Via Gizmodo comes news of FakeTV, a device that simulates the flickering of a TV set at night. It's supposed to deter burglars:

See how that works? I'm asking because I don't know. Okay, I can think of one advantage FakeTV has over real TV: no Grey's Anatomy.

P.S. Here's a clip of it at work:

Just don't sit too close to it, or you'll pretend to ruin your eyes.

Jeff Nolan says in "I Have Seen the Future and It Works":

It almost ironic to think that the television industry once thought that 500 channel cable would be their salvation, enabling them to syndicate niche content and offer specialty channels that provided more inventory for advertising, but it’s the proliferation of broadband (often through cable) that may well be the undoing of television as we know it.

I'd love to see our man Kamal - who is quite the talented musician - rock out on one of these:

Then suddenly it becomes HOLY CRAP AWESOME:

I don't know how much the actual veterans of Omaha Beach appreciate having a bunch of sissies for their soundtrack, but what are they gonna do about it?

(thx, hollywood elsewhere)

Jeff Nolan hears crickets:

What’s more interesting, that high definition DVD players have suddenly plummeted in price or that nobody seems to care. Maybe the reason that the prices have gone off the cliff is that consumers don’t actually care… high def DVD is the new laserdisc.

Want to watch your Netflix "Watch Now" movies without DRM or browser restrictions? Lifehacker has you sorted:

[I]f you're desperate to watch that Watch Now movie on a device other than your computer, this hack should pretty much get you there.

Lifehacker's beginner's guide to BitTorrent is also pretty good if you haven't quite grokked how to get in on all the download fun that's keeping studio heads, record company honchos, publishing execs, and government busybodies awake at night.

Change topic, PLEASE.

The only question that remains is this: Which celebrity should we pitch in to buy one of these for? I say we aim for the irritating, as the boring can be more easily ignored.

I thought this quote, from NBC/Universal's top lawyer Rick Cotton, was a joke at first:

In the absence of movie piracy, video retailers would sell and rent more titles. Movie theatres would sell more tickets and popcorn. Corn growers would earn greater profits and buy more farm equipment.

Turns out the guy actually said it! And in an FCC filing, no less. Mike Masnick responds with his usual eloquence:

[F]irst off, movie theaters are doing great this year, suggesting the big "threat" of piracy had a lot less to do with its troubles than the fact that it just didn't have that many compelling movies the past few years. Also, corn farmers are doing quite well (and people still eat popcorn at home while watching pirated movies). Of course, that doesn't really matter. What's key here is that if Cotton and NBC actually believe this logic, then they don't deserve to be in business. By the very same reasoning, I could say "If all movies were pirated, then everyone would have that additional money they didn't spend on movies to spend on things like fancy dinners. Restaurants would be more crowded. Farmers would make more money by being able to sell more profitable food at higher prices." See how easy it is?

I think I've made the point here before that these guys and suits are dumb. Nice to see that I'm not always wrong. As Mike says:

Of course, knowing how the entertainment industry works, next thing you know, they'll be demanding a cut of the profits corn farmers make, since, after all they're "profiting off the backs of the movie industry" without paying the industry for the benefit.

Well, I'm no fan of Sony's new format, but I understand there are some people around here who are Blu-ray customers. I hope this doesn't happen to them:

A thread over at the AVS Forums has highlighted a potential problem with the coating of Blu-ray discs, described by many as "disc rot" due to the mould-like spots that have made several owner's Blu-ray discs unplayable. The five page thread has reports from dozens of forum members, many of them discovering spots which can't be rubbed off on Blu-ray versions of "The Prestige." It's impossible to judge how widespread the problem is from a single forum thread, although it's not unheard of to see a product recall after a problem is discovered by users on a forum.

Kinda sucks for Blockbuster, which has just announced that it will go exclusively Blu-ray for HD discs.
Link via Brian Micklethwait

* A group of well-intentioned translators in Poland are looking at two years in jail for creating free subtitles for some movies. Insert your own Polish joke here.

* A bunch of Raiders of the Lost Ark fans so loved the movie that they painstakingly re-created it, shot for shot, back in 1981. Techdirt lists all the legal hassles and prison sentences the fans would probably have if they tried to do that today.

* MPAA chief Dan Glickman claims that Spider-Man 3 has been such a big hit because of anti-camcording efforts. As Mike Masnick points out, this argument is laughably false.

For the type of fans who go out to see such a movie on opening weekend, the download isn't a substitute. If anything, it's a complement. Just like when the last Star Wars film came out, fans download the movie, but still want to enjoy the experience of seeing it in the theater with a huge group of other fans. Plus, of course, basic logic should tell you that the camcording crackdown had nothing to do with the large opening. Whoever was doing the camcording couldn't have done it until the movie opened anyway. On top of that, as soon as one decent camcorded version made it to the net (as at least a few did), then it's infinitely available and it doesn't really matter if the industry stopped every other camcording attempt. However, this is the MPAA we're talking about, and if they can't get their math right, I guess it's no surprise that their logic skills are weak as well.

Dave Winer - the guy who helped pioneer podcasting, RSS, blogs, and a bunch of other stuff - is blogging about how his home theater is spoiling him for all other theaters.

Then early this week, went to see SpiderMan 3 at the AMC Bay Street, a relatively new theater, which should have the latest screening equipment. The movie had just come out, so it seems the print should be in good shape. This is the first time I've been to a theater seen since upgrading my sound system, and while I had always been impressed with the sound at theaters in the past, this time I was surprised to hear how bad their system is. The one I have at home is thrilling, theirs is mushy. And the film had all kinds of defects that I never would have noticed before, but now I'm spoiled by HD. However, even normal movies that I screen at home from an ordinary DVD are better quality than what they show at a theater. I wonder why?

Hmm. Maybe the studios and theater owners are so obsessed with piracy and killing our technology that they're not paying much attention to their own technology. Dave says:

One reason I mention this is to point out, in my own humble way, an opportunity for the movie industry, to turn theaters into fantastic movie-viewing venues, with the best equipment, cranked up for maximum effect. Honestly, I think they're going to have to do that to compete with the equipment that's making its way into the home these days. Sure I spent a fair amount of money on my setup, but if there's one thing we know for sure, the prices in home electronics go down very quickly these days.

Actually, Sony is making its copy protection asshattery a huge pain for customers. In a nutshell, their copy protection is jacked to the point where some of Sony's own DVD players won't play Sony's own DVDs. And here's the corporate line on whose problem this is:

We know about this problem. Its our new copy protection that’s making these discs unplayable in some players including our own, we do not intend to change the copy protection. The only correction to this problem is a firmware update to your player. The electronics division know about this and should have given you this information.

And here I thought there was no way to make sitting through the anti-piracy warnings any more annoying. Imagine if you had to update your player's firmware just to sit through that horseshit! But wait, it gets worse, as Jeff Nolan reports:

The best part is that the new DRM that Sony is using prevents the discs from playing on some DVD players, including their own, but does nothing to stop DVD ripper software from accessing the content. Really, I can’t make this stuff up.

Neither can we, and sadly, Sony ensures that we don't have to. Guess I know which company's products to avoid on my hunt for a good stereo speakers and a decent TV...

I mean, seriously. Most of them still don't realize that they're not selling movies, but the experience of watching movies. Now it turns out that they're just now cottoning on to the fact that the films they show should have something to do with which movies their customers want to see. As Mike says:

Being able to better target more markets is a huge step up -- but it's something that the theaters should have started preparing for a decade ago, rather than today.

All hail the fucking iPhone.

Brilliant post from The Long Tail author Chris Anderson about how shooting digitally changes acting.

[F]ilm costs a lot and must be used sparingly, while digital tape is practically free. The difference between the scarcity economics of film and the abundance economics of digital is, as Bill put it, "the difference between pointing a loaded gun at someone and a toy gun. You point a loaded gun at them and they're going to act different. A film camera is a loaded gun. Digital is not."

I've had to unlearn saying "action" and "cut". I think shooting in digital makes every actor better. You're always in rehearsal and never in performance. There's no "start". It allows for serendipity. Rather than reach an emotional moment and then having to recreate it later with the film running, you capture everything.

At Techdirt Greenhouse in Silicon Valley last weekend, I was very impressed by a demo from online editing company Jumpcut. Using clips from other Jumpcut users and Jumpcut's own video clip repository, you can edit your own videos online and turn them in to works of digital art.

One very cool project that Jumpcut brought to the web was a trailer remix contest in association with the film A Scanner Darkly. Warner Bros Independent Pictures invited people to use Jumpcut to recut, remix, or remake the trailer for A Scanner Darkly, directed by Richard Linklater, who used some pretty cool new digital technology to make the movie.

Next up for Jumpcut: The makers of The Power of Few, starring Q'orianka Kilcher (she played Pocahontas in Terence Malick's The New World - a role a close friend's daughter almost took, but that's another post), are going to invite Jumpcut users to edit a scene in the movie, which will actually be included in the final cut.

Byron Dumbrill, Director of Product Management for Jumpcut, was a great presenter - relaxed, funny, and confident in the product. And what a product it is. If you want to find out more about Jumpcut, check out this Information Week article. Watching it in action was enough to make me want to run out and buy a video camera. (Since I had to run out and buy a new still camera - I went with the Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX01 with a Leica DC lens, as recommended by Blip.tv's Mike Hudack - when my Canon PowerShot A70 went kaput mid-week, that purchase will have to wait.)

I'm flying to San Francisco tomorrow with Blowing Smoke groupie Adriana. While in the Bay Area, we'll attend Techdirt Greenhouse - brought to you by the blog I've quoted here more than any other, Techdirt - and I'll see Adriana speak at Vloggercon. She's going to be talking about net neutrality - y'know, how to stop ISPs from blocking services like Skype in order to serve corporate interests.

While my primary reason for flying to Cali tomorrow is the Techdirt event, I'm actually getting more and more excited about Vloggercon. It's awesome that we live in an age where anyone with access to increasingly inexpensive digital equipment and a net connection can effectively direct, write, produce, and star in their own shows. With sites like YouTube blowing up business models all over the place, it's a pretty exhilarating time to be into this stuff.

Oh, and while we're in San Francisco, author and blogger Shel Israel is throwing a party for me and Adriana at the Hotel Utah (no polygamous relations will be going on, though...as far as I know). If you're in the Bay Area and want to come along, shoot Shel an email or send one to me at dynamist AT gmail dot com.

It doesn't have a sales agent. It was shot in digital video by a rookie director and cost less than $1 million. But it could prove itself one of the unexpected success stories of the Festival de Cannes.

Suddenly, just three weeks before Cannes was to begin, the unknown filmmaker was dropped into the big show. At first, there was jubilation -- until reality set in.

Although 25 films will screen digitally during the festival, Blash was told his film wouldn't be one of them. So he and his producers had to scramble to raise some extra cash to blow up the film to 35mm and get it subtitled. Producer Molly Hassell hand-carried the dripping print from Paris with new French subtitles Friday. "It's damn heavy," she said. "I never carried a film before."

I just signed up for Second Life, because in my line of 'work', everyone's buzzing about how it's the next frontier. It's an RPG, but one where you can actually do business and exchange money for goods and services within the game. Even the BBC is simulcasting their music festivals within Second Life now.

That said, I spent twenty minutes just adjusting the settings for how big my avatar's boobs should be. So far, I'm not feeling the pull that others clearly do. How sweet would it be, though, to have a poker game with your homiez within Second Life? I mean, assuming you all have broken legs and can't just get together for a poker game.

BTW, my Second Life name is Jackie Commerce, if you want to find me and evaluate my whole boob decision.

If you're into digital innovation, online media, the bass-ackwards nature of digital rights management, and stuff like that, you're probably a fan of Techdirt, a blog I link to quite often from here (check out today's post: Yes, movie download sites still suck). Techdirt held its first event back in February, and I was lucky that a planned trip to California coincided with it. It was a blast. They've just announced that the next Techdirt Greenhouse will be held June 10th in Sunnyvale, and I've already got my ticket. It will definitely be worth the trip from London. Highly recommended if you like smart, interesting, fun people and are into this stuff. Registration for non-special people (read: those who didn't attend the first Greenhouse event) opens tomorrow.

Mike at Techdirt, our favourite tech blog ever, participated in a panel at the CATO Institute's debate on intellectual property rights and relates this anecdote from that day:

Someone from NBC Universal asked some questions...about how NBC Universal could continue to make $200 million movies like King Kong if they're supposed to be selling services instead of content. My answer was that they're already selling services instead of content. They're selling the experience of going to the movie and the convenience of the DVD among other things...

The guy at NBC Universal was asking the wrong question. Go back 100 years, and I'm sure the guy who made buggies for horse drawn buggies asked how he could continue to make buggies as the market moved on to cars. The point is that the markets change. NBC Universal shouldn't be looking on themselves as being in the $200 million blockbuster movie business -- but the overall entertainment business. Then, there are plenty of business models that make sense. Putting in place a regulatory scheme that enforces a situation to keep that one aspect of the business model alive does not make sense. Let the market decide.

The same guys who want to control whether or not you can change the channel during commercials are supposed to let the market (read: you) decide what you want out of entertainment? These guys aren't going down without a fight to protect the only thing they know, but it is a fight that they are losing.

JP Rangaswami, who's a big shot board member of an investment bank in London (read: not some random geek like the ones I usually quote) blogs today about DVD "piracy":

Chinese audiences now get legal DVDs earlier than in the US, for about a twentieth of the US price. Yup, that would do it. That would kill “piracy”.

Makes you think a bit about what causes “piracy” in the first place. I think I would like DVDs at a twentieth of the price and released two weeks after the film hits the big screen. I look forward to the next unsightly mess, as there are attempts made to stop the grey exports.

Yahoo isn't just a company with a stupid name, you know. Yahoo Research Berekely just released a prototype for remixing video:

International Remix enables you to create your very own movie mashups. Go crazy with creativity and re-edit, remix and mash-up film selections from this year’s [San Francisco Film] festival into 1-minute remixes. You can then post your remixes to the site gallery for others to view and enjoy.

Teri Hatcher is ugly.
Cameron Diaz is ugly.
Bill Clinton looks like W.C. Fields.
But (sigh of relief) Eva Longoria is flawless!

I WANT MY SKANK TV!

In the past, my rule of thumb has been: "Never buy a TV that costs and weighs more than your car." But I might have to rethink that, because according to a local NYC paper, prices on those big-screen jobbies are dropping like Tara Reid's IQ. You've got the plasma-screen ones, the LCD deals, and the crappy rear-projection TVs that make you want to go to the optometrist. I don't really know how the HDTV stuff fits in there, but from what I've seen of it, I don't really need to see people's acne scars and nose hairs. Anyway, just another reason not to go out and buy a ticket to sit in somebody else's fart cloud and try to watch Tom Cruise play a human.

Lions Gate Home Entertainment plans to release movies in the new high-definition digital format called Blu-ray, becoming the latest DVD distributor to endorse the technology. Blu-ray's principal backer is Sony, and HD DVD's chief developer is Toshiba.

There are two competing formats, Blu-ray and its rival HD DVD as the two vie to dominate the new form of DVD. Toshiba and others are expected to make some HD DVD players for this coming holiday season, whereas Blu-ray players are not expected in stores until early in 2006. Both sides are trying to line up as many studios as possible to make movies so there will be products on shelves to play on the machines.

We like high-definition and competition is good, let's see what comes out of the wash...

What with Kamal waxing lyrical about High Definition, I thought I'd have a shot (ahem) at it too. David Pogue of New York Times reviews Sony's new HDR-HC1 and has a brisk look at the attitudes to HDTV dividing the world into three camps:

Group A thinks HDTV is the greatest invention since the microwave, and counts the hours until the nation's transition to HDTV is complete. Group B thinks that HDTV is an enormous boondoggle, a bald-faced government-industry conspiracy to milk the citizenry for billions.

And Group C would just like somebody to explain what HDTV is.

The Group C is dealt with briefly:

No problem, C. HDTV is a new, improved video format. The picture is wide, like a movie screen. And it's so sharp, you can practically count the actors' pores. For many people, one look at the stunningly clear, realistic picture is enough to--well, to push them into Group A.

The review of Sony's HDR-HC1 is glowing and comprehensive, heck, I'd buy if I had the money.

Sony's new HDR-HC1 is the world's smallest and least expensive HD camcorder. At 7.4 by 2.8 by 3.7 inches, it's about a third the size of previous HD models, and small enough to pass for an ordinary digital camcorder. At $1,750 online, it's about half the price of the FX1. And as if price and size didn't make the HC1 distinctive enough, here's the best news of all: it's also an absolutely terrific camcorder.

And how is this for recommendation? Where's my geek gadget budget?

You'll see a spectacular picture in a format the geeks call 1080i high-def. The video is so clear and sharp, it's not so much a home movie as a flashback.

Although I am not sure that I'd want to keep my flashbacks anywhere else but where they belong - deeply embedded in my memory, and not on my flash memory card. Heh.

But let us conclude on a serious note, gazing firmly beyond the horizon:

In other words, buying a high-def camcorder today is a decidedly forward-thinking move. It allows you to capture the priceless moments today, at the best possible quality, even though the rest of the HDTV puzzle pieces have yet to fall into place.

If that kind of "shoot now, show later" philosophy appeals to you, thank Sony. The HC1 is a true breakthrough in price and size, and it brings the potential of dazzling high-definition video to an enormous new audience.

Just like Blowing Smoke... ;-) But what do our resident geeks experts say?

Now that broadcast television is finally going digital, and theaters are to follow suit, the question becomes is that an opportunity or a threat for those concerned?

One of the main reasons for the transition is simply demand for excellent picture quality. I can’t explain all the technical stuff and video compression technologies applied because I don’t care whether the content I am watching is in binary digits or analogue waves but just give me a picture that makes you feel like you’re there and you just want to grab the things you see?

So how come the transition is so slow? The answer according to Barry Fox, a London-based journalist writing about consumer electronics is:

Analogue broadcasting must end before digital can flourish. Switching off today’s analogue services will release broadcasting frequencies that can be then sold off to the highest bidders- either for more television broadcast or for new mobile services.

So there you have it, more money for the government but better picture and more content for us.

Satellite broadcasters and cable companies have the edge now since they own the delivery systems that enable them at their own discretion to offer more channels in high definition. The only dilemma is that they can’t find enough high-def content to broadcast yet, but that will soon change.

I won’t get into the 480, 720, and 1080 lines format but I am sick and tired of having to deal with NTSC, PAL, SECAM, REGION 1 & REGION 2. When I put a DVD in the tray, I want it to play no matter what format it is and preferably in high definition. I just love high definition and I can’t wait for it to be available on video games where I can play Halo and kill aliens with plasma laser accuracy. Some of you might say that it's high def already - just look on the back cover where it say 720 or 1080 - but that’s component quality and not high definition. (I am rather disappointed with Halo2 by the way. It seems like Microsoft and Bungie focused more on the Xbox Live side of the game and spend two minutes on Cooperative play. Must be something to do with $$$.)

This is why I decided to shoot Blowing Smoke in high definition using the camera body of an HDW-F900 24p HD CineAlta Camcorder with a full complement of Panavision lenses from zooms to prime lenses. As a result, watching Blowing Smoke on DVD is really quite a joy and a pleasant experience. I look at the colors and I go, wow, this is really something. And things get better - we shot the movie back in February of 2004 and since then several new cutting edge high-def cameras have been introduced on the market.