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Canal Plus chief: Amazon, Netflix will bring video-on-demand to France early next year
Amazon might be continuing its European HD streaming video invasion by arriving in France next March, according to Canal Plus' president, Bertrand Meheu. The executive is well-placed to have that info, as he says his company will be supplying Amazon with content for the service's launch on the Kindle Fire. If true, it's not known yet if it would be in the form of Lovefilm, which launched in Germany and the UK recently, or if it would be available on PCs, Macs, Xbox 360 consoles or Smart TVs as it is elsewhere. Canal Plus has been fighting to keep such competitors out of the notoriously protectionist country, but it was recently blocked by a state watchdog from hoarding VOD rights exclusively for its own networks. The company also said that Netflix would arrive in France by "early 2013" -- another credible claim, considering the huge amount of content it produces that the US streaming service would surely need.
Screen Grabs: Engadget makes its prime time TV debut on XIII
Screen Grabs chronicles the uses (and misuses) of real-world gadgets in today's movies and TV. Send in your sightings (with screen grab!) to screengrabs at engadget dot com. It's been a long time coming but after years of cataloging various gadgets in TV and movies, we finally got our own starring role on the small screen. Our HTML code stood in for the usual computer gibberish pretending to be a dangerous hacking program on an episode of the French / Canadian TV series XIII and was spotted by a keen-eyed (and HDTV-equipped) reader as seen above. US viewers might recognize the title since it was also the source of a videogame in 2003 and a miniseries that aired on NBC in 2009; in its current iteration, the tale of a conspiracy in the US government airs strictly outside our borders. A clip of the scene is included after the break, check for the "5 years old, highly encrypted source code" at about 1:29. Nice job Prodigy Pictures but next time we expect a speaking role, two scenes with co-star Aisha Tyler, a trailer and a bowl of M&Ms -- but only the green ones. Have your people talk to our people, we've been looking for a new career. [Thanks, Dennis] %Gallery-127870%
Canal+ live & on-demand TV comes to French Xbox 360s
The U.S. has Netflix, the UK has Sky TV and now France is getting Canal+ added to the Xbox 360, in a similar deal to the one bringing live and on-demand Sky TV in England, the French will be free to party up and watch more than 3,000 movies and TV shows, catch-up TV, French Ligue 1 soccer games, and headbutt flopping, filthy-mouthed Italians in the chest. No word if sports hooliganism will be supported in this iteration, but judging from the screens the avatar support should also mirror its UK counterpart. This is likely not the end of tie-ups between the two either, with the partnership planned to eventually encompass other Canal Plus & Microsoft products. Check out one additional pic of the updated dashboard after the break.[Via Reuters]
Sogecable's Digital+ brings Canal+ Deportes HD / Dcine HD to Spain
Spain's been dealing with a pitiful lack of high-def content for awhile now, and just a few months shy of a full year since Sogecable's Canal+ HD showed up, we finally have two more making the trip over. The satellite pay-TV operator Digital+ has delivered a new pair that we can only imagine will go over quite well with locals: Canal+ Deportes HD (sport) and Canal+ Dcine HD (movies). Sure, two ain't many, but are you really going to complain about a 300% increase in available HD material? We thought not.
CANAL+ KEY provides pay-TV reception of French networks
Forget those OTA tuners that only pick up what's widely distributed for free; the CANAL+ KEY can handle that and more. Developed in conjunction with DiBom, the device -- hailed as the planet's first USB key-sized DTT HD decoder -- enables the reception of French pay-TV programs (SD and HD), 18 free DTT channels and even the premium channel CANAL+ HD. The key is equipped with two small antennas and can provide viewing enjoyment to any USB-equipped PC. Regrettably, there's no price / availability date mentioned, but yet again, we're amazed at how quickly France is becoming Europe's beacon of HD light.[Via TechDigest]
