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I was talking to Si Lumb on one of our short get togethers (really need to get together more with him, as we always cover so much)
We got talking about many things including… [1][2][3][4]
ideas on how virtual wardrobes, bookshelves and DVD racks are an area ripe for a startup UIs for filtering, sorting and organising are in massive need of a makeover, as digital browsing is awful. where are the "experience" adventures, like the film "The Game"? Surely there’s a market? Why can’t movies make more of the "trial" approach – give away the opening scene instead of trailer lies
How conditioning to multitask/multiscreen makes watching passively feel antiquated. Why Red Dead Redemption is an amazing achievement yet inaccessible to girls because of gunplay & controls. On game completion: why Portal is something you have to play the whole way through and deserves the time. TV box sets and why 6 seasons of 25 episodes is a real commitment – and is it really worth it?
In short we covered a lot including some of the thoughts we had on Digitalization of the DVD rack.
The problem is when you have mainly digital or virtual goods, how do you show and share your collection with friends and family?
I’ve been thinking about how to show my media collections in the real world. On XBMC, there is a great screensaver which shows all the fan art/backdrops on your machine as a slow slideshow. Great but I don’t always have my TV on and energy wise its hardly very efficient. So I’ve been thinking, since I learned about sharethe.tv. It might be possible to push this information to a digital photoframe.
In actual fact, I had planned to buy a special wifi connected photoframe today at the local currys/pcworld clearance centre to do the task. But forgot after my scooter ride turned very cold out near Huddersfield.
The thinking is I can create a feed (some how) which the photoframe will accept. In actual fact with a bit of XSL knowhow, it should be possible to create a combination of the information of the movie from IMDB with the fan art of TMDB.
Ultimately I’d like to experiment with a Android Tablet like the Samsung Galaxy Tab running a cut-down/custom Android XBMC remote. Of course I’m not the only one who is thinking this, other hackers have tried the XBMC remote on a android tablet. But no ones really developed a photoframe interface optimized for showing your collection.
So everyone knows I loved Inception but as it moves out of the cinema, I had a problem. A problem which will effect more and more people in the future. (This is certainly early adopter tertiary I admit)
On the 6th December Inception hits the shops on blu ray and dvd.
But I don’t own a blu-ray drive, neither do any of my friends and I either really want the dvd because its too low quality. I would like to contribute to the director and the actors in the film by buying a copy but I don’t want to own a copy on physical media. I usually do buy a copy of my favorite films on dvd so I can share them with friends who don’t have a decent home cinema setup like mine.
However I’m somewhat happy to hear Inception will come out on Triple Play (Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy) My worry is that there is little information on what the digital copy is…?
Ideally I’d like it to be a drm less Hd MKV or H.264 formatted file which I can play on my XBMC and Boxee home entertainment system. It sounds like going on the Iron man 2 triple play…
Contains a digital copy of the feature and the feature in standard-definition
…That it will be a standard definition and still a drm’ed affair. What a shame if it is.
I actually quite like the idea of a triple play disc (I actually don’t mind paying extra for them too) if the media takes advantage of what the pirates have perfected for almost a decade now.
No worries, I expect I’ll buy the disc and take it as fair game to rip the Blu-ray into a format which makes sense for me. Now if we can get the publishing industry to something similar this with ebooks and physical books…
From the Backstage Blog, a frank discussion about DRM and Cross-platform support. It all started when I asked Ashley a few questions recently about the iplayer strategy. Ashley answered the question with quite a bit of passion and Matthew Cashmore thought hey wouldn't it be a good idea to get some of that passion in a recording. He is the result which you can judge for yourselves…
The iPlayer, no don't do a runner, seriously, it's taken over the mailing list, dominated our discussions and is something that many members of the backstage community care an awful lot about. So do we. We all know the questions. Why don't we stand up to the rights holders? Why do we insist on using DRM? Why did we sign a secret deal in blood with Microsoft?
So we finally decided that these questions needed answers, and the only person to talk to was the boss. We present 26 minutes of questions and answers about iPlayer, DRM and cross platform support with Ashley Highfield, Director Future Media & Technology.
In this frank discussion we cover the DRM issues, explain that iPlayer isn't a Microsoft only party and ask why didn't we use a non propriety solution.
You can get the file directly from Blip.TV under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike licence in Mpeg3, Ogg Vorbis or AAC.
