I wrote Wednesday about Warner Brothers’ plan to let people rent movies online (and over cable pay-per-view) systems the same day that they are released on DVDs.
Thursday, Apple announced instant online purchases: It has gotten all the big studios to let people buy electronic copies of movies on the day of DVD release as [...]

Is a turnaround at hand or still a year or two away?
Happily, consumer spending on discs and downloads held steady last quarter — no mean feat after consecutive first-quarter declines — and there were small yet promising signs of growth on the high-def and digital delivery fronts.
But that doesn’t erase questions about the biz’s immediate [...]

J.J. Abrams doesn’t sound like a big-time Hollywood director and producer when he says the best place to watch his effects-filled disaster film “Cloverfield” is not in movie theaters but at home.
Most filmmakers want fans to see movies the way they were meant to be seen, on big screens in dark theaters where fantasy can [...]

 
Joe Letteri has been behind the scenes on some of the biggest movies in the 90s and into the 21st Century. From his first job on The Abyss to The Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers and The Lord Of The Rings: The Return of The King to King Kong, Letteri has been involved [...]

Online movie rental company Netflix Inc has surveyed its subscribers to gauge their interest in streaming movies to their televisions using Microsoft Corp’s Xbox 360, a Netflix spokesman said on Monday.
Netflix spokesman Steve Swasey declined to say whether the survey indicated a soon-to-be announced partnership between the two companies, but said Netflix was interested in [...]

 
Wars of all sorts are a costly matter. Countries engaged in war have to divert many of their resources away from usual spending towards the effort. While the companies behind the high-definition format war didn’t have as much at stake as traditional warfare, there are still heavy losses associated with losing.
Toshiba officially surrendered in the [...]

 
No sooner has the battle for the next-generation high definition DVD format ended, with Blu-ray triumphing over HD DVD, than a new contender has emerged.
A new system that is incompatible with Blu-ray, called HD VMD, for versatile multilayer disc, is trying to find a niche. New Medium Enterprises, the London company behind HD VMD, says [...]

 
It seems Dreamworks has gotten the OK from Toshiba to drop HD DVD because they have cancelled all upcoming HD DVD titles including the anticipated “Bee Movie” that was set for release in North America on March 11th.
Dreamwork’s parent company Paramount also announced that it would be ending HD DVD releases beginning on March 4th.
The [...]

Howard Stringer made history in 2005 for being the first non-Japanese executive to take the helm at Sony Corp. But he may be better remembered as the one who won the high-definition war, erasing the stain on the electronics firm’s image ever since it lost the videotape war two decades earlier.
Although celebrated yesterday, the victory [...]

Toshiba said Tuesday it will no longer develop, make or market HD DVD players and recorders, handing a victory to rival Blu-ray disc technology in the format battle for next-generation video.
“We concluded that a swift decision would be best,” Toshiba President Atsutoshi Nishida told reporters at his company’s Tokyo offices.
The move would make Blu-ray [...]