Category: Entertainment

Cloud Culture Entertainment

YouTube lets you relive the old-school look of VHS — in HD

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As reported on Engadget. By Joe Pollicino Sure, watching YouTube videos in HD is great when you want clarity, but maybe you’ve been yearning for that grainy, tape-recorded look. Marking what’s apparently the 57th anniversary of cassette-based video recording, the YouTube team has snuck a VHS tape-shaped button on select videos. Clicking it will the throw a filter over the content, providing a highly distorted and nostalgic feast for the eyes. There’s no official list of compatible content, but the…

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Culture Entertainment Legal

Animal Farm: a look at the ‘Ag Gag’ laws that are making it tough to film cruelty

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As reported on The Verge. By Lessley Anderson Legislators send mixed messages on why the laws exist A still from Burger King Cruelty, produced by Mercy for Animals. Americans love their hamburger, but they hate to see where it comes from. That dichotomy is leading to a rash of so-called “Ag Gag” laws being enacted across the US, as reported on by The New York Times this week. The laws aim to block or severely limit activists’ ability to film…

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Business Culture Entertainment

How a Hollywood effects studio builds the movie monsters from your nightmares

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As reported on The Verge. By Matt Brian In an age where movie studios can create almost anything using CGI, Hollywood’s special effects studios and their real-world creations are still in very high demand. In a behind-the-scenes interview, Venue takes a look at Spectral Motion — a special effects creature studio which has provided the prosthetics, animatronics, and costumes for hit movies including Hellboy & Hellboy II, Looper, Blade 2, X-Men: First Class and this summer’s upcoming blockbuster Pacific Rim. Spectral…

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Application Entertainment TV

Adobe Launches Primetime To Facilitate TV Everywhere Services, Signs Up Comcast & NBC Sports As Customers

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As reported on TechCrunch. by RYAN LAWLER Adobe has changed the way it sells technology used to enable high-quality streaming services from TV networks and other video providers. With the launch of Adobe Primetime — previously know as Project Primetime — the technology company is providing a suite of tools for video delivery. And it has signed up a couple of big new clients for the suite of products. Over the last year, Adobe has been…

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Entertainment Story

One more time: can Daft Punk make albums matter again?

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As reported on The Verge. By Trent Wolbe Pop’s mystery men return for another futuristic gaze into the past If you are old enough think back to a time before Napster, before music taxonomy became a full-time job for hashtaggers and your record store had only four categories to guide your music discovery: rock / pop, hip hop / R&B, classical, and country. You were dialing into local BBS’s at 28.8k tops and WAVs and MODs…

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Culture Engineering Entertainment Hardware Dev

3D printed speakers give you a custom light show to go with your tunes (video) Hands-on

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As reported on Engadget. By Michael Gorman 3D printing is still in its relative infancy, but more and more folks are using machines like the MakerBot Replicator and Formlab’s Form 1 to turn digital plans into physical reality. An Autodesk engineer named Evan Atherton has access to a much more capable (and expensive) 3D printer, an Objet Connex 500, and as a design exercise decided to use that printer to create a finished product. You see, a lot of…

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Business Engineering Entertainment

Phantom Flex4K camera unveiled, blasts through 1000 4K frames per second (video)

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As reported on Engadget. By Steve Dent Vision Systems just upped the 4k speed barrier by a near order of magnitude with the launch of its Phantom Flex4K cinema camera at NAB. Starting at $110k, it builds on its Phantom Flex predecessor with up to 1,000 fps in 5 second bursts at 4k, 2,000 fps in 2k and 3,000 fps at 720p resolution — speeds that’ll net you almost three minutes of 4k video when played back at 24…

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Entertainment Military Story

Inside the War Machine: New Documentary Maps an Epic Photo Career

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As reported on Wired. BY JAKOB SCHILLER Tim Hetherington. Photo: Courtesy of HBO   Tim Hetherington is trying to explain why he documents war. He launches into a cliché about violence and the “human experience” but quickly stops, laughs and says, “No, that sounds too fucking bullshit.” It’s the opening scene from HBO’s new documentary about Hetherington called Which Way Is the Front Line From Here? The Life and Times of Tim Hetherington. The film, which airs April…

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Business Entertainment

Explainer: What’s Aereo, why does it matter, and will it kill cable?

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As reported on The Verge. By Greg Sandova With an important court decision in its favor, here’s how Aereo could change the future of live TV Aereo is trying to make live TV available over the Internet and yesterday the company got a step closer. The United States Second Circuit Court of Appeals declined a request by some of the country’s largest television networks to issue a preliminary injunction against Aereo, which would have closed the service…

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Engineering Entertainment Games

BIOSHOCK INFINITE REVIEW: ABOVE AND BELOW

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As reported on Polygon. By Arthur Gies Even if you’ve tried to maintain a total media blackout on BioShock Infinite, it would have been difficult to remain ignorant of the extended, torturous development cycle it’s been through, or the number of major creative personnel who have come and gone during that time. You’d almost think it was hard to follow up the original game, which has been lauded and held up as one of the few conscious,…

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