Disney to create Content for SnapChat

More about the ecosystem for PicoP success.

Portable - Short - Good content -- supported by advertising.

That's perfect. (And it's not dependent on any particular platform.)

With this, and carrier specific video content (free to the users of the particular carrier.) the ecosystem is primed and very ready to use PicoP when it's available.


Reuters -- more at source.

The Walt Disney Company’s U.S. television arm will create shows for Snap Inc’s Snapchat, Disney announced on Wednesday, in Snapchat's latest deal with a major U.S. media company.

Financial terms were not disclosed.

Snap, which is preparing for next year's initial public offering, has signed a variety of advertising and content agreements this year with Viacom, Comcast’s NBCUniversal and Time Warner Inc’s Turner Broadcasting System Inc.

Media companies such as Disney partner with Snapchat in an effort to reach the type of younger viewers the social media company targets, which increasingly eschew traditional television. The two had previously worked together for a special Live Stories, a Snapchat feature that curates user-submitted photos and videos tied to a specific event, around ABC’s broadcast of the Academy Awards in February.

Unlike in Snapchat's other deals with media companies, where any ad sales responsibilities would be shared across both companies, Disney will control and sell all advertising for the shows it produces for Snapchat.

Project Field

This is an interesting kind of use for AR, that would be (As Disney illustrated) very compatible with PicoProjection. 

They are apparently connecting this with Forward Works -- which is their mobile gaming platform.

Rethink Research

Engadget

The company is showing off dedicated smart pads that pair with a phone or tablet to bring card games to life. Imagine a game like Hearthstone, for instance, but with physical cards that you buy in store. Or the physical and digital versions of Pokémon Trading Card Game fused together.

When a user places a card on one of the pads, it's identified using an NFC-like wireless technology. The pad then sends the card's exact position to the phone or tablet using Bluetooth. Once the card is in the game, the pad is able to detect movement -- if you slide a card to another position, for example. The cards will be both readable and writable, meaning in-game status changes can be saved. Depending on the game, players will also be able to "grow" a character, with stats stored on the card.


Disney's Augmented Reality -- interacting with Cards

TinyMe

A taste of what Disney will deliver.... I'd be interested to know if anyone has patented this particular process or if it's just out there. There have been an number of companies who have delivered similar products.... I suspect this particular kind of AR goes mainstream sooner rather than later.



TinyMe PR

More progress in Projection Mapping

This is very interesting.

Taken in isolation, it might not mean much, but if you look back to Microvision and their work with Disney, it seems to connect in a very interesting way.





In the Disney Hideout video below they talk about marking the surfaces that are projected onto, and how it can affect the projection. This is very much a Microvision project. You can see that the projector they use in the ShowWx.

First appeared here in a Project Hideout video from 2013



Good Find Fuzzie

Buzz about Netflix as an acquisition target

Watching the subscription-based models for video delivery is a place to watch for PicoP -- especially anything that is enhanced for mobile. 

There are a lot of advertising dollars out there that can be enhanced by larger format video.

A lot of subscriptions can be sold to people who have mobile large-format video.

Microvision will provide a significantly disruptive force for television.



Tim Cook has repeatedly stated that television is an “area of intense interest” for AAPL, and is ripe for disruption. Press reports have indicated that Apple has held discussions with cable companies and content providers, and that the company had planned an over the top television (OTTP) service, but was unable to successfully negotiate licensing agreements. We believe that APPL’s vision is to look to disrupt pay-TV subscriptions5, and while Netflix could be a nice complement/component to that vision, we think that Apple might prefer to spend the money to license content and rights to offer a more complete service (i.e., including content not well aligned with the on-demand delivery model of an SVoD offer, such as sports and news).


UberGizmo

Disney already owns a 30 percent stake in Netflix rival Hulu as it partnered with Fox, Time Warner, Comcast, and NBC to establish the streaming company. Netflix would be a natural fit in Disney’s portfolio given that the company is now paying due attention to cord cutters.

Apple has long been rumored to be interested in setting a streaming service of its own. Granted its ambitions are said to revolve around live TV streaming, but Netflix already has a robust platform that it can use to further its TV ambitions. The company made $234 billion in revenue in the last fiscal year, it’s not like it can’t buy Netflix if it wanted to.

Apple Buying Netflix would be waste of 50 Billion

Sacconaghi and Kirjner make no reference to any specific rumors on the matter. Instead, they note that “Apple acquiring Netflix is a dream-scenario for many Netflix bulls, and a possibility often raised by investors.”

“There is no question that Apple can do it – its market cap is over 13 times Netflix’s $45 billion EV, and Apple has nearly $150 billion in net cash on its balance sheet,” the authors observe.

“The question is really whether or not Apple will acquire Netflix [...] Overall, we do not see a compelling rationale for Apple to acquire Netflix.”

They start off by musing that Netflix would have the benefit of bringing lots of revenue, and a subscription business, to Apple’s services offerings:

Apple has a business model problem. The key challenge is that Apple’s business principally involves selling hardware — most notably iPhones, iPads, and Macs [...] Perhaps the most intriguing consideration of Apple potentially owning Netflix is that it would add $8B to Apple’s services revenues (or 3-4% to total Apple revenues), and more importantly could be used creatively to help shift Apple’s transactional business model towards a subscription-based model. We believe AAPL could and should look to build a subscription offering of features and services that could be bundled with its hardware offerings, analogous to what Amazon does with Amazon Prime. Netflix (at a discounted price for only iPhone or iPad users who buy Apple hardware as a subscription) could be a key element of an attractive services bundle.

CastAR & Disney Infinity

This has my attention on a couple of fronts. One is CastAR -- any maker of augmented reality glasses is a possibility for Microvision's inclusion. (Nomad beats everything else I saw for field of view -- and any claims I've heard so far.)  

This also has "table top games coming to life" which was where we saw Microvision and Disney cooperating.  Disney (There's more, use the search)



Engadget  (much more at the source)

CastAR, the augmented reality company founded by two former Valve engineers, has set up a new studio in Salt Lake City with the goal of creating fresh mixed-reality experiences. To help fill the new digs, castAR scooped up a handful of developers who worked on the Disney Infinityseries at Avalanche Software until that studio was unceremoniously shut down in May.

***

CastAR, founded by Jeri Ellsworth and Rick Johnson, has been buliding a pair of augmented reality glasses that can be used in everyday and professional life. However, the company hasn't forgotten its gaming roots: One of its main goals is to create tabletop games that come to life with the castAR glasses. That's fairly close to what the folks at Avalanche were doing with Disney Infinity -- but instead of bringing reality to life, they fused it with the television screen.