Biz/tech notes.

Though I've been told he's got it all wrong, Edward Jay Epstein's piece in Slate on why Rupert Murdoch has "placed an order for 20 million digital video recorders for his customers" is nonetheless a terrifically provocative read if you've got a thing for speculating on how we'll be watching movies a few years down the line. Sidenote: Bill Smith in the New York Observer on an odd emerging alliance: Murdoch and Hillary Clinton.

Meanwhile, as big retailers like Wal-Mart and Target begin phasing out their stock of VHS tapes (as Mark Chediak reports for the Washington Post), and a resolution to the DVD format wars seems further off than it seemed just a few weeks ago (Richard Brunton sums up developments nicely at the Movie Blog), another format suddenly clamors for attention: The UMD, li'l discs you slip into a Sony Playstation Portable (PSP). Blockbuster will be renting them (according to news passed along by Chris Thilk at Cinematical) and Fox will release Robots on UMD and DVD simultaneously (as Scott Hendrick reports in Variety). Click on Amazon's entry for the UMD version of Kung Fu Hustle, and you can follow links to plenty more.

Many have assumed it'd be Apple that'd dream up the iPod for video; has Sony, inadvertently or not, leapt ahead? If so, then only temporarily, I'd imagine. As with music, portable video won't break through until it requires no hard copies at all.

Kris Oser reports at AdAge.com on AOL's new content strategy; it's going to involve a lot more freely accessibly video content, evidently.

Georg Szalai for Reuters on the Viacom split. More on how media moguls are refashioning their empires from Daniel Gross in Slate.

Posted by dwhudson at June 15, 2005 4:53 PM