AMC says in a blog post, ” The AMC premiere of Season Five was the most watched Mad Men episode ever, up over 21% from the previous season premiere. Mad Men continues to establish itself as one of the most honored series in television history, winning its fourth consecutive Emmy for Outstanding Drama Series last year, a milestone achieved by only three other shows in history (Hill Street Blues, L.A. Law, The West Wing).”

Here are the special features that will be included on the DVD/Blu-Ray releases:

• “Mad Men Say the Darndest Things” – Take a look at the best one-liners from the series and perhaps you will see your favorite!
• “The Uniform Time Act of 1966″ – A pictorial timeline explores the history of Daylight Savings Time and its official observance in the United States.
• “What Shall I Love If Not the Enigma?” – A glance into the life and work of metaphysical artist Giorgio de Chirico.
• “The Party of the Century” – Author Deborah Davis and legendary bandleader Peter Duchin take you inside Truman Capote’s infamous Black & White Masquerade Ball.
• “Scoring Mad Men: Inside a Session” – Join composer David Carbonara, orchestrator Geoff Stradling and sound engineer Jim Hill in the recording studio as they discuss their formula for scoring Mad Men.
• “Newsweek Magazine Digital Gallery” – A selection of Newsweek Magazine covers share the top news stories from around the world in 1966.
• Mad Men Season Five commentaries – Matthew Weiner and the cast and crew of Mad Men take viewers behind the scenes in feature-length audio commentaries for all 13 episodes.

It’s unclear when the fifth season will hit Netflix Instant, though it will most likely be just ahead of the Season 6 premiere. It looks like there will be at least two more seasons, based on contract extensions for cast members.

Supervised by director Steven Spielberg and renowned sound designer Ben Burtt, Raiders of the Lost Ark has been meticulously restored with careful attention to preserving the original look, sound and feel of the iconic film. The original negative was first scanned at 4K and then examined frame-by-frame so that any damage could be repaired.

The sound restoration was also done with the same attention to detail and care, which should give fans a fantastic high definition version of one of the most entertaining movies ever made. In case you missed it the first time around, LucasFilm also released a trailer to announce the Indiana Jones Blu-rays earlier this spring:

The biggest change to these warnings is the emergence of the Immigrations & Customs Enforcement (ICE) as a major department in the war against copyright infringement. The FBI has lagged in going after individual websites, but the ICE has stepped up, taking out over 750 domain names.

The first warning comes with the typical message: “The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement is investigated by federal law enforcement agencies and is punishable by up to 5 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.” But the addition of ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations special agent badge adds a little more intimidation.

The second logo you will be forced to sit through is from the National Intellectual Property Right Coordination Center. That branch of the government with an extraneously long title involves about 20 different government agencies. Their logo reminds us that a very angry eagle sees everything you are doing and is going tear your face off if you even think about watching a movie you didn’t pay for.

Both images will be shown consecutively for ten seconds each at the beginning of the movie, and you must watch them as you will not be able to skip or return to the menu screen. This will be the longest 20 seconds of your life.

I’m not sure how this is going to deter pirates, because I am sure they won’t be viewable on pirated versions of said media. So the people who actually purchase the movie are punished. What a world.

[source: arstechnica]

As engadget pointed out, a preview Blu-ray was released in March. That disc contained the series’ first episode, Encounter at Farpoint, and two other episodes. One, Sins of the Father, is a 3rd season episode involving Klingon politics. The other is a 5th season episode, The Inner Light, in which Captain Picard learns to play a Ressikan flute.

The trailer for that preview release is below and was uploaded to the CBSHEonDVD YouTube channel, a CBS Home Entertainment channel that promotes DVD and Blu-ray releases. It seems to be an afterthought. The trailer attempts to show how much better the series will look with before and after shots, but the video was only uploaded in 380p, meaning no difference can be seen.

What do you think? Will you be waiting in line on July 24th? Will you have time to save up enough money for what is sure to be an expensive release? Leave a comment below and let me know.

(via engadget)

In case you were wanting to up your geek level to uber-status, we present to you a life-like version of the Star Trek Phaser to complete your cosplay collection. These semi-functional Star Trek phasers were built with Playstation 3 Blu-Ray drives and toy phaser models to replicate the “real” thing.

If you fired these things at an alien, they would be left with a really unpleasant warming sensation on their skin. So, yeah. Take that, alien scum.

You will notice that some of these videos look a little smokey. A fog machine was used to show the laser traveling through the air, otherwise it just looks like a laser pointer. Mainly because that’s what it is, a high powered laser pointer.

I case you are wondering how to build your own Star Trek Laser, jayrob94561 includes a link to the laser pointer forum with instructions on how to build your own. Yes, there is a laser pointer forum.

So far these phasers can only by set to “ruin children’s birthday party” as the only thing they are good for is popping ballons. And looking cool…

[via: Huffington Post]

The cartridges will be released alongside compatible hardware in the form of the ODS-D55U USB 3.0 Optical Disc Archive. Sony also announced that several companies including BSkyB, CBS News, Time Warner Cable Sports, Fuji Television, and Tohokushinsha Films have all signed up already to use this new technology.

Furthermore, in addition to the production of media and drive units, Sony will collaborate with a variety of other manufacturers in related business areas such as storage media, robotics (automated media exchange systems), middleware (hierarchical storage management and control) and application software for media asset management (including media management and search) for the purpose of developing system solutions for media archive applications.

Sony lists these highlights on their product page for this device. But Strangely there is no price listing:

-Best suited for archiving any data file, long term

-Direct and quicker access than legacy linear data tape systems

-New optical disc cartridge, scalable capacity up to 1.5TB per cartridge

-USB3.0 interface

-Robotics for ODS-D200U planned for the future

-Available Fall 2012

Kotaku is reporting that their sources have told them that the next Xbox, dubbed the 720 for obvious reasons, is updating everything about the console for a release in 2013.

The sources are claiming first and foremost that the next Xbox will do away with the DVD format opting for Sony’s industry standard Blu-ray format. A Blu-ray disc can hold either 25 or 50 GB and easily best the DVD’s paltry 9 GB.

The sources also claim that the next Xbox will ship with an improved Kinect sensor that would further Microsoft’s plans of having Kinect invade every living room around the world. They say that the new Kinect would feature an on-board processor, a feature cute from the original Kinect. This would allow the Kinect to detect motion more effectively while freeing up the resources of the actual console to do the heavy lifting when it comes to games.

The most interesting rumor to come out all of this though is the potential for Microsoft to equip the console with some kind of software that would prevent the playing of used games. This could either be done through tying each game to a person’s account or through something hardware related. It’s too early to tell and don’t take it as fact just yet. A move like that would be drastic and anger a large portion of the gaming community who rely on stores like GameStop to obtain cheap used copies of games.

Reports from IGN also indicate that Microsoft will be using AMD’s Radeon 6000 series of graphics cards to power their console. This would put the next Xbox at about six to eight times more powerful than the current Xbox 360 and two times more powerful than Nintendo’s Wii U console expected to launch later this year.

Fudzilla is also reporting that the CPU for the Xbox 720′s development kits are already going into production for a late 2013 release. Those within the industry are saying that Microsoft is on track to deliver Xbox 720 dev kits to developers as early as March of this year.

As with all rumors, especially the anti-used game system, take them with a grain of salt. If any of this is true, we should hear more about it in the months leading up to E3 in June.

THX Media Director is integrated into a number of home theater devices, including the Dune HD Max and Dune HD Smart B1 Blu-ray players, the Sharp Elite LED LCD TV, and Indy Audio Labs’ Acurus Act 4 preamplifier. The Dune HD players are currently available, and will have access to THX Media Director via an automatic firmware update.

THX has also partnered with several major content authoring companies to make the Blu-ray discs they create for the various entertainment companies compatible with THX Movie Director. The statement does not say what, if any, THX Media Director compatible content is already available.

[Source: THX Blog]

"Offering Blu-ray rentals is an exciting opportunity for redbox to expand our product offerings and build on the relationships that we’ve established with millions of consumers nationwide," said Mitch Lowe, president, redbox.  "Redbox is a convenient, affordable home entertainment provider and we’re delighted to offer consumers their favorite movies on the increasingly popular Blu-ray Disc format." 

"According to a recent report by the Digital Entertainment Group, sales of Blu-ray players increased 103 percent in the first half of this year," the company noted in its announcement. "The sale of almost two million set-top players during this time has increased the total number of Blu-ray players sold to an estimated 19.4 million, resulting in more consumers entering the Blu-ray rental market."

Redbox Blu-ray rentals will cost $1.50. Regular DVDs are only $1.00.

Redbox recently made public intentions to use a web service to expand its library, which would make it a much bigger competitor to Netflix. That appeared to be mostly forward-looking, however. It’s hard to say when that will happen, and what its offerings will be exactly.

Put simply, the battle for your living room and the dollars associated with your living room is heating up and I believe that 24 months from now there will be clear winners and losers. The next 24 months will likely represent the biggest changes we’ve seen yet for mainstream America’s media consumption.

First lets talk about the losers.

1. Cable and satellite providers. The economy is bad. There has never been a better time to cancel your cable and satellite service. As more and more digital media content is being made available through other sources, there becomes less and less of a reason to put up with overpriced cable and satellite TV. The service is bad, the service is expensive, and it’s a high reoccurring fee that is just the type of thing that consumers will look to cut out of their lives as they baton down the hatches. What’s more, Comcast is probably especially susceptible to losing internet customers in this downturn as well as they’ve received a lot of negative PR over their bandwidth caps which could increasingly hit consumers as more and more streaming video (and especially streaming HD video) comes into play.

The lone hold out will likely be the sports fanatic who simply cannot get by on network TV sports alone.

AT&T may fare better than traditional cable and satellite providers because they are aggressively rolling out their high speed fiber Uverse service and *requiring* consumers to buy their TV service in order to get the much faster than cable/dsl internet speeds. It’s kind of chump that they do this if you ask me, but hey, only the strong survive right?

2. Apple. Apple computer’s AppleTV has been a huge flop. Just like Thomas Hawk told you it would be over two years ago when I first dubbed AppleTV the iDongle. I followed that post up with another 10 reasons why the iDongle would fail about a year and a half ago. Apple’s mistake was that they sacrificed user functionality over a desire to tightly control your content and charge you up the ying yang for it. By not including a DVD player (something cheap and easy that they could have done) with AppleTV they force you to buy the content from them rather than more cheaply through a Netflix DVD subscription plan. By not including a DVR they force you to either pay them to watch your network TV commercial free or watch it without them and see the commercials. Apple really missed the boat with this one and could have been well positioned had they done like they did on the iPod and focused on the hardware and giving users functionality while not worrying as much about the content. In the end they would have made more money on both hardware and content, but as it is now the box is too restrictive and will be limited to a niche Apple fanboy audience who love anything Apple makes no matter how crappy it may be.

3. Roku. A lot of fanfare was made when the Roku box first came out with people saying it was the best thing ever, blah, blah, blah, blah. While having a few month lead time on comparable streaming Netflix boxes, as Netflix broadens their streaming service to other platforms it just won’t make sense to buy a Roku box when you can already get streaming Netflix on more popular and currently owned devices. More on the Roku here.

4. Movie Theaters. A lot of people say that the movie theater business will be resilient in this upcoming downturn in the economy. After all, movies thrived during the Great Depression right? True point. But back in the Great Depression there was no HDTV, no Netflix, no DVDs, no giant plasma TV screens or home theater sound systems. The movie theater has been a rip off with greater home entertainment competition for the last 3 years, but the economy has been good and people still went to the theater anyways (albeit in declining numbers). Not anymore. Watch the movie theaters go the way of the dinosaur as the consumer tightens back and chooses more economical entertainment at home vs. going out. If you’ve always wanted a photograph of your favorite theater’s neon sign, now’s the time to get it before they go out of business.

5. Blu-Ray. Blu-Ray players and discs are too expensive and a rip off. Sony won the battle by becoming the de facto high def DVD standard after wiping HD DVD off the map, but they lost the war. With streaming high def content and free OTA HDTV there is no need to pay all that money for Blu-Ray.

Now on to the Winners.

1. Netflix. Clearly Netflix has made the right move in investing so heavily in streaming technology. Netflix’s DVD rental and watch now service are both winners. In the past week we’ve seen announcements that Netflix will begin streaming it’s service on both Microsoft XBox 360s and TiVo units. If you have either of these units there is a strong case to be made that with a three disc Netflix plan for $19.99 a month you can have better content to watch at any given time than you can with your cable or satellite provider. If I were Netflix I’d start pumping this message big time. Why pay Comcast or DirecTV $80 a month when you can get better content from Netflix for $20. This is a clear value proposition for the consumer. Even in a bad economy people need something to distract them from their daily woes. And while people might not shell out $80 to take a family of 5 to the movie theater (parking, popcorn, soda, wayyy overpriced tickets, etc.) or pay $80 a month to Comcast or DirecTV for TV, they will pay $20 a month to get a very strong substitute from Netflix.

2. Microsoft XBox 360. The new Microsoft XBox 360 is out just in time for Christmas and may be the most tempting thing for people to try and buy even in this bad economy. Microsoft and Netflix announced this week that they will begin streaming *high def*, yes *high def* content to this new box. They are going to start with only 300 high def titles, but watch for this to rapidly expand in the near future.

Microsoft’s going to try and get a pound of flesh out of you of course by requiring an XBox live "gold" membership which is also kind of chump in my opinion, but this new box is clearly a winner.

3. Microsoft Media Center. Microsoft’s Media Center technology is getting better and better. Charlie Owen, from the Media Center team over at Microsoft, put out a great post earlier this week highlighting some of the things that we have to look forward to with Windows 7.

Many of Media Center’s changes are cosmetic — a cleaner better designed layout and interface. But there are some substantive content changes as well. Probably most significant, the next version of Media Center will support the H.264 high def video format. This means that high def H.264 video files can now be consumed on your television through a Media Center PC or Media Center extender. The significance of this is that the H.264 compatibility opens up the Media Center to a very popular format used for cheap pirated video content. Now I’m not advocating video piracy with this post, but the fact of the matter is that millions of people watch pirated H.264 format video on their computers every year. Now instead of having to watch the latest pirated episode of Dexter on your computer alone, you can now actually watch it from the comfort of your couch with your XBox 360 Media Center extender.

The power of Media Center plays in perfect concert with the power of the XBox 360.

All XBox 360s act as Media Center extenders. This means that if you have a Vista PC in your home (and more and more people do/will every day) you can stream your photos, music, home videos, and TV complete with a DVR if you have a TV tuner in your PC.

Could be a winner / could be a loser

1. TiVo. TiVo is certainly a consumer favorite. People that own them are very, very passionate about them. In addition to a new DirecTV service coming out next year and current offerings on the cable company platforms, TiVo today announced their own partnership with Netflix in what has been a much talked about on again / off again sort of relationship over the past four years or so. Being broadly rolled out in December, the new service will put more than 12,000 titles on the TiVo platform coming from Netflix. The service won’t be available on all TiVo units (it will work on Series3, TiVo HD, and TiVo HD XL units) but makes a TiVo a much more compelling option for consumers.

TiVo already has one of the best DVRs in the business and this new Netflix streaming option makes it even more attractive. Still, TiVo is an expensive option. Consumers either have to pay a $12.95 per month annual fee with TiVo or they have to pay an additional $400 charge for lifetime service. These high fees may keep some consumers away from TiVo as an option. Also there is no confirmation yet from TiVo that they will be offering the HD streaming option that the new XBox 360 will.

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