Developers NetBlender have just announced their BD Touch software for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Using the official Apple SDK, they’ve come up with an app that links your handset, via WiFi, to your Blu-Ray player; not only can you control it remotely, you could use it to transfer content from the player to your iPhone, direct from the Blu-Ray menu structure. It’ll also let you manage a media library (both of owned and rented titles, together with suggestions for films you may enjoy), view trivia and commentary-style information on the iPhone’s display in-sync with the on-screen playback, and use the iPhone as a controller in discs that offer gaming features.  Â
The second video is even more cool: it shows how BD Touch could enabled Blu-Ray disc makers to put a digital copy of their media onto your iPhone or iPod Touch via WiFi, all with a straightforward interface and no need to get your hands dirty ripping the film with software:
NetBlender are offering their BD Touch SDKs as free downloads for developers to put compatible content onto discs and to create iPhone applications that are compatible with Blu-Ray media, opening up the possibility of films having free iPhone games and other apps, available through Apple’s AppStore, available to coincide with the in-store film release.
Written by Chris Davies on April 11th, 2008 with no comments.
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Filed Under: FutureWatch
What I’m going to say will likely disturb some folks, particularly in light of the fact that iTunes just became the #1 music retailer in the world this month. But work with me a little.
The online music revolution has not occurred, yet.
That’s it. No wild speculation, or tin-foil hat accusations, (and yet your characteristic sensationalism remains –ed)
That is the whole of the thing. While other industries have seen often dramatic effects on their business as a result of the internet, the music business is much like it was when my dad had a music store 20 years ago. Consumers still shop, they buy records, or singles they’re interested in. In short, online music has not been changed by the internet (save for the piracy aspect), it remains the same “Buy and Consume†metaphor it has always been.
In the spirit of disrupting future software patents by publishing prior art, after the break we’ll discuss in detail exactly how Apple could change all that.
(more…)
Written by Leigh McMullen on April 10th, 2008 with no comments.
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After reading about the iPhone for a while, memorising facts from its spec-sheet is just an occupational hazard. So, Apple’s cellphone has a maximum screen resolution of 640 x 480 for compatible content… doesn’t it? Ars Technica say no, and they’ve been playing with video that encoded at 720 x 576, 25fps on both the iPhone and the iPod Touch, a figure that’s funnily enough exactly the same as a PAL DVD. Videos encoded at that resolution can be viewed both through mobile Safari and funneled over from iTunes, although of course it only shows up at the 480 x 320 resolution of either device’s screen.
So why is this important, if you can’t see the difference? As Ars Technica explain, it’s all about optimising your video library for playback on multiple devices:
“[It] can be [useful] if you want the same files to be playable the mobile device and on the computer screen or TV. If you are interested in experimenting yourself, don’t forget to stick to baseline H.264 encoding and remember that these files will not play on older generation iPods”Iljitsch van Beijnum, Ars Technica
The upside is that movies bought from the iTunes store are actually being delivered in higher resolution than you might expect, given Apple’s quoted compatibility for the iPhone; Iljitsch found his copy of Punch-Drunk Love came in at 853 x 366, which would look far better through, say, an Apple TV than a 640 x 480 version might.
[via Gizmodo]
Written by Chris Davies on April 8th, 2008 with no comments.
Read more articles on Media and iPhone and iPhone archive and iPhone content and iPod Touch and iTunes and iTunes Store.
Filed under, it’s never too soon.
This evening, without so much as a beating drum to alert the dogs of war, Apple fired a shot right across the bow of Adobe Photoshop’s dominion over photo editing.
Aperture is already my favorite photo organizing and fine-tuning software –it’s brilliant, and offers a seamless upgrade to the familiar iPhoto. What’s been frustrating however is the need to export to Photoshop to perform anything more than basic RAW adjustments to highlights, shadow, sharpness and re-touch.
Today, this all changed. Apple has released an example plug-in “Dodge and Burnâ€, and with it, demonstrated Aperture’s plug in architecture. Per this review, additional plug ins are in the works from Nik Software, PictureCode, and Digital Film Tools.
Sure we won’t be able to “paint†in it (and why would we), but if Aperture will shortly have access to the kind of plug-in library available to Photoshop, there may be virtually no need for Adobe in any professional photographer’s workflow. This is clearly one step further in Apple’s strategy to dominate their core “creative professionals” market. Remember when Avid/Adobe Premier owned film editing? Who is going to pick that over Final Cut now?
I’ve been playing with the version 2.1 now for a few hours and love the new functionality, but what’s got me more exited is the potential, I see a huge library of plug-ins on the horizon. So Aperture users, sound off, what plug-ins do you desire most? Me, top of the list, I want an HDR merge and tone-map plug-in, Right Now.
Written by Leigh McMullen on March 29th, 2008 with no comments.
Read more articles on Aperture and Media and Photo Editing and Product Review and Software and plug ins.
Wired’s Editor in Chief Chris Anderson says the future of business is free, and so my publisher and I are giving away free copies of my books.
Bill Pollock of No Starch Press has seeded full electronic versions of my coffeetable books — Cult of Mac and Cult of iPod — to Bittorrent via Pirate Bay.
We want to see if giving away copies of the books will have any effect on sales.
“I’ve been in publishing for just over 20 years and my training has not been to give books away,” writes Pollock on the No Starch blog. “But I think there’s something to this and logic tells me that if we increase the visibility of our titles, we’ll sell more books.”
We came up with the idea after reading about the amazing success to bestselling author Paulo Coelho, who seeds his own books to file-sharing networks and then promotes them on his blog. Coelho claims great success with “pirating” his own books, saying it has had a slow but dramatic effect on sales.
Of course, Coelho is an internationally acclaimed author with a high profile, which may account for his success more than giving away free books. But still, it’s an experiment worth trying.
As Pollock says on his blog: “I think that publishers (music and book) are spending too much time circling the wagons and not enough time thinking of ways that they can use technology to advantage. Certainly, our move here is a bit unusual, but someone has to take the plunge. May as well be us.”
Here’s the torrent for Cult of Mac.
And the torrent for Cult of iPod.
If you download the books, remember to keep your torrent client open so that others can also download the files.
Please let me know what you think of the experiment and the books. Send mail to: leander@wired.com
Written by Leander Kahney on March 19th, 2008 with no comments.
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