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Despite the massive influx of 3D films, summer movie attendance has fallen to its lowest level since 1997.

On the other hand, however, 3D, IMAX and standard ticket price hikes have all led to record revenue for the studios and theater chains.

Tickets sold from May through Labor Day are expected to drop 2.6 percent to 552 million, almost as low as 1997's 540.3 million tickets sold.

"The movies just didn’t excite people the way they needed to," says Paul Dergarabedian, president of Hollywood.com Box-Office. "When you raise prices and perceive that quality goes down, you have a major problem."

Revenue will set a record at $4.35 billion, a 2.4 percent jump from last year. The average ticket price will increase 5.1 percent from $7.50 to $7.88, thanks mainly to 3D and IMAX showings which cost $3 more, on average.

The BBC launched the iPlayer to much fanfare in 2007, and the service has been largely successful on the PC, smartphones and even game consoles.

However, the iPlayer was only available in the UK. That may be changing soon, says BBC Director-General Mark Thompson.

Speaking during the Edinburgh International Television Festival, Thompson says an international rollout is planned within the year.

Different than the UK version, the international variant will be "a commercial venture," although it is unclear whether the service will cost money to the end-user or be supported by ads.

There is always the chance that the business model will be something we have not yet seen for a streaming video service.

We will keep you updated.

US video rental giant Blockbuster just announced the Onkyo BD-SP808 Blu-ray player, set to ship to retailers in September, features a client for their online video service, Blockbuster On Demand.

Blockbuster On Demand is already supported on a handful of players from Phillips, Samsung & Toshiba, as well as a range of other devices including TiVo DVRs and the Archos 605 portable media player. There is also a client for Windows.

Unlike the Netflix Watch Instantly service, which offers unlimited viewing of mostly catalog titles and TV shows, Blockbuster On Demand rents and sells individual titles, including many new releases.

Blockbuster is favored with support from movie studios in the form of earlier access to new releases because this is sees as a tool to keep Netflix and Redbox from dominating the home video landscape. But Blockbuster's failure to compete with either company has led them to bankruptcy.

Blockbuster's plans for success in the on demand rental space may also be in trouble if rumors about Apple expanding their iTunes rental operation are true.

Apparently Facebook has hit the user limit and crashed. Or it might be some other issue but currently millions and millions of Farmville addicts are cursing as Facebook seems to be down in its entirety.

According to Downrightnow.com, Facebook has been offline for couple hours and the hundreds of millions of users around the world are missing their hourly dosage.

The downtime not only affects the site itself but a lot of its partners and sites that use Facebook to spread their word -- such as your beloved AfterDawn.com. There has been no confirmation from Facebook why the site is inaccessible but it definitely is no intended maintenance break. Hopefully, Facebook will be able to straighten out their problems soon.

For now, liking things is on hold.

According to sources speaking to CNET, Apple is prepared to double the length of time prospective buyers can listen to music tracks before buying, from 30 seconds to one minute.

CEO Steve Jobs will announce the change on Wednesday, during Apple's annual September media event.

Apple has not confirmed the report, declining to comment on "speculation."

A long time complaint about iTunes (and other music download sites) is the fact that 30 seconds is usually not enough time to see if a song is really for you.

Furthermore, the sources say Jobs will use much of the media event showing off how Apple is improving the iTunes music discovery experience.

We will have a full report on Wednesday.

Sony Ericsson launched the high end smartphone Xperia X10 earlier this year which disappointed would-be buyers when it came with the outdated Android firmware version 1.6.

In May, the company noted that it would possibly update the smartphone to Android 2.1 in the Q4, and today they have confirmed the update.

Posting via Twitter, SE UK has said it will begin rolling out the 2.1 update in September, earlier than expected.

Coming with 2.1 for the X10 are HD video recording, Wireless home connectivity via DLNA and improvements to signature applications Timescape and Mediascape to make them even smarter and richer.

The X10 has a 1GHz Snapdragon processor, and a 4-inch 854x480 touchscreen which until now, did not have official multi-touch support.

Intel has purchased part of the large wireless chip maker Infineon Technologies AG, buying the company behind the chips used in the Apple iPhone.

The company has fallen far behind in the growing smartphone processor market since their technology uses too much power, draining the phone battery too quickly.

With the acquisition today, for $1.4 billion in cash, Intel now has the wireless-chip division of the company, and an instant "in" to the market.

Intel purchased the mobile software company Wind River Systems last year for $885 million, and they have since been creating the mobile OS dubbed "Moblin," which will run on smartphones using Intel chips.

Additionally, the company recently paid $7.68 billion for the large security software firm McAfee, and the company plans to integrate security into its mobile chips.

With the addition of Infineon, Intel will be the fifth-largest supplier of smartphone processors.

LG has announced that it will showoff a 2.9mm 3D OLED TV at the IFA 2010 event starting on September 3rd, claiming it is the world's thinnest OLED to date.

There were little other details available about the TV.

The TV will indeed be the thinnest in the world, unless Samsung unveils a thinner one during the event.

In addition, LG will unveil an 180-inch plasma 3D TV prototype, on the of the largest commercial 3D displays ever created.

The IFA 2010 Consumer Electronics Show will run from September 3rd until the 8th in Berlin.

Nintendo has announced that they are dropping the price of the DSi and DSi XL handhelds in September, likely as a way to slowly clear our inventory before the eventual launch of the 3DS.

Starting on September 12th, the DSi will drop to $149.99 and the large XL will drop to $169.99.

The 3DS will give gamers a chance to watch 3D movies and play 3D games without the need for any special glasses.

Nintendo released the DSi XL last year, introducing the handheld with 93 percent larger screens than the DSi allowing for easier playback of movies and easier Internet surfing.

The DS Lite will stay at $129.

Roku has dropped the prices of their set-top boxes this week, taking up to 30 percent off each of their available devices.

The Roku SD, originally priced at $80, is now $60.

Roku's midlevel Roku HD box (the most popular of the series) is now $70 after being $100.

The Roku HD-XR, which adds extended range via Wireless-N, is now $100 after being $130.

Roku was the original Netflix streaming set-top, but the company has since updated the boxes to include Amazon VOD, UFC matches, and other channels.

You can buy the boxes here: Roku Price Drop

You can read our review of the original Roku Digital Video Player here: Review: The Roku Digital Video Player

According to XBL director of programming Larry "Major Nelson" Hryb, a Gold subscription to Xbox Live will soon cost you significantly more.

Starting November 1st, users in the U.S., UK, Canada and Mexico will face a price increase for the service.

In the U.S., a one month Gold card will jump from $7.99 to $9.99. A 3-month sub will jump from $19.99 to $24.99. Finally, a 12-month sub will jump from $49.99 to $59.99.

In the UK, a 1-month sub will move from 5 GPB to 6 GPB.

Canadian gamers will see their 1-month sub price increase from $8.99 CAD to $9.99 CAD.

Additionally, in Mexico the 12-month sub will increase to 599 pesos from 499.

As a way to give back to loyal XBL fans before the price hike, Microsoft has dropped the price of the 12-month subscription in the U.S. to $39.99 until November 1st.

AMD, the world's second largest CPU maker and the world's largest seller of discrete graphics chips has said today it is killing off the ATI brand name, four years after the company purchased ATI Technologies.

The logo for ATI, which has been around since the 1980s, will be removed from all future GPUs, leaving just the Radeon name.

Sources that have seen the new logo say it will appeal to gamers and general consumers.

Removing ATI branding should help AMD to unify its wide brand of products, thus making itself more relevant in the eyes of consumers.

On the downside, the ATI logo is very recognizable to end-consumers that have installed graphics cards over the last decades. Despite that, one source says: "When I saw the new Radeon logo, I shortly forgot that ATI was not next to it. It looks rather compelling."

AMD has not confirmed the reports.

Surprising no one, Microsoft has filed an appeal of their loss in the i4i patent case. They were found to be infringing a patent on formatting documents using a separate XML file with markup instructions.

They use this technology in Word's DOCx file format.

In papers filed late last week, Microsoft lawyers claim lower courts are using an incorrect standard for the proof of prior art required to invalidate i4i's patent on a 'Method and system for manipulating the architecture and the content of a document separately from each other.'

Microsoft claims that because patent examiners failed to properly research prior art (existing use of the technology), it shouldn't be considered valid without 'clear and convincing' evidence to the contrary. Instead, they say, the lower standard, 'preponderance of the evidence,' is appropriate.

This is key to the company's defense, they say, because the proof of prior art, in the form of source code written by an i4i developer prior to joining the company, has been destroyed. In fact it was written for a program called S4, which the i4i developer worked on for his previous employer.

This makes it nearly impossible for Microsoft to come up with evidence which would meet a 'clear and convincing evidence' standard, which is similar to 'beyond a reasonable doubt,' used for criminal cases. 'Preponderance of the evidence,' on the other hand, would only require Microsoft to prove that the older product probably (more than 50% likely) invalidates the patent.

The FTC has dropped their investigation into whether LimeWire put user's identities at risk of theft saying that the latest versions of the software have much-improved safeguards.

In a letter, the FTC said research "showed consumers continue to inadvertently share sensitive documents via peer-to-peer software like LimeWire," and that it is necessary for distributors of the software to "act more responsibly and provide safeguards against inadvertent sharing."

Despite LimeWire drastically improving its service, the FTC says the company still needs to improve the client for less tech savvy consumers.

But it said LimeWire still has to improve its service further for less savvy consumers.

"We remain concerned, however, about consumers who are still using insecure legacy versions and are therefore subject to a risk of inadvertent sharing of sensitive, personal information," write the FCC. "We expect LimeWire to continue to advise consumers to upgrade legacy versions of its software because of the potential safety benefits of doing so."

BGR has posted leaked photos of Verizon's upcoming flagship Android device, the HTC Scorpion which is expected to hit the carrier within 6 months.

The Scorpion looks similar to the EVO 4G but with an aluminum trim similar to the Nexus One.

HTC'S Scorpion has a 4.3-inch screen, a front-facing camera and an 8MP standard camera with dual LED flashes. The device also has a kickstand.

The device will launch with Android 2.2 and will run the HTC Sense UI.

Finally, BGR speculates that the impressive device will use a dual-core 1.5GHz Snapdragon processor that does not ship until next month, the first smartphone to do so.