Family Guy Enters the Matrix

Too awesome not to post:

via Gizmodo

Batman: Gotham Knight

This looks pretty cool in the same vein as the Animatrix:

Straight to dvd….seems like it would be a cool thing to see in the theatre.

AppleTV HD Movie Rentals

Last night, Duane came over and we decided to test out the new HD Movie rental options on my new AppleTV. We choose Michael Clayton as neither of us had seen it and figured it was a good choice because we didn’t really know much about the story. Note: the HD movie rentals are currently only available from the US iTunes store (so you need a US iTunes account). Canada is due to get them “by the end of 2008″.

I wasn’t sure how this would work since presumably the HD movie file is ginormous and perhaps we should have ordered it earlier so that more of it would be downloaded. Fortunately, it only took a few minutes before it was ready to begin watching and it was streaming the rest down in the background. So we settled in and started watching the movie.

Initially there was a little stutter but that was only during the studio intros and then once the movie got going it was playing back like normal. The picture quality was pretty decent and the sound was Dolby 5.1. I might need to have Mr. Bollwitt over soon to help me rewire things to get rid of the ground hum I have.

Anytime you have compressed video playing back on a high definition monitor (I have a 37″ HDTV that tops out at 1080i), you’ll notice any imperfections in the source video. I wasn’t expecting HD-DVD quality from a downloaded source but it was pretty decent….as good as my Shaw HDTV receiver.

Until the movie got dark that is. At first we noticed some heavy compression artifacts in some of the opening outdoor scenes. These scenes seem to take place in the early morning but I’m pretty sure they weren’t meant to look like they had been rotoscoped (ala A Scanner Darkly). See for yourself in these shots I took below….keep in mind the blacks around the movie are in fact true and my camera was just blowing them out…you should still see the effect I’m talking about.

You can also see some of the artifacts around George here:

While this wasn’t quite what I was expecting from a quality standpoint, it was really only an issue during very low light scenes. All the other scenes seemed fine and since I’ve never seen the movie another way, I can only assume this ‘look’ isn’t something the director was going after and was in fact a byproduct of the digital download. Still it was pretty slick to have Duane come over and within minutes we were watching a big Hollywood movie in HD with no media involved.

This also didn’t seem to deter Duane from picking up his own Apple TV today as well. Stay tuned for future rental reports from both of us.

What’s on the Apple TV?

I’ve been looking for a better way to use my HDTV lately. The Xbox360 (and XBox 1 running XBMC) I currently have works fine but the biggest issue I have with it, when watching any kind of media is how loud it is. Specifically the fan(s) inside it and the (now obsolete) HDDVD drive. It’s fine when you’re playing Halo 3 or Team Fortress because the games are usually loud and I have the stereo cranked. But when you’re trying to watch a movie or tv show, the fans are just annoying.

So after hearing from Tod about his experience with the recent ‘Take Two’ software upgrade, I decided to take the plunge and pick one up - the 40gb model since that’s all the store had in stock. I figured I could always return it if it wasn’t quite was I was looking for (and/or upgrade to the 160gb version if I decided I need more storage).

Setup was quick and simple. The package consists of the Apple TV unit itself, a remote (just like you get with most Macs) and a power cable. That’s it. No other cables are included. It has a number of connection options on the back as you can see above. I connected to my TV via a HDMI cable. My TV’s audio is connected to my stereo separately so I was done with the setup. I powered it on and was treated to a cool, but brief, intro movie and then a menu similar (but different) to Front Row on a Mac. I figured I would need to download the software update since it had just come out and that process took about 10 minutes.

Once I was back up and running again (after 3 restarts while the firmware upgraded) I started connecting things up. If you launch iTunes on another local machine on your network, you’ll be given the option to add the Apple TV to your iTunes. The Apple TV will provide a pairing code that you need to enter on your computer in order to allow them to talk to each other. Once that was done, it started syncing my iTunes library from my iMac to the Apple TV (which you can turn off if you just want to stream content).

I was most interested in the Flickr integration and so far, it almost makes the purchase worthwhile for me on it’s own, let alone the other things which I’ll talk about in a minute. There is a Flickr option in the Photos menu. While you can easily access any photos you have on your other computers (PC or Mac), having the ability to pull in Flickr directly is amazing. You add Flickr accounts to the menu screen and by simply putting in your username, it goes and grabs all your public photos (well, links to them at least). You can browse all your sets and photos from here. You can also browse your contacts as well and add them to the accounts list. There is a ‘recent photos’ option at the top of your list so you can view the last 500 (!) photos on the account. I wish there was a ‘your contacts latest’ option like there is on the Flickr homepage. Once you start viewing the photos, you can set the transitions, music, speed, etc of the slideshows. There is a much cooler screensaver option built into the Apple TV that I wish was a transition option which is simply a random bunch of images (from a set you choose or the recents) that just float up the screen in various sizes. Then after a minute or two, the images rotate around in 3D and keep floating up. It’s really pretty cool. I made a quick video of it:

Another compelling thing was that I had seen online was the podcast functions were vastly improved and that there is quite a lot of cool HD content available. To me, this is where the future of online media is going. Despite my HD DVD purchase, I had pretty much given up on physical media as a way to get video content and the Apple TV seems to be one of the better ways to access that online repository. Sure the Xbox has movie rentals but it doesn’t have access to Podcasts or easy access to the rest of my ‘digital life’ like my music or my photos. There is something to be said for seamless integration across my network.

There is also the ability to rent movies directly off the device, with many available in HD. Unfortunately, you need a US iTunes account to access all the really good stuff but Canada is supposed to get more later this year. Fortunately I have a US account although someone managed to spend the last of the store credit so I won’t be able to try out the HD movie rentals until I get a refill card next time I’m across the line. There is a fair bit of free content available and you can preview everything which is great.

I’ll let you know if a few weeks if it was worthwhile but so far I don’t see this thing going back to the store.

Going to SXSWi? Part 2

One of the cool side benefits of going to the Interactive portion of SXSW is that you get exposed to the Film and Music festivals. Unless you purchase a gold passport, your Interactive badge won’t get you into those events, panels and parties…well, maybe the parties but they have armed guards preventing the film geeks from mingling with the web geeks (and vice versa) inside the convention center.

In previous years that I’ve attended, and hopefully this time around, there has been downloads of music from all the bands playing during SXSW and a huge torrent of trailers for all the movies showing during the film portion. This amounts to exposure to a ton of new music and cool new films you might not otherwise be exposed to. So even if you’re not going to Austin, you can still benefit since the downloads are free and open to anyone. Looks like this year, they have a trailer site with a videoplayer to browse through all the films. They still haven’t posted (or at least I couldn’t find) the music downloads but they do have a list of all the bands performing. I’m going to have to see about getting into the Moby session.

This year, the first trailer that I’ve come across, for a documentary about online gaming/virtual worlds called Second Skin, looks very interesting and just happens to be free for Interactive attendees:

Speaking of games, another nice benefit of going to Interactive is the Screenburn Festival which happens at the same time. They also have their own arcade tradeshow with game companies showing their wares with demos and giveaways. It’s free and open for the public as well.