Bob Ankosko

I tried to imagine the S9W at home but quickly realized my rustic family room is no match for its art-gallery vibe. Although I have to admit, when I first laid eyes on its magnificent 82-inch Ultra HD screen with its cinematic 21:9 aspect ratio, I wondered why it was perched, just shy of teetering, on a compact refrigerator. Refreshments at hand, perhaps? No, that wasn’t it. (Not even close, knucklehead.)

Walmart’s Vudu To Go app (Digital Vudu Revisited), a follow-up to the Disc to Digital service launched last year that lets you unlock digital copies of DVD and Blu-ray movies you buy or purchase digital rights to discs you already own, is now up and running (in beta form as of this writing). Unlike the original service, which required you to bring discs to Walmart (UltraViolet: Building a Movie Library in the Cloud,), the app lets you convert discs from a Mac or Windows-based PC in your home and store them in the cloud so they can be accessed for streaming or downloading on multiple devices.

When we first heard about the Ultra High Definition Alliance, an industry coalition that has set its sights on establishing new standards that raise the bar on video quality, we were eager to learn more, especially after perusing the “who’s who” list of member companies: DIRECTV, Dolby, LG, Netflix, Panasonic, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, Technicolor, Walt Disney Studios, Twentieth Century Fox, and Warner Bros. We caught up with Vince Pizzica, senior executive vice president of strategy at Technicolor, to find out what makes the UHD Alliance tick.