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Blu-ray releases on November 2nd 2010
Oh man, now we're talking -- after weeks of nothing much to talk about on Blu-ray home media's holiday season finally gets started. First off is the highest box office grossing animated feature of all time with Toy Story 3 (no word on a 3D release) as well as Cars Toon: Mater's Tall Tales from the same studio. Next up HBO has its latest epic mini series The Pacific, which is sure to be a must see for any WWII genre fans. There there are a number of classics like The Goonies, The Sound of Music and Highlander. That should be enough to keep you busy for a least a week. Cars Toon: Mater's Tall Tales (Walt Disney) Centurion (Magnolia) Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (MGM) Christmas Cottage (Lionsgate) Dinosaurs Alive! (Image) Fallen (Image) The Goonies (Warner) Grand Canyon Adventure: River at Risk (Image) Highlander (Lionsgate) Once Fallen (First Look) The Pacific (HBO) The Sound of Music (Fox) Space: 1999: The Complete Season One (A&E) Toy Story 3 (Walt Disney) Ultimate Toy Box Collection (Walt Disney) V: The Complete First Season (Warner) White Christmas (Paramount) Wild Ocean 3D (Image) The Wiz (Universal)
VUDU, Walmart and Disney join forces, add a free streaming copy to Toy Story 3 Blu-ray discs
Walmart is showing how it might make use of VUDU after purchasing the 1080p movie streaming house earlier this year, now that the two have teamed up with Disney to throw in a free digital copy of Toy Story 3 with each one purchased at the store on DVD or Blu-ray. When the movie goes on sale today, customers will receive a download code they can use on their nearest VUDU player (now including Boxee on the Box, PC or Mac) to stream some Buzz and Woody at any time without a disc involved. Walmart and VUDU are quick to describe this mix of physical and digital access as the future of content, and we're thinking this type of promotion is about to become much more widespread since Amazon's already offered a similar deal with Disc+, and Best Buy purchased CinemaNow specifically for this type of offer. The only question now is if customers will start asking "which streaming service does this connect to?" before they run out to buy a new Blu-ray instead of simply looking for the lowest price or other promotional tie-in.
Toy Story 3 Blu-ray listed on Amazon for December 10, could it be 3D?
If you're hoping to see more domestically released Blu-ray 3D titles this year you may want to raise your alert level as Blu-ray.com reports, among other retailer information, on a mysterious listing for Toy Story 3 on December 10. The regular release has already been listed for November 2, in both two disc Blu-ray set, three disc BD/DVD/digital copy combo pack and 10-disc trilogy form, but since it's not among the exclusives announced earlier this week from Disney, seeing the top grossing flick of 2010 at home in 3D this year seems like a real possibility.
Toy Story 10-disc box set pops up for preorder on Amazon
If you were worried that the upcoming four disc Blu-ray/DVD/digital copy release of Toy Story 3 (the highest grossing animated film of all time, btw) on November 2 just didn't have enough discs, a 10-disc set with all three Toy Story movies on Blu-ray, plus digital copies and DVD versions of all of them has appeared on Amazon. TheHDRoom pointed out the listing and that there's no official info, but right now $70 brings home the aforementioned discs plus one more that likely holds bonus features. We've gone back and forth on the value of these extra disc sets for various reasons, but this may just be pushing it too far.
Toy Story 3 in 4K 3D: does higher-res equal higher enjoyment?
We'll be straight with you, the Engadget staff is somewhat ambivalent about 3D: some of us believe it to be a gimmick, while others see it as a legitimate advance in film technology that takes our movie enjoyment up to its next logical station. What you won't find us disagreeing on, however, is that everything looks better when it's taken to a 4K resolution. Sony has been busy rolling out its new 4K projectors across the US and Europe, and invited us yesterday to see Toy Story 3 in some ultra-advanced 4K 3D. Because of it having four times the resolution of the more conventional 2K stuff -- which Avatar, the big 3D (and 4D) flagship, was delivered in -- Sony's projector is able to deliver both the left- and right-eye frame on the screen at the same time, rather than having to alternate them in hummingbird fashion. That should ideally provide a more pleasurable overall experience for the viewer and ultimately pay off for the company in more people ponying up more cash for the extra goodness. So, we moseyed along to an Apollo Cinema in central London -- the chain has already installed Sony's hero 4K projectors in 11 of its venues -- and all you'll need to do is click past the break to see what we thought.
RealD's smaller 3D glasses ensure your kids look a little less goofy in theaters
Some things work when it comes to "one size fits all," but other things don't. Hats? Maybe. 3D glasses? Not so much. Thankfully, then, RealD is introducing sets of specs for theater goers aged eight and below -- or really anyone with a kid-sized head. Like the other glasses handed out at theaters these are individually packaged to ensure they're "clean and fresh for every moviegoer." Because, you know, nobody likes a skanky pair of peepers. These little-sized glasses will be available for your little ones at showings of Toy Story 3 starting this weekend.
iPhone 4.0 OS: Now with iAds
Today at the iPhone 4.0 preview event, Apple announced that one of the new features coming in 4.0 is the iAd network. According to Steve, an average iPhone user is on their phone using apps about half an hour a day. So at one ad every three minutes, that's 10 ads on each device each day, and with almost ten million devices out there, Apple claims they'll be serving a billion ad opportunities every day. And yet this isn't the huge news about iAds. Here is what makes it a big deal: Apple built the network and is offering it up to developers to use how they'd like, with 60% of the revenue made on those ads going to developers themselves. That's up a bit from the standard "Apple gets a 30% cut" rule of thumb, but more than half seems more than fair. Apple hosts and sells the ads, and developers take home over half the revenue. The ad demonstrated live actually looked cool: they showed off little Toy Story 3 ad at the bottom of a news app. Tap the ad, and it comes up with some options (a character list, sounds from each character, etc) and even a game to play, including an option to buy a game from right within the ad. Steve even asked if anyone had seen anything like this before, and among the gathered press, he got silence in response. Currently, the most educated of guesses is that the AdKit API will be a developer source as well as an iTunes source (iTunes sources are where the App Store and Music Store get their content.) After the event in the Q&A session, Steve said they attempted to buy AdMob and got sniped by Google, so they bought Quattro and are trying very hard to come up to speed on what web advertising is like, presumably so they can change it. As long as they aren't trying to get me to refinance my mortgage or whiten my teeth, I'm looking forward to the future of advertising on the iPhone.
