Tag: disney

Hollywood strikes back against illegal streaming Kodi addons

An anti-piracy alliance supported by many major US and UK movie studios, broadcasters and content providers has dealt a blow to the third-party Kodi addon scene after it successfully forced a number of popular piracy-linked streaming tools offline. In what appears to be a coordinated crackdown, developers including jsergio123 and The_Alpha , who are responsible for the development and hosting of addons like urlresolver, metahandler, Bennu, DeathStreams and Sportie, confirmed that they will no longer maintain their Kodi creations and have immediately shut them down. The action comes after The_Alpha reportedly received a hand delivered letter to their UK home : “This letter is addressed to you by companies of the six-major United States film studios represented by the Motion Picture Association (MPA), namely Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc., Disney Enterprises, Inc., Paramount Pictures Corporation, Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation, Universal City Studios LLLP and Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc., Netflix, Inc. and Amazon Studios LLC (represented by MPA via the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE)), Sky UK Limited, and The Football Association Premier League Limited, ” the opening paragraph reads. The letter identifies the developer as the creator of third-party software that provides “unlawful access to protected copyright works, including works owned by, or exclusively licensed to, the Content Companies” and notes their additional involvement in the upkeep of the Colossus repository, an online collection of various streaming Kodi addons. With Colossus gone, a popular TV show and movie streaming tool called Covenant is also currently unavailable. It’s scared a number of related addon developers, with Ares Wizard, another popular host, reportedly deciding to throw in the towel. The crackdown suggests the MPA/MPAA-led Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment has a thorough understanding of how owners of so-called “Kodi boxes” are able to stream TV shows and films illegally. While Colossus merely hosts the tools, urlresolver and metahandler did much of the heavy lifting for streamers. Their job was to scrape video hosting sites for relevant streaming links and serve them up for tools like Covenant inside Kodi. Streamers will find it very difficult to find working video streams of their favorite content without them, but they could reappear via a new host in the future. Sorry to say but I am stopping all development of the urlresolver, metahandler, and my other addons. I am not responsible for covenant and bennu but colossus has agreed to delete the repo too. — jsergio123 (@jsergio123) November 15, 2017 As pre-loaded Kodi boxes have surged in popularity in the past year, many of the most popular piracy-linked addons have targeted by rightsholders. In June, US satellite broadcaster Dish Network issued a lawsuit that targeted the TVAddons repository and forced streaming tools ZemTV and Phoenix offline. The action will be bad news for Kodi, the the company behind the popular media center. Despite attempts to distance itself from piracy, it often finds itself implicated in news reports that focus on actions taken against infringing third-party addons. Via: TorrentFreak , TVAddons

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Hollywood strikes back against illegal streaming Kodi addons

A live-action ‘Star Wars’ show is headed to Disney’s streaming service

After years of rumors of a live-action Star Wars TV series, it’s finally happening. The only catch? It’ll be exclusive to Disney’s upcoming streaming service, Polygon reports . CEO Bob Iger didn’t have any details to share about the new series, but the fact that it’s coming is still a bombshell for the Star Wars universe. And, of course, it’s also a smart way to sell Disney’s streaming service, which is set to launch in 2019 . Additionally, Disney will be producing three other original series from its Marvel, Monster’s Inc. and High School Musical franchises. Disney revealed a few months ago that it’ll remove its content from Netflix, which includes existing Star Wars films, and move it over to the company’s streaming service in 2019. Via: Polygon

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A live-action ‘Star Wars’ show is headed to Disney’s streaming service

Disney merges its kid-friendly streaming options into a single app

Disney has combined four of its kid-friendly streaming apps into one all-encompassing one called DisneyNOW . It has everything that the separate Disney Channel, Disney XD, Disney Junior and Radio Disney apps had, but all of the content is now consolidated under a single main app. DisneyNOW has full show episodes and livestreaming of shows airing on Disney Channel, Disney Junior and Disney XD when you use a valid cable, satellite or digital service — such as Hulu and YouTube TV — login. Multiple users can create their own profiles and the app will hold their spot in shows they don’t finish and suggest content they might like based on what they watch. DisneyNOW also has games, more of which will be added monthly, and Disney Channel original movies. However, it doesn’t have theatrical releases . Disney is saving those for its Netflix rival set to launch sometime in 2019. DisneyNOW is available now on iOS, Apple TV, Android, Fire tablets and Roku with Fire TV, Android TV and web support coming in 2018. Via: TechCrunch Source: Disney

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Disney merges its kid-friendly streaming options into a single app

AMC will install room-scale VR in theaters by 2019

Movie theater chain AMC is committing to virtual reality in a big way. The company has announced a $10 million investment (as part of a $20 million investment round) in Dreamscape Immersive, a VR storytelling studio with a focus on room-scale installations and real-time motion tracking. AMC plans to put six VR stations in its multiplexes in North America and the UK over the next year and a half, according to a press release. That number is key: Unlike things like the John Wick VR experience, or the ones made for Interstellar or Alien: Covenant , Dreamscape’s are social in nature, supporting up to six “players” at a time. The Verge reports that the installation spaces will be 16′ x 16′ walkable spaces with a railing around the perimeter. Haptic floors, fans and scents can be implemented if the experience calls for them. Users will wear a VR headset, a backpack computer and a few sensors for motion tracking. The result is life-size avatars that act and react in real-time with your body’s movements. Info about what those experiences could be isn’t available, but half of AMC’s investment is earmarked specifically for making them. And, with the likes of directors Gore Verbinski and Steven Spielberg, composer Hans Zimmer and former Disney Imagineering chief Bruce Vaughn calling the shots, maybe they’ll be a bit more memorable than crappy tie-ins we’ve seen before. Source: PR Newswire

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AMC will install room-scale VR in theaters by 2019

Watch Hulu’s live TV service on your Mac or PC

It’s been a month since Hulu added its live television service to the Amazon Fire TV and only a day after the company announced Xbox 360 compatibility for its subscribers. Now the company that Disney, Fox, NBC and Time Warner owns is putting its subscription-based live streaming product on PC and Mac. This is the first time Hulu will stream live television to something other than set-top boxes and mobile devices. It makes sense, as Netflix , Amazon and HBO already allow you to watch from the comfort of your web browser. The web-based version will be basic to start while Hulu takes more time to finalize the final interface, according to Hulu’shulu macbook Ben Smith. “This is a very early version of the new Hulu experience on the Web and we expect it to evolve significantly over the next few months, ” writes Smith. “From point, click, and keyboard interactions, to responsive pages to fit all screen sizes; we are carefully considering all of the things that make building a web experience unique from living room and mobile devices.” You’ll be able to watch live television from more than 50 channels from individual networks, all the Hulu on-demand movies and originals, premium channels like HBO, Cinemax and Showtime, and catch the latest live games from ESPN, Fox Sports and CBS. If you live in a “select market, ” you’ll also be able to tune in to local ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC affiliates. Supported browsers include Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Microsoft Edge and Internet Explorer 11. Source: Hulu

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Watch Hulu’s live TV service on your Mac or PC

Disney’s immersive ‘Star Wars’ hotel is a Jedi dream come true

No, you’re not dreaming: Walt Disney World plans to open an insanely ambitious immersive Star Wars hotel that sounds like something out of Westworld . Every guest will experience a completely unique story throughout their stay, which will “touch every single minute” of their day, according to Disney’s resort chairman Bob Chapek. You’ll dress up in Star Wars clothing and explore a starship (the hotel itself) filled with familiar-looking aliens. And just to complete the experience, every window will look out onto space. Basically, it sounds like Disney is extending the interactivity you typically find in its theme park experiences with one of its resort hotels. It’s a part of Disney World’s upcoming “Galaxy’s Edge” area, which is dedicated to Star Wars experiences. As Gizmodo describes , those theme parks will also be very interactive — you could, for example, run into Chewbacca who recruits you for a mission. That leads you to the Millennium Falcon ride, and depending on your team’s performance across your different jobs, you could get extra credits, a reprimand, or even have bounty hunters chasing you across the park. Both Disneyland in California and Disney World in Florida will be getting the “Galaxy’s Edge” lands in 2019, but at this point it sounds like the immersive hotel is only headed to Orlando. We’ll be following the hotel’s progress closely, if only to keep an eye on those suspicious Droids. Source: Disney Parks

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Disney’s immersive ‘Star Wars’ hotel is a Jedi dream come true

Disney’s ‘Star Wars’ theme park is taking shape

Universal Studios Japan recently released the first trailer for its in-construction Super Nintendo World attraction, and now Disney has gone one better by building an actual physical model showing off its upcoming Star Wars Land (unofficial title). Due to open in 2019 at both Disneyland in California and Disney World in Florida, the new area “will transport guests to a never-before-seen planet” — which just happens to look like every weathered, forgettable world characters from the films briefly touch down on to get a ship part or intel or what have you. There should be plenty to do at the “remote trading port” once you’ve filled your boots with expensive merchandise and your bellies with Yoda burgers. Ride specifics are pretty hazy, but Disney has revealed that visitors will control the Millennium Falcon on a secret mission as part of one signature attraction, while the other main draw will drop guests “in the middle of a climactic battle between the First Order and the Resistance.” Star Tours, a Star Wars -inspired flight simulator, and several other attractions were up and running at various Disney parks long before the company waved a check in front of George Lucas he couldn’t pass up. Now Disney owns the rights to the extremely popular franchise, it makes sense to create a more elaborate live experience for fans to visit — especially after the shot-in-the-arm that was the last two movies. Though a few years off completion, anyone visiting Disney World in the future will be able to kill two film-inspired birds with one stone, diving into the mind of James Cameron through the new World Of Avatar experience. Via: TechCrunch Source: Disney

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Disney’s ‘Star Wars’ theme park is taking shape

Disney’s projection tech turns actors’ faces into nightmare fuel

Disney is taking scary clown makeup to the next level. It’s using a new projection system to transform the appearance of actors during live performances, tracking facial expressions and “painting” them with light, rather than physical makeup. Called Makeup Lamps, the system was developed by a team at Disney Research, and it could potentially change the way stage makeup is used in future theater productions. Makeup Lamps tracks an actor’s movements without using the facial markers common in motion capture, then it displays any color or texture the actor wants by adjusting the lighting. It can make someone appear older by creating “wrinkles” on their face, for example, or it can paint their face in creepy clown makeup, à la Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight . And all of it is done in real-time. A similar technology was used earlier this year during Lady Gaga’s performance at the Superbowl. Nobumichi Asai, creative director of Japanese visual studio WOW, was brought in to create a red lightning bolt on Gaga’s face during her David Bowie tribute. The attention that performance received has helped the technology become more mainstream. Latency — the time between generating an image that matches the actor’s pose and when the image is displayed — is a big challenge to live augmentation, of course. Large amounts of it will cause the projection and the actor’s face to appear out of sync. Disney’s research team combated this problem by limiting the complexity of its algorithms and employing a method called Kalman filtering, which uses measurements over time to make predictions and minor adjustments. “We’ve seen astounding advances in recent years in capturing facial performances of actors and transferring those expressions to virtual characters, ” said Markus Gross, vice president at Disney Research. “Leveraging these technologies to augment the appearance of live actors is the next step and could result in amazing transformations before our eyes of stage actors in theaters or other venues.” Source: EurekAlert

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Disney’s projection tech turns actors’ faces into nightmare fuel

Check Out the Evolution of the US Dollar Bill

The US one dollar bill is still old school. In fact, it has the oldest design of all US currency being produced today. So that means it doesn’t have the flashy tech, or the colorful hues, or the wild looks that have leaked into the redesigns of the more valuable banknotes. But that doesn’t mean it hasn’t changed. Just… Read more…

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Check Out the Evolution of the US Dollar Bill