radar multimedia

HD DVD is Dead

So HD DVD is officially dead. Toshiba announced today that they would discontinue developing, manufacturing and marketing HD DVD players and recorders. The announcement ends a two-year-long battle with Blu-ray Disc to succeed DVD (even though Blu-ray still has a long way to go since most players are still experiencing incredible-long load times and glitches with the firmware). The move came soon after both Wal-Mart and Netflix announced they would only carry Blu-ray product, and Best Buy announced it would give preference to Blu-ray. Warner Home Video's decision in early January to only support Blu-ray left HD DVD with Paramount Home Entertainment and Universal Studios Home Entertainment as the only major studios supporting the format. Hardware sales data the week after Warner's announcement showed 93% of high-def players sold were Blu-ray, according to The NPD Group, and Nielsen VideoScan data has consistently shown Blu-ray software outselling HD DVD 3:1 or more. Toshiba significantly lowered its player prices during the holiday season, and Microsoft dropped the price of its Xbox 360 HD DVD add-on by $50 earlier this month. Toshiba also bought a 30-second Super Bowl ad for a reported $2.7 million, but apparently was not effective in boosting sales or digging into Blu-ray's lead.

What do you think? Will you miss HD DVD or is it "c'est la vie"?

(thanks to The Hollywood Reporter.com for the complete story)

Radar in Peru

New pictures from our recent trip to Peru have been uploaded to the photo albums on the left. Out of 700 images, these were the best. Enjoy!

top video content websites of 2006

As mentioned in Cynopsis Digital, here are the top sites adults used to view video content online in 2006, from Piper Jaffray. The numbers represent the percentage of respondents who said they viewed video on these sites:

YouTube 43.5%
TV Network Sites 41%
Google Video 26.5%
MSN Video 24.5%
Yahoo! Video 22%
MySpace 16.5%
AOL 13.5%
Other 17.5%

lucifer

RG Entertainment has tapped Radar Creative to create a website, DVD and movie poster for Lucifer, a movie being produced & directed by Ray Griggs of RG Entertainment. Some of Hollywood's top "A List" players collaborated on the movie trailer including cinematographer Russell Carpenter, a well-known film scoring orchestra, Cafe FX and ADI. Griggs plans on shopping the DVD trailer around town in order to raise the necessary financing needed to film the feature length movie. Click here to view the website (a work in progress) or visit www.luciferthemovie.com. Don't forget to sign the guestbook.

visual trends: "zoom-to-reveal" (by matthew warren)

"Zoom-to-reveal" design (or ZTR as I'll refer to it in this blog) is becoming more and more of a trend in the design world.

A few years ago, websites like Mapquest and Google maps introduced us to an old concept: zooming in to reveal more. You might be familiar with the work of Charles Eams and his Orders of Magnitude, but this concept of zooming in to reveal more information as it relates to the Information Age and not the Scientific World, is a newer concept. Let me explain.

With Google Maps, we can choose what information we want to see and on what level. You can choose Earth, continent, country, state, county, city, highway, road, sidewalk, ant... you get the idea. Stay at a higher elevation if you're wanting to know where a person's home is in relationship to the freeway; zoom in closer if you want to see where a person's home is in relationship to the street (ie: end of the cul-de-sac, before the right turn, etc...).

So now companies are using this mentality with designing their sites. Stay at a higher elevation if you're wanting to know where this company is in relationship to the industry (how do they compare with the other guys?); zoom in closer if you want to see where this company is in relationship to its clients (who are they working with?); zoom in even closer if you want to see where this company is in relationship to specific projects it's producing (why are they different/better/smarter?).

The best example of this is Leo Burnett's website: a creative ad agency in Canada. As you'll see (after you've spent three hours of your life playing with their website), they apply this technique to their world quite brilliantly.

Another example I can't cut & paste here is what TBS (a TV network in the U.S.) is doing with their graphics packages. Drew Lucas found this website (browsegoods.com) and sent it to me -- again, a perfect example of how ZTR is being used effectively in the design world.

What do you think? Is this just a fad or a new way of communicating in a visual world?

radar returns safely from uganda

RADAR's Matthew Warren and Drew Lucas returned to Los Angeles on Thursday after a five day trip to Uganda, Africa. Warren and Lucas stayed busy during the short trip filming multiple video clips for Calvary Community Church in Westlake Village, Africa Renewal Ministries, Children's Hunger Fund and Vapor Productions. The team also upgraded the existing video editing system at Gaba Community Church, leaving them with a new laptop complete with Motion, Final Cut Pro and the entire Adobe video suite. Images from the trip can be viewed by clicking here. The RADAR team may return to Uganda next August for a concert event at the Mandela National Stadium just outside Kampala.

radar in uganda

RADAR's Matt Warren and Drew Lucas depart for Uganda today. They'll join up with several people from Children's Hunger Fund and Africa Renewal Ministries in order to upgrade a video editing system that was installed in 2004. New cameras and equipment as well as new software and tools will be made available to the eight person video team. Africa Renewal Ministries (or ARM) produces educational DVD's for faith-based operations throughout Uganda and East Africa. ARM's main focus is food distribution to children and families who need it most. In addition to equipment upgrades and software installation, the RADAR team will be filming several interviews for multiple non-profit organizations.