<B>The Force Will Be With You- For Three Months</B>
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The Lucasfilm Empire has announced that on September 12th of this year it will release the "original unaltered" <I>Star Wars</I> Trilogy- <I>Star Wars</I>, <I>The Empire Strikes </I>, and <I>Return of the Jedi</I>- on DVD. Each film will be available as a two-disc set with the 2004 digitally remastered DVD versions that have already appeared. Taking a page from Disney, these original trilogy releases will only be available until December 31st.
Internet TV service provider Brightcove and TiVo, have agreed to enable broadband video published through Brightcove to be distributed directly to TiVo subscribers' set-top boxes. The new agreement could help push Internet TV one step closer to being the end-all, be-all of digital entertainment. (Or, it could just be another highly hyped deal that sounds cool but doesn't really amount to much.)
Teens love vinyl, says a Canadian researcher. A Ph.D. candidate who interviewed them for his dissertation found they love analog sound, respond to the visuals of big LP jackets, get a kick out of older music, and like all collectors, enjoy the thrill of the hunt. Surface noise? ¡No problemo! Their "active involvement in negotiating the pops, skips and crackles endemic to most second-hand records" was cited as part of the experience. And then there's rebellion, of course, something that every generation of kids is good at: "Through their retrogressive tastes and practices, these youth effectively disrupt the music industry's efforts to define and regulate their consumer identities," said the researcher, David Hayes. His findings were published in the Feb. 2006 issue of Popular Music and Society (though the text is not online).
E3 opened this morning, and it was the usual jumble of people and wonder of video gaming. Surprisingly, though, the show itself seems to have been toned down. It is still loud and garish, but there seemed to be more room to move in the aisles, and it was at least 30 dB quieter than before. You could actually talk to the person next to you in a normal voice, something not possible in previous years. Here's the PS3 in black. According to the latest specs, the $500 PS3 will not have the card readers, wi-fi, or, get this, HDMI. My guess is that it will output component at 1080i. Even the $600 version has gone from 2 HDMI jacks to just one. Perhaps most amusing is that they will play SACDs. It well go on sale November 17. From reports I’ve heard, lines have already formed for one of the 2,000,000 available on that date. Two-mil more will ship at the end of December (after Christmas).
OK, let's tote up the recent wins for Steve Jobs. The trademark lawsuit from the Beatles is history. The music labels have renewed their 99-cent download arrangement with iTunes, amid much grumbling, even after Steve rejected their demand for variable pricing. The French parliament may be backing off its legislative requirement that iTunes downloads play on non-Apple devices. Disney is paying $7.4 billion for Pixar, of which Steve owns more than half, and he's got a seat on the board of directors, presumably alongside Mickey. The iPod is dominating the audio industry. Intel-driven Macs are being positioned for higher sales. Microsoft just can't seem to get its act together for the next generation of Windows. And whether or not Jobs ever gets to beat Bill Gates, he's already beaten an even meaner adversary, pancreatic cancer (God bless). I'll bet there aren't even any widows in his sock drawer.
Bang & Olufsen - the Danish maker of fabulous audio and video gear seen in movies, TV shows,and magazines but rarely seen in homes such as yours and mine - now has a multi-room wireless audio system. B&O says the new BeoLink Wireless 1 system offers "unrivalled performance and superior sound quality", and the audio can be distributed to as many as 21 rooms simultaneously with zero delay and no echoes (well, except for the ones you'll hear in acoustically dreadful rooms...)
I've heard that you started out as a set dresser, but became an actor to have more control over how a film turns out. My heroes growing up, going back to the silent days, were actors like Buster Keaton and Clint Eastwood who empowered themselves as filmmakers.
