CNN to go all HD with Atlanta studio upgrade
on March 15, 2010
CNN’s new Atlanta HD broadcast facility will enable the network to go all high-definition starting in late Spring 2010, reports Multichannel. Daytime shows produced in Atlanta like CNN Newsroom will now be in hi-def. CNN also has HD equipped studios in Washington, D.C., Los Angeles and their first hi-def facility in New York. In the U.S., CNN will make use of its 20 HD production trucks and 100+ photojournalists to provide content for the network. Standard-def feeds will still come from international content providers who haven’t made the switch yet.
Although Hulu recently lost popular Viacom content from “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” and “The Colbert Report”, they may make up for some lost viewership with the addition of content from NFL Network. The NFL channel on Hulu (
LIFE, the BBC’s follow up to the hugely popular Planet Earth series, will be broadcast over 11 episodes in HD starting Sunday, March 21, 2010. The series will break new grounds in filming, showcasing techniques such as The HD Heli-Gimbal (producing rock-steady aerial shots with 800mm lens distance capacity), Extreme High-Speed Photography (reaching speeds of up to 1,000 FPS), Underwater Time-Lapse Sequences, and new techniques in microscopy, infra-red, and ultrasonic imagery. 
Even if you don’t subscribe to HBO you’ve probably seen commercials for the upcoming series The Pacific from the makers of the Band of Brothers. The Pacific, honing the tagline “Hell was an ocean away,” is a story that follows the journeys of three U.S. Marines – Robert Leckie, Eugene Sledge and John Basilone — as they engage the Japanese following the attack of Pearl Harbor in WWII. 
Yesterday, during Sony’s GDC 2010 press conference, we were given the first official look at the new Playstation motion controller. The Playstation Move is a motion tracking controller that, unlike its Nintendo counterpart, offers complete 1:1 movement detection in a current gen, HD environment. 
Terrific news for some mobile users on the Netflix front: iPhone and Nintendo DS users may have to wait a while, but Netflix chief Reed Hastings and staff have already sent out surveys to gauge what consumers desire when it comes to mobile use of the streaming service. 
Sony announced today the addition of HD content from the major studios to their Playstation Network video-on-demand service. 20th Century Fox, Walt Disney Pictures, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Universal Pictures, and Warner Bros. are the six major studios to provide titles for rent or own through the Playstation Network. 
Moments ago Valve made the official announcement that, indeed, Steam will be coming to Mac OS X this April. The Mac client will include every game available to the PC service including Valve’s Half-life, Left 4 Dead and Team Fortress series. 
After an ongoing dispute between Disney (ABC’s parent company) and cable TV provider Cablevision failed to be resolved, the network was pulled at midnight on Saturday, Dec. 6. The dispute wasn’t settled until Sunday night at 8:43 p.m, almost fifteen minutes after the Academy Awards had already started. Until then, 3.1 million Cablevision subscribers were unable to get ABC. 
Samsung’s new line of multimedia R80 notebooks will hit Best Buy stores on Sunday, March 7. Two of the three R80 models are loaded with nVIDIA GeForce graphics cards (R580 and R780) and the less expensive R480 and R580 models come with internal Blu-ray Disc drives. It’s strange that the more expensive R780 doesn’t come with a BD drive, but those are specs we got. The 16:9 hi-def resolution LED displays vary in size according to the model. (See chart below.) All three models include HDMI ports. 
Cox Communications will start rolling out Epix HD and on-demand channel “Vutopia” to its markets on April 1. Epix HD is a premium movie channel from Viacom Inc., Paramount Pictures, MGM and Lionsgate. The channel is normally offered for $9.99 per month. 
In the U.S. the Wi-Fi enabled Apple iPad (available in 16GB, 32GB and 64GB) will hit stores on Saturday, April 3. Later in April, the 3G models will be released throughout the U.S. as well as Japan, Australia and Europe. The iPad is almost an enlarged iPhone, with the functionality of Amazon’s kindle its driving point. The large 9.7″ display on the iPad is LED backlit at 1024 x 768 resolution. “iPad is something completely new,” said Steve Jobs. Continue on for pricing. 
Why is Netflix winning the movie rental race? We looked at base plans for both Blockbuster and Netflix — one a brick and mortar movie rental giant with a few thousand stores and kiosks opening nationwide, and the other a movie-by-mail enterprise which has taken the market by storm. First let’s look at what they are offering. 
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