In the ongoing fight between Redbox–which rents DVDs from kiosks for $1–and major Hollywood studios, 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment just filed a brief to dismiss Redbox’s lawsuit against it.
The fascinating legal battle between Redbox and the studios centers around the issues of steep discounting, windowing and the price for premium content.
If you want to get Hollywood movie studio types irked, mention Google. And if you want them steamed, bringing up Netflix will usually work.
But if you want to see the tops of their heads blow off, Redbox is just the ticket.
Except not to their movies, it seems, if the major movie studio execs have their way in an ever-growing legal battle with the DVD-rental kiosk company.
A typical consumer named Louie Swisher, though, begs to differ.
Incredibly, this is the seventh year of the D: All Things Digital conference.
We feel very lucky to get here, especially in the midst of what our own site’s Digital Daily scribe, John Paczkowski, has so perfectly dubbed the “econalypse.”
Ironically, Walt Mossberg and I planned to launch the very first conference in the middle of the last major downturn for tech, in 2001. But, in the carnage of the Web 1.0 meltdown, we actually held off for two years, with our first D gathering taking place in 2003.
Well, we’re still going–making the same long-term bet that the digital revolution will keep rolling as we did at D1. Here’s our lineup for D7.
OK, the Lauren ad was a little too cute for its own good, and BoomTown has no interest in Giampaulo’s “really big hands.”
But the latest installment of Microsoft’s real-people advertising campaign, called “Laptop Hunters”–this time a mother and son named Lisa and Jackson looking to score a computer–is pretty funny and sweet, and the main theme of hefty value over too-thin hipness is really starting to kick in.
And while I cannot blame Microsoft for sticking to the Apple-Is-for-Value-Ignorant-Elites meme, I still wish that the messaging would move on from price to more important things such as how the software and hardware perform together.
BoomTown has been an unabashed fan of Pure Digital’s Flip digital video cameras since we debuted them at the D: All Things Digital conference in 2005.
And I have used the nifty device on this site since for my shaky-tastic video extravaganzas.
Yes, Pure Digital’s CEO Jonathan Kaplan is to blame!
Here is my video interview with him, which I did last week, in the wake of Pure Digital’s acquisition by Cisco for $590 million, in which we talk about what’s to come for my beloved Flip.
Displaying BoomTown’s advanced age and elephantine cache of meaningless tech memories, after news yesterday that the software giant was plunging into the retail market, I was surprised to find little mention that Microsoft’s last store effort had ended in failure in 2001.
That’s not to say it’s a particularly good or bad idea to hire a former Dreamworks and Wal-Mart exec named David Porter as vice president of retail stores to create Microsoft-branded stores–or as the company announced yesterday, “to create a better PC and Microsoft retail purchase experience.”
Just as long as the Zunes go on the back shelf!
While at the TED conference last week, I asked a variety of people in attendance at the elite gathering which presentation had blown their head off–figuratively, of course!
TED, which feels like a four-year college in four days, had an eclectic range of speakers, many focusing on the awful state of the earth. But there were also less-dire presentations, such as one on how Brad Pitt’s head and range of facial expressions are now stored in a Sony database for all eternity.
That’s a cold comfort amid all the global melting down, but BoomTown will not refuse it.
Here’s some more TED reaction from the digerati.
BoomTown is not saying it’s going to be like watching grass grow.
But 2009 is not exactly getting off to a rousing start this week–with two underwhelming blockbuster tech events taking place that already have more of an air of whimper than of bang to them.
That would be the Consumer Electronics Show, the annual egregious gadgetfest in Las Vegas, and the final appearance by Apple at Macworld.
Of course, while CES tries to fend off the spate of no-one-is-going-to-CES stories–well, I am!–the absence of his digital Holiness and Apple CEO Steve Jobs at Macworld has really generated most of the glumness.
We’re posting all the interviews from the sixth D: All Things Digital conference that took place in late May.
Here’s an interview that Walt Mossberg did with Michael Dell, the founder of the once-high-flying computer company who has returned as its CEO. Dell was forced to resume the role in 2007 after changing market conditions caused the company to falter and competition from Apple, Hewlett-Packard and Sony increased.
This is part three of three parts.
We’re posting all the interviews from the sixth D: All Things Digital conference that took place in late May.
Here’s an interview that Walt Mossberg did with Michael Dell, the founder of the once-high-flying computer company who has returned as its CEO. Dell was forced to resume the role in 2007, after changing market conditions caused the company to falter and competition from Apple, Hewlett-Packard and Sony increased.
This is part two of three parts.
We’re posting all the interviews from the sixth D: All Things Digital conference that took place in late May.
Here’s an interview Walt Mossberg did with Michael Dell, the founder of the once-high-flying computer maker who has returned as its CEO. Dell was forced to resume the role in 2007 after changing market conditions caused the company to falter and competition from Apple, Hewlett-Packard and Sony increased.
This is part one of three parts.
In this first part, Dell talks about how Dell stumbled and how it is trying to right itself.
Well, here’s a good reason not to write off Joost quite yet:
When it officially debuts its new Web-based service in mid-October, the London-based company will have some pretty hot content with its half-dozen seasons of the former NBC hit, “Friends.”
Also, there will finally be no more irksome plug-ins.
There will also be cooler social-networking elements.
While all this is not going to make up for the lost time the online video service has wasted with its annoying P2P-based desktop client download, going to a Web-based, all-Flash service with more robust content is certainly the right way to stop rival service Hulu from continuing to clean Joost’s clock.
We’re posting all the interviews from the sixth D: All Things Digital conference that took place in late May.
Here’s the fourth and final part of an interview Walt Mossberg did with Sony Chairman and CEO Sir Howard Stringer.
The consumer electronics giant has been under enormous pressure to innovate and compete better in all its many businesses, and still has not proved it can knit them all together into a cogent whole.
In this video, Stringer takes questions from the audience about audio quality, cable versus telephone, software and iTunes.
We’re posting all the interviews from the sixth D: All Things Digital conference that took place in late May.
Here’s Part 3 of 4 of an interview Walt Mossberg did with Sony Chairman and CEO Sir Howard Stringer.
The consumer electronics giant has been under enormous pressure to innovate and compete better in all its many businesses, and still has not proved it can knit them all together into a cogent whole.
In this video, Stringer talks about craplets and digital music players, including the iPod and Walkman-enabled Sony Ericsson cellphones, and takes questions from the audience about YouTube and the challenge of maintaining innovation and entrepreneurialism at a huge multinational company.
We’re posting all the interviews from the sixth D: All Things Digital conference that took place in late May.
Here’s Part 1 of 4 of an interview Walt Mossberg did with Sony Chairman and CEO Sir Howard Stringer.
The consumer electronics giant has been under enormous pressure to innovate and compete better in all its many businesses, and still has not proved it can knit them all together into a cogent whole.
In this video, Stringer talks about the next direction for the PlayStation gaming business, Blu-ray discs, the impact of digital distribution, digital changes in the movie industry, personal computers and the “joy of craplets.”
Kara Swisher started covering digital issues for The Wall Street Journal's San Francisco bureau in 1997 and also wrote the BoomTown column about the sector. With Walt Mossberg, she co-produces and co-hosts D: All Things Digital, a major high-tech and media conference. Read more »
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
D is unlike any other executive conference. Since its debut in 2003, D has brought to life the energy and excitement of the digital revolution in an unscripted, upfront and unparalleled way. Read more »
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