disney

In the Disney-Pixar animated movie "Up," Carl Fredricksen (Edward Asner) and wife Ellie dream of traveling to Paradise Falls, South America. When Carl takes that trip by using thousands of helium balloons to lift his home right off its foundation, the house takes quite a beating.

A home builder in Utah has created a full-scale replica of that charming home--firmly fixed to the ground--in the city of Herriman, about 20 miles southwest of Salt Lake City.

The builder, Bangerter Homes, has re-created several rooms from the 2009 film in retro detail--down to the wallpaper, light switches, and custom-made fireplace mantel, which is currently adorned with some very "Up"-like knick-knacks. … Read more

Apple has done away with the 99-cent video rentals of TV shows it began offering last year via the Apple TV and iTunes.

Despite Apple's best efforts, most of the top networks weren't willing to offer shows for that price. News Corp.-owned Fox Television and Disney's ABC were the only two majors that were involved and even they offered a limited amount of content at 99 cents.

Now does this sound like the studios are willing to back a new subscription service from Apple or for anyone else for that matter? No. Don't put any … Read more

Apple co-founder Steve Jobs will remain on the board of Walt Disney, according to a published report.

Citing an unnamed source with knowledge of the matter, Bloomberg reported today that Jobs' position as a board member at Disney is unchanged. What's easy to forget in all the coverage this week about Jobs resigning as CEO of Apple is that he also helped build Pixar into the mammoth animation studio it became.

In May 2006, Jobs sold Pixar to Disney for $7.4 billion, giving him a 7.4 percent stake in Disney, one of the six largest Hollywood film … Read more

To some, Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes might appear to be a foe of Web distribution.

Remember, he was the guy who last year compared Netflix with the Albanian army--the view that the popular company would remake film distribution, he said, was a little like saying the tiny country's army would conquer the world. Time Warner has also made it clear Netflix subscribers won't be streaming episodes of HBO hit shows, such as "True Blood" or "The Sopranos," anytime soon.

Because Time Warner, one of the world's largest and powerful media companies, … Read more

Yahoo would pay up to $2 billion to acquire Hulu if the deal came with four or five years of exclusive access to current TV shows and older movies, according a story in yesterday's Business Insider.

Citing a "source familiar with Yahoo's M&A plans," Business Insider said that Hulu's owners would have to guarantee the exclusive access before Yahoo's corporate development people would present such a deal to their board of directors.

However, that type of deal may be tough to swing.

Hulu's owners have reportedly been willing to offer the … Read more

On today's show, special guest Thomas Dolby drops in to talk with us about the state of the music industry and digital distribution, his new album, and the amazing sounding MMORPG that goes along with it. We're pretty overwhelmed by his brilliance. But we recover a bit for tech news, like Hulu's 1 million paid users (and imminent death), and whether the Droid Bionic can catch up to the Atrix 4G.

Hulu acquired more new customers in June than it did in the months of April and May combined, according to a blog post by CEO Jason Kilar.

Kilar wrote that 875,000 subscribers now pay for Hulu Plus and that the company anticipates surpassing 1 million paying subscribers before the end of summer.

"We've continued our quest to make Hulu Plus available on every Internet-connected device," Kilar wrote. "In the past 90 days, we have made Hulu Plus available on Xbox 360 and Kinect, select Android smartphones, TiVo Premiere DVRs, and select Samsung Blu-ray players. Collectively, this means an additional 25 million devices are capable of accessing the Hulu Plus service."

The public has seen a wave of breathless announcements and leaks about Hulu in recent weeks. First, Yahoo was said to have made an offer, and then it was Microsoft and Google and AOL. Then Hulu announced it had renewed licensing deals with some of its content partners--the same ones, as it happens, that also own a share of Hulu.

Hey, what do you know?

This is the public-relations equivalent of slapping a little Bondo on a clunker. Hulu certainly has a few dings and dents to pretty up. I have no doubts that Hulu has acquired those 875,000 subscribers, but so what? Kilar crows that company amassed that number only since November, when it officially launched. … Read more

Too busy to keep up with today's tech news? Here are some of the more interesting stories from CNET for Monday, June 20.

New domains mean new trademark issues The Internet's overseers approve a plan to expand the number of top-level domains. That opens the door for .paris, .canon, .eco--and for a new era of trademark complications. More

Offline Google Docs playing peek-a-boo The offline version of Google's productivity suite has been spotted outside Google's firewall. With Chromebooks now launched, time is of the essence. More

Is Apple's declining stock cause for concern? Several pundits … Read more

Disney was willing to pay up to $700 million for Club Penguin, but apparently forgot to renew its domain. Parents can't be happy.

If you go to Club Penguin--like my daughter did--you may get an odd-looking Network Solutions page. It's the page you get when you haven't renewed a domain name. The page has been down for a good chunk of the day. CBS News reported that Club Penguin returned about noon, but a lot of folks still can't get to the site. The outage has been widely reported on Club Penguin blogs such as the … Read more