Hasta La Gadget!

If you want to the theaters this summer to see The Avengers, you may or may not know that Joss Whedon was involved with the project. The Avengers was a massive hit, was easily the biggest film of the summer, and made a huge amount of money. If you miss the days of Marvel superheroes on TV, a new series is in the works from Whedon.

Even more interesting than knowing he’s working on co-writing a new ABC pilot for a TV series is that the series he is working on is set in the Avengers universe. The project is tiled S.H.I.E.L.D. and follows the secret military law enforcement group headed by Nick Fury. I doubt we’ll see Samuel L Jackson in the project, he makes a good Fury.

Reports indicate that Joss Whedon, and his brother Jed are co-writing the pilot along with help from Joss’ wife Maurissa Tanchareon. There are also indications that Whedon might direct the pilot if his schedule allows. I would hope if Whedon directs the pilot, whomever they choose to direct the individual episodes is up to par.

The production for the pilot is going to get underway as soon as possible according to Mercury News. S.H.I.E.L.D. isn’t the only Marvel superhero property ABC is developing as a series. It looks like The Hulk is also coming back to television. That was my favorite show growing up, The Incredible Hulk and The Dukes of Hazard made for an exciting Friday night in the 80′s.

Joss Whedon working on ABC Pilot called S.H.I.E.L.D. is written by Shane McGlaun & originally posted on SlashGear.
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At some point in your life you’re going to reach the stage where A) you can’t stand to listen to the horrible drivel and jingles spewed forth by TV commercials and B) your failing eyesight and dexterity will make it nigh impossible to find the mute button on your remote before your show returns. So the Smash Mute might look ridiculous to you now, but one day you’ll see the beauty of its simple design. More »

Online video — helped along by the rise of tablets, better broadband and a flood of content from YouTube, Netflix, Amazon and many others — has seen a huge rise in usage in the last few years; and while PCs remain the most common way to consume it, thanks to consoles like the Xbox, even TV screens are becoming popular for online video consumption.

According to a new study out from NPD surveying 14,000 consumers across 14 countries, some 18% of users are accessing online video on TVs on a daily basis, with some 25% accessing it several times a week, with movies driving much of that growth.

Similarly, it noted that tablets and smartphones are also continuing to see more usage for online video. The fact that overall PCs have a higher penetration than tablets may be the reason why PCs — both laptop and desktop — still prove more popular than tablets and smartphones as a place to watch online video. But as we have seen before, when people do have tablets, some are actually spending more time watching video on them than they are PCs, by as much as 30% more.

China — urban China, that is — is coming out as the most online-video-friendly country at the moment. As you can see in the table below, which measures online video consumption in different countries by device, China’s urban users beat every other country surveyed, across every device. This may be down to simple user behavior, but it’s also, NPD says, because Chinese users can access a lot more video content online than they can from domestic broadcasters and pay-TV providers.

Going back to the bigger picture, the rise in online video watching on TV is not exclusively because people are buying fancier televisions with internet built into them; also playing a role are the consoles that they are attaching to their existing sets. Products like the Xbox or set-top boxes from pay-TV providers that link up with broadband-enabled on-demand services have propelled TV into a strong category for online video, especially in particular markets.

In Mexico, some 30% of users watch online video on TVs. Among urban parts of China the number is nearly 40%. Neither still reaches the number of people watching on PCs — 52% on laptops and 73% on desktop PCs, respectively — but it is getting close.

“Online content is mostly viewed on computers or mobile devices such as tablets and smart phones, but TVs are increasingly becoming devices of choice for consumers, particularly since an increasing numbers of sets have either built-in connectivity or can be connected to the internet via a peripheral device such as a connected Blu-ray player or set top box, among others,” noted NPD DisplaySearch research director Riddhi Patel in a statement.

NPD says films are the most popular online video on TVs, overtaking TV content.

But, lest you think the whole world is getting connected, think again. NPD says that 44% of viewers have “no interest” in content on TVs; a further 30% said they do not own the equipment to watch online video.

And even if they were given the tools to watch online video on TV, only one-third of those without the possibility to do so now say they would want to. Within individual countries, India ranked the highest among those with “no” online video viewing options, at 67%. But it’s not just an emerging market story: Japan was the second-highest market in the no-online-video game, at 42%.

We’ve seen NHK preparing its Super Hi-Vision 8K video since time immemorial. Wouldn’t it be nice if the TV broadcast technology was more than just a perpetual research project? If sources for Japan’s Nikkei aren’t dreaming, the International Telecommunication Union is now “likely” to declare the format an official standard for broadcasters and TV makers. Should it go ahead, the UN telecom body would ask the world to rely on Super Hi-Vision as an eventual successor to HDTV and reduce the balkanization of TV standards that we’ve seen in the past. Neither the ITU nor NHK is known to have commented on the claim so far, but NHK isn’t exactly in a rush to get a seal of approval from anyone — widescale test broadcasts aren’t coming until 2020, and production TVs themselves are only just entering a 4K universe.

Filed under: Home Entertainment

Nikkei: ITU near recommending NHK’s Super Hi-Vision as official TV standard originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 22 Aug 2012 22:08:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This week I bought a Roku. Late to the party? Yes, but not as late as you might suppose. Roku has sold about 2.5 million streaming media boxes since the product launched in 2008. Approximately 1.5 million of those units moved in 2011, indicating an acceleration of demand. Coincidentally, those numbers roughly represent the cord-cutting movement: Reportedly, 2.65 million cable subscribers ditched their service between 2008 and 2011, with about 1.5 million of those defections happening in 2011.

While cable cord-cutting is a trend, the movement is occurring in the context of customer inertia. About 100 million customers subscribe to cable, satellite, and other pay-TV providers (e.g. AT&T’s U-Verse). The problematic value proposition of cutting the cord will probably keep massive inaction in place for the short term, but cannot, I believe, withstand long-term marketplace demands.

Continue reading Editorial: Cutting the cable cord is a young trend going in the right direction

Filed under: Home Entertainment

Editorial: Cutting the cable cord is a young trend going in the right direction originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 20 Aug 2012 15:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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