fox

Three major film studios have been unwilling so far to ink deals that would let YouTube rent out their movies, a new report claims.

Rumors surrounding YouTube's plans to expand its rental service with flicks from major studios most recently cropped up earlier this week. As of this writing, Warner Bros., Sony Pictures Entertainment, and Universal Studios have all signed on, according to reports.

However, Fox, Disney, and Paramount Pictures have decided against signing a deal with YouTube, according to an article published yesterday by TheWrap, an entertainment-news site. The article claims the studios are holding out over concerns … Read more

Google's face recognition scares us with its privacy implications, Hollywood gives us $30 dollar movies, and its not an April Fool's Day joke. Honeycomb needs to bring more native apps to the platform, ASAP, and a SmartFart App already exists!

Twentieth Century Fox and Netflix have expanded their digital distribution deal, the companies said today.

Under the new agreement, Netflix can now stream two of Fox's top television shows--"Glee" and "Sons of Anarchy." The first season of "Glee" and the first two seasons of "Sons of Anarchy" were made available on Netflix's streaming service today. Going forward, subsequent seasons will be "added annually," the companies said.

The companies also plan to bring several more series in the Fox library to Netflix, including "Ally McBeal" and &… Read more

Just two weeks on the App Store and Time Warner Cable is once again scaling back the number of channels available on its live TV application for the iPad. But unlike the last time this happened, this crop could be gone for good.

Bowing to legal pressure from News Corp, Viacom, and Discovery, Time Warner Cable has removed 11 channels from the application, cutting away at the 32 it had offered before. Though a scant number when compared with home cable packages, which can number in the hundreds, the app represented the step toward taking that same lineup on the … Read more

The bottom line: Firefox 4 is a worthy expression of Mozilla's ideals. The browser is competitively fast, sports a new minimalist look, and includes some excellently executed features. Unfortunately, that describes most of Firefox's competition, too.

Review: Firefox 4 had a rough time in its early development, but those days are over. The browser that you can download now is in the same speed category as its competition; offers many similar features (stronger in many areas and slightly weaker in others); includes broad, cross-platform support for hardware acceleration and other "future-Web" tech and standards; and is … Read more

The bottom line: Firefox 4 is a worthy expression of Mozilla's ideals. The browser is competitively fast, sports a new minimalist look, and includes some excellently executed features. Unfortunately, that describes most of Firefox's competition, too.

Review: Firefox 4 had a rough time in its early development, but those days are over. The browser that you can download now is in the same speed category as its competition; offers many similar features (stronger in many areas and slightly weaker in others); includes broad, cross-platform support for hardware acceleration and other "future-Web" tech and standards; and is … Read more

Editors' note: Mozilla released version 5 of Firefox on June 21, 2011. The updates are incremental and largely invisible to users. As such, most of this review is taken from our original Firefox 4 review (as is the video, which is still applicable). As we continue to test and use Firefox 5, we will update the review with any new information.

The bottom line: Firefox 5 is a worthy expression of Mozilla's ideals. The browser is competitively fast, sports a new minimalist look, and includes some excellently executed features. Unfortunately, that describes most of Firefox's competition, too.

Review: … Read more

Kevin Fox, lead designer at Mozilla Labs is theorizing that the headphone jack on the Apple iPad 2 might just be waterproof.

Based on the iPad 2 teardown graphics sourced on the crowdsource repair manual site iFixIt, he speculates that the new headphone jack is the materialization of a patent Apple submitted back in September 2010 that uses smaller pogo pins instead of the traditional metal strips.

The springy pogo plug design reduces the real estate required around the hardware, and also exposes the outermost plug ring when fully inserted into the jack--not a big deal, since the "ground ring" is simply used to remove charge and pause device playback when you remove it from the connector.

Interestingly enough, Fox also speculates that its steep-angled curve within the iPad 2 suggests a weatherproofing element to prevent moisture penetrating the device, and the subsequent lawsuits that can occur as a result.… Read more

LOS ANGELES--HBO won't stand in the way of cloud video or UltraViolet, the name given to technology standards that the film industry hopes will become a new home video format and a successor to the DVD, say multiple sources.

If you've ever wondered why some movies disappear from the video services of Apple, Amazon, and Netflix, the likely reason is the HBO blackout. When a new release is aired on HBO, often the company has acquired the exclusive right to distribute the movie electronically. That means the title must come down at other outlets, including Web stores. HBO … Read more