Month: July 2016

The Mill Blackbird: “Transformer”-artiges Fahrzeug für Filmaufnahmen

Wie stellt man ein Auto, das es nicht gibt, realistisch im Film dar? Damit setzt sich die auf visuelle Effekte spezialisiere Firma The Mill aus London auseinander. Sie hat ein veränderbares Chassis gebaut, auf das im Computer jede beliebige Karosserie gesetzt werden kann. (Elektroauto, Film)

Wie stellt man ein Auto, das es nicht gibt, realistisch im Film dar? Damit setzt sich die auf visuelle Effekte spezialisiere Firma The Mill aus London auseinander. Sie hat ein veränderbares Chassis gebaut, auf das im Computer jede beliebige Karosserie gesetzt werden kann. (Elektroauto, Film)

Early Sales Figures: Ultra HD Blu-ray Growing Faster Than Blu-ray

Ultra HD Blu-ray is off to a better start than Blu-ray, according to the latest sales stats from Home Media Magazine.Launching only in March, 228,000 Ultra HD Blu-ray discs have already been sold as of June 24. This compares extremely we…



Ultra HD Blu-ray is off to a better start than Blu-ray, according to the latest sales stats from Home Media Magazine.

Launching only in March, 228,000 Ultra HD Blu-ray discs have already been sold as of June 24. This compares extremely well to when Blu-ray was first launched, when only 57,000 discs were sold in roughly the same time period.

The fast uptake is happening despite the fact that only two Ultra HD Blu-ray player models have been launched so far, from Samsung and Panasonic (availability of the Panasonic model varies according to region). 

But despite the lack of hardware choices, over 45 Ultra HD Blu-ray releases are already on store shelves. In trying to answer the age old question of who came first, the chicken or the egg, or more specifically, the movies or the players, it appears that the overall strategy is leaning towards making 4K movies available first.

Of the released titles so far, the popular picks among early 4K adopters have been a mix of new releases, like 'The Martian' and 'Deadpool', and re-released classics like 'Independence Day'. But showing that the format still has a long way to go, one of the more popular recent releases on 4K, 'Independence Day', only accounted for 4.54% of all disc sales for the title (including Blu-ray, DVD and combo editions).

The format also recently received a huge boost from an unlikely source, with Microsoft announcing their upgraded Xbox One console will include Ultra HD Blu-ray playback, and will retail for $100 less than the Samsung player, currently the cheapest on the market.

[Via Variety]

HP awarded $3B in damages from Oracle over Itanium database cancellation

Oracle found to be in breach of contract for ending Itanium software support.

Safra Catz, Oracle Corp. CEO, second left, exits superior court in San Jose in 2012. (credit: Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

A San Jose jury has awarded Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) $3 billion (£2.25B) in damages from Oracle after Oracle breached its contract to provide Itanium support in its namesake database and Linux distribution.

Oracle unilaterally decided to drop support for Itanium systems running HP's HP-UX operating system in 2011. HP (as then was; the company split into two last year, with HPE retaining the interest in the server business) sued, claiming that Oracle was in breach of a 2010 contract between the two companies in which the database firm promised to support HP's Itanium systems.

That suit was decided in 2012 in HP's favor. The judge required Oracle to fulfill its contractual obligations to support HP's Itanium systems and decided that HP was due damages. Oracle resumed the software support in late 2012, but the damages portion was undetermined. The two companies were back in court some four years later to decide just what those damages should be.

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