Gadgetell | Tech News, Reviews, and Interesting Things

You’ve got to feel bad for YouTube.  After becoming the Internet’s darling for such fun gags, it wants to get a day job.  No longer content with just the clearing house for pranks and short clips, it wants to be in the full length movie business as well as the TV show business. 

YouTube served up this kind of content at one time but was forced to take most of it down over copyright claims.  Now YouTube is working with Hollywood to gain their trust and their content.

But it isn’t an easy road.  Sure YouTube has the traffic, 81 million folks in September but they also have the baggage.  And it’s more than just past indiscretions.

Find out what’s next for YouTube.

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Sections: Video, Content, Web, Websites, Online Music/Video

In the wake of the Xbox 360 receiving Netflix streaming High Definition, Roku has announced, on their own forums, that they will have HD streaming on Roku boxes before the end of the year.  Roku boxes were, in fact, the first devices to offer the Netflix “Watch Now” functionality, straight to your TV. 

On the Roku Labs Forums, “RokuTim” (Tim Twerdahl, VP of Consumer Products at Roku) told the masses that “Roku will be delivering Netflix in HD by the end of the year.“  This is great news for everybody who hopped on the Roku bandwagon early, however he also mentioned that “Roku will be using Advanced Profile encodes which will deliver HD at substantially lower bit-rates than what Xbox is offering.“  Uh oh.  Looks like the Xbox 360 has the upper hand here, and that your Roku HD movies may be a tad on the choppy side. 

More after the break.

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Sections: Video, Content, HDTV, Web, Websites

According to a source, you can opt into the new Netflix Watch Instantly movie player.  The source is The Official Netflix Blog, so it’s probably accurate.  This brings Netflix’s movie player to OS X for the first time (without running Windows) by using Microsoft’s Silverlight.

If you’re a slider and you use both Mac and Windows machines, once you opt into the Silverlight experience, you’re locked into to it for both platforms.  If you’re a Windows-only user, you may wonder why bother with opting in at all?  Well, maybe you hate Internet Explorer and you’ve always wanted to watch Netflix in Firefox.  This is your chance.

However, there is no opting out yet.  If the experience sucks, you’re stuck.  It’s a beta, so you know what that means.  I’m using it now and have already been hit with some errors.  Some movies that used to work don’t play Silverlight yet (mostly Starz offerings). 

Go for it!  [Netflix opt-in link]
Read more at the [The Official Netflix Blog]

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Sections: Apple, Video, Accessories, Web, Web 2.0, Web Apps, Web Browsers, Online Music/Video

Remember Joost?  The peer-to-peer video client made from the guys that made Skype and Kazaa?  Yeah, sometimes I forget it exists as well.  But that’s okay, because the somewhat annoying desktop client is gone.  Joost has finally gone to flash, just like Hulu and a number of other services.

Joost is touting its sort of social networking aspect to try and get people to use it.  You can use JoostFeed to watch the videos your Joost friends recently watched, or you can “Shout” about videos to your friends to tell them to watch it.  It might be a bit hard to actually use the feature unless your friends are those who haven’t already forgotten about Joost.  More after the break.

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Sections: Video, Video Providers, Computers, Web, Web 2.0, Websites, Online Music/Video

Talk about ideal product placement gone mad.  In the upcoming James Bond Quantum of Solace movie, there are eight different characters sporting six different Ericsson phones.  And nope, they don’t even have to tape over the brand name….I’m sure Sony paid plenty to be the featured phone of choice.

The six featured phones somehow also magically include the canceled Ericsson W707.  The new character Elvis has that one.  Bond himself sports the C902 (in the limited Titanium Silver color of course).  The Bond girl uses the W350 in Graphic White color; for anyone wanting to be just like the love of Bond’s life remember Graphic White.  As for the rest of the characters, we have M catching calls with the G700 (in Mineral Grey), Matthus using the G700, CIA with the W910, and another new character, Green, pockets the G900. 

What goodies come with Bond’s phone?  Find out after the break.

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“The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to five years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000.“  So says the warning on all movies released since early 2004. Well, granted many get a bit of a chuckle every time they pop a movie into their player and see that flash across their screen knowing they’ve just downloaded it from somewhere on the ‘Net, but still…it’s the thought that counts. And apparently, the thought of RealNetworks is that they want to make it a little easier for their customers to burn those dvds; since they are coming out with a new product called RealDVD which allows users to burn a digital copy of the movie of your choice…ummmm..legally?  Guess that remains to be seen.  Because there hasn’t been enough chatter about the whole piracy/fair use thing lately.

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Trying to lure in customers to replace their DVDs or HD DVDs with Blu-rays, Paramount is offering ten bucks per title to do just that. Although Paramount and Dreamwork titles are involved in the offer, it isn’t good for just any Paramount movie.

According to HighDefDigest, the promotion will start with the release of Transformers on Blu-ray coming in just a few days on September 2nd. Hopefully you won’t mind messing up those boxes a bit though, since you need to include the proof-of-purchase tabs from both the DVD and the Blu-ray disk, along with the promotional certificate from inside eligible Blu-ray movies.  You also have to buy your Blu-rays before December 31, 2009 and have your rebate envelope postmarked before January 31, 2010.

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Vudu first began showing up in Best Buy locations back in late-March and at the time it was just 24 locations, all of which were located in California. The limited availability was thought to be a testing period to make sure the devices would be able to sell as expected.

Well, jump forward a little over a month and it looks like it must have been successful because Vudu and Best Buy have just announced a little more widespread availability, however it is still not nationwide.

They have remained in California, but also expanded to Arizona and Illinois, all in all it looks like they are now available in almost 70 Best Buy locations. In addition to the move into Best Buy locations in other states, Vudu has also recently added 35 new movies to own and 30 new movies to rent.

Via [CrunchGear]

http://www.crunchgear.com/2008/07/02/vudu-continues-to-infiltrate-best-buy/

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Well, by now I hope you have already seen our unboxing set that we posted yesterday, but now its time for a quick hands on review with the Roku Netflix Player.

First off the player is small, which may be good or bad depending on your setup. I say this only because it does take up very little space in your entertainment stack, but similar to game consoles and the AppleTV its another odd size device that you will have to make a place for. Lucky for us, we had a nice spot to sneak it in.

The setup was easy an process and the player comes with the remote, a power adapter and a set of cables to hook it up. The setup was simple, find an empty set of plugs on your TV, plug the cables into the TV and into the player, then plug in the power adapter. Just like that its hooked up, and now its time to begin the actual setup, which I am happy to say was just as quick and painless.

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This little set-top box hit the market early last week with quite a bit of excitement. The Roku Netflix Player was what a lot of people had been waiting for, and based on statements about a 10 day delay from the Roku forums, they either sold really well or Roku had underestimated the initial sales numbers. Either way we were lucky enough to be able to get our order in early and with that ours is now in hand. That means you can be on the lookout for a review in the future, and if you have any questions about how it works send them our way. In the meantime enjoy some pics from the unboxing.

Keep reading for some more pics…

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