As expected The Incredible Hulk and The Strangers are now available for purchase.
Both The Incredible Hulk and The Strangers will become a rental on November 19th.
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The Incredible Hulk And The Strangers Now Available For Purchase
Wall-E And Kitt Kittredge Now Available For Pre-Order
Apple has listed two new pre-order titles in the iTunes Store, Wall-E and Kitt Kittredge. Head on over and pre-order your copies now!
Kitt Kittredge will be available to rent on 10-28 and there is no rental date available for Wall-E.
The Blair Witch Project Is The New $.99 Movie Of The Week
The Blair Witch Project is the new $.99 movie of the week for 10-14-08.
Crusoe, Season 1 Now Available In HD
The first season of the new NBC TV Show Crusoe is now available in HD on the Apple TV and iTunes Store.
On a related note, it seems as though Bones, Season 4 will also become available in HD but there is no version to purchase yet.
Head on over to our HD TV Shows page to see the entire list of available HD TV Shows.
Boxee on Apple TV: First Impressions
I’ve had Boxee installed on my Apple TV for a couple of weeks now and I thought it was time to report on my impressions of using it so far. First, just let me say that I’m impressed. Boxee is much more than your typical media player and I will likely become a regular user. So, having blown my whole review in the second sentence I’ll post the details for those who want to know more:
Pros:
- Provides a social networking component to a media player which, as far as I know, is their major innovation. You can follow and befriend people on Boxee and receive a feed of what they are listening to and what videos they are watching. Personally, I would use this but it wouldn’t necessarily be my main motivation.
- Includes Internet radio and video, including Last.fm. I like Last.fm and Internet radio to listen to songs and artists that I haven’t heard before. This is a big plus for me. Internet video goes beyond YouTube but I didn’t spend a lot of time with this.
- Included BitTorrent client. The intended use of this is to download legitimate content and Boxee includes lists of movies available for download via BitTorrent, presumably in the public domain or for free download. For example, I downloaded A Boy and His Dog. Most of the movies are oldies.
- Allows access to network and local content. As with applications such as nitoTV, Boxee can play media stored locally on your Apple TV or available via network shares (on your PC or Mac or NAS). The necessary codecs for most video content is included.
- Auto recognition of content – Boxee can scan your content and fill in details that it recognizes. For music is will recognize the artist and album and provide album covers. For movies and TV shows it can fill in a cover and plot summary. You can help the recognition by providing hints and Boxee will provide a list that matches.
- Visualizations when playing music. I find these a little too hyper for my liking – a little more subtle would be appreciated.
- Extra features during playback. This is another great feature. When you press pause during playback of music or video you get a playback bar at the bottom of the screen. You can pause or stop or fast forward, etc. One feature I like is the Lyrics option for music – Boxee will retrieve the lyrics for the current song and display them on the screen – instant Karaoke! For video you can access settings and change various options for playback. Much more than what Apple TV provides by default.
- Pleasant user interface. Boxee is pleasant and intuitive to use. You should be able to figure out how to use it without reading a manual – menus and options seem to be in the right place.
Cons:
I really like Boxee so there are only a few things that I’ve noticed that a drawbacks:
- I find the UI sluggish. The Apple TV can seem sluggish in general but I find Boxee to be quite sluggish at times. I am curious if others find this.
- It’s tedious to get back to the music visualization or video playback if you get deep into the Boxee menus. Given the sluggishness it gets a bit tedious pressing the “Menu” button to get back to the playing video/music.
- Video playback can appear in the wrong aspect ratio. I’ve found video file playback to require tweaking of the aspect ratio to get the video to look right. It would be good to have a zoom to fit height or width option that preserves the aspect ratio.
- The list of friends activities overwhelms the main screen. More than a few friends who are fairly active on Boxee will overwhelm your main Boxee screen. There are other layout options so this maybe manageable.
- Boxee does occasionally crash but completely forgivable given it is alpha software. You should disable the Apple TV screen saver if using Boxee because it does cause problems.
So, if you plan to hack your Apple TV, I highly recommend giving Boxee a try.
UPDATE: Hot on the heels of this post, Boxee has released a new alpha version which addresses some of my concerns and includes TV streaming from CBS, Hulu and others! Very cool. List of new features:
- streaming TV shows, movies and clips from Hulu, CBS, Comedy Central and MySpaceTV (using their embeddable player)
- major changes to the UI – we changed the navigation hierarchy, as well as many other elements
- improved performance – you should notice an improvement in the navigation of the UI
- manually adding RSS feeds from the web – you can go to http://app.boxee.tv/home/rss and manually enter your favorite Video, Audio or Torrent feeds
Daily SD Rental Update 10-20-08
iTunes SD Rentals New Releases for 10-20-08.
18 New SD Releases to start the week off. A couple of good one were added. What happens when a predator meets sweet girl with revenge on her mind? You get Hard Candy! And of course, how can I not mention a precious movie that was just added?… The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
Click on the link below to view the full list of today’s new releases.
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