BlockBuster OnDemand Streaming on Samsung HDTV and Blu-ray Players

Blockbuster OnDemand challenges Netflix and Amazon's Instant HD Video on Demand service.

Blockbuster OnDemand is coming to a long list of Samsung TV and home theater products. The online pay-per-view streaming service will be added to Samsung's online-enabled HDTVs, Blu-ray players, and Blu-ray home theater systems via future software updates. As part of the deal, Blockbuster will also sell some of the Samsung products in its video rental stores.

The service, due to launch in September or October in the United States, is similar to Blockbuster's existing pacts with TV maker Vizio and digital video recorder maker TiVo Inc, which was announced in March.

According to Samsung, the Blockbuster OnDemand feature will be added to "Samsung LCD and Plasma HDTVs Series 650 and above, and Samsung LED HDTVs Series 7000 and above," as well as "select 2009 Samsung Blu-ray players and home theater systems."

Most probably these top HDTV and Blu-ray players will play Blockbuster HD movies:

• Samsung LN46B650 46-Inch 1080p 120Hz LCD HDTV
• Samsung LN52B750 52-Inch 1080p 240Hz LCD HDTV
• Samsung UN40B7000 40-Inch 1080p 120Hz LED HDTV
• Samsung PN50B650 50-Inch 1080P Plasma HDTV
• Samsung BD-P2500 1080p Blu-ray Disc Player

Finally TV's will partially take over the role of the desktop monitors to be our window to the broadband internet. How will Netflix and Amazon keep up in this competition?

Do you like these Samsung devices or do you prefer the excellent and Vizio 32" 1080p LCD HDTV (VOJ320F1A) at a low price of ~$500?

HOME Movie Views Tops 1M on YouTube

HOME - the Film by Yann Arthus-Bertrand has been released on June 5th 2009 World Environment Day. For the first time ever, a film has been released on the same day in over 50 countries and on every format: movie theaters, TV, DVD and Internet.

The full Project HOME movie is available on YouTube in HD (1280×720 mp4 @ 2000 kbit/s) for free. It has reached one million views in 9 days. The network traffic to deliver the full 93 minutes of HOME HD is in the magnitude of a petabyte!

The plan was to show HOME Project on YouTube until 14th June but the date has been apparently extended. The download counter is close to 1.2 millions and counting. Thank you Yann Arthus-Bertrand, PPR and YouTube!

HOME on the iPhone

It is now possible to find out the latest news on the planet, calculate your carbon footprint or watch Yann Arthus-Bertrand’s film thanks on the iPhone thanks to a free application available on the Apple Store website.

HOME project - Free HD Earth Movie on YouTube

HOME - a Film by Yann Arthus-Bertrand (to be released on June 5th)


The French photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand is well known for Earth from Above, a stunning collection of photographs that affords its viewers a window into the world's workings. He has wandered the globe to gather this collection of more than 200 uniformly striking photographs. His new project is a unique movie HOME. In his own words:

"We are living in exceptional times. Scientists tell us that we have 10 years to change the way we live, avert the depletion of natural resources and the catastrophic evolution of the Earth's climate.

The stakes are high for us and our children. Everyone should take part in the effort, and HOME has been conceived to take a message of mobilization out to every human being.

For this purpose, HOME needs to be free. A patron, the PPR Group, made this possible. EuropaCorp, the distributor, also pledged not to make any profit because Home is a non-profit film.

HOME has been made for you: share it! And act for the planet."

More than a movie, HOME will be a major event all over the globe: for the first time ever, a film will be released on the same day in over 50 countries and on every format: movie theaters, TV, DVD and Internet.

HOME project is available on YouTube in HD for free. Home is also available on DVD, Blu-ray formats and as a companion book - Home: A Hymn to the Planet and Humanity.

The free release of the first HD movie is another milestone for broadband internet innovations.

Gigapixel Photography on the Rise

What is a gigapixel image?

A gigapixel image is a digital image composed of more than one billion pixels. It contains more than 150 times the detail captured by a typical 6-megapixel consumer camera. One way of visualizing the size of a four gigapixel image is to consider a photograph of a regulation football pitch (soccer in USA) which is 90m x 45m. A four gigapixel top-down photograph of the entire field at 1mm per pixel would cover the entire area of the football pitch!

How does it work?

Gigapixel images are created by tiling a large number of photographs, or scanning a large film negative (8" x 10"). Gigapixel images are displayed on-line using streaming technology which breaks the image into small tiles and loads them as you look. This allows you instantly view high-resolution images that are over several gigabytes in size. There are beautiful gigapixel photography online at GigaPan and GigapixelPhotograpy.com.

What are the applications of gigapixel imagery?

Gigapixel photographs are ideal for tourism, real-estate, architecture, medical imaging, archiving, and documenting special events. High-resolution images create the impression of "being there" by immersing the viewer within the scene. The extreme level of detail captured in a gigapixel image allows artifacts to be accurately preserved for future generations.

Can you print a gigapixel image?

Yes, gigapixel images can be printed. At a size of over 20ft (6m), a gigapixel print retains jaw-dropping detail even when viewed a few inches away.

The largest digital photographs

The largest digital image at the moment is a 17 gigapixel photograph from Glacier Point, Yosemite National Park. It is claimed by Gerard B. Maynard.

• Dimensions: 214,414 pixels X 80,571 pixels
• Size: 96.5 GB
• Pixels: 17,275,550,394

Break Free of the Browser with JavaFX

Internet innovations have taken another step towards Web 3.0 with the introduction of Drag-to-Install feature of Sun's new JavaFX Rich Client Platform. Do you like a (JavaFX) web application? Break free of the browser and drag it to your desktop! Check out the demo video here.

JavaFX is a rich client platform for building cross-device applications and content. Designed to enable easy creation and deployment of rich internet applications (RIAs) with immersive media and content, the JavaFX platform promises that RIAs look and behave consistently across diverse form factors and devices.

JavaFX will have to compete with existing RIA platforms like Adobe Flex/Flash and Microsoft Silverlight. See the JavaFX samples for some example applications.

Recast Digital Delivers HD Flash Video with RVD1

2009 will be the year of Full screen HD video on the Web.


Recast Digital is a provider of High Definition (HD) Internet video streaming services.

Recast Digital combines advanced Flash Player development with vastly scalable video delivery mechanisms to offer content owners, media businesses, and online advertisers, a highly effective method of serving ultra-high quality interactive on-demand - and live - video to large audiences.

Recast Digital's Flash-based RDV1 player senses the computer power and bandwidth available to the user, and adjusts the definition accordingly up to the 3.2 Mbit/s required for full HD quality. They have re-engineered Flash using existing codecs so that it enables HD content very smoothly, even across the internet and works with Adobe Flash 9 or above. The player supports the following quality and bandwidth options:

• 580 Kb/s - WD Bronze
• 736 Kb/s - WD Silver
• 1036 Kb/s - WD Gold
• 860 Kb/s - SD Bronze
• 1.2 Mb/s - SD Silver
• 1.7 Mb/s - SD Gold
• 1.2 Mb/s - HD Bronze
• 2.2 Mb/s - HD Silver
• 3.2 Mb/s - HD Gold

Experience the Recast Digital high-definition Web video on their demo site.

Is Google Too Powerful?

It's the year 2014, and Googlezon, a fearsomely powerful combination of Google and Amazon.com, has crushed traditional media to bits. Taking its place is the computer-generated Evolving Personalized Information Construct—an online package of news, entertainment, blogs, and services drawn from all the world's up-to-the-minute knowledge and customized to match your preferences. And it's all collected, packaged, and controlled by Googlezon.



This is the future according to EPIC 2014, a faux documentary posted to the Web in late 2004 by young journalists Matt Thompson and Robin Sloan.

Do you think google is too powerful? Cast your votes on BusinessWeek!