hollywood

PALOS VERDES, Calif.--"I don't speak for Hollywood," Disney boss Robert Iger said when questioned by Kara Swisher here today at the D9 conference

But from Disney's perspective, Iger sees new platforms (the cloud, the Net, social platforms) as great opportunities for the company. "We're in the content business," he said. "There's no question it provides challenges to old business models, but we were in businesses that were relatively low-growth, and had not changed in a long time."

When he saw the emergence of new tech platforms--Iger used the term "the video iPhone"--he said his realizing was, "Wait a minute, this is VHS," referring to the last non-Internet sea change to hit the television industry.

"There's going to be displacement of consumption...the opportunities to be entertained in the home are so much greater today." But, he said, they're all incremental opportunities for content companies.

So how will Disney keep its content profitable on these new media platforms?

"We view Netflix positively," he began, "It's a good provider for our content to be accessible on," even though some content goes through Disney's deal with Starz on the way to Netflix. Disney also has a direct relationship with Netflix. Also, "We like Hulu for a number of reasons, and not just because we're an equity partner." Iger said that the more content distribution… Read more

Feature films could be part of Apple's iCloud launch next week.

In the past several weeks, Apple executives have stepped up their attempts to convince some of the major Hollywood film studios to issue licenses that would enable Apple to store its customers' movies on the company's servers, two sources close to the negotiations told CNET. Apple began discussing a cloud service with the studios over a year ago.

An Apple spokesman declined to comment.

Apple announced today that next Monday, the start of the company's Worldwide Developers Conference, it will unveil the iCloud, a long-anticipated service … Read more

It's not much of a stretch to say that the Amazon tablet has become one of the worst-kept secrets in the Android universe. These last few months have seen rumors and hints coming from all angles, including a coy statement from CEO Jeff Bezos.

As we move into the second half of the year, when the tablets are expected to launch, additional details are beginning to fall into place, and over the past few days, we've gone from expecting a single tablet to various reports indicating that Amazon is working on both a 7- and a 10-inch tablet. … Read more

Smart, strategic, and frequently inscrutable, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt's comments must often be closely analyzed. Sometimes they're discounted as regrettable, off-the-cuff remarks. Other times, his statements are a window into what is really going on inside his company.

On Wednesday, Schmidt shocked big media conglomerates, federal lawmakers, and apparently even executives within his own company when he told reporters in London that Google would defy U.S. government attempts to remove sites from the Web that are accused of trafficking in pirated goods. Schmidt, who was at Google's helm during an unprecedented decade-long run of online-advertising success, … Read more

It was pretty much established that Google TV wasn't ready for prime time when it launched last fall, and now comes more proof.

Logitech has reported that the company's Revue with Google TV set-top box and the accompanying gear generated only about $5 million in sales during the last quarter. That's only about 72 percent less than the $18 million Logitech had expected. This was first reported by Janko Roettgers at the blog GigaOm.

One day I hope to learn why Google TV was rushed out. It wasn't like there weren't already plenty of risks … Read more

The Netflix juggernaut showed no signs of slowing down during the first quarter of 2011.

On the contrary, for the quarter ended March 31 (PDF), Netflix reported worldwide net profits of $60 million, or $1.11 per share, on revenue of $719 million. The earnings for the Web's top video-rental service were nearly twice the $32 million the company saw for the same period a year ago.

A survey of 25 analysts by FactSet Research showed that Netflix was expected to earn $1.07 a share. As for the company's closely watched number of subscribers, Netflix reported that … Read more

A month after Hollywood studio executives said that Netflix had declined to post "Buy" buttons on its site, the video-rental service has done just that.

Obscurely posted on the Netflix page advertising the Robert De Niro film "Little Fockers" is a hyperlink that reads "Buy now." Clicking it takes you to Littlefockers.net, the official Web site for the film. The blog Hackingnetflix.com first reported on the button.

Netflix has always declined offers from the studios to sell movies from its subscription video-rental site, sources in the film industry told CNET. CEO Reed … Read more

Here's some more data that shows Web TV still has a long way to go before unseating DVD and Blu-ray discs in the home.

In a survey of consumers in March by The NPD Group, the research firm found people "are still using DVDs and Blu-ray discs to watch movies more than all digital-video options combined." In the past three months, 77 percent of consumers reported watching a movie on a DVD or BD, which is unchanged from last year.

The survey of the more than 9,600 people found that 78 percent of home-video budgets were … Read more

The agreement by Netflix and other top video-rental services to wait 28 days before renting newly released DVDs appears to be boosting disc sales--as much as 30 percent in some cases, say two national retailers.

Representatives from retail chains Best Buy and Hastings Entertainment told CNET during the past week that disc sales and even rentals are up for movies that aren't available at Netflix or Redbox during what has come to be known as the "sales-only window."

"On sales of specific titles, we've seen our market share go up over time and degradation of … Read more