Hundreds of full-length feature films including blockbusters from Walt Disney Co. and Sony Corp.’s Columbia and Tristar studios have been illegally uploaded to the world’s most popular video site, generating hundreds of millions of views over the past year.

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Separately, Disney is developing films based on “Star Wars” characters, Chief Executive Robert Iger said Tuesday, in addition to the three sequels the company has already said it would make.

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As always, Hastings’s quarterly shareholder letter has all sorts of interesting tidbits about the company, including the fact that it’s considering raising debt to finance more original productions like “House of Cards,” which debuts February 1.

Hastings also brings up an idea the company has been discussing quietly with would-be content partners: The new stuff that Netflix pays for doesn’t have to come in conventional TV time increments, which means a sitcom could be 40 minutes long or 12 minutes long, instead of the standard 22, etc.

But based on the visual evidence, what Hastings really wants us to pay attention to is what he considers a big advantage over his competition: A much bigger video catalog.

In the past, Hastings has made respectful comments about the likes of Amazon and Hulu Plus, which offer their own video subscription services. And he does that again this time around.

But then he also points out the results of the survey his company conducted, where it looked to see how many of its most popular movies and TV shows were available at Amazon, Hulu and the recently launched Redbox/Verizon service.

You can’t miss the results, because he’s displayed them in a giant graphic:

That one doesn’t require much translation, but just to be clear, here goes: You know how people like to complain about the selection on Netflix? Well, take a look at the other guys. Perhaps that’s why we have more than 30 million paying subscribers, and the other guys don’t seem to be anywhere in sight.

Hastings’s earnings calls are often entertaining/informative as well. So I’ll listen in there and report back if there’s anything worth noting.

This feature appears to have popped up today, and there doesn’t seem to be any other details about the offer, like the number of days in advance that Newsstand buyers will get their iPad editions. I’ve asked Hearst for more information.

[UPDATE: A few more tidbits, via Hearst pr's Alexandra Carlin: She says the length of Newsstand buyers' headstart "varies", depending on publication, and that the offer applies to single copy sales as well as subs. As far as the deal's origins: "Apple suggested this initiative, and it’s a great offer they can provide to their newsstand users. We’re always working with our retail partners on unique ways to drive consumer sale and engagement."]

Right now, Hearst is the only publisher offering the option, for 22 of its titles. An Apple rep says it will be happy to let other publishers try the same thing.

This looks like the first time any publisher has tried an early digital “window” for their magazines, anywhere. Hollywood has recently warmed to the same idea when it comes to selling their movies online.

Bigger context for the tweak: Magazine publishers, who were once giddy about the prospects of selling their titles via the iPad, have sobered up.

The general consensus: Tablet editions are a nice revenue stream that in some cases brings publishers new readers, and in others helps them hang onto existing print subscribers, via online/offline bundles. But they’re not enough to save many publishers from the decline of their print businesses — a reality that Time Inc. staffers are bracing for as they get ready for long-reported and significant layoffs.

Earlier this month, Hearst Magazine boss David Carey told his employees that the company had reached 800,000 paid digital subscribers by the end of 2012. We’ll talk to him about where he goes next in a few weeks, at our D: Dive into Media conference. See you there …

Total home-entertainment spending in the U.S. inched up 0.23 percent to $18 billion, according to a report released Tuesday by Digital Entertainment Group, a trade association.

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No need to ask whether this one is a Netflix-killer, because it clearly isn’t.

Instead, it’s comparable to Comcast’s Streampix, which is also priced at $5 month, and which doesn’t attempt to rival the large Netflix catalog of movies and TV shows.

Instead, AT&T digital video service is primarily stocked with titles from Sony and MGM. But if you’re looking for anything remotely new, you’re going to be disappointed.

I asked AT&T PR for an example of the stuff they’re going to offer, and got this response: “American Teacher, Assassin’s Code, Charlie’s Angels, Summer in Genoa, Lars and the Real Girl, Rudy, The Wedding Planner, Hotel Rwanda, Legends of the Fall, Snatch and more.”

So there you go.

Like Comcast, AT&T has the ability to sell its service nationwide, but for now is only marketing it to its existing pay-TV customers. Hard to see many folks shelling out for this, but presumably AT&T will use it as a retention device, and give it away for free while telling people they’re getting a $5-a-month value.

Now Walmart says it has solved that one, more or less, with software that will let most users handle the “disc to digital” process at home.

Walmart says that, starting this month, users can start storing copies of some of the movies they’ve already purchased on DVDs, using Macs and PCs and its Vudu.com movie service.

You’ll need a computer that still has an optical disc drive for this. So, if you’re working on, say, a MacBook Air, you’re going to have to dig up an older PC, or forage for an external drive.

And you’ll still need to pay for the privilege of using Walmart’s cloud: $2 to convert a standard DVD or Blu-ray, or $5 if you want to convert a standard DVD into an HD copy. That may turn off some people who believe that paying extra for digital copies of stuff they own doesn’t make any sense.

Also note that while many of the big studios, including Sony, Warner Bros, Fox (which, like this site, is owned by News Corp.) and Paramount are in, not all of their films are available for digital storage and playback. So in some cases this will still be a moot point.

Still, the notion of hauling your discs to a store in order to move them onto the Internet made zero sense in 2012. Nice to know that Walmart has caught up in 2013.

Walmart has made other strides, as well. It recently started letting Android users download digital copies of their movies on their devices, instead of requiring them to stream them. And it says that, next month, Apple iOS users will be able to do the same.

Walmart is pushing the service in conjunction with UltraViolet, the Hollywood + tech consortium that’s trying to push movie ownership via a system that’s supposed to let users access any film they buy, on any device. And since Disney isn’t an UltraViolet member, that means none of this applies to Disney and Pixar films, which means a key demographic that would value having multiple copies of the same movie — parents with kids — won’t get as much out of this as Walmart would like.

Still, when Walmart rolled this thing out last March, it looked DOA, and UltraViolet backers have conceded to me privately that it has underwhelmed them, too. Maybe the retailer has done enough to give this thing a second chance.

HBO, which normally plays up the value of its original productions like “Game of Thrones,” says that 84 percent of its conventional TV viewing* comes from movies.

The deal, which many observers had expected, was done well in advance of a 2016 expiration date. It’s relevant primarily because it means that the movies won’t end up on digital subscription services like Netflix or Amazon.

There had been industry chatter about Universal owner Comcast taking the movies in-house to create its own Netflix-like service, or to fold it into its existing Streampix offering, but that won’t happen, either.

The next big question for movie-distribution observers is the status of Sony’s deal with Starz. BTIG analyst Rich Greenfield, among others, thinks Netflix will end up with that one, too.

We’ll have HBO President and COO Eric Kessler onstage at D: Dive into Media next month.

*That is, the stuff that people watch when HBO airs it, as opposed to on-demand plays and views via its HBO Go service.

The answer comes via a deal industry folks have been buzzing about for a while: Starting in 2016, Netflix will get exclusive access to all of Disney’s big movies — including the Pixar movies and the ones based on Marvel superheros — in the “pay window.”

That is, after they’ve been available for rental and for sale. Or in other words, when pay TV channels like HBO and Showtime get their big titles.

That’s not the first time Netflix has landed a deal like this — it had already inked similar ones with Dreamworks Animation and Relativity — but it’s by far the most important one.

It fills an important hole in the Netflix catalog that opened up last year when the company lost access to Sony and Disney movies it used to get via a deal with Starz. And it’s particularly valuable for Netflix, which already has a reputation as a cheap way to entertain/pacify kids. And it helps bolsters the claim that CEO Reed Hastings has been making for a while: We’re just like HBO (or any other cable channel people like).

Next pressing question for Netflix: Can it afford to pay for stuff people want to watch?

Today, investors seem to think it can, since they’ve bumped up Netflix shares by 14 percent. But Netflix investors are a fickle bunch, so hold off on reading much into that.

Netflix and Disney won’t disclose the deal terms. The Los Angeles Times’ plugged-in reporters quote a “person close to the matter” (likely on the Disney side of the table) who says “Netflix could ultimately pay more than $300 million” a year for the movies.

That figure seems plausible, at the very least: A year ago, Netflix said it was willing to pay $200 million or more a year for the Starz/Sony/Disney deal. This deal doesn’t include Sony and Starz’ stuff, but it does include a lot more content from Disney, including the studio’s direct-to-video deals, along with a selection of classics like “Dumbo” that will be available immediately.

Since the Starz deal fell through, Netflix has been arguing that the loss wasn’t that big a deal, since it has increasingly become a place to watch TV shows instead of movies; it’s also been playing up its upcoming foray into original productions, like “House of Cards.” And CEO Reed Hastings repeatedly said that while he liked having the Disney and Sony movies, they didn’t account for a whole lot of streaming hours.

So Hastings and company may have to do a bit of finessing here: They need to convince Wall Street that they’re happy to get this stuff, but that they weren’t buying it at any price. And, crucially, that the new titles will help bring in new subscribers and hang on to existing ones, so that Netflix can afford its steadily increasing content tab.

But the Netflix CEO says Jeff Bezos will have to spend a lot of money before that happens: Hastings says Amazon is losing between $500 million and a $1 billion a year as it acquires streaming video content rights.

Hastings says he generated those numbers based on the value of the content deals that Amazon won when the two companies competed head to head. He says he thinks Amazon’s costs are split evenly between its U.S. operations and Europe, where it operates the Lovefilm streaming service.

Last month, Netflix said it was on track to spend $2.1 billion on content over the next year.

In the U.S., Amazon rents and sells digital movies and TV shows on a one-off basis via its Amazon Instant Video service. It also offers a large catalog of titles for free to customers who pay $79 a year for its Prime shipping service, and recently began testing an option that lets customers pay $8 a month for Prime; Hastings’s estimate is based on acquisition costs for the Prime/video bundle.

Netflix charges $8 a month for its streaming service.

Hastings made his comments during an interview with Dow Jones editors in New York. Amazon hasn’t responded to a request for comment. Update: Here’s Amazon spokesman Andrew Herdener, via email: “We don’t comment on our individual investments but it’s correct that Prime Instant Video is an amazing value for customers. Not only do Prime members get unlimited streaming video, but they also get free 2-day shipping and the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library as well.”

Last week, a report from broadband service company Sandvine pegged Netflix’s share of Internet traffic at 33 percent, with Amazon at 1.8 percent. But Hastings says he takes the newcomer seriously: “Amazon is the best competitor we’ve ever faced.”

It’s about an assistant named HAL who tries to make contact with a higher intelligence. These two guys get in the way and mess it all up.

– Apple’s personal assistant app Siri, summarizing the plot of “2001: A Space Odyssey”

But that was January! Now Murdoch’s 20th Century Fox studio has cut a deal to sell and rent its movies and TV shows via the search giant’s YouTube and Google Play portals.

The announcement means Google has agreements with all of the major Hollywood studios. That brings the company to parity with competitors like Apple and Amazon, and it may be more symbolic than anything, since none of the digital outlets have been significant revenue generators for the studios so far.

But Fox is hoping to change that with a new digital sales push. It is cutting the price for new movies like “Prometheus” to $15 from its usual $20, and offering them earlier than it has in the past: You can buy the movie today, three weeks before it will appear on discs and pay-TV operators’ video-on-demand stores.

Fox will market “Prometheus” hard at every digital outlet it can find, including those run by Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and Sony. But people familiar with the studio’s plans say it is counting on a significant assist from Google, which means you’re likely to see prominent ads for the movie on YouTube and on other Google properties. (News Corp. also owns this Web site.)

Okay. So what about the whole piracy thing? Neither Google or News Corp. officials are commenting about a rapprochement.

But last month Google did announce that it would start making it harder for pirate sites to show up in its search results, a move that drew praise from both the movie and music industries.

Perhaps that, combined with a need to shore up a flagging DVD business, was enough to change Murdoch’s mind. If so, the detente could have an impact on his other dealings with Google’s entertainment ventures, like Google TV and its Google Fiber project, both of which News Corp. has yet to support.

Alternate theory: Murdoch has simply been overwhelmed by Sergey Brin’s Google Glass specs, which he labled “genius,” after a Fashion Week event this month.

The high-profile duo aren’t the first to visit Google+, but the company is taking their arrival very seriously. The video teasing their chat prominently features Google Play branding, and video of the Hangout will be broadcast live on ABC’s Times Square Jumbotron (ugh, fine, it’s technically called the “Supersign”). That’s a first for any of the site’s publicly watchable “Hangouts On Air.”

Google declined to disclose the details of the partnership between themselves and Disney (owner of “Lincoln” distributor Touchstone Pictures), but said the Hangout was an “afterthought” to the original plan of just debuting the first trailer on YouTube.

(Update: the Google spokesperson interviewed for this story says the word “afterthought” was incorrect, noting that “part of the appeal of exclusively premiering the trailer on Google Play, was the ability to also promote the trailer in a hangout”).

Layering on top of the seeming identity crisis: The video chat isn’t exactly of the people, by the people, for the people. It will be moderated by Google’s Steve Grove, and only three participants will be able to ask questions of Spielberg and Gordon-Levitt — and they have to have uploaded their own videos about “Lincoln” to YouTube and shared the event listing with their Google+ circles.

Still, it will be interesting to see if and how the association with one of the most-anticipated movies of the year will affect Google+’s image. Even without A-list celebrities on board, Hangouts are a nifty (but not so popular) distinguishing feature of the search leader’s social network.

Here’s a look at the aforementioned teaser video for the full trailer (and the Hangout), which will debut at 4 pm PT:

So, in an effort to stand out from the pack, Toshiba has introduced an eye-catching, ultra-widescreen Ultrabook. Its display is much wider than it is tall, with a 21 by 9 aspect ratio — wider than even the rectangular, 16 by 9 aspect ratio that has become standard for most HD TVs. Called the Toshiba Satellite U845W, this laptop, with its extra screen real estate, is aimed at heavy media consumers and multitaskers.

It measures 14.5 inches by 7.9 inches, and is .83 of an inch thick. At four pounds, it’s substantially heavier than the 2.96-pound MacBook Air, but in line with some other Ultrabooks. It felt surprisingly lightweight when it was open and resting on my lap.

The Satellite U845W hit the market in late July. The base model, which has a mid-level Intel chip, comes with a 500 gigabyte hard drive plus 32GB of solid-state drive and retails for $1,000. The model Toshiba sent me for testing costs $1,500, and has a faster, 256GB solid-state drive and Intel’s third generation Core i7 chip. Both machines are built with 6GB of RAM. While the Satellite U845W was designed with Microsoft’s upcoming Windows 8 operating system in mind, it’s currently running Windows 7. And, unlike some upcoming Windows 8 laptops, this one lacks a touchscreen.

Overall, it’s a solid laptop, with fast processing and boot-up speeds and terrific speakers. I did find the widescreen display to be useful for multitasking, because I was able to view a couple of Web pages side by side on the screen, such as a live video stream next to my Twitter feed.

But the design is a little too awkward for my taste. The wide screen feels lopped off at the top, and the laptop doesn’t fit some of my larger purses as well as other Ultrabooks do. Plus, I couldn’t find a ton of video content with a 21:9 aspect ratio to fully enjoy the widescreen experience.

The laptop’s color is called “midnight silver,” but it actually has a coppery sheen to it, which I liked. The chassis of the laptop is made of machined aluminum, with a thick, black, rubberized strip running along the long side, which gives it a distinguished look.

The underside of the laptop is made of a combination of polycarbonate plastic and aluminum, and is covered entirely with the same textured black rubber, for keeping a good grip on the laptop.

The keyboard is backlit, with an extra-large trackpad. Another benefit of such a wide-sized computer: My fingers had a little extra room and didn’t feel at all cramped while typing. The keys themselves were a little flat, without the kind of spring I usually prefer.

In terms of ports, the Satellite U845W has an HDMI port, three USB ports and an expandable Ethernet port, as well as a headphone port and a microphone input. It also has an SD card slot.

It does not have a DVD drive. While a lot of newer, thinner laptops are lacking optical disc drives, a drive would be particularly handy with this one — since it’s targeted at movie buffs.

The 14.4-inch, glossy display has a resolution of 1,792 by 768. While I’ve seen more luminous laptop displays, most movies and video clips looked pretty crisp, with good color quality.

I wasn’t able to watch a lot of video content optimized for this sort of screen because it’s just not widely available. I more often watched 16:9 videos, which appeared with black bars on the right and left sides of the screen because of the extra-wide display. This included shows on Hulu, a movie on Netflix and the livestream of President Barack Obama’s convention speech on YouTube.

The only full-screen media I watched was several new movie trailers that were in 21:9 — “The Hobbit,” for one — which were suggested to me by Toshiba. The few clips I found did feel a little more cinematic, but ultimately, I didn’t get a lot of out of the video-watching experience.

I found this laptop to be more useful for browsing multiple Web pages at once. I could snap two browser windows side by side and get a good-sized view of both of them, so I could monitor work email while watching a movie, or see the commentary from Twitter while watching livestreamed videos from the conventions.

Among the standout features of the laptop were its battery life and its speakers. Toshiba says this laptop has a battery life of nine hours; in my test, which involved turning off sleep mode, playing iTunes on a loop and running an email application, all while the display was on full brightness, the battery lasted just under five hours.

This is weaker than the battery life of the MacBook Air, according to our previous tests at AllThingsD, but beats out some other Ultrabooks, including the Lenovo IdeaPad U300s, the Dell XPS 13 and the Sony Vaio T13.

And, as with other premium Toshiba laptops, the Satellite U845W comes with two powerful Harman Kardon speakers that offer full, clear sound for both music files and movies.

Despite these features, the Toshiba U845W is still a niche product that, for now, will likely appeal to only true cinephiles or multitaskers.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120910/toshibas-widescreen-ultrabook-head-scratching-but-good-for-multitasking/feed/ 3 http://allthingsd.com/20120907/when-will-amazon-take-on-netflix-directly-ask-jeff-bezos/ http://allthingsd.com/20120907/when-will-amazon-take-on-netflix-directly-ask-jeff-bezos/#comments Fri, 07 Sep 2012 14:24:28 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=248694 Amazon has been building up a digital library of movies and TV shows to help it take on Netflix. But unlike Netflix, you can only use Amazon’s subscription service if you’re a member of Amazon Prime, its $79-a-year free-shipping program.

Many people, including Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, expect Amazon to eventually detach its library from Prime and offer it as a standalone subscription.

And some content owners I’ve talked to say they like the idea so much that they’ll compel Jeff Bezos to do it whether he wants to or not.

Not so fast, says Bezos. Here’s his take on the subject, from Tricia Duryee’s extended Q&A with the Amazon CEO.

Duryee: We are also hearing that studios would like you to decouple video from Prime and have you sell it as a standalone service, like Netflix.

Bezos: There are a lot of studios, and they are not all like-minded. We have very good relationships with studios, and we just did a big deal with Epix a couple of days ago, so, yeah, I like our approach.

But could they make you change your approach?

Bezos: Well, it’s their content, so they can license it however they like, but they aren’t all like-minded. We are trying to offer people a service they like, so I’m very confident that we can find content for them.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120907/when-will-amazon-take-on-netflix-directly-ask-jeff-bezos/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120906/announcing-d-dive-into-media-2013-featuring-google-facebook-sony-hearst-and-more/ http://allthingsd.com/20120906/announcing-d-dive-into-media-2013-featuring-google-facebook-sony-hearst-and-more/#comments Thu, 06 Sep 2012 13:07:50 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=248191 If you made it to the first D: Dive Into Media conference this year, you got to see the likes of Dick Costolo, Jason Kilar and Neil Young lay out the the future of the media business.

Want to hear more? We’re happy to oblige: We’ll be hosting our second edition of the event next February.

Like our first event, we’ll use the Dive conference to highlight a story we cover at AllThingsD every day — the way the media business responds to technology’s threats and opportunities — by letting you meet some of the industry’s most powerful and fascinating leaders.

You’ll also learn about new players that will have a big impact in the months and years to come. And like every All Things Digital event, you’ll get all of this via our trademark interviews: Unscripted, uncensored and thought-provoking.

The setting is awfully compelling, too: We’re coming back to the excellent Ritz-Carlton in Laguna Niguel, perched above the Pacific, about an hour south of Los Angeles. It’s a great way to spend a night and a day.

We’ll be announcing speakers throughout the fall, but here’s a sampling of what we’ve got planned:

Michael Lynton is CEO of Sony Entertainment Inc., a new post which gives him control of Sony’s movie studio, its music label and its powerful Sony/ATV music publishing joint venture. Each of those businesses faces very different prospects, and we’ll talk about all of them, in one of Lynton’s first appearances since taking the job last spring.

David Carey became president of Hearst Magazines in 2010, and since then he has pushed the publisher aggressively into digital apps and editions for iPads, Kindles and other platforms. But he’s also insistent on keeping the magazine industry’s core bundle of content plus ads intact, and he’ll explain why.

Nikesh Arora is senior vice president and chief business officer at Google, which means he’s in charge of all revenue at Google (2011 total: $38 billion), which means he may be the most powerful person in the advertising industry. We’ll have lots of questions for him.

Dan Rose is vice president of partnerships at Facebook, a big job that makes him the man to see for every media company trying to figure out how to work with the social network and its 955 million users. We’ll ask him what publishers, movie studios, TV networks and music labels are asking for, and what Facebook can deliver.

On behalf of Walt Mossberg, Kara Swisher and the rest of the AllThingsD staff, I’d like to invite you to join us Feb. 11 and 12.

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