Even good year has challenges12/15/2006
As I said at our Video Hall of Fame gala two weeks ago, the industry has much to celebrate this year.
The end is in sight12/8/2006 VB sister publication Variety last month ran a very clever obituary for the VHS format. With the tongue-in-cheek headline “VHS, 30, dies of loneliness,” the story was clicked far and wide across the Web.
Warm reception for Truth12/1/2006 CULVER CITY, CALIF.—Former Vice President Al Gore and the makers of An Inconvenient Truth gathered here last night at the hip Smashbox Studios (home of L.A.’s Fashion Week) to accept Environmental Leadership Awards from the California League of Conservation Voters.
Bragging—not rental—rights11/17/2006
So Blockbuster is finally getting in the P.R. game as it pertains to rival Netflix Inc., and it has got the perfect partner in consummate indie showmen Bob and Harvey Weinstein.
Cracking windows11/10/2006 SANTA MONICA, Calif.—If major motion pictures were to be released simultaneously in movie theaters and on DVD, an estimated 15% to 20% of movie patrons would stay home, causing about a third of theaters to shut their doors.
Tuning in to TV on DVD10/27/2006 TV stations use the ratings earned during sweeps months to set future advertising rates, and DVD retailers may find them of use for future planning too, given that this fall’s ratings winners are likely to be next year’s top TV on DVD sellers.
50 is a milestone10/20/2006
The question that naturally follows then is why the studios would use 50GB until they’ve really got high-def interactive features that require all that capacity for storage.
Down but not out10/6/2006 VHS. What a drag. That’s the prevailing sentiment at some studios chafed by statistics that show the overall home entertainment business essentially flat, when, in fact, DVD is still growing by a small amount each year.
Cartoon crowd9/22/2006 Sony Pictures this week bows Open Season as its entry into CGI animated films. The studio has four more movies planned, prompting the Los Angeles Times recently to question whether there’s a genre glut in CGI.
All’s fair and square9/8/2006 Amazon’s new video download service, “Unbox,” is actually pretty box. Should that be boxy? Or box-centric? Maybe box driven. Yeah, box driven. In the sense that it appears to have been created to open another stream for revenue.
