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Just hours after RealNetworks filed a preemptive lawsuit against the major Hollywood studios to avoid outcry over its RealDVD DVD-ripping software, Hollywood responded in kind. The Motion Picture Association of America asked a federal court in Los Angeles for a temporary restraining order to halt the sales of RealDVD, arguing it illegally bypasses DVD copyright protections. Said the MPAA, “RealNetworks’ RealDVD should be called StealDVD.”

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Turns out RealNetworks Inc.’s new DVD ripper RealDVD is as legal as its creator is litigious. Real debuted RealDVD this morning and along with it a preemptive lawsuit against the Hollywood interests that will inevitably attempt to litigate it into oblivion. Brought against the DVD Copy Control Association and a who’s-who of major studios, the suit asks the court to rule that RealDVD complies with the DVD Copy Control Association’s license agreement.

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About the best thing to be said about Amazon Unbox, the mediocre, odiously restrictive, video download service the retailer launched last year, is that it was … er … Windows-only, I guess. Which, obviously isn’t saying much.

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Leave it to ABC to devise a service that offers all the convenience of video-on-demand with all the annoyance and vapidity of broadcast TV in one joyless package. This morning the network and its affiliates announced fast-forward-disabled video on demand, which prevents viewers from bypassing commercials.

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“Comcast 3.0.” That was the subject of Comcast CEO Brian Roberts keynote address at the Consumer Electronics Show today. And what is “Comcast 3.0?” Well, like Web 2.0 and 3.0, it’s a marketing term–in Comcast’s case, one for its transformation from “broadband” provider to a “wideband” provider.
In 2008, said Roberts, Comcast will begin upgrading its [...]

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Burst has added another notch to its patent-infringement settlement belt. The scrappy three-man company, which once beat a $60 million settlement out of Microsoft over charges that the software giant had stolen its streaming media technology, has managed to squeeze a few million out of Apple as well.
Bringing an end to an often contentious [...]

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Time was, when a movie bombed at the box office, Hollywood studios could always slap it onto a DVD, ship it off to retail outlets and make some or all of their money back.
No longer. The salad days when you could rush dross like “Police Academy: Mission to Moscow” and “From Justin to Kelly” out [...]

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From top to bottom, Blockbuster is deliberately and willfully infringing on our patented methods. Netflix invented a 100 percent better mousetrap that Blockbuster copied.
- Netflix spokesperson Steve Swasey, April 5, 2006
Apparently, Blockbuster isn’t as hopelessly tethered to its VHS rental-business past as you might think. Yesterday, the video-rental retailer acquired studio-owned movie download [...]

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