You probably know Netflix raised its prices. And, like everyone else, you’re probably outraged at the death of $10 1 disc + streaming plan. But the $6 price hike doesn’t have to be the end of the world. More »
The original Google Videos is going to be mighty huffy about this. Not only has it endured repeated attempts on its life following Big G’s acquisition of YouTube, but now its very identity has been humiliatingly copied and pasted onto an entirely different service. The new Google Videos is a movie rental app that will give Android users in the US mobile access to the 3,000+ premium titles that are already available to rent on a desktop. So far, no one has been able to break out the popcorn except a few lucky Xoom owners, but last night the app mysteriously became available to everyone else in Android Market, too. Unfortunately, those quick triggers who managed to install the app before it disappeared were rewarded with a riveting succession of server errors, but at least it gives us hope that the real-deal will be with the masses in short order. Google Videos is dead, long live Google Videos.
Google Videos rental app makes fleeting cameo in Market, portends of an imminent release originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 04 Jul 2011 18:51:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Here’s a bad idea: announce a beta run for your discount subscription movie ticket service, but neglect to inform the 21 San Francisco-based theaters listed that they’re part of the fun. That’s essentially what Landmark, AMC, Camera Cinemas, and Big Cinemas are claiming MoviePass did earlier this week, and boy has the corn begun to pop. According to The Wrap and Variety, the chains weren’t pleased to find out that MP had worked with mutual partner MovieTickets.com to set admission prices without their consent; the intriguing tidbit here is that despite the low cost for consumers, the theaters would still be paid full admission. MoviePass had been hoping to gain more support with the test phase, but it looks like that’ll be on pause for a good while. No word on whether the beta will see a rescheduling, but you’ll find the full details in the links below, and a PR rebuttal from AMC past the break.Continue reading MoviePass gets kicked out of theaters before it can get a ticket
MoviePass gets kicked out of theaters before it can get a ticket originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 02 Jul 2011 11:57:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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D-Box movie-theater chairs will shake you in time to the on-screen action
Imagine if, every time there was an explosion up on the cinema screen and a crashing thunder of sound from the theater’s THX speakers, your seat shook, spilling your beer/coke/popcorn into your lap. Well, imagine no more. The Kinetic Movie Theater chair could make this messy, pants-wetting fantasy into a moist reality.
The D-Box, already in several theaters across the U.S and also available for home use, takes “motion-codes” embedded in the movies (DVD and BD for home use) and uses them to control motors in the seats that rock, roll, shake and rattle you in time with the on-screen action.
I can see this being great for games, but who really wants to watch a movie and be jerked around while doing it? Does being shaken in time to Jake LaMotta’s punches in Raging Bull, or bobbing up and down as you descend the rapids in Deliverance really add to the movie? My guess is that this will work best in crappy action movies, which are pretty low on content as it is.
Still, if there’s one thing that can tempt me to part with my money, it’s a scary-sounding health warning, and the D-Box has a great one:
The D-BOX motion system and motion enabled seats may be harmful to women who are pregnant, persons with heart conditions, the elderly, persons with back, head or neck conditions or injuries or those with other pre-existing medical conditions.
Available now, in various first and third-party forms.
D-Box Movie Theater Seats [D-Box via Core77]
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Here’s a scenario: you’d love to see the latest blockbuster, but aren’t willing to fork out a month’s wages to do so. Cue MoviePass, a startup seeking to make life cheaper (fiscally, not emotionally) for repeat cinema moviegoers. The $50 subscription allows for “unlimited” cinema screenings, provided you’re okay with a few caveats: 3D or IMAX screenings incur a $3 surcharge, and you’ll be limited to one flick per day. Tickets must also be purchased on a partner website, netting you a coupon code that’s exchanged for stubs in-theater. Not the most elegant solution, but the reliance on paper prevents folks from re-watching or double-dipping while inside. If that sounds just a bit too jovial for you, the company’s also considering a chopped-down $30 plan, which would impose a four movie limit each month. It’s launching as a trial this weekend in San Francisco, so if you’ve nothing better to do, give it a go and let us know how it works out.MoviePass wants to be Netflix, but for theaters originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 28 Jun 2011 21:15:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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This article was written on February 23, 2008 by CyberNet.
Weekend Website
Anytime that I’ve needed to lookup information regarding a movie, I’ve always turned to The Internet Movie Database. They’re considered to be “the biggest, best, most award-winning movie and TV site on the planet” and they have all kinds of information available. While IMDB remains my favorite source for TV and movie information, I thought it was worth taking a look at some alternatives because there are some great ones out there. Today we’ll be looking at three sites to visit which include Movies.com, Yahoo! Movies, and MovieWeb.
Movies.com has actually been around since 2000 and they include everything related to movies. If you’d like to keep up with movie news or you want to buy tickets and view show times, you can do it all at Movies.com. Here’s a quick run-through on what you’ll find at the site:
Homepage
The homepage includes the movie spotlight which shows the box-office leaders, movies opening during the week, upcoming movies, and new DVD releases.
The Buzz
The Buzz is where you’ll read all about the latest buzz! At the moment, of course it’s all about the Oscars. Right now you can take the Headless Oscar Fashions Quiz or see the list of Oscar nominees.
New & Upcoming
In the “New & Upcoming” section you’ll find a spotlight for the week. This week it’s Jumper which is now in theaters. You can get all kinds of info on the movie of the week as well as other new movies including movie details, tickets and times, trailers and clips, and reviews. They also post an upcoming release calendar by week so that you know when movies you want to see are headed for the big-screen.
Reviews
Want to know what people think of a movie before you see it, this is where you can do that. They graph results which include their opinion, the opinion of critics, and what their site visitors have to say. For example, Jumper was given a C rating by Movies.com, a C- by the critics, and a B by site readers.
Other “Stuff”
Additional components to the site include a fan forum, a place where you can see photos of your favorite actors and actresses, as well as a section to view trailers and clips from upcoming movies.
If you end up visiting the site frequently, you’ll want to become a member and then you can customize the content that you see on the site, keep track of reviews that you’ve written, and more.
Yahoo! Movies is another great site to go to when you want to keep up with movies. Out of any of the sites we’re talking about today, Yahoo! Movies has the best interface. The main components to this site include the list of the top movies at the box office, a list of movies opening this week, the option to get showtimes and tickets for movies in your area, and a section with movie news and gossip. They too have trailers and clips for new movies.
Below you’ll find a quick run-through of what you’ll find when navigating through Yahoo! Movies.
There are three main tabs on the Yahoo! Movies site – “Movies,” DVD,” and “My Movies.” Today we’re just focusing on the content that you can find under the “Movies” tab.
In Theaters
This is where you’ll get all of the information you could ever want about movies that are opening in theaters shortly, and those already in theaters. One of the best parts about the information that they provide is the user reviews. There are SO many user reviews for movies so you really get a good idea of whether or not it’s worth seeing. For each movie, they provide a brief summary, but then they also provide links to more detailed movie information, showtimes, trailers & clips, and user reviews.
Showtimes & Tickets
Just enter in your location and it will pull up a list of theaters and showtimes in your area. They also provide the address and phone number for the theater, and a link so that you can map it on Yahoo Maps.
Coming Soon
By visiting the “coming soon” section, you’ll be able to see a list of movies that will be coming out over the next several weeks.
Top Rated
Remember how I mentioned all of the user reviews? They are most useful in the “Top Rated” section. A list of movies that are in the theaters is displayed, and then they display what the average grade was that Yahoo! users gave the movie. For example, The Bucket List has been given, on average, a B by users. They also included a list of Top Movies of All Time which includes movies like The Shawshank Redemption, The Godfather, Star Wars, and more.
MovieWeb’s slogan is “The Best Seat in the House” and like the other two sites we mentioned today, they include all kinds of information on the latest movies hitting the theaters, those just coming to DVD, and more. While their site can be a little difficult to navigate, there’s a lot of great content there so searching through it is worth it. Some of the main components you’ll find on their homepage include a list of movies on DVD this week, the latest Blu-Ray and HD DVD movie reviews, today’s box office numbers, and all kinds of news, features, and interviews.
Below you’ll find some of the information that you can find on MovieWeb’s site.
Releases
Under the “Releases” tab you’ll find a list of the movies that will be in theaters, those that will be released on DVD, and HD DVD and Blu-ray releases for the week. What I like about MovieWeb’s release section compared to the others is that they show the movie cover instead of just listing the movies which is nice.
User Reviews
There are pages upon pages of reviews for movies in the theater as well as those on DVD. I clicked to view a review of Spiderwick and I was able to get reviews as well as all kinds of information regarding it. Aside from the review, here’s a list of all of the information you can get for movies:
Hi-Def
Unlike the other sites we mentioned, MovieWeb has a section dedicated to the latest Hi-Definition News. The only downside is that you can’t subscribe to the news which would be great if you were keeping your eye out for movies being released on the Blu-ray format. Aside from the news, they also list the latest HD DVD and Blu-ray movie reviews which can be found on the homepage as well.
Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com
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There were better movies playing Sunday afternoon. Super 8, X-Men: First Class. Midnight in Paris. But I bustled past all of those. I headed to theater 7, foul den of Green Lantern 3D. Armed with a superpower of my own. More »
Buzz Player can stream movies in any format to your iPad, from anywhere
Buzz Player is an iPad (and iPhone and Android) app that lets you stream video from pretty much any device on your network. That means you can watch movies stored on a network-attached hard drive without switching on a computer. It’s pretty amazing.
There are other solutions for streaming video to the iPad. Air Video takes any file on your Mac or PC and converts it on-the-fly to an iPad-friendly format, but requires a computer to do it. Another app named FileBrowser will stream movies direct from, say, a Time Capsule, but they need to be H.264 MP4 files. This probably means you’ll have to convert the files first.
What Buzz Player does is connect directly to any SMB or FTP server. From there, you can browse the folders until you meet a movie you’d like to play. Tap it and you can choose to copy the file to your iPad, or just play it. The movies starts right away, and plays stutter free in seemingly any format.
And I mean any format. Not only will it play H.264 MP4 and WMV in a range of containers (AVI, MOV, OGG, DIVX and more), it will handle things like Sorensen, Real Video and Theora. It also supports pretty much any sound format, and allows you to connect over the local network or even via 3G using most networking protocols. Buzz Player even supports subtitles, and lets you tweak not only their appearance but to offset their timing — handy for getting things to sync up.
It’s not all great, though. The interface is ugly, unintuitive and looks more like an open-source Linux project than a polished iPad app. Once you get past this, though, it’s easy enough to use.
I also get some crashing. Every time I hit the “X” in the top left corner to back out of the current movie or section of the app, it dies. When playing movies and working with the network, though, it is stable.
You really need to read the iTunes description to see just how much this thing can do, but let me just add one more point. You can also load up the app with movies via iTunes, just like any other video player. That way, you have pretty much every possibility covered.
Buzz Player is just $4 for the iPad, $3 for the iPhone and ¥499 (around $6) for Android.
Buzz Player [Bugun Software]
Buzz Player for iPad [iTunes]
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The DSLR Follow Focus lets you follow focus… on your DSLR
The DSLR Follow Focus kit is a simple, lightweight, cheap and downright ingenious way to add pro follow focussing and racking to your movie-making setup. It costs just $60, and fits into a pocket. Here’s how it works.
First up is the focus lever. This is a sprung loop of steel with two handles. Squeeze these handles and the loop expands. Slip it over your lens, let go and it clamps into position, offering a lever to more accurately turn the focusing ring.
Next, clip the little pointed marker onto this ring, and then loop the included Velcro strap around the lens, just behind the focus ring. Focus on your first subject and stick a little metal marker onto this strap. Do the same for your other focus points and you’re ready to shoot. The markers let you quickly snap your lens to focus on the preset points.
You could combine two together, racking the zoom whilst moving the camera whilst following focus for that great Alfred Hitchcock-style OMFG effect (I’m pretty sure that’s what Hitchcock actually called it).
The size and ease-of-use here are the clear winners. I’m sure big, locking follow-focus rigs are more accurate time after time, but they also turn your camera setup into some thing the size of a cinderblock.
Available now.
DSLR Follow Focus product page [DSLR Solutions via PetaPixel]
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Hard to say why Google chose to roll its Movies app out first to 3G-packed tablets sporting Android 3.1 (a smaller testbed, perhaps?), but it looks as if it won’t matter for much longer. We’ve received a number of tips this evening suggesting that Google Movies can now be downloaded from the Android Market by WiFi-only Xoom tablets, though some are seeing a litany of server errors when trying to actually use the service. That said, we didn’t see any issues here at Engadget HQ, so it’s possible that a few kinks are still being worked out on select servers. Give it a whirl and let us know how it turns out in comments below, and if you’re a proud owner of a Galaxy Tab 10.1… well, we guess you’re also the proud owner of a trait called “patience.”
[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
Motorola’s WiFi Xoom gains access to Google Movies, just in time for the weekend originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 17 Jun 2011 01:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
