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FOX

Disney Acquire 20th Century FOX

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In the world’s worst kept secret. Disney’s crush on 20th Century FOX has had a fruitful ending. A mega-merger.

The deal amounts to $66B (the second largest merger this year, only to Broadcom-Qualcom at $130B) and includes, Movie Studios, Networks Nat Geo and FX, plus a 60% stake in Hulu. Rumour over here in the UK is that they want FOX’s to be allowed to acquire Sky. So, they too, will own Sky.

While it’s interesting to dream of X-Men in the Avengers movies.

Something may not be so apparent in the buying of FOX’s. Sure they now own a HUGE chunk of the movie business. But what are Disney jealous off……

Netflix

As a result of purchasing FOX and a controlling stake (?) in Hulu, (60% is ALOT) this is Disney’s throw of the dice in the streaming world. Hence, why Disney had such a strong love interest in Hulu.

Whether Disney will fold Hulu (if they can) and build up a brand new streaming service of their own. Consequently with exclusive Disney/FOX’s content. Is anyone’s guess. But will there be pull of Marvel content from Netflix? How badly will this hurt Netflix?

Only time will tell. But this is HUGE for the consumer.

 

 

 

Star Wars Drones By Propel

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Disney Laughing Detection

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Disney want to know how you enjoy their films, at IEEE’s Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, Disney Research and Caltech highlighted the way they track facial expressions of people watching films.

The tech is so advanced they claim that they can predict the face’s future expressions through the remainder of a film, its called “factorised variational autoencoders” (FVAEs)

To make this possible, researchers used infared cameras to the audiences of 150 showings of 9 films, including a lot of Disney movies! Like Zootopia, Big Hero 6 and the recent Star Wars films.

After compiling this huge amount of data, they went back and tested it on some more moviegoers, after an initial set up period the FVAEs were able to predict when an audience member (remember these are brand new fresh audiences) was about to laugh or smile as tied to significant moments in each of the films. They hope to predict other emotive moments in films such as fear and sadness. How this data will be used is unclear, but it could help them better understand audience reactions than human based market research.

 

Apple buying Disney?!

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According to a story circulating the internet, Apple is weighing the option of buying Disney. For $200 billion.

“Recently, investors have increased their expectations that Apple could seriously consider acquiring Disney,” the report says.

Making it clear that Apple are open to “acquisitions of any size”

Disney, one of the few companies in the world that is as instantly recognizable and popular as Apple, makes for a compelling potential partner.

It would require federal help though:

Apple would need U.S. regulators to give it a “tax holiday” to repatriate offshore cash to fund an acquisition of Disney. Assuming Apple could obtain a 9% tax rate, it would effectively have access to cash of $223 billion.

Interesting.

To listen to the guys chatting about this please click here!

 

Episode 212 Avegant Glyph

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Disney Magic Kingdoms – Available NOW!

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The newest way to keep your nieces’, nephews’ and offspring quiet, Disney Magic Kingdoms, from Gameloft is out NOW. The game, for smartphones and tablets, allows players to build their very own Disney Parks, excluding the painful waiting in queue’s all day.

Available for iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Android and Windows Phone. Players will live the thrill of their favorite Disney Park by embarking on a new adventure with Mickey Mouse and all his friends, as they endeavor on a mighty quest to restore the kingdom’s magic from evil powers.

Just don’t complain when you inevitably want a go and get caught playing the “kids toy” by the Mrs’ – “I was just helping” doesn’t count anymore.

IOS download: Here

Android download: Here