More things to say....

[lithera]

Warner Bros is the first studio to open its film vault for print on demand DVDs, making it possible for fans to buy films that had been stuck in the vault. Most of what WB is offering is more obscure titles but a lot of these titles either had limited or no DVD release. Print on demand DVDs are not a new thing but it is new that a big studio is jumping into the fray and looking to provide customers with the long tail of their releases.

http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/dvd/2009-03-22-classic-films-on-demand_N.htm
www.warnerarchive.com

In similar news The University of Michigan Press announced that more that at least 50 of the more than 60 monographs they produce each year will now be released in digital form. They've seen that print (for monographs) is a really broken business model. As more and more scholarly works go on-line, we'll need to work on authentication for sourcing.

Also, I've noticed a sort of backlash recently, with the idea that 'if you don't print it out, it will be lost forever'. Not it could be but there are /lots/ of people out there who are convinced that keeping a digital copy only means eventual lost data. Now, either that assumes that all electronic devices will fail at some point (over a long enough span, perhaps), we'll get to a point where we can't retreive information from older forms of memory (my BetaMax tapes!) or we're headed for some sort of dark age or apocalyptic future. I like having paper and printed pictures and all of these things but just because I have digital copies doesn't mean they'll be lost forever.

We just need to get better at presentation. It is easy to show slides or photo albums. It is harder to show the data on a hard drive or SD card.

In other news, there is an Astro Boy trailer out there. You can find it on Hulu. It looks like fun, which I wasn't expecting.

ImageMovers and Disney are in negotiations to pick up film rights to "The Stoneheart Trilogy". The third book in the series is due out in the next month.

Tom Selleck, Catherine O'Hara and Martin Mull have all joined the cast of Five Killers. This is a Lionsgate action comedy that stars Ashton Kutcher and Katherine Heigl. Sounds like we need two more? I've missed Tom Selleck and Martin Mull.

NBC has put the first 11 Quantum Leap episodes online as part of their Vintage Shows Online series. Man, I loved that show.

New Moon casting continues. I still can't bleieve that Twilight sold 3 million copies. Then again I do know some people who were eagerly awaiting their copies.

Comments

[thezzyzx.livejournal.com]

Well the other fear about digital media is format changes. They happen so suddenly that there is a legitimate fear that MP3 will be a worthless technology in 10-20 years and everything will have to be reconverted.

[lithera.livejournal.com]

That I do understand but it won't be irretrievalble - it'll be annoying and frustrating but not really 'lost forever'.

[fireballof3.livejournal.com]

There's major projects underway to try to preserve some of those older file formats so we can read those old file types that are just no longer in use.

The big problem is, a lot of file formats from early on (and even now) are proprietary, so if the company goes away, so potentially does the ability to read or make new files in the future. That's why audio CDs, DVDs and so on are still preferred to purely digital methods - if Sony blows up today, my Sony DVDs will play tomorrow, but my streaming video collection from them won't.

[lithera.livejournal.com]

*nods* That is quite true. Yet another reason I'm against DRMs.

[fireballof3.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, DRM on older file formats isn't something that can be undone very easily.

[lithera.livejournal.com]

Very true. It is complicated and frustrating to deal with but it shouldn't be impossible.

[wandelrust.livejournal.com]

I just recently started buying MP3-only music, for precisely that reason. Not so much the dark apocalypse with no mp3 players (I'll have other things to worry about, then), but more "Crap, my hard drive is corrupted." I still need to be better about backups...

I'm still eagerly awaiting Twilight 5: In which Bella has sense smacked into her over the course of 500 pages. I expect I'll be disappointed.

[lithera.livejournal.com]

I understand that. I need to be better about it myself.

Well, the author stopped working on the the book she had been writing since an early copy of a partially finished version got leaked on the internet and now it is spoiled for everyone. No idea if that's changed recently. Though from what I understand it was supposed to be the same story... told from Edward's point of view. David Eddings, much?

[thezzyzx.livejournal.com]

One of my message boards is a board (mostly but obviously not completely) for Phish's female fans. I tend to forget about the gender issues until I go to the book section and read the 5 page thread gushing over this series ;)

[lithera.livejournal.com]

Ugh. I know some very intelligent people who love the books but I can't handle the super magical boyfriend saves me from everything ever-ness of it.

[thezzyzx.livejournal.com]

Oh believe me, I've done some definite double takes when I've seen the people who post there. You think you know people and then this comes out...

[lithera.livejournal.com]

Fandoms are weird, weird things.

[elsewhere7.livejournal.com]

I heard about this part. I'm wondering if there are people who can be hired to go through the trash bins of some authors I know, if it would have the same effect.