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A good story is timeless, crossing between different medium, living and breathing it runs in an often unending circle.  Books and comic books become TV shows and movies.  Movies and TV programs spin off and beget novels and video games. Games too, sometimes start their own traditions or evolve from other tales already known.   It’s a natural co-existence; a cycle that’s evolving with each change in communication mediums.

Among the different medium, video games and movies in particular share a common ground.  They are often similar in storyline and visual style.  That makes for a natural companionship where, on one level, they co-exist by sharing franchises as appropriate to the different technologies and methods of storytelling; watch Star Wars, the movie; play Star Wars, the video game.  On another level, however, the mediums themselves almost converge. There, games become a dynamic, interactive, choose-your-own-adventure equivalent to the static, but rich, three act Hollywood movie experience.

From Spiderman, to the Matrix, from Lord of the Rings to Star Wars, from James Bond, to The Simpsons and CSI: games built around existing TV and movie franchises increasingly dot the lists of popular games for current generation consoles.  And in reverse, Click to Read More

In the technology industry there are nearly as many rumors and reports speculating about Apple and their products as there are gossip headlines about Lindsay Lohan or Paris Hilton.   One of the most common iTunes related news grabbers has been movie rentals, or speculation thereabout.   Now, it’s grabbed the wires again.

The Financial Times is reporting Apple is close to announcing a deal with Fox that will give Apple the rights to offer movie rentals through the iTunes digital store at some time in 2008. 

Some are speculating the story underlies a renewed push for Apple’s “hobby project,” Apple TV.   Alternate theories push a video strategy as a means of supporting Apple’s now almost entirely video enabled consumer product line (only the iPod shuffle doesn’t support video).

Apple has not made any statements about such a video offering and this is not the first times the Financial Times has run with a story focused on the concept that proved premature.  Click to Read More

Movie distribution generally follows relatively strict calendar windows.  First releases go to the theaters, then, after a nice time lag, the DVD is issued.  From there, TV, pay per view, hotels, airlines and the rest of the mix get their shot.  Every now and then, the calendar gets thrown away for an experiment.  Vudu is the latest beneficiary.

Today, coinciding with the DVD release of the Bourne Ultimatum, set top box video on demand provider Vudu will be making the film available in a downloadable HD version.  The same day download breaks the calendar tradition and is characterized as a first of kind offering.

Much as it’s respected, the calendar for film distribution is not sacred.  Despite pressures from the theater industry which seeks to protect box office revenue through exclusivity, experiments do happen on occasion. Click to Read More

The promise of high definition DVD for consumers is better image quality and more features.  For movie production houses, that’s all nice but arguably as important is the promise of better encryption standards.  The more secure the content, the less likely there will be theft.   Viacom chairman Sumner Redstone put it  succinctly in a speech Thursday.  He said  “If content is king, copyright is its castle.”

There’s no question that castle should be secure. The trouble for the studio’s is, when it comes to software, if it can be built it can be broken.  For every tally they put on the scorecard for more security, somewhere, someone is going to try and undo it – even if the only goal is to see if they can unlock what’s supposed to be secure.  And given enough time, they’re going to be successful at breaking through. Reports are, that happened this week with Blu Ray.

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Download a movie from any download service and chances are, you can’t burn it onto a DVD, at least one that will play on any machine (e.g. your home DVD player).  It’s a matter of copyright protection.  Store bought DVDs are encrypted with what is essentially a digital padlock called a Content Scrambling System (CSS).  Your home DVD player was manufactured with the keys.  Your computer, similarly equipped to unlocking the file when it comes to playing a movie, doesn’t have the tools to make a lock of its own.   That may soon change.

Thursday, the DVD Copyright Control Association (DVDCCA), a trade association that oversees these issues, agreed for the first time to begin licensing the encryption technology to consumer device makers.  Click to Read More

For all the hype, the battle to define a next generation DVD standard hasn’t yet been winning hearts and minds.  Ask an average consumer “Bluray or HD DVD?” and most will give an indifferent sigh or a puzzled “huh?”  There’s no urgency to buy absent a single unified standard.

Only about 3million high definition discs have sold so far (both formats combined).  In contrast, standard definition DVD’s sell about a billion units in the U.S. every year.

Those facts haven’t stopped technology giants, and their competing camps, from raging an all out marketing war for the future.   In one corner there’s Sony, inventor, tech giant and proud father of yet another proprietary technology: BluRay.  They’re hoping BluRay will win, and not join Betamax and the Memory Stick in their archives of “Close but not quite.”  On the other side, there’s Toshiba and its partners championing their less expensive, evolutionary solution. 

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If you’re not a preteen, a relative of one, or someone following the media industry, you probably haven’t’ heard of Club Penguin or its rival Webkinz.     The sites provide interactive games and social network like features for preteens. Club Penguin, launched in 2005, was designed to be a fun, safe, game and activity environment for today’s internet enabled children aged 6 to 14; MySpace for the younger set. On the site, kids can adopt and interact with virtual Penguins or chat and play games with other kids on the site.

Wednesday, coinciding with their earnings release, Disney announced they were buying the British Colombia based company for $350m in cash plus revenue performance incentives that could make the kids social network worth as much as $700m. 

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