Amazon has struck a multi-year deal for exclusive Prime Video streaming rights for Universal's live-action theatrical releases. As Deadline reports, it's the first time Amazon has struck such a deal with a major US studio. The deal kicks in with Universal's 2022 slate of movies.

Here's where things might get a little confusing. The deal is for a chunk of the pay-one window, which is the 18-month period after a movie's theatrical run. Earlier this week, Universal and its NBCUniversal sibling Peacock reached a similar agreement for the first four and last four months of the window.

Within four months of their theatrical release date, Universal's live-action movies will start streaming on Peacock. Four months after that, they'll move over to Prime Video for 10 months, then the films will go back to Peacock for at least another four months. Streaming rights can get pretty complicated!

The deal covers blockbusters such as Jurassic World: Dominion, Get Out director Jordan Peele's next horror film and Halloween Ends. Movies from Focus Features and Blumhouse are also part of the pact.

As for Universal's animated movies from Illumination and DreamWorks, those currently stream on Netflix. For the 2022 and later release slate, according to Deadline, Netflix might hang onto the streaming rights for Universal's animated flicks for the 10 months of the pay-one window that they're not on Peacock. In any case, the movies will later hit Prime Video. 

Meanwhile, Amazon's free streaming service IMDb TV will have exclusive streaming rights for 2020 and 2021 theatrical movies from Universal. The deal covers current box office champ F9 and The Invisible Man, along with some older animated movies like Despicable Me 2, How to Train Your Dragon 2 and Shrek 2.

The Prime Video deal follows a major agreement between Netflix and Sony Pictures. Starting in 2022, Netflix will have exclusive rights to Sony's theatrical releases for the 18-month pay-one window. So, movies like Uncharted, the Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse sequel and Morbius are all Netflix-bound.

The film that kickstarted (and nearly killed) Star Trek’s first second life is going to be remastered, once again. Star Trek.com (via Gizmodo), says that Paramount has green-lit a “full restoration” of Robert Wise’s 2001 “Director’s Edition” of Star Trek: The Motion Picture. The site says that the project, which will take between six and eight months to finish, will be formatted in 4K, with Dolby Vision HDR and a new Dolby Atmos soundtrack. David C. Fein, Mike Matessino and Daren R. Dochterman, who worked with Wise on the 2001 DVD version, will all return to work on the 4K spruce up.

The Motion Picture (TMP)’s fraught production meant that the film was barely finished before it premiered, with Wise carrying the print himself to the premiere. Wise had said that the film was “unfinished,” and despite a healthy box office, took a pasting from critics who deemed it to be too slow and talky. At the dawn of the DVD era, Wise, Fein, Matessino and Dochterman collaborated on a re-edit of the film that better showed off Wise’s original vision. This included remastered visual effects and a remastered and re-edited score by Jerry Goldsmith. The effects for the 2001 version were produced by CGI pioneers Foundation Imaging, which was Star Trek’s (then) contractor for all computer generated work.

(After its theatrical run, ABC broadcast a “Special Longer Version” of the film that is notorious for including extra scenes with clearly unfinished effects. The most obvious of which is the start of Kirk’s EVA, where the airlock set is surrounded by studio scaffolding, intended to be replaced by a matte painting.)

It was a well-held myth in fan circles that a 4K version of the Director’s Edition was impossible because the CGI assets and film footage had been scanned and edited for standard definition. The bankruptcy of Foundation Imaging, which took place shortly after the film was released, also dashed hopes for any higher-definition re-releases. However, as Memory Alpha lists, producer David C. Fein confirmed in 2017 that the digital material necessary to facilitate a 4K remastering still exists.

Given how TMP’s reputation has been slowly rehabilitated over the last three decades, a 4K version of the film is very welcome. If only because, as well as a smart and interesting vision of the future, the model work and score are so good that they deserve to be seen in the best possible resolution. We can’t wait to experience this in 4K when it arrives at some point between December and next March.

Starting in 2022, Universal's movies will be available on Peacock first instead of on HBO. That means the next Jurassic World and the new Halloween movie will make their TV debut on the streaming service also owned by its parent company Comcast. According to Variety and The Wall Street Journal, Universal's films will appear exclusively on Peacock for streaming within four months after their theatrical release, as well as within the final four months of an 18-month window. 

Those 10 months in between, the films will be licensed to around two to three additional partners, though none of them will have exclusive rights to the movies. Universal has yet to release the list of additional partners, and it's unclear if HBO is one of them. Variety says that by adopting the segmented TV release schedule, Universal is hoping to avoid over-saturation or making its films seem stale. In addition, streaming platforms are apparently willing to pay top dollar for popular movies these days in an effort to stand out from their ever-increasing number of rivals out there. 

Whether the move leads to a boost in subscriber numbers for Peacock remains to be seen. Comcast made the streaming service available to more potential viewers just a month ago by releasing apps for the Amazon Fire TV and tablets and Samsung's smart TVs. Peacock also grew its live sports portfolio recently and announced that it's streaming 44 Premier Lacrosse League games for the season that started on June 4th. 

The French government has decreed that Netflix, Disney+ and other streaming services will have to spend up to a quarter of their French revenue on making local content. Eighty percent of each platform's respective investment will go toward making French shows, TV movies and documentaries (more Emily in Paris and Lupin, anyone?). The remaining fifth — four or five percent of their total French revenue — will be used to make theatrically released movies.

The country is the first European Union member to enforce new streaming rules under the European Commission's Audiovisual Media Services Directive. The framework is designed to create more parity between streaming platforms and other broadcasters and entertainment services across the EU.

Until now, streaming platforms have been prohibited from adding any theatrically released movie to their French libraries until three years after the film hit cinemas in the country. If the services spend a quarter of their French revenue on local content, they'll have access to films within 12 months of their release dates. If they opt for the minimum investment of 20 percent, they'll need to wait at least a year before adding theatrical releases.

So, there's an incentive for platforms to invest the full 25 percent of revenue. Disney+, for instance, might be tempted to go down that route so it can stream the likes of Marvel, Star Wars and Pixar movies much sooner in France.

Netflix is planning to reinvest 20 percent of its French revenue in local content, according to Variety. It's hoping to lock down a 12-month window for theatrical movies. The company hasn't shown its movies at the Cannes Film Festival for years, partly because of the three-year cinema rule.

The EU has been working for years to ensure streaming platforms have a significant proportion of local content in their libraries. Other jurisdictions have been attempting to make streaming services invest in local productions as well.

The Canadian government, for instance, is looking to reclassify streaming companies, which could require them to contribute hundreds of millions of dollars toward making local content. In 2017, Netflix committed to spending $400 million on Canadian productions over five years.

The ideal way to watch Tenet, according to director Christopher Nolan (and many others), is in a cinema. "This is a film whose image and sound really needs to be enjoyed in your theaters on the big screen," he said last year amid the throes of a pandemic. That inspired YouTuber Bob Wulff, who runs the WulffDen channel, to stuff the time-bending blockbuster onto Game Boy Advance Video cartridges.

Wulff freely admits this is "quite possibly the worst way to view Tenet." He split the movie across five cartridges because it's two and a half hours long. According to Wulff, "30 minutes is the maximum time you can have for a Game Boy Advance Video [cartridge] and still have it in somewhat of a watchable state." He even made custom labels.

There are tradeoffs, of course. Wullf had to crush the video down to six frames per second with a resolution of 192x128 and a whopping 8 KB/s bitrate. The software Wulff used also speeds up video by a third by default. The result is not exactly the pristine IMAX cinema experience Nolan would have hoped for. Many viewers already found it hard to hear much of the dialogue in Tenet due to the questionable sound mix, so can you imagine trying to watch the film with a GBA speaker?

Most Game Boy Advance Video cartridges had a few episodes of a show like Pokémon or SpongeBob SquarePants, but there were a few full-length movies such as Shrekand Shark Tale. With the 20th anniversary of the GBA fast approaching, it seems like the perfect time to order some GBA Video cartridges, a device to flash them with and ruin your favorite movie by watching it in a terrible format.

Now you can recreate the infamous dance scene from Ex Machina with some cardboard, LEDs, and Arduino.

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The post Party Like a Sci-Fi Billionaire with the Music-Sensing Light from Ex Machina appeared first on Make: DIY Projects, How-Tos, Electronics, Crafts and Ideas for Makers.

[Patrick] was looking for an easier way to control music and movies on his computer from across the room. There is a huge amount of remote control products that could be purchased to do this, but as a hacker [Patrick] wanted to make something himself. He calls his creation, “Dial” and it’s a simple but elegant solution to the problem.

Dial looks like a small cylindrical container that sits on a flat surface. It’s actually split into a top and bottom cylinder. The bottom acts as a base and stays stationary while the top acts as a dial and a push button. The case was designed in SOLIDWORKS and printed on a 3D printer.

The Dial runs on an Arduino Pro mini with a Bluetooth module. The original prototype used Bluetooth 2.0 and required a recharge after about a day. The latest version uses the Bluetooth low energy spec and can reportedly last several weeks on a single charge. Once the LiPo battery dies, it can be recharged easily once plugged into a USB port.

The mechanical component of the dial is actually an off-the-shelf rotary encoder. The encoder included a built-in push button to make things easier. The firmware is able to detect rotation in either direction, a button press, a double press, and a press-and-hold. This gives five different possible functions.

[Patrick] wrote two pieces of software to handle interaction with the Dial. The first is a C program to deal with the Bluetooth communication. The second is actually a set of Apple scripts to actually handle interaction between the Dial and the various media programs on his computer. This allows the user to more easily write their own scripts for whatever software they want. While this may have read like a product review, the Dial is actually open source!

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