Movies

Warner Bros. has expanded its DVD2Blu program, a service that offers customers the opportunity to send in a DVD copy of a movie and receive back from the studio a Blu-ray version.

Citing Blu-ray's success, Warner Bros. said consumers can now choose from 90 of the company's "most popular titles to upgrade." The available movies include several well-known titles like "The Aviator," "A Christmas Story," and "Get Smart."

Although I haven't tested it out, the process of using DVD2Blu seems painless. Customers can go to the site and select … Read more

Sounds like Netflix CEO Reed Hastings can count Mark Cuban among his fans.

"Netflix has been brilliant at monetizing previously unmonetizable content," Cuban said this week. The founder of high-def cable station HDNet and owner of pro basketball's Dallas Mavericks, Cuban made the statements as part of a blogging debate he's engaged in with Newteevee reporter Janko Roettgers.

Cuban is skeptical that Netflix or any other Web video service are serious long-term challengers to cable companies. On Monday, Cuban wrote a blog post called "The Future of TV is TV." He was talking about … Read more

EMERYVILLE, Calif.--Call it Toy Story 3.5.

That's what Pixar's Jason Katz, at least, called Toy Story 3: The Video Game, during a press event for the game at the famous animation studio's headquarters here Wednesday.

Katz, the story supervisor on the forthcoming "Toy Story 3," which will hit theaters on June 18, was explaining to a group of reporters that while the game version of the film is very true to its source material, it also stands on its own and extends the franchise. Someone who plays the game and then sees the … Read more

With the North American debut of "Iron Man 2" still five days away, scores of pirated copies of the comic-flick began popping up online this weekend.

The film, starring actor Robert Downey Jr., generated a whopping $100 million in ticket sales this weekend in its overseas debut, according to Reuters. Apparently, among the millions of International moviegoers to see the film were some hiding handheld cameras.

At The Pirate Bay on Sunday evening, there were dozens of copies of the Paramount Pictures' film available for download. According to comments by users, the copies available were recorded by people … Read more

Last summer, not long after the U.S. government began a review of how piracy affects consumers and the nation's economy, the feds went to the major movie studios for help.

Representatives from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), Congress' investigative arm, asked the studios for information about a survey the studios had commissioned (PDF) that concluded piracy and counterfeiting cost the film industry $6.1 billion in 2005.

But the GAO never got all of the information it requested from the Motion Picture Association of America, according to GAO administrators, including Loren Yager, the author of the summary report … Read more

Copyright owners are in need of some good researchers.

I've already written a news story about the report on piracy and counterfeiting issued Monday by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) that called into question some of the assertions made by copyright owners about the effects of piracy on their businesses.

Because the claims about piracy's effects could influence copyright legislation in the future, it's worth taking a closer look at the GAO's year-long investigation. I also wanted to cover some points I wasn't able to make in the previous story.

First, the GAO … Read more

After spending a year studying how piracy and illegal counterfeiting affects the United States, the Government Accountability Office says it still doesn't know for sure.

Congress tasked the GAO in April 2009 with reviewing the efforts to quantify the size and scope of piracy, including the impacts of Web piracy to the film and music industries. In a 32-page report issued Monday, the GAO said most of the published information, anecdotal evidence, and records show that piracy is a drag on the U.S. economy, tax revenue, and in some cases potentially threatens national security and public health. But … Read more

Laughing Squid has what has to be the best example of iPad porn to come along yet: iPad Unboxing Porn.

A clever video (see below) made by Internet TV network Revision3 and sponsored by domain registrar GoDaddy--it's hard to get the connection, but whatever--spoofs 1970s-era porn movies as we watch the slow, tender, and foxy unpacking of one of Apple's hot new tablets.

There's not much else to be said. The production's a bit long, and you can certainly get the point within a couple minutes, but what I liked about it was that while it … Read more

Want to change the world but only have 99 cents? Armchair Revolutionary is here to help.

Set to launch into beta on Tuesday, Armchair Revolutionary is a Web-based social activism platform designed to harness large-scale crowdsourcing and the boom in social gaming in a bid to support a wide variety of science and technology ventures that could benefit the world at large.

Started by the founders of The Hollywood Hill, said to be the largest social change membership organization in the entertainment-industry, Armchair Revolutionary is meant to bring people's interest in helping support worthwhile causes and the iTunes-era simplicity … Read more