Stories related to: DVD

Fans of Neil Young will soon be able to buy his entire music archive on Blu-ray discs, the AP reports. The first 10-disc set, out this fall, will cover the prolific rocker’s career from 1963 to 1972 and will include some previously unreleased songs, videos, and handwritten manuscripts. Buyers will also be able to download more content to the discs on their own. More »

Cuneiform tablets have kept information safe across millenia, but hard drives have lifespans of just a few years. Even if your CDs survive the century, their players might have become obsolete, warns the Boston Globe . "Who knows how long they're going to last—how much time before the information on a zip disk just goes into cyberspace heaven," said one archivist. More »

A new documentary tells the story of Kurt Cobain’s life in the singer’s own words, the Independent reports. Kurt Cobain: About a Son , on DVD this month, is constructed around 25 hours of previously unreleased interviews of the Nirvana frontman by journalist Michael Azerrad. Cobain, who committed suicide in 1994, speaks openly about his band, his marriage, and his childhood. More »

Hollywood is ignoring the public's desire to download films at its own peril, the Economist reports. It's no surprise that studios are sticking to their business model, especially with huge DVD profits, but the industry could reap fine earnings from downloads. Meanwhile, pirate sites like the surprisingly spiffy ZML.com are reaping the benefits. More »

An Israeli company will unveil, at the Consumer Electronics Show in January,  a DVD made of a plexiglass-like polymer that can hold half a terabyte of data. Mempile adds that within a few years its DVDs will be up to one terabyte—enough to hold 250,000 high-resolution photos or MP3s, or about 40 HD movies or 115 DVD movies, reports ComputerWorld . Current HD DVDs hold 50GB maximum. More »

DVD sales are slipping while video games and their tie-ins are seeing record consumption, reports Ars Technica, leading Ben Kuchera to suggest that video games will replace DVDs on many retail shelves. With even grandmothers now going Wii wild, video games are no longer just the realm of teens and young single males, he writes, despite much higher retail prices than competing DVDs. More »

The first Hollywood writers strike since 1988 began early this morning when union representatives walked out on talks with studio negotiators after 11 hours at the bargaining table. Both sides expect the strike to be long, expensive and debilitating. "Once it starts, it's going to get ugly," a writer told the Los Angeles Times . More »

TV writers could walk out any day now, leaving late night TV and topical shows like The Daily Show in the lurch, and one of the sticking points in their talks with entertainment producers is their demand for a larger slice of DVD and online video revenue. But as Saul Hansell of the NY Times points out, the Internet isn't done upending everything we know about showbiz moneymaking. More »

They beat Blockbuster, but can Netflix outpace rivals in the race to show downloaded movies on TV? "It's like a three-act play, and we're in the opening minutes of the second act," said Netflix exec Steve Swasey. Act two is where startups like Vudu take on giants like Amazon to plug home TVs into the ‘Net—while Netflix tries to adapt before its DVDs hit the dumpster, the Washington Post reports.    More »

The high-profile Oscar hopeful American Gangster opens next week—but it's already available as a pirated DVD for $5 or for free via internet file-sharing sites. American Gangster is the latest example of the upper hand that bootleggers have gained of late in their war against security measures, the Wall Street Journal reports. And the bootlegs are pristine quality, too. More »

It seemed destined to be an art house anachronism. The director was inexperienced, the lead actor unknown and apparently miscast, the score cobbled together. The result, however, was one of the seminal works in the history of American cinema, "The Graduate. " As the 40th anniverary DVD is released, the San Francisco Chronicle looks back at the icon of an era. More »

The face-off between two standards for high-definition DVDs took a new turn yesterday as Paramount Pictures and its subsidiary DreamWorks dropped support of Sony's Blu-ray format. Starting this week, the studios will distribute new discs exclusively in the HD DVD format, which is supported by Toshiba and functions on less expensive players, the LA Times reports. More »

Netflix faced a second wave of bad news today as its stock price plummeted and its website remained inaccessible to visitors. The company announced price cuts Sunday and yesterday absorbed a triple blow: lowered sales expectations, a subscriber decline, and a Wall Street downgrade. The website crash then left the company's signature interface offline for nearly 24 hours. More »

Movie rental giant Blockbuster picked sides today in the hotly contested battle over high-definition DVDs. Starting in July, Blockbuster will buy all of its new high-def DVDs in Sony's Blu-ray format, a damaging blow to rival Toshiba's HD DVD, which the rental company had stocked jointly until now. More »

Apple is buttering up top movie studios as it prepares to launch a video-on-demand service to contend with cable and satellite companies. Apple plans to offer each movie as a 30-day rental for $2.99, and it's telling studios the term of lease means they won't take a hit on DVD sales. More »