on the wall should be. Here we’re seeing another big push in the war waged between artists, record labels, and those that would stand to lose profit at the hands of the oncoming digital revolution. While […]

We got a first look at the BitTorrent Bundle back in May when it was introduced as a new file format for content creators. Basically, this Bundle will allow those creators to package several items together for free with additional items being available for those who move forward and unlock it. We recently got a […]

Barnes & Noble can’t stem the losses from its digital books and device division, as the Nook department saw revenues drop 20.2 percent year over year according to the company’s just-released quarterly earnings report. Nook earned $153 million, and that’s up sequentially from $108 million despite the yearly decline.

Nook hardware fared the worst, dropping 23.1 percent year over year while sales of digital content for Nook apps and devices dropped 15.8 percent. B&N partly blames the decrease in content sales on poor Nook tablet and reader sales, but also on outside factors. Specifically, B&N calls out the fact that this year there wasn’t either a Hunger Games or a 50 Shades of Grey trilogy to drive consumer content purchases. Retail was down 9.9 percent year over year, with revenues of $1 billion total, covering business from physical and online stores.

Overall, the company seemed keen to express continued support of its Nook offerings via the earnings release. Board Chairman Leonard Riggio suspended an offer he had planned to make on the company’s retail business, saying that instead B&N needs to focus on building its 10 million Nook owning customers, and to increase sales of Nook devices both in stores and online. That means Nook will continue to operate in tandem with the retail business, rather than the two divisions being split up into separate companies.

Nook Media CEO Michael P. Huseby also said in a statement that the Nook line will continue to be offered “at the best values in the marketplace,” and that “at least one” new Nook product will be coming for the holiday season, with others in development for beyond that. No mention was made of the plan revealed last time around to open up Nook development to outside OEMs, but the conference call is at 10 AM ET this morning, so we’ll update if any new information comes to light at that time.

Though it seems like a bit of a strange headline to lead with, it would appear that VUDU’s upgrade of their Disc to Digital software from Beta to full-fledged release may have hit a hiccup. That shouldn’t be too much of deterrent from users working with this system, on the other hand, as the details remain the same: conversion of your DVD and Blu-ray disks into digital editions accessible from wherever you’ve got an internet connection. For a fee, of course.

This service allows users to convert the video from their already owned disks into SD or HD formats for $2.00 apiece or $5.00 if they’re HD DVD. SD from DVDs costs the standard $2, as does the only format available for Blu-ray disks, HD. This system works with the UltraViolet video system so users will be able to watch on devices such as Roku, PlayStation 3 (and 4, we must assume), tablets, smartphones, Xbox 360 (and 720, more than likely), as well as your connected TV – and through the web, of course.

This system is currently working with mostly streaming services, allowing VUDU apps to stream via the web, but also with updates to iOS and Android in recent months making offline downloading a reality as well.

So what you’ve got here is a system where you put your DVD or Blu-ray into your computer, hit the “go” button, and allow this system to scan it. Once it’s scanned, you’ll have a virtual copy of that disk anywhere you can access VUDU’s webpage and/or app. This system uses Gracenote technology to recognize the contents of the disk and UltraViolet for video in cloud web storage.

UPDATE: The system has now left Beta for real – make with the converting!

This system will immediately (if not soon) be working on both Windows and Mac OS X machines and requires an internet connection as well as a DVD / Blu-ray drive to scan.

VUDU Disc to Digital meant to leave Beta today [UPDATE] is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

The Electronic Software Ratings Board, as many of you already know, is the organization that assigns age-based ratings for video games here in the United States. At the moment, only a fraction of games get rated since the sheer number of digital games makes rating each and every one of them a seemingly insurmountable challenge. Today, the ESRB announced that it has made the process of rating digital games a whole lot easier for the itself and developers alike.

Normally when developers want a game rated, they have to pay the ESRB to review a DVD of in-game footage, but the ESRB has done a lot to streamline the process for digital titles. Instead of sending in a DVD of game footage, developers simply fill out a questionnaire that determines a rating for their game. They can fill out the questionnaire and submit it to the ESRB free of charge too, which should do a lot to get more developers using the ESRB’s rating system. As an added bonus for consumers, the ESRB’s digital rating system will not only assign age-based ratings, but also tell consumers if the game will share their data and location, among other things.

Naturally, there’s cause for concern when it comes to this self-rating system, as developers could potentially lie about their game to get a “better” rating (if such a thing even exists when it comes to game ratings). However, the ESRB tells Ars Technica that its tests show that the self-rating method works nearly as well as ESRB representatives assigning the ratings themselves, so the organization is confident that bogus self-ratings won’t be much of an issue. If they do become an problem, the ESRB can always rescind a developer’s access to its ratings program as punishment, though developers can appeal if they think the rating of their game wasn’t handled properly.

At first, this streamlined ratings systems will only be available for digital games on big platforms, such as Xbox Live, PSN, the Nintendo eShop, and the Windows 8 Store. Don’t expect ESRB-rated games to begin popping up on the iOS App Store or Google Play Store anytime soon though, as both Apple and Google use their own ratings systems for apps and actually shot down proposals from the ESRB last year. What do you think of the ESRB’s digital rating system – is it a good idea, or is the organization just opening itself up for abuse?

ESRB simplifies digital rating system is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.