Review: Roku 2 Streaming Player

via SoldierKnowsBest on YouTube

The Roku 2 Streaming Player looks like a terrific source of Internet content to stream to your TV via a very small, compact box. SoldierKnowsBest does a great video review of the steaming player.

Spotlight on MyTouch 4G, Google+, and Harry Potter

Google invites NerdBoyTV to try Google+
Just got my invite from Google to tryout their possible "Facebook killer," Google+. This CNET video reviews some of the key highlights. You may want to sign-up to try it, too.



NerdBoyTV Smartphone Spotlight: MyTouch 4G
Because my longtime T-Mobile contract is coming to an end (and my teens have abandoned them for Verizon), I've been offered a pretty tempting offer to keep Brandon's service with the speedy MyTouch 4G. What do YOU think?



The Final Harry Potter Movie Coming!
If you haven't purchased your tickets for the 7/15 midnight showing of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2, you better hurry. I just bought mine yesterday and now the show is SOLD OUT. The movie trailer looks AWESOME!

NerdBoyTV loves Fiverr.com!

If you've never used it before, it's pretty much hybrid between an "ebay" and "elance." People post "gigs" that they're willing to do for $5 (like post a video testimonial, write a press release, hold a sign up in Times Square with your name on it, call someone as a celebrity on his/her birthday, etc.). You get the idea. I had someone create this movie intro for my sister's toy store for $5—the guy got it back to me within two hours (though they don't always promise THAT!). Check out Fiverr.com today.

Who do YOU want to win the Academy Award for BEST PICTURE?

I'm taking on a "Citizen-At-Large" reporting assignment for CNN and I want to know who YOU would want to win BEST PICTURE at this year's Academy Awards next Sunday? I don't want you to tell me who you THINK would win—simply tell me who you LIKE if you could vote. If we can SKYPE (soon), I'd like to put together a video of the all the picks from everyday people (not the critics). Wanna participate? SKYPE me at "NerdBoyTV" to set up a 1 minute interview.

Facebook movie is all about the hoodies ... and shower shoes

CLICK to read article on Technolog.

"Much is made of Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg's ubiquitous grey hoodie. Not so much the Adidas shower shoes that — if 'The Social Network' isn't the complete work of fiction Facebook reps claim it to be — Zuck wore with and without socks throughout his time at Harvard and Facebook's meteoric rise.

Having just seen a screening of the movie (which hits theaters Oct. 1), I'm inclined to side with the Facebook reps on the colorful liberties taken with events, certainly dialog, and possibly wardrobe. In his portrayal of Zuckerberg, Jesse Eisenberg (aka the rich man's Michael Cera) wears at least six different colored hoodies.

Don't get me wrong. 'The Social Network' is worth seeing — fast paced and engaging — an achievement all the more impressive considering this is a movie pretty much about coding and legal documents. One wonders what director David Fincher ('Fight Club') and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin ('The West Wing') could've done with 2008 dud 'Valkyrie'— another movie about paperwork.

Where 'The Social Network' fails in historical accuracy — and all movies based on 'actual events' do — it succeeds in hitting key points in the Horatio Alger narrative, revealed through the color of hoodie fictional 'Zuckerberg' wears in any particular scene. As far as I'm concerned, anyway. Check it out!

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Blockbuster files for bankruptcy protection

CLICK here to read entire article.

"Troubled video-rental chain Blockbuster Inc. filed for bankruptcy protection and said it plans to keep stores and kiosks open as it reorganizes.

The move, long expected and pre-arranged with bondholders, effectively ends an era that Blockbuster dominated — of Americans visiting video-store chains for the latest movie-rental releases.

Increasingly, Americans are watching movies via video subscription services like Netflix Inc., video on demand and vending machine services such as Redbox.

In a submission to the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in the Southern District of New York on Thursday, the company said it reached an agreement with bondholders on a recapitalization plan.

Blockbuster plans to reduce debt from nearly $1 billion to about $100 million or less by swapping debt for equity in a reorganized Blockbuster with bondholders that hold about 80.1 percent of the company's senior notes.

It has received commitments for $125 million in 'debtor-in-possession' financing from senior noteholders to repay customers, suppliers and employees during the reorganization.

'After a careful and thorough analysis, we determined that the process announced today provides the optimal path for recapitalizing our balance sheet and positioning Blockbuster for the future as we continue to transform our business model to meet the evolving preferences of our customers,' said CEO Jim Keyes.

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Apple unveils new box for streaming movies, TV

Apple unveils new box for streaming movies, TV - Yahoo! News

"Apple Inc. announced a smaller, cheaper version of its Apple TV device for streaming movies and television shows over the Internet and into the living room. It also unveiled a new line of iPods, including a touch-screen Nano model.

The tiny new Apple TV system announced Wednesday will only let people rent, not buy, content. For first-run high-definition movies the day they come out on DVD, people will have to pay $4.99. High-definition TV show rentals will be 99 cents.

The price of the box is also being cut to $99, from $229. Cheaper options for streaming video had been available, including Roku's set-top boxes that start at $60.

Apple TV has been around since 2007, but it hasn't caught on with the mainstream. For one thing, it doesn't record shows the way TiVo and other digital video recorders do. And the need to sync the box with a computer was too complicated for most consumers, Apple CEO Steve Jobs said.

'We've sold a lot of them, but it's never been a huge hit,' Jobs said.

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Redbox gives in, agrees to 28-day window for new Warner Brothers DVDs

By Ben Patterson : Yahoo! Tech: "It looks like Redbox's crusade to stock its kiosks with the very latest movies has come to an end, with the buck-a-night kiosk company agreeing to a 28-day delay before renting new-release DVDs and Blu-rays from Warner Brothers.

In addition to inking a 'multi-year' deal with Warners, Redbox is also dropping its lawsuit against the Hollywood studio, which had refused to sell wholesale copies of its new releases to Redbox until 28 days after its latest discs had hit retail shelves.

In exchange for agreeing to the 28-day window, Redbox will be able to buy DVDs and Blu-rays from Warner Brothers (the studio behind 'The Blind Side,' 'Sherlock Holmes,' and the 'Harry Potter' and 'Batman' movies) 'at a reduced product cost, preserving value for our customers and increasing customer access to Warners titles at Redbox locations nationwide,' Redbox president Mitch Lowe said in a statement Tuesday afternoon.

The news comes about a month after Netflix stuck a similar deal with Warner Brothers, and I wouldn't be surprised if Redbox signs more deals with the likes of Universal and Fox, the two other studios that Redbox sued after they instructed their distributors not to sell brand-new reduced-priced discs to the kiosk company."

YouTube getting into movie rental business

YouTube getting into movie rental business - Media biz- msnbc.com: "Movie rentals are coming to the Internet's most popular video site.

YouTube is making its debut as a rental outlet Friday to help promote some of the movies that will be shown at the upcoming Sundance Film Festival.

It's part of a test that YouTube hopes will encourage more movie studios to rent movies through its site.
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The expansion announced Wednesday thrusts Google Inc.-owned YouTube into competition with more established vendors such as Apple Inc.'s iTunes store, Amazon.com Inc., Netflix Inc. and Blockbuster Inc.

The first batch of YouTube's rentals will cost $3.99 for a 48-hour viewing period. Movie studios will be able to set their own prices, with rental viewing windows ranging from one to 90 days. YouTube will get an unspecified commission from each rental."

And the most pirated movie of 2009 is ...

By Ben Patterson : Yahoo! Tech (CLICK to read more)

"TorrentFreak had just come out with its annual list of the most downloaded movies of the year ... and no, we're not talking movies from iTunes. So, which summer blockbuster took the dubious honor of most pirated film of 2009? Tell 'em, Mr. Spock.

Yep, that's right: This year's hit reboot of the 'Star Trek' franchise (and one of my favorite movies of 2009, by the way) tops TorrentFreak's list, with a whopping 10.9 million downloads on BitTorrent in 2009—a figure that handily rises above last year's high-water mark of 7 million (for 'The Dark Knight').

Nipping at 'Star Trek''s heels with 10.6 million downloads is 'Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen,' another big summer blockbuster that'll probably end up as the biggest U.S. box-office draw of the year (to the tune of $402 million).

And which movie came in at number three? Could it be 'Up,' this year's masterpiece from Pixar (which earned $293 million at the box office)? Or wait ... don't tell me: 'Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,' right?"

Movies on SD card now a reality

By Christopher Null : Yahoo! Tech

NerdBoyTV NOTE: I can't wait to give this one a try! Nice!

"First came movies on USB thumb drives. Now feature films are suddenly finding their way to SD cards, the same media you use in your digital camera.

While the thumb drive movie appears to be a one-off experiment involving just one title bundled on a flash drive and being sold in just one retail chain, movies on SD card are actually invading on a broader scale.

Specifically, kiosks that offer consumers movie rentals downloaded to SD card will arrive in six Blockbuster and Hollywood Video stores located in Dallas, Seattle, and Portland this week. The kiosks will come loaded with a thousand films (and 500 more by the end of the year), including both catalog titles and major new releases -- and they'll be available on the same day as the general DVD release, before they hit video-on-demand services on cable networks or the Internet.

Want to play back the movie? In addition presumably to having the option of playing it on your computer, video stores will rent or sell set-top boxes that can play SD-stored content directly. It's unclear if users will be able to bring their own SD card for the download or will have to purchase one in conjunction with the movie rental.

Pricing, curiously, is set to be higher than the $1-a-night standard for DVD kiosk rentals, largely because they will use a similar strategy to VOD pricing, where movies can be watched at any time up to a month after the movie is rented and must be completed within 48 hours of when you start watching the film, after which time the movie can no longer be viewed.

SD-based movie purchase options, with no time limits on viewing, are also in the works.

I don't live in a market with these kiosks so won't be able to try them out firsthand. If any of you manage to find one of these kiosks in the real world, please report back with your thoughts!

The kiosks are being installed this week."

YouTube may rent streaming videos

By Christopher Null / Yahoo! Tech (CLICK to read more)

"It's one of the great success stories of the Internet: Quickly going from novelty website to cultural touchstone, YouTube is now one of the most grade-A, top-line, and biggest websites on the net today.

It's also one of the web's biggest disasters, since it makes absolutely no money: Google reportedly will lose about half a billion dollars running the site this year. Aside from a few ads here and there, there's really no revenue stream for the impossibly popular site.

Solution? How about renting movies?

Streaming video has been the Next Big Thing for entertainment pushers for quite some time, and Netflix has famously embraced the idea of streaming entire films to its subscribers, a service that is becoming phenomenally popular. But getting people to pay for a streaming video on a per-view basis instead of getting a movie you can download outright (even on a time-limited basis) has been elusive.

Even trickier: The idea of doing all of this in the web browser as opposed to, say, Apple's approach, which lets movie renters watch a film on their computer, their phone, or their television via the Apple TV box."

Big screen evolves to compete with small

By Yahoo! News (CLICK to read more)

"Today, young movie-watchers look increasingly like Molly O'Connor. A junior at the University of Dallas, she still goes to the cinema occasionally, but is often just as happy to hunker down on a bed or a couch with friends to watch a downloaded movie on a laptop that's perched on a nearby desk or a chair.

'Sometimes, it's nice to have a wider screen, but I don't think I gain that much by going to a movie theater anymore,' the 20-year-old student says. 'Now, it's more about convenience.'

Or as 26-year-old Michael Brody puts it: 'I watch movies the way many people listen to music — anytime, anywhere, any way.' A freelance writer in New York who blogs about film, he used to go to the movie theater every week. Now he's there once or twice a month, partly to save money and also because he doesn't think most movies are worth the effort.

Sounds like bad news for movie theaters. But we're talking about an industry that not only survived, but ended up thriving amid the arrival of television in the 1950s, videotapes in the 1980s, and DVDs in the '90s. The reason? An ability to continually remake themselves and find new ways to generate revenue, by introducing everything from the multiplex and more elaborate concessions to lengthy pre-show advertising."

Netflix hits 10 million subscribers

Netflix hits 10 million subscribers : Christopher Null : Yahoo! Tech: "DVD sales may be falling through the floor, but DVD rentals look like they're actually headed in the opposite direction. Online DVD rental outfit Netflix announced this week that it had surpassed the 10 million subscriber milestone, adding a whopping 600,000 new customers since January 1 alone.

The company added that it could hit 11.3 million subscribers by the end of the year."

SHOW #62 - NerdBoyTV BROADCAST: Who will win the Oscar?

In this episode of NerdBoyTV, Ryan Yee takes a crack at trying to predict who will win the 2009 Academy Awards tonight, including Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, Supporting Actor, and Supporting Actress. This is the first time NerdBoyTV used YouTube's "annotations" to "enhance" its video broadcast. ;-)

Apple planning streaming "iTunes Replay" video service?

Apple planning streaming "iTunes Replay" video service? : Ben Patterson : Yahoo! Tech: "Rumor has it that iTunes users may soon be able to stream their movie and TV video purchases from just about anywhere, à la Amazon 'Video on Demand' and Netflix 'Watch Now.' Will it happen for real? I sure hope so.
The hot tip comes from AppleInsider, which claims that Apple is 'wrapping up' the streaming service, dubbed 'iTunes Replay,' for iTunes 8.

Details on the service are sketchy; AppleInsider says that the service would support both TV and movie purchases over iTunes, but doesn't specify whether you'd be able to watch purchased videos directly over a Web browser (as you can with the Amazon and Netflix streaming services), or if the iTunes software client would be required."

How to Spruce Up Your Home Videos - PC World

How to Spruce Up Your Home Videos - PC World

"You've got a slew of footage of family gatherings or dance recitals. Edit those clips into something you can put in a DVD or show at the next reunion. Follow PC Magazine's quick tips to show you the way."

SHOW #050 - NerdBoyTV INTERNET: Animoto (Creating Photo Music Videos)

In this episode of NerdBoyTV, Ryan Yee demos how to turn your digital photos into a stunning music video using the online Internet service, Animoto. Includes a music video that Ryan put together using Animoto.

Netflix: New Set-Top Box Streams Video to TV | Newsweek Tech and Business | Newsweek.com

Netflix: New Set-Top Box Streams Video to TV Newsweek Tech and Business Newsweek.com: "How many little boxes do you have in your living room? A TiVo and a DVD player? Maybe a Wii or an Xbox? A wireless router in the corner? Netflix is betting that—if you're a happy subscriber and a PC user—you'll be eager to plunk down $99 for one more. The world's largest online movie rental service made good on a years-old rumor this week by announcing the release of the Netflix Player. The compact box is made in partnership with Roku, a privately held digital media company, and lets subscribers instantly stream movies and television shows from their account directly onto their television."