It's a Brave New World – Blog by Scott Arundale & Tashi Trieu

Eastman Kodak Co. is preparing to seek bankruptcy protection in the coming weeks, people familiar with the matter said, a move that would cap a stunning comedown for a company that once ranked among America’s corporate titans.

The 131-year-old company is still making last-ditch efforts to sell off some of its patent portfolio and could avoid Chapter 11 if it succeeds, one of the people said. But the company has started making preparations for a filing in case those efforts fail, including talking to banks about some $1 billion in financing to keep it afloat during bankruptcy proceedings, the people said.

A Kodak spokesman said the company “does not comment on market rumor or speculation.”

A filing could come as soon as this month or early February, one of the people familiar with the matter said. Kodak would continue to pay its bills and operate normally while under bankruptcy protection, the people said. But the company’s focus would then be the sale of some 1,100 patents through a court-supervised auction, the people said.

That Kodak is even contemplating a bankruptcy filing represents a final reversal of fortune for a company that once dominated its industry, drawing engineering talent from around the country to its Rochester, N.Y., headquarters and plowing money into research that produced thousands of breakthroughs in imaging and other technologies.

The company, for instance, invented the digital camera—in 1975—but never managed to capitalize on the new technology.

Casting about for alternatives to its lucrative but shrinking film business, Kodak toyed with chemicals, bathroom cleaners and medical-testing devices in the 1980s and 1990s, before deciding to focus on consumer and commercial printers in the past half-decade under Chief Executive Antonio Perez.

None of the new pursuits generated the cash needed to fund the change in course and cover the company’s big obligations to its retirees. A Chapter 11 filing could help Kodak shed some of those obligations, but the viability of the company’s printer strategy has yet to be demonstrated, raising questions about the fate of the company’s 19,000 employees.

Such uncertainty was once unthinkable at Kodak, whose near-monopoly on film produced high margins that the company shared with its workers. On “wage dividend days,” a tradition started by Kodak founder George Eastman, the company would pay out bonuses to all workers based on its results, and employees would use the checks to buy cars and celebrate at fancy restaurants.

George Eastman and Thomas Edison ca 1920

Former employees say the company was the Apple Inc. or Google Inc. of its time. Robert Shanebrook, 64 years old, who started at the company in 1967 and was most recently world-wide product manager for professional photographic film, recalls young talent traipsing through Kodak’s sprawling corporate campus. At lunch, they would crowd the auditorium to watch a daily movie at an on-site theater. Other employees would play basketball on the company courts.

“We had this self-imposed opinion of ourselves that we could do anything, that we were undefeatable,” Mr. Shanebrook said.

Kodak’s troubles date back to the 1980s, when the company struggled with foreign competitors that stole its market share in film. The company later had to cope with the rise of digital photography and smartphones.

It wasn’t until 10 years ago that the mood began to sour, said Mr. Shanebrook. By 2003, Kodak announced it would stop making investments in film. “I didn’t want to stick around for the demise,” he said.

The company and its board have weighed a potential bankruptcy filing for months. Advisers told Kodak a filing would make its patent sale easier and likely allow the company to command a higher price, people familiar with the matter have said. The obligation to cover pension and health-care costs for retirees could also be purged through bankruptcy proceedings, the people said.

Those obligations—which run to hundreds of millions of dollars a year—as well as the unprofitable state of Kodak’s new businesses, have made the company undesirable as a takeover target, people familiar with the matter said.

During a two-day meeting of the company’s board, management and advisers in mid-December, executives were briefed on how Kodak would fund itself during bankruptcy proceedings should efforts to sell its patents fall short, a person familiar with the matter said.

Kodak is in discussions with large banks including J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., Citigroup Inc. and Wells Fargo & Co. for so-called debtor-in-possession financing to keep the company operating in bankruptcy court, people familiar with the matter said.

Kodak has also held discussions with bondholders and a group led by investment firm Cerberus Capital Management LP about a bankruptcy financing package, the people said.

Should it seek bankruptcy protection, Kodak would follow other well-known companies that have failed to adapt to rapidly changing business models. They included Polaroid Corp., which filed for bankruptcy protection a second time in December 2008; Borders Group Inc., which liquidated itself last year; and Blockbuster Inc., which filed for bankruptcy protection in 2010 and was later bought by Dish Network Corp. A bankruptcy filing would kick off what is expected to be a busier year in restructuring circles, as economic growth continues to drag and fears about European sovereign debt woes threaten to make credit markets less inviting for companies that need to refinance their debts.

Mr. Perez decided to base the company’s future on consumer and commercial inkjet printing. But the saturated market has proved tough to penetrate, and Kodak is paying heavily to subsidize sales as it builds a base of users for its ink.

The company remains a bit player in a printer market dominated by giants like H-P. Kodak ranks fifth world-wide, according to technology data firm IDC, with a market share of 2.6% in the first nine months of 2011.

As the company works on a restructuring plan, a key issue for creditors is whether the printer operations are worth supporting, or whether the bulk of the company’s value is in its patents.

Nortel Networks Corp., a company that also had fallen behind the technology curve, opted to liquidate itself in bankruptcy court rather than reorganize, raising a greater than expected $4.5 billion for its patent trove.

Kodak’s founder, Mr. Eastman, took his life at the age of 77 in what is now a museum celebrating the founder and Kodak’s impact on photography. His suicide note read: “To my friends, my work is done. Why wait?”

Read more:

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Video game sales failed to live up to high hopes in December, with total industry sales falling 21 percent to $3.99 billion from $5.07 billion a year ago.

For the year, game sales were $17.02 billion, down 8 percent from $18.59 billion a year ago, according to market researcher NPD Group.

The poor performance of video game sales in physical retail stores masks what’s really happening.

Gamers are shifting their purchases to online, social and mobile forms of gaming — dubbed digital gaming — while the retail side is shrinking fast.

The growth in digital isn’t quite big enough to offset the shrinking retail numbers.

In December, hardware sales were down 28 percent while software was down 14 percent.

Full told, the estimated total consumer spending on games includes physical video and retail games, used games, game rentals, subscriptions, full-game digital downloads, social network games, downloadable content, and mobile games. Not counting hardware, this had estimated sales of $16.3 to $16.6 billion in 2011, down about 2 percent or so from a year ago.

Hardware sales were down 11 percent for the year, as were accessories. Software was down 6 percent. New physical retail sales of portable, console and PC games were $9.3 billion in 2011, down 8 percent from $10.1 billion in 2010. Sales grew for used games, full-game digital downloads, downloadable content, and mobile gaming apps.

“Overall industry results are not entirely surprising given that we are on the back end of the current console lifecycle, combined with the continued digital evolution of gaming,” said Anita Frazier, analyst at the NPD Group. “Core gamers continue to be engaged and spend on established franchises across both the digital and physical format using multiple devices for different gaming occasions.”

Shed added, “Our overall estimate of the market continues to point toward the increased imperative for deeper visibility into digital distribution than is available today, not only in the U.S. but globally.”

NPD is working with research company EEDAR to try to come up with more accurate numbers for global digital and physical game sales worldwide.

For the full year, Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 was the best-selling game, and it took the top honors in December. Just Dance 3 from Ubisoft was No. 2, followed by Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim from Bethesda Softworks, Battlefield 3 from Electronic Arts, and Madden NFL2012.

During the year, Microsoft said it sold 1.7 million Xbox 360 consoles in December and it was the top console seller in 2011. Microsoft also said it outside the second-place player by more than 2.7 million units. It captured about 49 percent of consumer retail spending at $6.7 billion in sales for 2011. Of that, $2.1 billion was spent on accessories such as Microsoft’s Kinect motion-sensing system.

Microsoft said it has sold 66 million Xbox 360s, has 40 million Xbox Live members, and has sold more than 18 million Kinect sensors. Microsoft said it ended the year with 40 percent share of the console hardware market.

Sony said it sold 6.5 million PlayStation 3 consoles in the holiday season.

source: http://dailybitenews.com/?p=7011

Chris Foresman reports from arstechnica.com:

Following the controversial launch of Apple’s completely revamped video editing software, Final Cut Pro X, Avid Media has announced (hat tip to MacRumors) that award-winning TV production company Bunim/Murray is dropping Final Cut Pro in favor of a complete Avid makeover. Going forward, the company will use Avid Media Composer and Avid Symphony for editing along with an Avid ISIS 5000 networked storage system to replace its current Final Cut Pro workflow.

“Due to the large volume of media generated by our reality shows, we needed to re-evaluate our editing and storage solutions. At the same time, we were looking for a partner who would understand our long-term needs,” Bunim/Murray’s SVP of post production Mark Raudonis said in a statement.

The message between the lines is that Apple’s latest offerings simply won’t (ahem) cut it anymore. Earlier this year, Apple completely re-architected Final Cut Pro X from the ground up with a new, modern media handling framework as well as 64-bit support. In doing so, however, it dropped many features that editing pros had come to rely on in their workflows. Apple also dropped its Final Cut Server product after phasing out its Xserveand Xserve RAID storage products over the past few years.

The decision has left many working pros wondering if Apple cares much about the professional market anymore. And, while the company has promised to improve Final Cut Pro X over time, those promises apparently weren’t enough for Bunim/Murray and others who have since migrated to competing solutions from Avid and Adobe. Let’s just say we don’t expect this to be the last we hear about major production companies making the switch.

THE HOBBIT, Production Video #4

Broadcast equipment manufacturer Grass Valley has introduced a new 3D toolset for its Edius multiformat nonlinear editing software.

“We see 3D production and post projects increasing around the world,” said Charlie Dunn, executive vp products at Grass Valley. “Now anyone working on an Edius system can instantly add 3D post capability to their arsenal of production tools and generate new revenue by expanding their client base.”

In September, James Cameron and Vince Pace’s Cameron | Pace Group and Grass Valley entered into a strategic alliance aimed at expanding the use of 3D in the broadcast industry through technology development.

As part of the alliance, CPG is currently reviewing the Edius 3D toolset with an eye toward incorporating it into a live 3D workflow, according to the manufacturer.

In December, a 30-day preview of the 3D version of Edius will be available online for testing purposes.

source: hollywoodreporter.com

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Video killed the radio star, now technology is killing editing and videographer jobs, at least at CNN.

by Nellie Andreeva Deadline.com

The cable news network today laid off 50 people in the Atlanta, New York, Washington D.C., Los Angeles and Miami offices. The bulk of the cuts are among editors, photojournalists and librarians, and CNN SVP Jack Womack explained them with the ability for virtually anyone to edit and publish video on their computers or search for background information online and with the influx of viewer-generated video. “Technology investments in our newsrooms now allow more desk-top editing and publishing for broadcast and online,” he wrote in an internal email. “This evolution allows more people in more places to edit and publish than ever before. As a result of these technology and workflow changes, CNN is reducing the number of media editors in our work force in Atlanta… We looked at the impact of user-generated content and social media, CNN iReporters and of course our affiliate contributions in breaking news. Consumer and pro-sumer technologies are simpler and more accessible. Small cameras are now high broadcast quality. More of this technology is inthe hands of more people. After completing this analysis, CNN determined that some photojournalists will be departing the company.”

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – This was supposed to be a weekend when ground zero for Southern California movie lovers was Hollywood, site of the AFI Fest.

But Martin Scorsese exerts a gravitational pull all his own. So on Saturday afternoon, the action shifted to downtown Los Angeles for a couple of hours, where the Regal multiplex drew nearly 1,000 fans and industryites eager for a look at Scorsese’s 3D adventure “Hugo,” which had previously screened only in a work-in-progress version at the New York Film Festival.

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Throw in a post-screening Q&A with Scorsese, editor Thelma Schoonmaker, production designer Dante Ferretti, cinematographer Robert Richardson, composer Howard Shore and visual effects supervisor Robert Legato, moderated by director Paul Thomas Anderson, and you had a three-hour slice of movie nirvana (plus 39 Oscar nominations and a dozen wins on one stage).

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And in a way, movie nirvana is what “Hugo” aims to be. An adaptation of “The Invention of Hugo Cabret,” a children’s book by Brian Selznick, in Scorsese’s hands it is less a children’s story than a knowing and glorious tribute to early cinema from a master moviemaker who also happens to be a master movie-lover.

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The film will be an odd duck to market: It’s partly an adventure tale about a kid who lives in a huge Paris train station, and partly a (fictionalized) story about the silent film pioneer Georges Melies (played by a marvelous Ben Kingsley).

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Not a kids’ movie, not an art film, not a typical Scorsese effort and not necessarily an Academy movie (more on that in a minute), “Hugo” is instead a big shiny ball of imagination, invention and cinematic wonder.

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And a few hours after the downtown screening, a big room full of folks who presumably love the movies gave “Hugo” their own stamp of approval. The film had its official Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences screening on Saturday night — and according to a couple of members in attendance, the response was extremely positive, with sustained applause and a strong buzz in the room afterward.

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(Attendance, though, was not as high as it had been for some other recent Academy screenings, including “The Help” and “Moneyball.”)

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Back at the downtown screening earlier in the day, Scorsese was introduced by Anderson as “the heavyweight champ.” The director used some of the 40-minute Q&A to detail the intricacies of filming in 3D, which he said was “arduous but most of the time a good deal of fun.”

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Shooting in 3D slowed down his usual workflow, Scorsese said, though he and Schoonmaker ended up editing the film switching between 3D and 2D monitors,. He dismissed worries about the move toward 3D, and said that the technology is “just another element to tell a story.” And, he added, it’ll likely be followed by more and newer elements.

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“We’re all headed, if everything moves along and there’s no major catastrophes, we’re basically headed toward holograms,” Scorsese said. “Why can’t you have (a) 3D (movie where) Hamlet comes out into the middle of the audience and does ‘to be or not to be?’ They do in the theater. Why can’t you have it in a movie theater, or at home?”

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In the meantime, he said, he’s simply using the tools that are now available to deliver what moviegoers always wanted to see. ”The first time images started to move, immediately people wanted color, sound, big screen and depth,” he said. “And that’s just what we’re doing now.”

In survey, 16% of school tech directors expect to have 1 tablet per student within 5 years

Whether counting heads at the Apple Store or buttonholing cell phone users at the Mall of America, Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster is the master of the small survey that may or may not be significant.

His latest: A survey of 25 educational technology directors at a conference on integrating technology in the classroom. “While our sample is small,” he writes in a note to clients issued Monday, “so is the population of IT decision makers in the education field in the US.”

And what did he discover? Among his findings:

• 100% were testing or deploying iPads in their schools. 0% were testing or deploying Android tablets
• Their schools currently have an average of one computer for every 10 students
• Nearly half (12) expect to eventually deploy one computer per child; two of their schools already do
• More than a third (9) expect to deploy one tablet per child; one of them already does

Given the huge problems facing America’s schools, it’s a slender thread on which to base a vision of broad educational reform. (Munster quotes outgoing Apple retail chief Ron Johnson, who has suggested that the current crop of students might be “the last generation with backpacks.”)

But Munster is probably correct that the overwhelming preference for iPads over tablets running Google’s (GOOG) Android reflects the power of Apple’s (AAPL) first mover advantage. He writes:

“We also see a trend in education (which is mirrored in the enterprise) that familiarity with Apple devices among students (or employees) is causing a demand pull within institutions to also provide Apple devices.”

SOURCE:  http://tech.fortune.cnn.com