hollywood

For years, Amazon appeared to be a big pushover when it came to delivering Web entertainment.

During the early part of the Internet Age, Amazon shipped CDs and DVDs to customers who ordered them via the Web and CEO Jeff Bezos' company became synonymous with Web music and movies. Then Apple's iTunes, and Netflix, laid waste to physical discs by delivering digital downloads and streaming video, and Amazon quietly drifted to the back of the pack.

But today Amazon flexed some muscle of its own by announcing it would stream movies for free to people who subscribe to the … Read more

Home video innovations always seem to lead back to porn.

The fingerprints of the adult-film industry can be found on the development of VHS and Blu-ray disc. Soon, the sector may teach us about the cloud.

Pink Visual, a porn studio with a history of embracing new technologies, appears to be among the first filmmakers in the United States to offer the kind of streaming-video features that Apple and Google were said to be considering last year.

Instead of storing digital movies they own on computer hard drives, Pink Visual customers will be able to store clips they buy from … Read more

Netflix may be the Web's top movie rental service, but nobody sells more download-to-own movies than Apple, according to market research by iSuppli.

Apple's iTunes accounted for 64.5 percent of all the money spent in 2010 on electronic sell through (EIS) and Internet video on demand (IVOD) despite facing increased competitive pressure from Microsoft's Zune (Xbox), Amazon, Sony's Playstation, and Wal-Mart.

"Microsoft in 2010 accounted for 17.9 percent of U.S. movie EST/IVOD consumer spending, up from 11.6 percent in 2009," iSuppli found. "Sony in 2010 maintained the No. … Read more

Not long ago, ambitious young executives at the six major Hollywood film studios maneuvered to get into the home entertainment divisions.

Nowadays, getting assigned to home entertainment is like being sent to the Eastern front. Better to work in theatrical distribution, international, or maybe studio facilities. Recently, I spoke with an executive from one of the big studios who, while discussing the challenges of working in the film industry, noted there was one silver lining: "At least I don't work in home entertainment."

The studios' home-entertainment divisions typically oversee sales of DVDs and Blu-ray discs as well … Read more

For weeks, news outlets have speculated about the tension that appears to be growing between Hulu's management and the major media companies that back the Web video portal.

The rift is at least big enough to prompt Hulu CEO Jason Kilar to write a blog post that appears to takes his argument with his bosses at NBC Universal, Disney, and News Corp., to the public. In his note, Kilar said things that he must have known would anger many at the three media companies who each own a minority stake in Hulu.

Kilar, a former Amazon exec, was critical … Read more

A group of stakeholders in the entertainment industry are poised to make a important sales pitch to consumers concerning the way they buy and watch movies and TV shows.

Warner Bros. Entertainment, Netflix, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, and Best Buy are among the members of a consortium called the Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem, or DECE, which has come up with a set of standards and specifications designed to make approved digital content playable on certified devices. DECE calls the technology UltraViolet.

DECE announced this evening at the 2011 CES in Las Vegas that it expects companies that have licensed UltraViolet to begin … Read more

If Google managers hope to license premium TV shows and films for Google TV and YouTube, they should do what Netflix did and "build relationships through traditional means."

That's the recommendation of one studio executive who was referring to a tradition that has helped forge partnerships in the movie industry for decades: doing lunch. Sounds simple, but in an industry that relies so heavily on personal relationships forged over arugula salads and sparkling water, Google's usual data-heavy, interchangeable-executive approach doesn't cut it. In Hollywood, it seems, Google has had a people problem.

Google managers now … Read more

It's called the World Wide Web.

But this epithet is clearly inaccurate. For its rightful name is the World Wide Winonaless Web.

Winona Ryder, one of the more underrated actors in Hollywood's pit of ceaseless machination, wants the world to know that she is Web-free. She will not, you see, be persuaded to commit herself to surfing the world's information systems in order to satiate some silly need to discover information.

In an Elle interview published last week, Ryder, who was entirely stellar in such movies as "Edward Scissorhands," "Girl, Interrupted," and one … Read more

It's a massive business, worth more than $20 billion annually in software and hardware sales alone. Its influence reaches every corner of our society and is as mainstream as it comes. I'm not talking about the television industry, believe it or not. I'm talking about video games.

Interactive games, like so many of the products and trends in the marketplace, come straight out of the "everything old is new again" file. Flashback to 1960, when CBS aired the show "Video Village," produced by Heatter-Quigley, the creators of "Hollywood Squares." The show … Read more