Google TVs in the UK, France and Germany will all welcome the Google Play store this month

Google has announced it is expanding the reach of its Google Play store on Google TV boxes, with the UK, France and Germany all gaining access to movies and music later this month.

Google TV has been around for a few years, but didn’t make it to Europe until mid-2011. Last month, Google added Google Play support to its set-top boxes, and thankfully it hasn’t taken another year for them to provide the same service elsewhere in the world, as today, Google has announced that it will be opening up Google Play for Google TV boxes in the UK, Germany and France on November 13.

With Google Play available on Google TV, access will be granted to the music and movie stores, but it has yet to be confirmed whether TV shows will be included. It’s also unclear how many studios and content providers have signed agreements with Google and for which countries, so expect them all to vary when it goes live. Finally, there’s no information on pricing for renting or buying content for Google TV either.

Initially, Google added Canada and Australia to its list of lucky new countries, but these have since been removed with an apology, and a promise that more locations will be added soon. Whether this was a mistake, or the result of some last minute legal wrangling, isn’t known. However, if it’s the latter, then they may appear again sooner rather than later.

If the news that Google Play is coming to Google TV in your home country has inspired you to seek out a box, your choice is slim, with Sony’s NSZ-GS7 being one of the only official, current options. It’s yours for £160 through Amazon in the UK. By contrast, Apple TV, the closest competitor to Google TV is a mere £75, and provides access to iTunes and its extensive collection of movies, music and television shows.

The November 13 release date will be a busy one for Google, as it’s the same day the new Nexus 4 smartphone and Nexus 10 tablet go on sale too.

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com

How to bypass video region restrictions in under a minute

Accessing your favorite movies or TV shows on the Web isn't always easy due to a pesky thing called region restrictions. Here is a beginner's guide to using a proxy to skip over the technical wall and start enjoying content from around the world.

I’m not going to lie to you: My girlfriend and I are big, sappy, aristocrat-loving “Downton Abbey” fans. So when season three debuted in September, we could hardly wait to start watching. Problem is, the show is currently only available to viewers in the U.K., and won’t make its way stateside until January 6, 2013. Impatient, we frantically began searching for a way around this useless (to us) hurdle — but we weren’t willing to start downloading things illegally.

Such is the dilemma of many Web users who try to access U.S.-made content from their respective international homes. Hulu, ABC, NBC, and even “The Daily Show” are blocked in many countries not called the United States. This is also true of music services like Spotify, and a wide range of other sites and services across the Web. Similarly, those of us in the U.S. cannot use BBC iPlayer, or, in the case of “Downton Abbey” fans, iTV Player.

Now, there are quite a few solutions to the problem of region restrictions. Unfortunately, the most user-friendly options, like a Virtual Private Network (VPN), usually cost money (not a lot, but some), or are complicated to use if the most technical thing you’ve ever done with your PC is install Firefox. There are also options like Tor, the anonymization software that masks your identity. And this is a fine option, but does involve downloading and getting to know additional software.

Fortunately for those of us who are not technical wizards, there is a quick and easy way to bypass region blocks in less than a minute, for free. I’m talking about using a proxy, and it’s surprisingly simple to use. (If you already know all about proxies and how to use them, feel free to move along — this one isn’t for you.)

Proxy basics

Before we get into the how-to bit, some background: Each time you go online, your computer is assigned an IP address. Your IP address, which is transmitted to every website you visit through your browser, tells these sites what your physical location is. This is why region blocks work — they simply forbid any computer with an IP address outside a particular geographic region from accessing content. By using a proxy, you actually change the IP address that your browser transmits to the Web.

The simplest way to use a proxy is to visit the mildly-NSFW-named VPN provider Hide My Ass (HMA), which allows you to simply past a URL into its Web Proxy tool and start browsing under a different IP address. Under the “advanced settings” tab, you can choose which country you want to appear to be browsing from. Website Proxify offers a similar service, as well. Easy though it may be, however, this solution will not work with certain websites. And, because so many other people are trying to use the same proxy address as you, load times slow to a slug-like pace.

Another solution is to establish your own proxy through your Web browser. You can either do this through the browser itself, or by downloading a plugin, like Proxy Switchy for Chrome, or FoxyProxy for Firefox.

To use any of these options, you’re going to need to find a proxy IP address and port. HMA generously offers a constantly updated list of these, which you can find here. You’ll want to pick a proxy that is from the country as the content you want to access. (So for “Downton Abbey,” I would choose a U.K.-based proxy.) Also check to make sure the “speed” and “connection” categories are good — if they’re not, you will experience a maddening series of interruptions.

How to use FoxyProxy

After going through a headache of glitches, we found the very best option is to use Firefox, and install the FoxyProxy add-on. Once you’ve done that, head over to the HMA proxy list page. Select your country of choice. Under the “Protocol” options, de-select “socks4/5.” (Just for simplicity’s sake.) Then hit “Update Results.”

At this point, you will also want to open FoxyProxy by hitting the icon that appears to the right of the URL box. Click “Add New Proxy.” Next, head back over to the HMA page and find a proxy that looks good (the bars next to the country name should both be green). Once you’ve selected one, copy the IP address, and paste it into the “Host or IP Address” field in the FoxyProxy window. Go back to HMA, and copy the “port” number that appears next to the IP address you’ve chosen. Paste the port number in the “Port” field in the FoxyProxy window. Then click “Ok.” (Don’t worry, you’re almost done.)

A notice will then pop up saying “you didn’t enter and enable any whitelisted (included) URL patters.” For our purposes, you can just ignore that — click “OK.” At the top of the FoxyProxy window, click on the drop-down menu next to “Select Mode,” then select the option that includes the IP address you just entered. Click close — and you’re done! Start streaming.

If you want to turn off the proxy, just click the FoxyProxy button, and change the mode to “Completely disable FoxyProxy.”

The downsides

Now, cheating the system never works out flawlessly. The first thing you MUST consider are your local laws. In the U.S., it is legal to use proxies. In other countries, it might not be — so check to make sure you’re in the clear before doing any of this. And, at the very least, you will likely be violating the terms of service of the websites you visit. In short: Whether or not this is legal doesn’t necessarily make it right.

Even if using a proxy is legal, and you don’t mind the ethical gray areas, you’re probably going to have to change the specific proxy you use on a regular basis. Free proxies, like those available through HMA, often get shut down, or are just too slow for streaming puposes. That said, you can get access to high-quality proxies through FoxyProxy, but it’ll cost you a few bucks a month for a subscription — totally worth it, if you plan to leap over region restrictions on a regular basis.

Image via Pell Studio/Shutterstock

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com

Google adds movie trailers to search results

Definitely a helpful addition to a search results page, Google is making it easier to find trailers for movies currently in theaters.

Detailed on Google’s official Google+ account this week, the search company has added links to movie trailers when a user searches for information regarding showtimes at local theaters. In order to bring up these listings, the user uses a search term like “showtimes zip code” or “showtimes city name” and Google displays all the current movies playing at nearby theaters. As of this week, a new gray button that says “Trailer” appears to the right of each movie listing. When the button is clicked, a pop-up window is launched overlaying the search results page. The trailers are being streamed from a “Googlemovietrailers” YouTube account, but Google doesn’t allow users to browse videos on the account. Users need a direct link to play the trailer on the YouTube page.

Depending on the screen size, the overlay window will size itself accordingly and automatically choose the highest quality version of the video. Google also overlays a dark gray color on the remaining white portion of the screen to improve viewing quality.

At the top of the overlay window, the user will see the name of the movie trailer on the left and a Google+ Recommend button on the right. However, there’s no rating system included on the overlay for negative feedback. Underneath the embedded YouTube video, Google has included the name of the director, several names of the top actors and actresses in the film and a detailed description of the plot.

It’s likely that the inclusion of movie trailers on search result pages will reduce the amount of people that visit sites like Apple, Yahoo, IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes to view a movie trailer. As of right now, the addition of the movie trailers button has been rolled out in the United States as well as other English-speaking countries including the United Kingdom, Australia and Canada. However, Google plans to roll out the new movie trailers button globally as well.

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com

Google launches its Indoors Maps service in France, rest of Europe watches enviously

After its Play Movies service, Google is launching its Indoors Maps service in France.

The addition is now available for the Android version of Google Maps and offers indoors maps for airports, museums and malls in France.

There’s a lot of useful information available such as escalators, ATMs and restrooms. For now, the coverage varies greatly, but some places are already covered in great detail. For example, maps for Carrefour supermarkets will show you whats on offer in the different aisles and even provide you with walking directions.

France is the third country in Europe to offer Google’s Indoor Maps joining the UK and Switzerland. Outside Europe, the feature is only available in the U.S., Canada and Japan.

Source : blog[dot]gsmarena[dot]com

Why aren’t there more movies based on apps?

We've seen movies based on toys, comics, television shows and even other movies. So where are the movies based on new digital media? Perhaps Hollywood isn't ready, claims a new New York Times report.

While old media has traditionally proven itself to be very happy at the idea of recycling itself into irrelevance – See the latest reboot of a television series/movie franchise/etc. to hit a movie theater near you soon – it has equally turned out to be something that is surprisingly slow at taking advantage of media that is outside of its immediate comfort zone. While we are now used to superheroes dominating the summer blockbuster circuit, it’s worth remembering that Tim Burton’s Batman movie came out almost twenty five years ago, and the original Superman: The Movie more than a decade before that. Even comic books, apparently, needed some time to be assimilated into the movie and television mainstream. All of which is a long way of saying, for everyone who may be expecting Hollywood to turn around any minute now and realize that there is a lot of Intellectual Property just waiting to be bought up, adapted and exploited for enterprising entertainment executives out there…? You may have quite a wait ahead of you.

If you’re looking for some evidence of that, then you need look no further than this weekend’s New York Times, in which the trials awaiting app developers hoping for a multimedia payday were enumerated in painful detail. Whereas Iron Man, Optimus Prime and even John Carter have specific audiences – and nostalgic appeal – the problem with apps (and even video games) is that, well, they appeal to too many people: “Should Talking Tom be a cartoon for children on Nickelodeon?” the piece asked, referring to the creation of Outfit7, an app developer looking to bring their brand outside of the tech field. “Or is it something more grown-up, perhaps for Spike or Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim? The wrong move could narrow the following. A Nickelodeon show, for instance, could make Talking Tom uncool for men in their 20s.”

Additionally, there is the problem that today’s app makers are more merchandise-savvy than many more traditional creators. “App makers want to keep potentially lucrative toy rights for themselves. But studio executives say it is hard for them to justify pouring tens of millions of dollars into the creation of a movie or television show unless there is an added revenue stream as an incentive,” explained the Times’ Brooks Barnes.

There is, of course, an even more obvious reason why moviemakers might want to stick with what they know for now: No-one in Hollywood has worked out a way to translate first-person interactive narratives – videogames, for the most part, or even analog like Battleship – into a successful movie just yet. Until they can work out how to create a pleasing story for all viewers out of something that so much of its potential audience has made up in its head, it’ll be awhile until we’ll see a massive influx of material that’s based even more on interactivity and less on pre-set conditions.

Well, Angry Birds aside, obviously.

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com

YouTube now features 150 free movies from Troma

Troma, everyone's favorite low-brow, low-budget film studio, has uploaded 150 movies from its catalogue for free viewing on YouTube.

Lloyd Kaufman’s Troma Entertainment has made a name for itself by bucking Hollywood trends. The company’s films are made with shoestring budgets, storylines designed to appeal to an audience’s most basic instincts, and an utter disregard for society’s notions of “decency.” Most crucially though, Troma’s films are very fun, which is far more than we can say for most $150+ million blockbuster efforts slapped together in a Hollywood backlot.

In keeping with this trend of flouting Tinsel Town conventions, Troma has taken to YouTube over the past few months to upload 150 films spanning the company’s surprisingly immense catalogue of movies. Now fans can watch “classic” Troma flicks like Rabid Grannies, and Poultrygeist free of charge, on demand and as often as they’d like. Unfortunately, this collection of free movies doesn’t include many of Troma’s most famous films — there’s no Toxic Avenger, no Class of Nuke ‘Em High and, most depressingly, no Surf Nazis Must Die – but that’s understandable, at least from a fiscal standpoint, as these films are the ones most likely to generate huge bags of cash at some point in the future and releasing them totally gratis would be detrimental to Troma’s ability to generate profits from these properties.

However, as if to make up for this noticeable lack of the studio’s most popular films, YouTube’s Troma Entertainment channel also includes a number of older films the studio has been distributing. Films like White Zombie (a 1932 movie starring horror icon Bela Lugosi that is widely regarded as the first entry in the “zombie movie” subgenre) and the endearingly terrible Shark, a Jaws clone that inexplicably features Burt Reynolds, back when the man could still draw swoons from female fans with the slightest hint of his hypnotically bushy chest hair.

Now we’re not saying that this is the greatest collection of cinematic masterpieces in history — far from it; these movies are objectively terrible — but we are urging anyone who has never been exposed to a Troma film before to take advantage of the firm’s generosity as soon as possible. Despite their flaws, Troma’s movies all have a deliriously entertaining sense of mayhem, and if you have the desire (and intestinal fortitude) to discover something wholly unlike the mainstream pabulum Hollywood has been regurgitating en masse for the past century, then now will likely be your best opportunity. 

That said, we should probably drop a “Not Safe For Work” disclaimer here to prevent any of you from firing up one of these flicks in front of your boss. The people who work at Troma could probably get away with it, and we have to imagine that these movies wouldn’t really faze those who work in slaughterhouses, but if you’re a typical cubicle worker who spends your days grinding away on depressingly meaningless paperwork your boss probably won’t be too keen to join an impromptu screening of Zombie Werewolves Attack!

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com

One Lego game to rule them all; Hands-on with Lego The Lord of the Rings: The Video Game

WBIE and Traveller’s Tales returns with its next Lego offering, a Lego-ized look at the Lord of the Rings movies.

If you are familiar with any of the Lego games from Traveller’s Tales, then you probably have a good idea of what to expect from The Lord of the Rings: The Video Game. The game is based on the three Peter Jackson movies rather than Tolkien’s books, and it translates a property that is well known, instantly recognizable, and adored by millions. The Lego formula is simple and tested: take beloved properties and translate them into a Lego world, then add humor, and this game is no different.

But of all the properties that the TT games Lego-ized, none feature material quite as violent as that of The Lord of the Rings. Sure, The Lord of the Rings isn’t exactly horrific when it comes to the brutality and gore, but compared to other Lego adapted properties like Batman and Star Wars, Lord of the Rings is positively bloody. It is also a fantastic story, filled with colorful moments that are ripe for a Lego treatment.

The game combines all three movies into one package and translates them using the traditional Lego style. You move around familiar locations in teams that allow you to either jump between characters with the touch of a button, or play co-op with a friend. Destroying enemies and objects releases bolts, the currency in the Lego-verse, and you will also stumble across the odd structure that you can put together to in order to complete an objective or progress. In terms of gameplay it is the same style that you are familiar with if you know the Lego brand. If not, it is a straightforward action game with a hack-n-slash slant that gamers of all age will appreciate.

In the demo the TT Games is currently showing off, the Battle of Helm’s Deep was recreated. In the film The Two Towers, this was an intense battle that saw a lot of death and destruction. In the the game, at one point a Lego-tized Peter Jackson, who is acting as a defender just as he did in the film during a cameo, looks for things to throw and decides that his Oscar would make a decent weapon. At another moment, a Lego uruk-hai begins a slow-mo run towards the explosives-filled gap at the base of the wall, and it will probably have you laughing out loud.

The game also features voice work that could change for the final release, but it appears that TT Games will continue with actual voice actors, something that was just introduced in the recent Lego Batman 2: DC Super Heroes. Regardless, the demo seemed to stick close to the script. The actions, however, were out right funny. Lego Aragorn and Lego King Theoden riding out into an unsuspecting horde of Uruk-hai was priceless.  

The game will appeal to fans, but the only downside is that it retains the same style that has been used for Lego games for years now. It is simple and easy, which makes it accessible, but it also feels a bit stale and in need of an upgrade sooner or later. 

The inclusion of 60 or so characters, all with multiple weapons, should have both fans of the Lego games and fans of The Lord of the Rings paying attention when this game is released in October for Nintendo DS, 3DS, PC, PS3, PS Vita, Wii, Xbox 360, and possibly even Atari and ColecoVision just to complete the set.

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com

Resident Evil 6 director Eiichiro Sasaki talks terror, tension and tie-ins

As the driving force behind Resident Evil 6, Eiichiro Sasaki has had a hand in everything from the unusually rigorous, Alien-inspired game scripting to how it relates to the franchise movies.

The director behind Capcom’s epic new Resident Evil 6 game was at Gamescom 2012 to discuss the huge sequel. The game offers players four unique interactive stories, three of which will allow cooperative gameplay. With a new Resident Evil: Retribution movie opening just before Capcom releases the game, and a straight-to-home video computer-generated sequel, Resident Evil: Damnation, coming out as well, this fall will be dominated by all variations of Capcom’s zombie franchise. Resident Evil 6 director Eiichiro Sasaki talks about the virtual and linear sequels in this exclusive interview.

What were some of the cinematic influences for Resident Evil 6?

There were a lot of cinematic influences in Resident Evil 6, but the most specific one I can point to is for Chris’ campaign. The real influence for that comes from the movie Aliens. If you think about that movie, you have this group of people who trained really hard and they start from a position of confidence and security, but as they get more and more involved in the situation it gets worse and worse and members of their team get picked off one by one. Well, the same thing happens to Chris. And as the situation progresses for him, things get worse and worse, until in the end it’s just him and Piers that are left to fight the menace that faces them. I think this type of experience, this kind of terror that you feel from seeing teammates fall one by one, is something that you can only feel from playing Chris’ campaign.

What are the challenges of developing four unique storylines within the overarching Resident Evil 6?

The biggest challenge for us is trying to make them all feel unique. We want to make sure that they all felt like a different campaign when you’re playing them. We have Leon’s campaign, which has more of that classic Resident Evil gothic horror feel; Chris’ campaign, which I already spoke of; Jake’s campaign, where you’re going to feel this tension because you’re always being chased by this creature that won’t stop stalking you; and the fourth campaign is Ada’s campaign, which you can play after you complete the other three campaigns. Hers is a little different because it’s a single-player experience that is more reminiscent of the original Resident Evil games. Because she’s a spy, you’re going to have to use some stealth moves to get in and infiltrate certain areas. She’s a woman of mystery and there’s just a different atmosphere that surrounds her campaign compared to what is in the other three.

Have there been any influences on you from what they’ve done with the Resident Evil movies that have impacted Resident Evil 6?

They’re great movies and Paul Anderson has done a great job as director of those films. It really shows that he’s a big fan of the series. I think more than us taking cues from him, he’s done a lot to actually incorporate a lot of elements from the games themselves into the movies. He’s taking more from us than vice versa.

Have you been able to go to any of his sets for the films and if so what’s that been like?

I really want to go so badly, but unfortunately I just have not been able to get there. But the executive producer of RE6, Hiroyuki Kobayashi, has been able to attend and he has been impressed with what they’re doing.

What’s it like having your Resident Evil characters like Ada Wong and Chris Redfield starring in Resident Evil: Retribution?

It speaks to the power of the franchise that what we’ve created in the games that they can be exploited in so many different ways. We’re trying to tell our own unique stories with Resident Evil 6 and Hollywood is trying to tell its own Resident Evil stories. I mean Resident Evil can be done in books, movies, games, whatever. It really is a multi-purpose franchise. It’s interesting to see how they overlap in many ways, but I would prefer that each medium does something unique to that medium. I want the Hollywood movies to take where they think Resident Evil should go in their direction. And I want the games to do with Resident Evil what they do best and make sure that they’re offering the best gaming Resident Evil experience out there. It’s really great that you can see Resident Evil take shape in so many forms.

With so many characters to deal with in Resident Evil 6, what role did the voice actors play in bringing these characters to life?

They really brought the characters to life. One of the ways we were able to do this was through full performance capture. This wasn’t the case for all of the actors, but many of the motion-capture actors and the voice actors were the same person, so they really brought the character to life. They really became that character during the course of the creation of the game. Another thing we did differently is that usually with games you write a script and pass it to the actors and they read it and perform it. It’s normally a very quick process. But we wanted the actors to be more involved, so from the very beginning when we selected the actors for this project we had meetings with them. The game’s scriptwriter and I sat down with the actors and really tried to come up with a direction for these characters to take. We tried to really create realistic, three-dimensional characters. I really think that’s the way we want to do it in the future to get the most out of these performances. Voice acting is a critical part of the game’s production and you can’t just treat it as an afterthought.

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com

Fox is not trading its film rights back to Marvel Studios

Twentieth Century Fox and Marvel Studios are currently negotiating a deal that could drastically alter the future of comic book movies.

When Marvel Comics opened a film wing (appropriately dubbed “Marvel Studios”) in an effort to grab a slice of the huge profits being made in the then-nascent comic book movie genre it was faced with a few issues. Sure the company has a massive catalogue of characters and stories to draw from to make its films, but the film rights to a number of its most popular heroes had already been sold to other production companies, long before superheroes proved to be box office gold. Twentieth Century Fox in particular had bought up a number of Marvel properties, including the X-Men, Daredevil, the Fantastic Four and a large number of secondary characters important to each franchise.

Now that Marvel Studios has established itself as a major Hollywood player, ready and willing to create huge blockbusters — need we again mention that The Avengers has pulled down almost $1.5 billion at the box office? — it wants those film rights back, if only to have the freedom to use the characters created by Marvel Comics as it sees fit.

This morning word broke that Fox had agreed to give Marvel the rights to Fantastic Four villain Galactus — you’ll remember him as the inexplicable giant purple cloud in Fantastic Four: Rise Of The Silver Surfer, or as an apocalyptic villain who eats planets in every other incarnation — as well as the Silver Surfer (pictured above), as part of a deal that would grant Fox the film rights to the Daredevil character for the foreseeable future. Fox has seemingly been planning to reboot its Daredevil film franchise in the wake of the disappointing (yet excellent in its “Director’s Cut” incarnation) 2003 Ben Affleck-starring Daredevil, but those plans have been put on the back burner ever since director David Slade stepped away from the hypothetical project. Joe Carnahan has since expressed interest in creating a Daredevil reboot at Fox, but Deadline believes that Fox’s confidence in Daredevil isn’t as high as it used to be, and that though the studio might agree to co-finance a Daredevil movie with Marvel Studios, it’s unlikely that Fox would mount the production by itself.

More crucially though, Deadline claims that its sources have strongly denied that Marvel and Fox are even having this discussion. Yes Fox is staring down a short timeline in which it must push a Daredevil film into production or forfeit the rights to the character back to Marvel, but as of yet, Deadline states, the two firms have yet to seriously discuss the possibility of swapping any of their respective film rights.

Unfortunately, the real losers in this situation are the fans. One of the cornerstones of Marvel’s popularity has always been that its characters live in a single, unified reality and that any one of them might bump into any other at any given moment. The Avengers was a great flick, but imagine how cool it would have been to see Spider-Man throwing punches alongside Captain America during the climactic fight. While we can’t really fault Marvel for selling off the film rights to its characters — these deals were all made back in the 1990s when Marvel was in very dire financial straits — it’s sad that the newly-minted Marvel Studios is unable to create a movie universe to truly rival its comic book universe simply because the publishing wing of the company needed cash during the Clinton administration.

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com