The Big Picture

Tom Norton and I saw Rio in 3D last week at our local AMC multiplex, which offers something called Enhanced Theater Experience (ETX) with a larger screen, digital projection, and a beefier sound system. I guess this is somewhere between a conventional theater and Imax, and it was quite good overall.

Last night, I attended a special preview screening of <I>Avatar</I>, one of the most eagerly anticipated movies of the year. Presented a few hours before the movie opened to the general public, the screening was hosted by 20th Century Fox, which gave 50 tickets in the front-most section of the theater to Panasonic for its contribution of equipment during production. Fortunately, I was near the front of that line, so I was able to sit in the last row of that section&#151;still a bit too close, but very immersive. I'm going to give you my impressions while minimizing any spoilers, though I found no surprises in this movie other than the incredible 3D imagery, which is certainly no secret.

Last Tuesday, I attended a demonstration of the BD-Live capabilities that will distinguish Disney's Blu-ray release of <I>Sleeping Beauty</I>, the first Disney animated title with these enhancements. Of course, to take advantage of them, you need a BD-Live (aka Profile 2.0) player, of which there are very few so far. In fact, the only ones available as of this writing are the Sony PS3 and Panasonic DMP-BD50, with the Sony BDP-S350 and S550 expected to ship soon.

This Thursday is the national pig-out known as Thanksgiving, followed by the national sellout known as Black Friday, the official start of the holiday shopping season. Retailers normally give thanks at this time for the sales that represent a major percentage of their annual business, but this year, they're likely to have much less for which to be thankful.

Now in its fourth year since the format was launched, Blu-ray remains a bit enigmatic. Of course, most early adopters and movie enthusiasts eagerly embrace it, and rightly so&#151;Blu-ray provides the best picture and sound quality you can get from a home-theater source. But its success in the mass market is less clear, at least so far. To assess this and other issues related to the state of Blu-ray, the <A href="http://www.dvdinformation.com/">Digital Entertainment Group (DEG)</A>, an industry-funded, non-profit organization that promotes various types of home entertainment, hosted a day-long conference last week at the Beverly Hilton hotel in Los Angeles, calling it Blu-Con 2.0.

Sponsored by NewTek, maker of the TriCaster portable streaming-video production system, the second annual Broadcast Minds roundtable at NAB offered a lively panel discussion about video production in the online era. Joining the panel was (left to right above) Leo Laporte, whose TWiT network is the official webcaster of the NAB show; Steve Hellmuth, executive vice president of operations and technology for NBA Entertainment; moderator Eric Schumacher-Rasmussen, editor of Streaming Video magazine; Mark Fratto, director of athletic communications at St. John's University in New York; and Adam Corolla, well-known comic who was introduced as having the most downloaded podcast in the world.

Peter Zolldan asks a perennial question: