By Chris Scott Barr

Don’t you love it when you realize that you missed a movie in theaters, and thus have to wait months for it come out on DVD? I’m sure that the movie studios have a good reason for doing it (profit, mostly), but it can still be rather frustrating. Well a few movie studios including MGM, Paramount and Lionsgate have jumped on a project that will allow you to watch movies at home, before they are released on DVD.

The project is called Epix, and it works in two ways. First, it is a TV channel that will air movies in a pay-per-view fashion before they are released on DVD. Second, they will also allow you to stream the movies to your computer, in 720p no less. This all sounds pretty good right? It would be pretty cool if it weren’t for the one little catch. Epix will only be housing their servers with select ISPs. What that means is that you will have to have both TV and internet service through a specific ISP in order to enjoy these movies. Honestly, if I can stream movies online, why do I need a TV channel for it? I ditched my cable service in favor of Hulu and Boxee and I have no regrets. I think I can wait for a DVD.

[ Epix ] VIA [ Dvice ]

By Chris Scott Barr

In some ways I feel bad for parents these days. Sure, as kids we all had our own slang that our parents didn’t always understand, but that’s nothing compared to what is used for texting. To the older generation it can read like a foreign language. Well LG feels the pain of these parents, and has created a translator.

The DTXTR is a simple little web app that lets you enter “teen text” and click a button for a translation. I suppose this is a decent idea, as some parents might be confused by what their kids are saying. But honestly, I wonder how many people will actually bother with it. I mean if a parent isn’t savvy enough to decipher the messages that their kids are sending, are they really going to bother going to a website to figure it out? If I were a kid and sent my parents something that they couldn’t understand, they’d just ground me until I learned how to spell properly.

[ DTXTR ] VIA [ TechCrunch ]

By Chris Scott Barr

I’ve been contemplating dropping my cable TV service for a couple of months now. There are two main factors that have influenced this idea. One, I realized that I don’t actually watch that much TV. There are a few shows that I follow on a regular basis, which brings me to my second point. All of the shows I watch can be found online. For free. Hulu is by far the site that I watch the most video on, and soon it will have even more to offer me.

Disney has just wrapped up a deal that will land them a 30% stake in Hulu. They will be putting up roughly $100 million and will soon start offering full ABC shows and classic movies on the site. Yeah, it’s definitely time to dump my cable.

[ WSJ ] VIA [ Wired ]