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Today New Line released a press release declaring their feud with Peter Jackson settled. Not only are these two parties settled they are now working on an adaptation of the classic novel, The Hobbit. Work will also start for a follow up sequel to the hobbit which will fill-in the spaces between the Hobbit and the already made Lord of the Rings Trilogy. Peter Jackson and his wife Fran Walsh are set to produce. No word yet on directors or writers but it’s obvious that the mind blowing talent at WETA digital will be behind the SFX. The first movie should be expected around 2010. in the meantime Jackson has started shooting his latest production “The Lovely Bones”, a horror feature. He is also set to direct a film called Tintin which is being produced by Steven Speilberg. Click below for the full press release.

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Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix launches today on DVD and HD-DVD. The HD-DVD consortium has revealed a new feature just for the HD-DVD release. This new feature ultilizes the standard network adapter included with every HD-DVD player. The gist of the feature is you can connect to a friends HD-DVD player and both of you can can simultaneously view the latest Harry Potter film fully synced up with message functionality.

From the official site:

Gather your own army of fellow wizards for a live community screening party. Invite other owners of the Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix HD DVD to simultaneously watch from their own internet-accessed players and text with your remote, PC or cell phone. When you host an invitation-only viewing, you control the film by pausing and playing the feature on everyone’s machine. You can chat live with your friends as you watch.

Now each session you create has a host and only the host can control the playback during the session. It isn’t said but is pretty much assumed that each party needs their own copy of the HD-DVD release for proper playback.

This toy projector is being sold at Target for $169.99. Now that is a very tempting price for a projector but let it be known that is a gadget that should be feared not curiously picked up for your kids. Gizmodo did a write up and it suffers from an amazingly dim picture, almost zero contrast ratio and a screendoor effect that looks like your looking at the video through a yarn knitted comforter. For $169.99 your better off buying a awesome game like Rock Band.

At $169, how bad could it be? Answer: horrible, and not even worth that. Perhaps you’ve heard of the “screen door effect” that’s common with low-end LCD projectors. A screen door would be a blessing compared to this. Watching this felt more like being behind the bars of a jail cell than having a screen door in front of us.

After that initial shock, it was time to run some of our projector test patterns, playing them back at the native resolution of this little monster, which is supposed to project video at 920×240 pixels, but we’re still not really sure whether that was what we are looking at or not. It’s probably closer to a cellphone-like 320×240.

From Arstechnica,

…right as the action is building to a crescendo—the movie fades to a commercial. For the next minute, you’re forced to watch the commercial as the fast-forward button has suddenly stopped working. The unhappy experience is repeated two or three more times before the movie ends. The only way to avoid the interruption is to pay another buck or two to the company you rented from.

That’s the scenario envisioned in a patent application filed by IBM (and dug up by Zatz Not Funny!). When DVDs are inserted for playback, the disc would check to see if the viewer had purchased the ad-free version or the (presumably) lower-priced version with unskippable commercials. If it’s the latter, the disc player would phone home to an online service to download commercials or play ads embedded on the discs themselves.

They also explain that a likely venue for this horror show could be in DVD rentals. Pay more for the retail copy of Shrek 3 or half off for a special edition DVD with 5 minutes of commercials in the middle.

A discovery made by a kung fu obsessed American teen sends him on an adventure to China, where he joins up with a band of martial arts warriors in order to free the imprisoned Monkey King.

From Tech Crunch:

The DRM camp is now saying that copying is good—to a degree. The upcoming DVD release on November 20 of Live Free or Die Hard will be the first to allow digital copies to your PC and one other USB-attached device. That’s two copies for the price of one DVD. The folks at Fox are calling this a Fox Digital Copy, and plan to roll it out with future DVDs as well. The catch: any device you put it on needs to be compatible with Microsoft’s PlayforSure DRM technology. That excludes all iPods, Sony PSPs, and even Zunes. 

According to Game Informer magazine(December issue) Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis have all come together and started work on a Ghostbusters video game. The story will take place after the events of Ghostbusters 2. The game is being developed by Zootfly(primarily a strategy game maker). Earlier reports from Dan Akroyd said the game would play like Gears of War with a very gritty feel to it. The game should release sometime next year for all major game consoles. The screenshot featured is on the cover of Game Informer.

Well fret not. Almost everyone involved with the old sci-fi channel mainstay has moved to continue the shows tradition in some way.

First, there’s Rifftrax, created by Mike Nelson the second host of MST3K. Rifftrax is a series of downloadable commentaries for ever growing collection of movies. Each commentary stars Mike himself and usually accompanied by 1-2 guest stars. These stars are usually his fellow comrades Kevin Murphy(2nd Voice of the robot Tom Servo) and Bill Corbett(2nd voice of the robot CROOOOOOOOOW!). Some of the special guest stars have been Sean Patrick Harris(Doogie Hauser) and Fred Willard. Each commentary features the same quality rapid fire puns, insults and meanderings that made MST3K such a hit with movie buffs.

Jump for more info.

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Tonight on HDNET movies, 10:15 PM ET and again at 12:00AM ET. This is an exclsuive sneak peak. HDnet movies is included with most Dish network HD packages. Check with your provider to see if you can get HDnet movies by tonight. Note: The DVD will be available from Magnolia films online in a couple of weeks.

IMDB link

Today Sony’s CEO made some intriguing statements:

We were trying to win on the merits, which we were doing for a while, until Paramount changed sides

“It doesn’t mean as much as all that,” Stringer said. He added that he believed there was an opportunity of uniting the two camps under one format before he became CEO, and he wishes he could travel back in time to make that happen.

The battle rages on in our hearts and our wallets.

source: Forbes.com

According to Engadget, on Friday(one day only), Wal-mart will be offering the entry level Toshiba A2 HD DVD player for the astonishing $99.99 price point. The A2 model is a entry level machine that is only able to output a 1080i/60fps signal. The latest model the A3, will be capable of outputting a full 1080p Signal. The A3 is expected to be priced at or around 200 dollars this holiday season.

One thing to be wary of is that Wal-mart tends to cut prices drastically on products they have little intention of stocking. Meaning every store may only be getting a few of the A2’s and a few dozen of the A3’s.

CORRECTION: I had orginally reported that the prcie drop on the A2 was permanent. It is actully only for this friday(11/2/07). Sorry for the confusion.