We’ve just got back from a visit to the House of Mouse in California and the buzz at both the Pixar and Disney studios is all about Blu-ray. The Wall-E 2-disc Blu-ray discs will break new ground in terms of picture quality, while Prince Caspian’s BD release will push the extras and interactivity including a clever new feature called Circlevision.

In the demo we saw, Circlevision let us use the remote to spin around a scene in 360 degrees. It’s done by using footage from an array of cameras positioned around a 360 degree set.

Circlevision was originally developed in the 60s, but it has been revived by Disney with the latest Blu-Ray technology. When you highlight specific points in the panorama, you can call up text, video and sound that relate to it. We spent ages wading through all the extras and barely scratched the surface of what’s on there. Prince Caspian looks set to be the most advanced Blu-ray release so far.

The magazine will be distributed every other month to an international subscriber base of “several thousand” said Tim Foster, co-editor and founder of Celebrations. Additional copies will be distributed at various Disney fan meet-ups throughout the US.

“The Disney audience is obviously huge — something like 20 million people visit the parks every year — so it's a big opportunity,” Foster said. “The other opportunity is that Disney had a magazine of its own, but it ceased publication a few years back. Since that time, there has been a void for a magazine like this, and people really want to have one to fill that gap.”

Foster and co-editor Lou Mongello are both authors of Disney guidebooks, as are many of Celebrations' contributing writers. Initially, Celebrations will depend on the established Web sites and blogs of these writers for grassroots promotion to Disney fans. Mongello's weekly Disney podcast, which draws in around 30,000 listeners, will also promote the magazine. Further PR and marketing activities will follow the magazine's launch, and a robust Web site is in the works as well.

Eventually, Foster said, he would like the magazine's audience to extend beyond the die-hard fans.

“There is a smaller group of loyal Disney fans that go to all the fan meets and listen to the podcasts, and up until now a lot of us have mostly dealt with those people,” Foster pointed out. “One thing we're hoping to do with the magazine is reach well beyond that community to people who are Disney fans but might not be podcast listeners and go all over the country: the family that goes once a year, for example. We feel those people aren't really addressed by a lot of us right now and that's where all our PR and marketing will come in.”

The Walt Disney Co. launched a new fan magazine, Disney En Familia, in July of this year. It targets Hispanic moms in the US.

Now, Disney is giving it another go by revving up the full power of its culture-creating engines. Instead of the take-it-slow approach, the Muppets are getting the "Hannah Montana" treatment

this time, being blasted into every pop-culture nook and cranny the company owns or can dream up. The balcony blowhards Statler and Waldorf would be impressed with the ambitiousness of the plan -- even if it does come with equally outsize challenges.

"We think there is a Muppet gene in everybody," said Lylle Breier, a Disney executive who is the new general manager of Muppets Studio.

Disney Channel is presenting new specials -- the first ran last month, the second will be shown in October -- in which Muppets interact with "High School Musical" stars and the Jonas Brothers, among other teenage wünderkinder. A stream of comic videos is in production for Disney.com, where a new Muppet channel recently made its debut, and viral videos have been unleashed on YouTube. NBC will broadcast a Christmas special in December, and special skits will arrive on certain ABC DVD releases. (One skit with the working title "Desperate Housepigs" is on a coming "Desperate Housewives" DVD.) A new feature film, still untitled, is planned for 2010, with more in development.

Meanwhile the Muppets will work overtime elsewhere, appearing on a new float in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, on "Nightline" interviewing political candidates and on various talk shows. More Muppet-theme attractions are being discussed for Disney theme parks.

And then there is the merchandise. Coming soon: Muppet clothing at Urban Outfitters and Limited Too stores; Muppet-theme items like stuffed animals and tote bags, at Macy's; and a Muppet boutique at the New York flagship of FAO Schwarz.

Disney does not want to create a flash in the pan; it sees the Muppets as a franchise that can sit side by side with, say, Winnie the Pooh. But creating any flash at all is the challenge. With the exception of a guest appearance here and there, the characters largely have been in cold storage for the past three years. And because the Muppets have been without a regular television gig for more than a decade, many children and younger teenagers don't know them.

Breier said recent focus groups indicated that some children could not even identify Kermit and Miss Piggy, much less ancillary characters like Fozzie Bear and Gonzo the Great. The wisecracking, irreverent Muppets (a combination of puppets and marionettes) also don't fit that neatly in the Disney culture, as they differ from most of the company's bedrock characters in two big ways: Kermit and coterie were primarily created to entertain adults, and they live in the real world. Henson was so insistent that they stand apart from his "Sesame Street" creations in personality and tone that he (misleadingly) titled the 1975 pilot that would boost their careers "The Muppet Show: Sex and Violence."

Undeterred, Disney expects the Muppets to expand their fan base beyond nostalgic older generations to the age group between 6 and 12 that has powered "Hannah Montana" and "High School Musical" into international blockbusters.

But how do you make 50-year-old puppets, even those as beloved to many people as these, relevant in a "Wall-E" world?

The new Muppet film, for instance, will be geared to a broad audience, but Disney understands the need to retain an adult sensibility. Cook hired the team behind the raunchy comedy "Forgetting Sarah Marshall," Jason Segel (the writer and star) and Nicholas Stoller (the director), to deliver the script. Leading up to a film rather than starting with one reflects the feeling among studio executives that the film will make a bigger splash if the marketplace is prepped first.

With merchandising partnerships like the one with FAO Schwarz, Disney also is trying to tap into a retailing trend popular with children and teenagers: customization. American Girl Place stores, for instance, give shoppers the opportunity to design dolls to their specifications. FAO Schwarz will do the same for Muppets fans.

At the store's Muppet-theme boutique, customers (for $100) will pick a body shape from various styles and then accessorize it with "a huge variation of Muppet parts," said David Niggli, the president of FAO Schwarz. (Versions will be sold on its Web site, fao.com.) The result will be what Jim Henson referred to as a "hand rod" Muppet: One hand goes inside the head of the puppet and the other holds thin rods connected to the puppet's hands, allowing for gestures.

"Younger consumers expect to be able to immerse themselves in the brands they like, so this idea is spot on," said Samantha Skey, an expert on youth marketing at Alloy Media & Marketing. She added that as far as teenagers and children are concerned, "it's a great way to bring this brand back from the dead."

That resurrection is being planned at Disney's headquarters in Burbank, inside what Breier has called the Muppets' war room. At a recent meeting, the Muppets team watched a newly completed video for distribution on YouTube in which Sam, the moralistic eagle, and the rock star Animal, still chained to his drum set, perform "Stars and Stripes Forever" with a chorus of clucking chickens and other Muppets. Everyone in the room laughed.

The viral videos have exploded on YouTube over the past month, giving Breier confidence that her strategy is starting to work.

As of early this month, four YouTube videos had been viewed a total of more than 5 million times, according to Disney research.

And some parents are starting to notice that the Muppets are suddenly on the radar screens of their young children.

"I tried getting them to watch DVDs of 'The Muppet Show' probably a year or two ago, and they weren't that interested," said Tom Weber, a New York father of two girls, ages 5 and 9. "But now that Disney is making its marketing push, they seem more aware and into it."

This is Disney-ABC-ESPN Television’s first agreement to make a TV series available on a VOD service in Italy. FASTWEB has created a dedicated area to accommodate the launch of its IPTV interface, featuring the likes of Lost, Criminal Minds and Alias.

“We are very proud to be working with Disney to give our subscribers access to some of the hottest series on international TV,” said Alessandro Petazzi, FASTWEB’s head of media and TV. “This agreement is highly innovative as it enables our FASTWEBTV subscribers to access their favorite series."