Creativity Online reports that Domino’s Brazil has teamed up with ten video retal stores in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro to cover popular DVDs with a thermal ink that lets off a pizza smell when heated. When the movie was over, the heated DVD would give off a pizza smell to the consumer. It was also painted to look like a pizza with the message, “Did you enjoy the movie? The next one will be even better with a hot and delicious Domino’s Pizza.”

I have to admit – it’s a pretty brilliant marketing strategy. It’s especially effective in countries like Brazil where streaming services have yet to really take off. Most consumers have to rely on DVD rental stores to check out the latest movies. Making the DVD smell like pizza would definitely make me hungry, and it just might work on hungry Brazilians as well.

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.

Domestic DVD revenue was down to $291 million from $320 million the previous quarter, and global revenue was up to $889 million from $870 million the previous quarter.

In a letter to shareholders from CEO Reed Hastings and CFO David Wells, the company says, “In Q2, we achieved financial performance in the top half of our guidance in nearly every metric, and have returned to profitability.”

The company says it has 24 million domestic streaming members, and is in 10% of Canadian households after 22 months in that country. Netflix recently surpassed a million members in the Latin America region. After six months in the UK and Ireland, Netflix also has a million members in that region.

“We believe we have pulled ahead of LOVEFiLM in every important streaming-related metric,” the letter says. “Going forward, competing effectively with Sky is our core and substantial challenge.”

Netflix says it expects to be profitable again in Q3, and in Q4 will launch its next international market, which will drive it temporarily back into the red.

Some think that renting the movie cheaply with inspire those that liked the film to make the DVD purchase. Universal and Fox think that the cheap alternative is ruining DVD sales. Warner Bros. is another that falls into this camp, saying that they will extend the delay period to 56 days before offering wholesale terms to rental companies.

As far as Disney goes, they have not made any announcement as to whether or not they will adopt the 28 day delay. But Redbox lovers will notice a distinct lack of John Carter on the new releases page. According to Redbox via Deadline Hollywood, “Redbox has always worked with Disney on a per title basis, without a contract. We will be sourcing John Carter through alternative means.” “Alternative means” indicates that they just buy the DVD from retailers to offer at their kiosks.

Deadline Hollywood is reporting that Disney CEO Bob Igor said to analyst in February that they are in discussions to go with the 28 day window before offering Redbox cheaper terms. It is apparent that they have since adopted that strategy and Redbox will now be forced to pay full purchase price for all of Disney’s Films. Igor added that it would be wise for them to protect DVD sales as much as they can. The market has been in steady decline recently.

Redbox is planning to have the DVD in kiosks next Tuesday. They have not said why they had the delay, knowing that they would have had to pay full price for the release anyway.

Do they not realize they are also competing with pirates? It seems to me that most people only splurge on a DVD if they think the movie is really good. Hollywood now produces more movies a year than anytime in history. If everyone shelled out $20+ every time a new movie was released, we would all be broke. It may also lead to Redbox raising prices on new releases. Also not a good thing.

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]

There’s a lot of factors contributing to fall of DVD, but certainly a couple main reasons are cost and convenience. Who wants to drive all over town searching for the hottest new release when it can be much easier found by switching on your computer, if you ever really turn it off anyway. The average consumer cost for an online movie is $0.51, as compared to $4.72 for a DVD copy. That’s a dramatic cost difference and it doesn’t include the time and fuel used to go track the movie down.

Walmart recently introduced a program linked to their streaming VUDU service which allows customers to trade physical DVD’s for rights to an online streaming version for about $2 for regular formats, and $5 for high definition. I like the sounds of that. I would love to clear all those old DVD’s out of the closet.

This next infographic from Onlinedegrees.com fills us in on the state of DVD’s and what’s brewing in the online media world today. Movies are big business, but the days of DVD are numbered. Take a look:

Announced today as “The YouTube Collection,” it promises to collect all of your favorite YouTube videos onto DVDs for offline viewing. A genius move, I say, but what will YouTube on DVD look like? The company has graciously offered a preview by adding a home button to the video options that opens up a DVD menu. This lets you skip to scenes, turn off audio or begin the ordering process for your real DVDs.

The ordering process couldn’t be easier. When you option to order The YouTube Collection, it asks you what kind of video you want. There’s many options to choose from including the most popular video genres from YouTube including dubstep remixes and cover songs. Upon ordering your discs, you are taken to the shipping options for all 555,000 discs that are to be sent to your home. I suggest going with YouTube’s own personal fleet of shipping trucks, but you are given other options like freight vessel. After all this, you are given the option of what format you want the videos on. DVD is the suggested format, but YouTube also offers their videos on other legacy formats including laser disc and betamax.

After all is said and done, my order came out to be a little under $3 million. That’s a small price to pay for thousands of hours of entertainment whether I’m online or off. The price will fluctuate depending on how many genres you choose. I’m sure you could keep the price under $1 million if you ordered nothing but dubstep remixes.

Being serious for a moment, I usually hate April Fools Day. It’s the one day of the year that companies make ridiculous announcements with some of them sounding real enough that reporters fall for them. YouTube is a champion of the good April Fools Day by making it entertaining and obviously not real. So our hats are off to the guys at YouTube for making another great April Fools Day joke this year.

Streaming movies from vendors like Netflix and iTunes will advance by 135% this year to 3.4 billion sales, for revenues of $1.72 billion – far less than the expected $11.1 billion taken in from DVD and Blu-ray disc sales. Online movies will account for 57% of viewership in 2012, but only 12% of the spending.

IHS analyst Dan Cryan states, “the result would be a net decline in home entertainment revenue even as consumption reaches previously unattainable heights.” Basically, with certain low-cost “all-you-can-watch” services from vendors like Netflix, consumers are taking in huge amounts of content for cheap. Netflix streamed over 2 billion hours of video in Q4, 2011. Streaming movies accounted for 94% of online viewership in 2011, while actual digital purchases made up on 1.3%

As a response to this, movie studios try to keep newly released material away from online streaming vendors. Still, Hollywood endorses the new UltraViolet format, the cloud-based media locker. Wal-mart has also endorsed UltraViolet, and has allowed users to transfer DVDs they own to the cloud for $2 a pop.

Nielsen posted on its blog a study the group recently conducted that looked at what Americans have been using their TVs for in the past six years.

To preface the study, Nielsen shows how TV usage has changed over the past 50 years. In 1960, only seven percent of all households received cable. In 1990, 56 percent received cable and 66 percent owned a VCR. In 2006, 89 percent of TV was viewed live and DVR usage only accounted for 1.6 percent of our TV time.

Things have changed pretty dramatically over the past five years. Today, 98 percent of American homes own a TV and have some kind of device (i.e. DVR, game console, DVD player) attached to the television. The amount of live television content being viewed has dropped to 85 percent while DVR usage accounts for eight percent of our TV time now.

Nielsen says that of three major devices that we connect to our TVs, the DVR gets the most use. While the amount of live TV content being watched may have dropped, it doesn’t mean people are watching less television. In fact, the time a person spent watching TV content increased 19 minutes year-over-year in the first four weeks of 2011.

If the DVR is so important to our watching habits, who is driving it? It would appear that females aged 18 to 54 use the DVR the most by devoting 10 percent of their viewing time to the DVR.

It would seem that the lowly DVD player is on its way out as less and less people use them. What has seen an increase is the game console with 3.9 percent of TV time being devoted to them. The increase in game console usage is being driven by teens who devote 11 percent of their TV time to using a game console.

It’s important to remember, however, that game consoles simply replaced the DVD player. With services like Netflix and Hulu as well as its ability to play DVDs natively, it only makes sense for dedicated DVD player usage to drop.

For those wanting to get into the nitty gritty of demographics, Nielsen has you covered. Asian Americans spent the least amount of time watching television in 2011. They did, however, see the biggest increase in viewing from 2010. In contrast, African-Americans and Hispanics spent less time watching TV in 2011 compared to the previous year.

Asian-Americans spent the least amount of time watching live television, but made up for it by devoting the most time to DVR and DVD use. Hispanic homes were found to use gaming systems the most while African-American homes used DVD players the most.

Here’s an image that breaks down TV usage among age groups:

I think I’m mostly surprised by the fact that people in my age group were still using VCRs in 2011. I keep around an old Betamax player for kicks, but I never actually use it.

While traditional TV is still clearly dominating American viewing habits, it’s clear that it’s beginning to lose its lead. The rise of the DVR and game consoles with streaming technology are cutting into its market.

All of this could explain why cable companies want to encrypt their signals. They don’t want to lose any more business to these services or new services like Boxee.

Verizon and Redbox hope to give consumers an option that is a “simple and affordable way to access the video entertainment they crave.”

Speaking about the partnership, Coinstar CEO Pau Davis said:

“Consumers rely on Redbox for the latest new release movies at a great value, and our joint venture with Verizon will enable us to bring them even more value by offering expanded content offerings and greater flexibility for how and when they enjoy entertainment.”

“Together, we are erasing old technology boundaries, freeing people to spontaneously enjoy the entertainment they want, whenever they choose, using the devices and media they prefer, at home or away,” added Bob Mudge, Verizon’s President of Consumer and Mass Business Markets.

Since the unnamed service is very similar to Netflix, a lot of people are wondering what will happen to it once this new venture launches. What’s more, the past several months have been rather rough for Netflix after it dramatically raised its prices last September. Consumers were outraged and some even dropped the service, as Bryan Gonzalez, the Director of Social Entertainment Labs at the Entertainment Technology Center at USC, explained in this video:

WebProNews recently caught up with Gonzalez again to talk about this latest development. According to him, Netflix has to continue to focus on its content in order to effectively compete with Verizon and Redbox’s service.

“For Netflix to really continue competing, I think they’re really gonna need to push hard and try to get as much content up front as possible,” he said.

“As long as Netflix keeps that drum beat of fresh content – new content – to their streaming sector, I think they’ll do fine,” he added.

Should Netflix be worried? What do you think?

Gonzalez went on to raise an interesting point about the deal between Verizon and Redbox. As he explained, Netflix’s actions last year were part of a bigger effort to move away from its DVD service. However, it seems that this new venture focuses on the DVD side, which he believes could be due to accessibility issues that so many Americans face.

“A lot of Americans still don’t have very fast Internet connections, so streaming quality isn’t as great necessarily for everyone as a DVD or a Blu Ray,” Gonzalez pointed out.

Another potential issue he raised was in regards to Verizon’s current FIOS cable TV service. At this point, Verizon’s FIOS program is not national, but one can’t help but wonder what will happen since the new venture seems to contradict it.

These details and others were not disclosed in the announcement but are expected to come as the launch date gets closer. The companies said the new service would be available during the second half of the year.