MUBI - Online cinema

[Number45]

http://blog.eu.playstation.com/2010/05/18/ps3-mubi-you/

Never heard of it, but it sounds great! No mention of price or quality.

http://mubi.com/

EDIT: Crappy quality trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QufTxeWGoVw

[JP]

Looks really interesting to me.

The link takes me through to The Auters site which I'm already a member of. The Auters is a fantastic site for people with a real interest in films and its a part of The Criterion Collection's film streaming service.

All fims aren't available in all regions and I've only ever seen them charging $5:00/?3:00 for them and I've not had any quality issues. You're not getting blu-ray quality but there just isn't the bandwidth availble for that sort of quality at the moment.

They mention that it'll be 300 films at launch on the PS3 so that should keep me going for about a week.

Really looking forward to this as they have some really good quality titles available.

EDIT:
Just signed into my Auters account now and you can view a list of newly signed up members and it seems that quiet a few journalists from the bigger gaming sites have signed up today in a big journalistic lump.

[Number45]

Yeah, apparently they've renamed that service to Mubi. Go figure.

[JP]

There's been some fairly heated discussions about the name change on there.

The Auters was a fine name but it was only a beta site and I think that name does suggest a certain type of social environment and I can imagine it not appealing to everybody. People are complaining that MUBI lowers the tone of the place which I think is crap, if they want it to chane efrom a fairly small localised site to a truly global community of people with interest in the medium then a sharper and easier tag is needed.

I really don't care what it's called, it's been a fantastic site while in testing and and it's the content that appeals to me and they seem to want to expand that rather than change it.

[JP]

I know I've said it before but I really, REALLY can't wait for this!! They may as well cancel E3 this year as there's going to be nothing better than this being announced.

I'd like to get my profile up to date before the autumn though but with a list of thousands of films to rate it's going to take some tim before it knows what to recommend to me.

[Family Fry]

Pricing should be as follows:
?12 a month subscription for unlimited viewing.
?3 per film.
?12 for 5 films.

[Number45]

Someone on GAF was saying that the Euro price is €3, so it sucks if they're asking for £3 as well.

[JP]

According to the owners the prices are currently being negotiated. There's been talk of the service also being subsidised by Sony but nothing has been announced yet.

Some of the team are still in Cannes negotiating contracts so it'll probably take some time before prices are revealed, I'm not sure if we'll hear anything before August/September.

If Sony do introduce premium PSN charges I suppose this is the sort of thing that could be included.

It's not exactly unusual for there to be different prices in different countries with the UK usually having to pay a bit more, it's a shame but I don't really see that changing any time soon. I do think ?3 would be a fair price though.

[randombs]

Good quality trailer here (360/480/720):



Looks brilliant, I can't wait for it. I imagine I'll be starting with the £12 monthly unlimited sub

:edit: Just signed up the the PC MUBI. Looks good, although the films I tried to search for aren't available in the UK yet. Maybe that's a good thing - forcing me to spread the net a bit wider!

:edit2: scrap that, it seems they're all in HD on the PC at least. I'll have to consider upgrading the Virgin as I doubt 1500mb per evening will be enough for one film + other internet. Top 5% of users my arse

[JP]

Wasn't sure whether to post this in the what films have you watched this week thread but this one may be more appropriate.

I just wanted to mention The Garage, it's a part of The Auters/MUBI and something I've been a fan of for the year or so it's been active.

I'm a really big fan of The Screening Rooms as a place to view what are usually new film makers films. It's far better to post a part of the on site description instead of going into detail and to just say visit the place and watch the films as you could stumble onto some brilliant stuff in the 1000 or so that are available on there and hopefully The Screening Rooms will be a part of the PS3 experience too.

Enjoy...

The Garage is most clearly understood as an online film production studio with three key areas of action:

The Screening Rooms, through which the best films can graduate to our world-leading Video On Demand platform, allowing the filmmaker to earn money direct. As with the main body of the site, we focus on finding niche works of cinema: foreign, independent and (in this case particularly) new ventures in experimental filmmaking- emphasizing work that will otherwise struggle to receive distribution, promotion or exposure.

The Production Notebook: a program of video interviews, podcasts, articles and seminars featuring world class industry professionals, vanguard experimentalists and contemporary theorists, educators and critics, including live broadcast and behind the scenes video notebooks (covering ongoing productions as they happen). Within this we have begun work on something called the Cinema 21 project. Designed to ask questions of the most influential filmmakers to have emerged or contributed to the development of film culture in the past two decades, Cinema 21 is an online version of Room 666 or To Each His Own Cinema. Those on our platform are in good company, to say the least.

Groups. Many Garage projects are dependent upon a spirit of collaboration and cooperation between different skillsets and disciplines. To aid in this, Garage encourages filmmakers and creatives interested in engaging with film and video art to cluster together and form mini-collectives, sharing ideas and discussions, and improving upon the work they submit. Garage producers further aid and facilitate these groups by advising on ways in which they can organise their content, frame their ideas and help with the transfer of necessary files and data across the web where possible.

[JP]

May as well post this here, LoveFILM is on the way to PS3, Wii and other hardware.

Both are near term roadmapsfor Lovefilm. In addition to Wii and PS3 on the near term roadmap for Widevine to enable for Lovefilm are iPad, Mac, PC, Andriod, Humax STB and SharpTV.

It seems that LoveFILM is currently available in UK, Denmark, Germany, Sweden and Norway so I suppose they'll be the countries to start off with it.

I've not used them before but it looks like they have some decent films available and they apparently have a current catalogue of around 67,000 although I can'y imagine they'll have the whole catalogue available to stream.

[JP]

An interview with Efe shedding a few more details.


Whenever I see anything new about the service it makes me want to get my profile up to date by selecting films that I like. Then I go to the site and remember they have a list of over 15,000 films which really puts me off and I really don't fancy working through nearly 800 pages of films.

Forgot to say before, thanks for the invitation teddymeow.

[JP]

New trailer from today.

[Number45]

http://blog.eu.playstation.com/2010/11/01/mubi-is-launching-on-ps3-this-week/

Coming this week.

[JP]

Good news, really excited about this and ?9:99 per month will easily be worth it for me.

Efe (MUBI founder) was saying last week that he was in Australia this week with Sony a they're having a launch party this week and they're announcing new studios that have signed up.

He's already confirmed Hopscotch Films & Madman Films with others on the way.

I don't know if it's still available but Madman Films have quite a few things free all the time, I watched the first episode of Samurai Girls last week and it's definitely worth watching.