Hasta La Gadget!

The British Film Institute plans to digitize and provide easier access to 10,000 British flicks as part of a new £500 million (approximately $800 million) “Film Forever” initiative. In addition to driving growth in the UK industry by investing in education, filmmaking and the like, the institute wants to put a mixture of free and paid content on its website, YouTube and VoD services. A BFIPlayer app will be providing a similar service to Samsung Smart TVs, PCs and mobile devices. Cinemas, DVDs and TV channels will also play host to the films, selected for digital rebirth by a bunch of experts and in part, by the general public. And, in the spirit of digitization, full details of the ambitious Film Forever enterprise (slated to run from 2012-2017) are available in e-brochure format at the source link below.

Continue reading BFI to digitize 10,000 British films as part of Film Forever investment plan

Filed under: Internet, HD

BFI to digitize 10,000 British films as part of Film Forever investment plan originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 04 Oct 2012 10:49:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We usually associate smartphones in news reporting with citizen journalism, not full-time journalists. However, a confluence of events has just led to the BBC’s Nick Garnett becoming a pioneer for mobile broadcasting on the professional level. When a shortage of satellite trucks prevented Garnett from getting the usual video feed for the BBC News Channel, he successfully arranged the British network’s first live video interview piped through a smartphone. The key, Garnett says, was Dejero’s Live+ iPhone app: while live streaming apps are already commonplace, Dejero’s let him merge the 3G and WiFi connections together, getting enough bandwidth to make a TV-worthy broadcast in a country where LTE is still very new. Combined with some very ad hoc staging and help from the BBC’s technical teams, the coordination resulted in a surprisingly smooth interview about flooding in northeastern England with relatively few hints of the extra-tiny recording equipment involved. It’s unlikely that broadcast crews will reach to their pockets for live coverage solutions before anything else, but the BBC is actively testing Dejero and other apps that could make smartphones as much a part of the field reporting arsenal as a camcorder and an eye for a good story. As we can’t embed the clip, check the source link to see it for yourself.

Update: We’ve now managed to embed the clip after the break.

Continue reading BBC News Channel conducts live video interview over smartphone, goes where satellites can’t (update with video)

Filed under: Cellphones, Alt

BBC News Channel conducts live video interview over smartphone, goes where satellites can’t (update with video) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 27 Sep 2012 16:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Embracing AirPlay has usually involved a wholesale switch in hardware: years of speaker investment go out the window for the sake of skipping a wire. Onkyo doesn’t have a problem if you bring your own equipment to the fray. Its new DS-A5 docking station brings Apple’s WiFi media streaming to many home stereos, including those of rivals, as long as there’s a wired or 802.11g-capable wireless router to feed the connection. Naturally, there’s perks if you do live in an Onkyo universe — any link using its Remote Interactive cable can both wake the stereo through AirPlay as well as control the dock from a traditional remote. About the only oddities are the vintage composite video output and a 30-pin dock for charging iPads, iPhones and iPods, neither of which will be much help if you live on the cutting edge. Onkyo brings the DS-A5 to American shores in October for $199; that’s a lot to pay for playing songs from the couch, but it’s a sight more affordable than replacing home audio equipment costing multiple times that amount.

Filed under: Cellphones, Home Entertainment

Onkyo DS-A5 grafts AirPlay on to existing home stereos, docks older iOS gear originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 24 Sep 2012 04:13:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sound familiar? Just days after the mobile apps for HBO, Cinemax and Hulu added closed captions support on iOS, a similar slew of upgrades have come to their apps on Android. Unfortunately, there doesn’t appear to be any change in the number of supported devices for any of them at this time. Hulu’s upgrade also adds on the option to share videos via Twitter, Facebook and other services, although the 10 second rewind button added on iOS does not appear to have made the cut. As usual you should see the new versions rolling around in the app store, hit the source links for more info.

Filed under: Home Entertainment, Software, HD, Mobile

Hulu Plus, HBO Go and Max Go apps for Android updated with support for closed captions originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 21 Sep 2012 12:39:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Fox embraced a radical thought when it outlined its Digital HD initiative earlier this month: customers are more likely to buy digital movies if the content isn’t artificially delayed and priced to match the releases on conventional discs. The studio is about to see if that gamble on common sense pays off. As of today, you’ll find 600-plus Fox movies ready to buy or rent in HD across every major digital video store in the US, with many downloads cleared to arrive ahead of their physical counterparts at lower prices that reflect a disc-free reality. The media giant has also decided to play nicely with Google after a longstanding absence, putting its movies and TV shows on Google Play Movies and YouTube. Its tentpole movie release Prometheus is unsurprisingly being used as the prime incentive to try Digital HD; the title is available online three weeks before the Blu-ray launch at a more reasonable $15 price. The sci-fi thriller is even Fox’s first movie destined for UltraViolet cloud lockers. Only Americans will have expanded access to movies and TV at first, but it shouldn’t be too long before many countries can be creeped out by Michael Fassbender’s android — including on their Android devices.

Continue reading Fox kicks off its Digital HD initiative by joining Google Play and YouTube, offering movies early

Filed under: Cellphones, Home Entertainment, Tablets, Internet, HD

Fox kicks off its Digital HD initiative by joining Google Play and YouTube, offering movies early originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 18 Sep 2012 13:31:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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