Monthly Archives: August 2011

Oops; looks like the iCloud will be televised after all

August 1, 2011
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Digital Living Room Looks like my confident claim last month that “The iCloud will not be televised,” was bunk. Apple released a software update for Apple TV today that adds limited iCloud support.

Apple TV owners will now be able to watch TV shows they have previously purchased from iTunes through the set-top box. The content will be stored remotely in iCloud instead of on the Apple TV device itself, which has very limited on-board storage. Ironically enough, the new Apple TV feature is actually the first implementation of iCloud, as the audio service hasn’t actually launched yet.

Users can also now purchase new TV shows directly through Apple TV for storage in iCloud. Previously, Apple TV was streaming rental-only. Read more »

Asking a lot of the audience

August 1, 2011
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Movies At Fortune magazine’s Brainstorm Tech conference last month, Dreamworks Animation head Jeffrey Katzenberg offered a rare admission for a Hollywood mogul.

“Let me have a show of hands of people that would say the last seven or eight months of movies is the worst lineup of movies you’ve experienced in the last five years of your life,” Katzenberg asked from the stage. “They suck.  It’s unbelievable how bad movies have been, right?”

The problem, in Katzenberg’s view, is too much marketing and not enough storytelling. Too many movies, he suggested, start out as a marketing plan, and only then do the filmmakers try to back into a script

“Today the thing that is probably most askew in Hollywood is the issue of marketability versus playability,” Katzenberg said. “There is this sort of unholy alliance that has existed forever between art and commerce, show and biz.  And today it’s out of balance and it’s too much on the biz, and it’s too much on the commerce and it’s too much on the marketability. Read more »