Hasta La Gadget!

Filmmaker J.J. Abrams (Cloverfield, Star Trek) and game creator Gabe Newell (Half-Life, Portal) just announced they’ll be working together on creating movies and games, via their respective companies, Bad Robot Productions and Valve Software. “We sort of reached the point where we decided that we needed to do more than talk,” Newell said of the partnership. The two were speaking at the DICE 2013 conference in Las Vegas, addressing “Storytelling Across Platforms: Who Benefits Most, the Audience or the Player?” After a half hour of speaking about storytelling in their respective mediums, Newell announced that the presentation came from an ongoing conversation between the two about storytelling. Today’s news is the fruition of that conversation, with the two taking action.

Newell specifically said that J.J.’s team could craft a Half-Life or Portal film — something we’ve heard about in the past, albeit not with Abrams attached — and Abrams said that Valve could help create a game with Bad Robot. Interesting indeed! Of course, the two have their jobs cut out for them — Abrams is currently working on both the Star Trek and Star Wars movie franchises, and Valve’s got a new hardware initiative set to debut this year.

Filed under: Gaming, HD

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In a move it’s calling a world’s first, Sky Sports has announced that parts of Formula 1’s final preseason tests from Circuit de Catalunya will be broadcast on its 3D network. While F1 has tested the use of 3D before, it’s never been broadcast and chief Bernie Ecclestone — who you’ll remember fiddled for years as F1 stuck with widescreen standard definition video presentations before it made the jump in 2011 — has previously said 3D will never be used. Sky Sports referred to the event as a one-off, while commentator Martin Brundle is quoted in the press release calling it a “special moment for F1 fans…a new immersive experience for viewers.

While Ecclestone may not be willing to push the envelope in broadcast tech, having Sky as a broadcast partner could force the issue as it justifies its exclusive access and dedicated broadcast channel. Last season the network upgraded the audio to Dolby 5.1 and added features like the Race Control view in its iPad app. Sky has previously featured sporting events on its 3D channel like Ryder Cup golf, Premier League and of course the 2012 Olympics. It says F1 will be the 14th sport it’s delivered in 3D, although we’ll have to wait until after this maiden test from February 28th to March 3rd — it will also be available in 2D HD on the regular F1 channel — to see if it becomes a regular fixture. Now, about those HD on-board cameras….

Filed under: Home Entertainment, HD

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Source: Sky Sports

We were already well aware of Deezer making its way toward some LG Smart TVs in the UK, but now the streaming service has announced it’ll be coming to many, many more savvy television sets in the very near future. The digital tunes provider let it be know that it’s struck a deal with Samsung, Toshiba and, yet again, LG, one that’s bound to make the Deezer application available to a “potential audience of at least 600 million people across more than 150 countries.” There’s a slight caveat, however, as the recently announced deal comes with somewhat of a limited scope — namely the fact Deezer’s set to only be usable on Samsung smart TVs in Europe that were produced in 2011, while the same goes for LG’s but with the exception of a worldwide availability. Toshiba, on the other hand, will be able to bring the music offering to its 2011-range in Europe, Middle East and Asia Pacific, as well as the company’s new 2013 smart TV lineup to users all around the globe. This, naturally, excludes us folks in the good ol’ US of A, since, as you may know, Deezer is still trying to figure things out this side of the pond.

Filed under: Home Entertainment, Software, HD

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Source: Deezer

Some British cable subscribers will soon have a new master: international telecom giant Liberty Global has just acquired Virgin Media for $23.3 billion in cash and stock. The deal gives Liberty an even larger stake in Europe than it had before and, if you believe the new partners, creates one of the bigger broadband companies on the planet at 47 million homes covered across 14 countries. Liberty also sees Virgin as good at tackling the business and mobile spaces that have been its relative weak points. How this will affect the UK isn’t immediately apparent, although Virgin Media will continue to run under its existing name — that moebius logo isn’t going anywhere in the foreseeable future. We’ll at least have some room to ponder the consequences when the buyout isn’t poised to close until sometime in the second quarter.

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Source: Liberty Global (PDF)

CBS has pulled back the curtain on just how many eyeballs were glued to its Super Bowl XLVII coverage, and it claims that its live stream netted 3 million unique viewers, up 43 percent from last year’s game. With so many fans watching the action via the internet, CBS managed to whip up almost 10 million live video streams, which is more than a 100% uptick from the previous year. If you’re wondering just how that translates into time spent watching the Ravens forge their path to victory, CBS says it broke a record by streaming 114.4 million minutes. According to figures collected by a trio of research groups, the game was the most “most-social event in the history of television,” racking up more than 52.5 million mentions of it around the web in a single day — three times that of 2012’s Super Bowl and Grammy Awards. Sure, CBS’ online viewership numbers for Super Bowl XLVI are impressive, but they’re still eclipsed by the record-breaking 164.1 million viewers who caught the Ravens and 49ers duke it out on television.

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Source: CBS