Hasta La Gadget!

Do you enjoy Saturday Night Live? If so, you’re in good company, with Yahoo‘s CEO Marissa Mayer revealing in a blog post earlier today that she is also a fan. That’s not all she revealed, however, expressing her fondness for the show amidst a bigger announcement: Yahoo has struck a deal with Broadway Video to exclusively offer Saturday Night Live content later this year.

According to the announcement, the agreement between the two companies allows Yahoo to exclusively provide Saturday Night Live’s archive of video content from the last 38 years. Full video content from the current season will not be offered by Yahoo, but it will feature clips from the season, with Mayer specifically listing Coffee Talk, Wayne’s World, Coneheads, and Pat being among them.

The announcement doesn’t give us much more detail than that, simply saying that it will be available “across Yahoo!’s sites,” implying that it won’t be all aggregated in a single location. Mayer says that another announcement will be made once the video content is available, and we’ll be sure to keep an eye out for it, with more details to follow.

In other Yahoo news, we reported earlier today that Yahoo Japan and Softbank Capital have joined forces to create a $20 million fund aimed at helping U.S. startups get a foothold in the Japanese market. In addition, Yahoo Japan also appointed a new U.S. operations head, Toshiaki Chiku, who said that the Japanese market can be a hard place for US startups to succeed, but this program aims to change that.

[via Yahoo]

Yahoo strikes deal to exclusively offer Saturday Night Live content is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Adobe Photoshop CS 5 and CS 6 have a set of features called Content Aware. They automatically fill in gaps or selected areas in images as if those gaps or parts were never there. It’s not perfect, but it can be a time saver for many operations. This prototype software is like Content Aware for videos – it can edit moving subjects out of a video while the background remains more or less untouched.

Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Computer Science and University College London’s Computer Science department developed the wonder software. From what I can understand, the program works by marking the subject(s) to be removed and the one(s) to be retained. Then, for each affected frame, the program will look at a source frame elsewhere in the video where the background is not blocked by the object to be edited out, and use this source material to “inpaint” the section back into the image.

I think the software works best when the moving object to be edited out is over a static background, i.e. it won’t be as effective when there are like a hundred people moving and you want to remove someone from the foreground.Watch the video for a demo (and a way better explanation):

How awesome is that? I don’t know how much of the process is automated though. Head to MPII’s website for more information on the program.

[via MPII via Ubergizmo]

Sony Network Entertainment International and Sony Computer Entertainment America announced a new online store this week. The online store has launched in the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Brazil. The store will allow PlayStation Network and Sony Entertainment Network users to buy games, movies, TV shows, and other content.

Sony promises that the new online store offers rich and detailed product pages making it easy to browse the store catalog containing what Sony claims to be millions of pieces of game-related content. The game content includes downloadable games, add-on content, and themes. The store is accessible through the PS3 and content can be purchased online via computers.

Content purchased using a computer for the PS3 will be added directly to the My Downloads area within the PlayStation Store. The content is also accessible using the PlayStation Vita or the PSP. The content also includes movies and TV episodes available through the online store that can also be watched on any Windows computer via the Media Go application for Windows PCs.

The movie and TV content can also be viewed on Android-powered Sony Xperia smartphones and tablets. Sony says that this online store was first offered in Europe in December. As of January 24 the store is available in the US, Canada, Mexico, and Brazil. Sony announced not long ago that people can also find their account wallet using PayPal and those wallet funds can be used to purchase any content from the new online store.

[via Sony Entertainment Network]

Sony Entertainment Network Online Store for games, movies and more heads to the US is written by Shane McGlaun & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

China’s biggest Internet TV company just penned a 5-year agreement with Sony. In doing so, the Chinese company will now provide over 300 Sony titles via the Youku Premium platform. Youku Tudou also has deals with DreamWorks, Paramount, WB, Twentieth Century Fox, NBC Broadcasting, Lionsgate, and Disney.

Thanks to this deal, viewers can now shell out cash to buy on-demand access to any of the 300 Sony titles. Options include Dracula, Groundhogs Day, The Fisher King, and Sense and Sensibility. If those sound kind of…aged, there will also be some modern offerings, including Men in Black 3, 21 Jump Street, and The Amazing Spider-Man.

Said Huilong Zhu, Tudou’s Vice President of Movie Operations: “We’re delighted to be working with Sony Pictures Television to enrich our film library. Since launching Youku Premium in 2010, Youku Tudou has been committed to building the best platform for viewers and copyright holders alike, and our strong working relationships with all eight major Hollywood studios allow us to offer our viewers a wealth of licensed content.” He went on to explain that unanticipated subscriber numbers lead them to believe that viewers are willing to pay for quality content.

Youku’s first paid content was a live broadcast of Guo Degang’s comedy show in 2009. Soon after, the company launched Youku Premium in 2010, which provides high-resolution and ad-free programming via both on-demand and subscription-based models. Presently, Youku Tudou enjoys two million paying users, and is “China’s first premium video platform.”

Youku Tudou pens 5-year deal with Sony is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Fans of digital media have a reason to smile today, as Fox has revealed that it will begin offering digital versions of its movies weeks before physical Blu-ray and DVDs release. The first movie that will getting this treatment is Prometheus, which is scheduled to release on Blu-ray and DVD on October 11. Fox will begin offering the high-definition digital version of the movie on September 18, giving those who don’t mind losing the disc about a three week jump on those who do mind.

Even better is the fact that these digital movies will be offered for less than current going rate for movies. Fox plans to offer its digital flicks for around $15 a pop, down from the $20 that consumers normally pay. The company will offering these movies with “Digital High Definition” or “DHD” branding, and this new initiative marks a team up between Fox and UltraViolet, a digital streaming service that Fox has been hesitant to partner with in the past.

Fox needs to tread carefully here, however. The company has tried to offer early digital copies in the past and failed to succeed for a number of reasons. Not only did Fox offer these earlier releases at a premium, charging as much as $30 per movie, but it also released these digital copies only two months after the movies premiered in theaters. Obviously, that didn’t sit too well with theater owners, so this time around, we’re seeing Fox take a much less aggressive approach to offering digital content early. Everyone should be happy with this new plan, as Fox says that most of the movies it offers early will be out of theaters by the time they become available digitally.

This new initiative will launch in 50 countries around the world simultaneously, and even though Prometheus is the only film with a solid digital release date at the moment, we’re told to expect other Fox films such as Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, The Watch, and Ice Age: Continental Drift to follow suit. If Fox does this right, it could help grow the digital movies market, which is already on the rise but still quite small when compared to the boxed movies market. Stay tuned, because this could get interesting.

[via The New York Times]

Fox will offer digital movies weeks before DVD release is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.