Digital Media News

News Bytes - December 15-16

2008-12-16T18:44:00.000-08:00

Nokia Brings N85, N79 to United States
via Digital Trends
Nokia has once again decided to go it alone with its high-end Internet-centric, multimedia-savvy smartphones, announcing the N85 and N79 devices are now on sale in the United States. Both phones are available unlocked and without partnerships with network operators, which means users will pay the full brunt of the unsubsidized phone's cost: $539 for the N85 and $439 for the N79. "We're excited to have these two multimedia devices available in the United States now—and in time for the holidays," said Nokia Americas VP of … Read

Hey CBS, Hulu Much?
via TechCrunch
CBS just pushed a completely new look and feel for it’s TV.com site. Think they have Hulu on their mind? you be the judge.

The overall look of the home page is very similar to Hulu, although the actual show pages remain different. Frankly, I think they should have gone all the way and copied Hulu completely.

Will Opening Up Keep Vudu From Closing Down?
via NewTeeVee
Download movie service provider Vudu announced today that it’s expanding its set-top box to deliver web video directly to TVs, as well as opening up to allow outside developers create applications for the device.

The new Vudu Rich Internet Applications (RIA) platform will broaden the company’s set-top box capabilities, enabling it to deliver web video from YouTube and network sites like those of NBC and ABC; display photos from Flickr and Picasa; as well as some casual games. Vudu owners can check out a sampling of new functionality today at the new Vudu Labs section of the Vudu home page.

Sounds a lot like Boxee, the open-source media center that enables much of the same functionality (plus Netflix streaming), and can run on Macs, PCs and even the Apple TV. Heck, the Boxee community might just port itself over to the Vudu box as well.

Opening up its box is a smart move, but will it be the gambit that pushes Vudu, which has never really caught on with consumers, into the mainstream?

You gotta give the company an “A” for effort. Over the course of this year it’s tried just about everything to get people to buy: price cuts on the box, porn, a 99-cent bargain rental bin, adding 1,000 HD titles, a new HDX high-def format, and a high-end XL2 box for home theaters.

In the meantime, however, the company laid off 15 percent of its staff at the end of August, followed by the departure of CEO Mark Jung in November. And Vudu won’t release stats, which always makes us suspicious.

Vudu’s bigger problem is that it’s always been expensive, unknown, and only did one thing. It costs $299 for the standard box, which, up until today, would only play Vudu movies. An Apple TV on the other hand, costs $229, and let you access your music, photos and YouTube video. Granted, the Vudu box has way more storage, but which brand are you going to trust to be around for awhile?

Vudu still has an uphill climb, especially in this econo-pocalypse we’re all suffering through right now, but leveraging the developer-sphere to create new uses for itself will make it more appealing.

Vid-Biz: Image Metrics, Aspera, Hulu
via NewTeeVee
IMDB Acquires Box Office Mojo; Amazon-owned movie database buys web site that tracks box office performance, terms of the deal not disclosed. (Variety)

Move Networks Partners with FuelTV; action sports lifestyle network launches new HD streaming player, created by Move. (Fuel.tv)

CBS to Pit TV.com vs. Hulu
via MediaBytes with Shelly Palmer
CBS will re-launch TV.com to compete with Hulu. Originally the domain, secured in its $1.85 billion acquisition of CNet, was more of a “water cooler site” rather than an online video or IPTV destination. CBS head Les Moonves is excited, noting “we think TV.com will become the destination, or certainly one of the leading destinations, for anybody who wants to watch TV shows or have a community around TV shows, see clips, play games, etc.”

Report: Mobile Content Explosion Makes Memory Cards A Big Money-Maker
via mocoNews.net
With more content being created and consumed on mobile phones, an interesting phenomenon has occurred: memory cards have quickly become the biggest money maker in accessory sales, research firm ABI Research reports. It isn't surprising that consumers are scrambling for more storage since many cellphones these days come with high-end cameras and the ability to play music, but often don't come with enough capacity to take advantage of those features. Sales typically occur on two levels. Often handset manufacturers ship phones with small capacity cards, such as a 1 gigabyte microSD, but then carriers push higher capacity ones at the register as a marked up accessory. Many phones today can support up to 8, 16, or 32 gigabytes. ABI predicts third-party suppliers like SanDisk (NSDQ: SNDK) will see a 17 percent compound annual growth rate in shipments over the next five years. But the real interesting thing to watch for is whether more storage capacity will lead to more content consumed. Release.

Mobile Content Bits: The Simpsons; Pandora On Windows; Yahoo Widgets; Go2 Music; Five Top Phones
via mocoNews.net
-- Fox Mobile releases content from The Simpsons: The Simpsons is getting another huge boost from Fox Mobile with more than 100 new and exclusive pieces of mobile content. The new suite of content includes: The Simpsons Itchy & Scratchy Land mobile game from EA and a range of holiday-themed content. Fox Mobile also released more wallpapers, voicetones, screensavers and videos from the long-running show under the company's subscription-based "Yellow Plan." Release.

-- Consumer Reports names top five smartphones and cellphones: In the latest issue of Consumer Reports, the publication ranks the top five smartphones and cellphones, and for once iPhone doesn't make the list, CNET reports. The top five smartphones in order are: Samsung Blackjack II, T-Mobile Wing, Motorola Q9C, T-Mobile Shadow and BlackBerry's Pearl Flip. The iPhone 3G and T-Mobile G1 ranked below all of those, according to Consumer Reports' ranking system, however the BlackBerry Bold and Storm, HTC Pro and Samsung Omnia appear to be left out of the running. The top five feature phones: Motorola ROKR E8, LG (SEO: 066570) Dare, Pantech Breeze, Sony (NYSE: SNE) Ericsson (NSDQ: ERIC) TM506 and Sony Ericsson's K850i.

News Bytes: November 17-19

2008-11-19T19:06:00.000-08:00

Sony presses 'pause' on streaming Netflix Instant Watch movies to Xbox 360*

via L.A. Times Tech Blog

Sony is fine with selling its movies and TV shows through digital means -- just not, apparently, when it involves working with its chief video game rival.

Sony has thrown a minor monkey wrench in the launch of Microsoft's revamped Xbox Live online platform. The rejiggered Xbox Live has, among other new features, the ability to stream about 12,000 movies and shows from Netflix's Instant Watch service to Microsoft's Xbox 360 video game console.

But now it's 12,000 minus "a couple of hundred" titles, Netflix spokesman Steve Swasey said. He declined to reveal the studios behind those titles. But an executive with knowledge of the matter confirmed reports that they come from Sony, which makes the PlayStation 3 console, and its subsidiaries. (The executive declined to be named, citing sensitive negotiations between Sony and Netflix.)

"We're very hopeful we will have these titles on the Xbox 360 shortly," said Swasey, who added that it would be a matter of "weeks" rather than months.

Sony issued the following statement:

This issue is not specific to Xbox or any other individual platform. Sony Pictures is currently in discussions with the relevant parties to resolve certain licensing matters related to the distribution of its motion pictures. Given the ongoing nature of these discussions, we don't think it is appropriate to comment further at this time.

Netflix subscribers who can't wait to stream "Superbad," "Drunken Master," "Bad Boys" or "Karate Kid" can still watch them on the Roku Netflix Player, the TiVo digital video recorder and several Blu-ray players made by Samsung and LG, as well as on Macs and PCs. Just not on the Xbox 360.

-- Alex Pham

Photo : Image of the Netflix service on Xbox Live by Microsoft

*UPDATED at 5:35 p.m. with a statement from Sony.

No One Expects… Monty Python on YouTube!

via NewTeeVee

Break out the comfy chair — famed British comedy troupe Monty Python now has a channel on YouTube. And in a very Python-esque manner, they’ve kicked the whole thing off with an introductory video that calls out YouTube users for ripping them off over the past three years.

From the Python channel page:

We know who you are, we know where you live and we could come after you in ways too horrible to tell. But being the extraordinarily nice chaps we are, we’ve figured a better way to get our own back: We’ve launched our own Monty Python channel on YouTube.

The channel currently has 24 videos, mixing classic clips from Python TV shows and movies along with interviews from cast members. According to the intro video, not only is this an attempt to wrest control from people posting illicit content, but also to provide higher-quality versions of clips instead of cruddy ones. And I’m sure having ads run over the bits doesn’t hurt either.

Vid-Biz: Move

via NewTeeVee

Move Networks Partners with Permission TV; adaptive streaming company hooks up with online video platform provider to resell integrated services to smaller media companies. (Broadcasting & Cable)

Online Movie Service Cinemanow Acquired By Sonic Solutions

via paidContent.org

Cinemanow, the online movie service that has been around for a long time, has been bought by Sonic Solutions, the digital media software company. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but rival Movielink got sold for a fire-sale price of $7 million last year to Blockbuster, and while Cinemanow's price is probably not that low, it isn't likely to be exponentially higher as well.

Cinemanow, founded in 1999, was backed by Lionsgate, but never really took off, and had been languishing from slow growth, as other online TV-focused (and more open) rivals like YouTube, Hulu and others took off. It was one of the first ones to offer DVD burning with some movies, and also offered limited "day and date" download and DVD burning; it was also one of the first ones to be embedded with devices such as Dell, HP, Samsung, TiVo, DivX, and Archos, but adoption was minimal.

The company CEO Curt Marvis left earlier this year to join Lionsgate as its new president of digital media. In 2006, it received $20.3 million in late stage (fifth round) funding, from Echostar and Japanese mobile content giant Index Holdings (JSD: 4835). Previous investors included Transcosmos, Cisco Systems, Lionsgate and Menlo Venture. Total money invested was more than $40 million.

As for Sonic, the two companies had been working together for a while to enable the download and burn of DVD movies on to its new Qflix DVD drives. The Qflix system adds a digital lock to burned DVDs, and thus studio-sanctioned, so to speak, and it had been working with partners like Dell and Pioneer for distribution. CinemaNow will be merged into Sonic's Qflix team to form a new Premium Content Group under the direction of Mark Ely, Sonic's EVP of Strategy. With this deal, CinemaNow CEO Tom Frank is leaving, while its COO and president David Cook become the GM of this new group. The group will focus on increasing the placement of CinemaNow's storefront on PCs and consumer electronics devices, and expanding the adoption of the Qflix technology platform. Sonic also owns Roxio, for those interested, which at one point owned Napster. Details in release.

Hulu To Be Bigger Than YouTube Next Year?

via Alley Insider

In a sign of just how little success Google has had at monetizing YouTube, a research firm is predicting that Hulu will surpass it in US revenue next year.

Screen Digest estimates that YouTube will make $100 million in US revenue this year compared to Hulu's $70 million. Next year, the firm estimates, both will make about $180 million. (See article in FT)

Before moving on, it's worth noting that Screen Digest is presumably talking about gross revenue. Hulu passes a far larger percentage of revenue through to its content providers (70%-80%) than YouTube does, so with $70 million of gross revenue, Hulu's net revenue would be a paltry $14-$21 million. YouTube also shares some revenue with some content providers, but a far smaller percentage, which is why News Corp and NBC built Hulu in the first place.

Also, as we noted last week, Google will be adding search-placement ads to YouTube, in which producers can pay to have their videos appear on search results. This should help boost YouTube's revenue and takes advantage of YouTube's enormous traffic (83 million monthly users to Hulu's 6 million).

But all that said: The fact that a research firm can make this prediction when YouTube has more than 10-times Hulu's US traffic illustrates the challenges Google faces in making YouTube into a real business. This is why YouTube is, intelligently, increasingly working with premium content providers. To get MGM et al as partners, we suspect YouTube is having to give up, if not a Hulu-like share of revenue, at least close.

YouTube still has the ability to squash Hulu: To do so, it has to match (or come close to matching) Hulu's revenue sharing terms and make its display, embedding, and editing tools as good as Hulu's. If it does this, it will erase the advantage Hulu has had over the past year, and its vastly greater size will make it a must-partner for every major video producer.

YouTube will also be able to make other revenue around the videos, so this wouldn't mean surrendering completely: Its position as the leading global video aggregator and search engine is still immensely valuable. Matching Hulu would, however, mean that YouTube would continue to be a vastly lower-margin business than Google's main business--which is why Google has fought like hell against going that route. But it sounds as though it may be time to throw in the towel.

News Bytes: November 13

2008-11-13T17:53:00.001-08:00

Digitalsmiths Lands Another $12 Million For Video Fingerprinting And Search
via TechCrunch

Research Triangle Park, N.C-based Digitalsmiths has closed a $12 million Series B round of funding to extend its video indexing and ad targeting technology platform. The money comes from existing investors The Aurora Funds and Chrysalis Ventures; .406 Ventures also participated.

Digitalsmiths has been indexing digital content in videos (both visual and audio) for Hollywood studios for the past three years and recently started providing its technology for web-based video platforms. The idea behind it is that content owners and publishers can monetize their digital video content more efficiently, while advertisers could potentially target ads to thematically relevant video content automatically.

The company first appeared on our radar when Warner Bros. announced it was using Digitalsmiths’ technology for enabling visitors of TheWB.com to search through their video clip archive by what the characters in scenes are saying (you can see our introduction to the new features here). A similar solution has been made available to another Time Warner property, TMZ, which notably pushed out competing video platform Brightcove in favor of Digitalsmiths.
Auditude (see previous coverage) and Viewdle are also players in this space, offering intelligent audio/video content detection.

NewTeeVee Live: Hulu CEO Says Success is About Being Obsessive
via NewTeeVee

Jason Kilar, the CEO of Hulu — everyone’s favorite way to watch studio shows online — discusses the three forces that are driving Hulu: the big wave of the online video trend, obsession (give ‘em what they want and be neurotic) and the positive results of the service so far.

A big wave: 12.6 billion was the number of video streams in the U.S. in September according to ComScore. It’s a big deal. It was a fraction of that 6 months ago. Think of it like what Starbucks did for premium coffee, is like what we’re doing for the premium content business — if you can make it easier to consume, people will consume more. Media is an impulse business. A lot of this is from infrastructure that is far beyond Hulu.

Obsessing: Our mission is ambitious and never ending. Our goal is to deliver a service that users, advertisers, and content owners unabashedly love. Our strategy is to deliver “brain-spray” awesome quality. The implementation is similar to when I worked at Disney. Attention to detail is the cornerstone of how Hulu has designed its service — we obsess over each pixel on the screen. The team at Hulu are odd birds. We argue over fonts, design, and we obsess over everything.

Give users and advertisers choice. Listen to users — empower them. Relentlessly innovate. The product is a function of being neurotic, but its good for users. Listen and take action quickly.

Results of Hulu: In the 8 months since launch, we’ve had 12 million monthly users, and 145 million monthly video streams. PC World Magazine named Hulu No. 1 product of 2008, and TIME Magazine rated Hulu among the Top 5 inventions of 2008. Hulu has been embedded over 1.5 million times, and on over 60,000 sites. We’ve attracted 115 top content owners, including Warner Bros, Sony, MGM, Fox, NBC, Comedy Central, Paramount, and NHL.

News Bytes: November 12

2008-11-12T18:04:00.000-08:00

Media Vets Launch Digital Entertainment-Focused Agility Studios; Gets Funding
via paidContent.org

A new digital studio called Agility Studios, started by three online vets, has launched today. The company, based in Los Angeles, has been founded by Scott Ehrlich, former VP of media at RealNetworks, who will serve as the company's CEO; Larry Tanz, till recently the president and CEO of LivePlanet, will now be the president and COO; and Keith Quinn, recently SVP of production & development for LivePlanet, who will oversee programming and production as the company's chief creative officer.

The company has also received funding from Colorado-based Mantucket Capital, which usually invests as a PE firm or provides distressed capital. The amount was not disclosed, but is in the "several millions", Ehrlich told me. The reason he went outside the traditional VC route was because he believes creative development requires a different kind of capital from VC money, with a longer term horizon.

The studio will work with content creators to provide infrastructure services that include business and creative development, financing, distribution, sponsorship and advertising sales, operations, business affairs and back office support. The programs or shows its develops would be distributed through various partnerships online, and then look at other platforms like mobile and TV. No clients have been announced, but Ehrlich tells me they will announce some in the next few weeks. To help achieve its goals, the company has also hired other execs from the entertainment industry: Shannon Pruitt (formerly of Fremantle and Mark Burnett Productions) as SVP of Integrated sales & sponsorships, Zev Suissa (formerly of DigWorks), as VP of production & development and Jason Turner (formerly of Fremantle) as VP of distribution & sales. Some more details in the release.

Of course the competition in the space is heavy, with all kinds of digital studios from startups (Deca, NextNew, 60Frames, Vuguru, Break and others) to bigger media companies incubating their own projects (Disney, NBC and others). Then there is the consumer adoption factor for original shows online, a nut no one has been able to crack from a business model perspective yet.

Ehrlich hopes his connection and his team, the long term money, and lessons learned from the first-gen digital studios, give them a better chance of figuring out the business, well, long term. It will focus on being a B2B company and also won't get into the distribution game itself (via its own video portal, for example), something Ehrlich thinks has tripped up some of the other companies in the space who try to do everything along the value chain.

Meanwhile, this new company begs a question: what is happening with LivePlanet, the once hyped digital studio founded by Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, and Chris Moore? The two senior execs above have joined Agility; the others listed here on LP's website have left as well. It still has a bunch of projects going on. I have been hearing rumors about the company's potential sale for a while, but Tanz wouldn't comment on it when I asked. More when I find out....

Gartner Sees $1.5B for Web Studio Video by 2012
via NewTeeVee

Gartner put out a report this week on so-called “protail” video content, estimating that worldwide advertising revenue for “the segment between professionally produced content and user-generated content” would exceed $1.5 billion in 2012, up from $75 million in 2008.

Some thoughts:

· The definition of “protail” content doesn’t really satisfy me. According to the release it includes Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, which I very much consider to be “professionally produced.” Further detail on the definition includes “higher-quality production and content produced in a more consistent or episodic manner…how-to, scripted sitcoms, scripted dramas, new forms of reality programming, niche news and lifestyle content (travel, food/cooking).” That means just about anything that isn’t personal sharing, viral vids, or ripped versions of TV shows, right? Gartner clarifies that “digital studios can create four-minute protail episodes for between $2,000 and $5,000″ — but then that doesn’t apply to Dr. Horrible, whose costs totaled six figures.

· $75 million is NOT a lot of money. Beyond the general economic malaise, no wonder so many folks are laying off people and cutting back plans. But…yay! $1.5 billion sounds very nice, thank you.
· Gartner’s Allen Weiner REALLY feels there’s a hole in the market for “‘clean, well-lit places” for this protail content. His proposed alternative to big sites like YouTube and Yahoo Video would help connect advertisers to content, and make it easier for consumers to find good content. This idea seems a bit shaky — it’s not like video portals out there such as Crackle, Veoh and Metacafe aren’t doing their best to figure out whatever needs they can address. And meanwhile Revver, probably the closest thing to what he’s talking about, seems to be down again this morning.

· One interesting, but somewhat unsatisfying, tidbit: Gartner was able to extract an exact number of views for Dr. Horrible, something we haven’t had much luck with. According to the report, “A one-week run on advertiser-supported Hulu.com netted more than 1.1 million streams.” Was that the first week, though?

Thumbplay Trims Headcount To Prepare For Prolonged Economic Downturn
via mocoNews.net

Thumbplay, a New York-based mobile entertainment company, said today it is trimming its workforce for what they are expecting to be a prolonged economic downturn. Thumbplay wouldn't specify how many employees would be let go, but confirmed it was much lower than the 25 percent reported by Silicon Alley Insider. A spokesperson said the total number of employees is under 100 employees.

In an emailed statement, CEO Are Traasdahl said: "Today, we informed members of our team about reductions in our staff. While difficult, these personnel decisions recognize the realities of the economy. This is preparation for what all indicators show will be a prolonged economic downturn. Thumbplay, like every responsible company out there right now, is preparing against future risk."

Trassdahl said 2008 is on track to be a strong year, with revenues expected to grow by more than 50 percent. Even by conservative estimates, he said next year will also deliver growth. The company is in a difficult position in the mobile content industry, where it is forced to either market directly to consumers, which can be costly, or to partner with carriers and share revenues. In March, the company announced it raised $18 million in venture capital. Thumbplay also has a number of high-profile partnerships, including deals with Cellular South, Comcast (NSDQ: CMCSA), MTV, AOL (NYSE: TWX), MSN, and has relationships with the four major record labels.

MySpace Launches PrimeTime App
via NewTeeVee

Social network MySpace launched its new Primetime application today, which lets users watch full-length content from their user homepages and profile pages.

To use the new Primetime feature, users must first download the free app, but once it’s running they will have access to premium content from Hulu, Warner Bros., Sony as well as MySpace originals like Roommates. The player offers sharing through links and embeds, as well as a thumbnail links to related content and a searchable directory of additional content.

MySpace says this new PrimeTime has the potential to monetize more than 150 million pages with video content, and mathematically that is possible. The company arrived at this figure based on comScore numbers saying the site reaches 76 million people a month and assuming each of those people installed the app on both their home page and profile page. Voila! You’ve got 152 million. Of course, that’s dependent on all users installing the app in both places.

In addition to the new app, MySpace redesigned the Primetime home on the site with a more pronounced player and easier searching for content across TV shows, movies, originals and channels.

While Hulu is a joint venture between FOX and NBC, the premium content company isn’t exclusively aligning with the FOX-owned MySpace social network. Hulu is also part of Facebook Connect and was supposed to launch that aspect of its service back in August.

News Bytes: November 6

2008-11-06T18:05:00.000-08:00

YouTube Plans To Launch Live-Streaming November 22
via Silicon Alley Insider

YouTube will launch live-streaming in the style of startups UStream, Justin.TV, Stickam and Mogulus at its November 22 "YouTube Live!" event, a company source who has seen mock ups of the user-interface tells us.

"Of course something could go wrong and they might not launch it," say our source, who nevertheless says YouTube employees talk of the new service's launch as a foregone conclusion.
A YouTube spokesperson told us: "We're working with a third party to live-stream our event called Live. We have no product to announce at this time."

Live streaming is very expensive and hard to monetize. A Google source told us in August that YouTube execs figure that if just 10% of YouTube's users adopted live streaming, bandwidth costs would go up 20% to 25%.

That's because live-streaming clips tend to last much longer than the short video clips typical of YouTube. They also require data to pass both ways.

It's also hard to make money off live-streaming. Advertisers don't want to put their brands against live content created by uncontrollable YouTube users.

One possibility that we feel Google shareholders should root for: YouTube will launch live streaming as a service for paying customers only.

MediaBytes:
via MediaBytes with Shelly Palmer » MediaBytes

Google has abandoned its proposed search ads deal with Yahoo. Google walked away after the Department of Justice told both parties it would sue them to block the agreement. Yahoo’s stock was up on the news, while board member Carl Icahn continues to push for a sale to Microsoft.
Sprint will bring NFL games to mobile devices. The mobile broadcast deal, valued around $500 million for five years, gives Sprint the right to phone-cast 8 exclusive NFL Network games a year. The big question is whether or not Sprint will be able to sell more than $500 million in phone plans.

Michael Crichton, author and creator of the hit television drama ER, passed away yesterday. Crichton, who was battling cancer, is best known for Jurassic Park. NBC CEO Jeff Zucker noted that Crichton “was a modern day Rennaissance man…who helped change the face of televised drama.

via NewTeeVee
Mobile Video Infrastructure Market to Grow; despite downturn, research firm In-Stat predicts the market will reach $291 million in 2012. (emailed release)

YouTube Working on Adding Full Length Studio Movies?
via paidContent.org

So says a report from News.com, and it seems a no brainer on the face of it: YouTube, owned by Google (NSDQ: GOOG), has tried to get full length movies and TV shows from major networks and studios for a while now, but has failed to make major headway due to queasiness on part of the conglomerates. The media/entertainment companies worry about putting their shows/movies in what has primarily been perceived to be a user-gen-heavy environment, and then putting all eggs in one video basket, so to speak.

According to the story, YouTube has been talking to the major film companies about launching an ad-supported, streaming movie service. A studio source I spoke to said nothing's final yet, or anywhere near it, but headway has been made. The video site has built a "Screening Room" recently, with the idea to showcase indie movies there. That could feasibly be expanded to include major studio content as well. Some sticking points include how many and what kinds of ads could be places in movies. If YouTube chooses to go the minimalist Hulu route, then they better have patience with scaling up enough on the ad deals side (not audience, which it arguably has) to monetize it effectively. Even Hulu has to start considering that seriously.

News Bytes: November 5

2008-11-05T19:30:00.000-08:00

Video Startup Veoh Cuts 18% of Staff
via TechCrunch

Online video site Veoh is laying off 20 people, or 18% of its staff of 110. The move comes a month after a Paidcontent reported layoffs in Veoh’s Russian office in St. Petersburg, which CEO Steve Mitgang says was a strategic decision rather than a financial one, as Veoh wanted to move its development staff to San Diego (where it has hired a replacement team).

This round is more of a financial move, given the new economic reality. The company insists that it is still strong on a financial front, and expects to be profitable next year, although CEO Mitgang admits profitability could be pushed out a quarter. Despite the somber news, he is confident Veoh will emerge as one of the few surviving video sites in what will no doubt be a coming shakeout.

According to comScore, visitors to the Veoh.com in the U.S. have come down from 4.5 million people in June to 3.8 million in September. And total minutes spent on the site has similarly dropped from 99.6 million minutes in June to 66.8 million in September. That drop in visitors is more than made up for in the growth in its standalone video app, Veoh TV, which reached 2.3 million people in the U.S in September. Globally, 16 million people watched videos on the site in September, and another 12 million watched via the app (see chart below).

The company has raised $70 million, including $30 million just last June. We are adding this announcement to our Layoff Tracker.

FCC Approves Use of "White Spaces" for Wireless Broadband
via Digital Media Wire - connecting people & knowledge

Washington - The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted on Tuesday to authorize the opening of unused portions of the broadcast spectrum to deliver wireless broadband Internet access. "Opening the white spaces will allow for the creation of a WiFi on steroids. It has the potential to improve wireless broadband connectivity and inspire an ever-widening array of new Internet based products and services for consumers," said FCC chairman Kevin Martin.
read more

Mobile Content Bits: Pepsi-QR Campaign
via mocoNews.net

-- Pepsi UK launches mobile QR campaign: A massive mobile ad campaign in the UK using QR codes. PepsiCo plan to put QR codes on 400 million cans and bottle, reports Brandrepublic.com. When a consumer takes a photo of the code with their camera phone, they will be sent to a WAP site where they can access games, ringtones and wallpapers or win prizes. The QR codes will be placed on all Pepsi brands, including Pepsi, Diet Pepsi, and Pepsi Max. Users must first download a QR reader to their phone if they don't already have one. They must also have internet access on their phone.

Echostar-Owned Sling Launching Online Video Portal; Hoping For Multi-Screen Convergence
via paidContent.org

Sling Media, the place- and time-shifting device company that is now owned by Echostar (NSDQ: SATS), is launching something that seems counter-intuitive on the face of it: a free, ad-supported online video portal aggregating video from various professional sources like TV networks, studios and other independents. Sling.com will launch as a video portal on Nov 24.

Anyone can use the site—they don't have to be a Slingbox user/subscriber, though if they do have it, they can plug that into Sling.com site, and watch live TV through their own TV boxes (like they do now through their online accounts, only in this case it is all integrated).

I spoke to Jason Hirschhorn, the president of its entertainment division, and he explained to me the rationale for the site. The site had been in works even before the company was bought by Echostar, and had been delayed for a bit while the content deals were coming in place.

Content wise: it has a lot, but the glaring omission is *Viacom/MTV Networks*, which means Comedy Central's popular shows like The Daily Show and the Colbert Report are not available.

Hirschhorn said the company is working on a Viacom (NYSE: VIA) deal and hopes to have something to announce soon. And Sling has the Hulu deal, which means it has everything from there except, well, Viacom content. It has also done separate deals with Warner, MGM, Sony (NYSE: SNE) Pictures, CBS, and others, and is working on doing more. On the movie side, it only has 125 of them, but is working on more. Unlike some of the others, it is also aggregating video news content from AP, Reuters and others. Since most of the media companies don't do exclusive content-distribution deals, it will get all of those deals anyway, and be competitive on content library, the company hopes.

More details after the jump

Functionality/design: more cluttered than Hulu, but then so is every other video site, compared with Hulu's minimalism. It has good IPG and search capabilities, more editorial curation and blogs from editors. Sling.com has tried to build in a lot more social functionalities, like a news feed of your friends, a la Facebook, profiles, sharing, etc. It is also building connections into other social sites, and working on building widgets and apps for those as well.

Challenges: Huge. Tons of competition from everyone and their mother in law. But Hirschhorn thinks it is still early in the game and no one has won the online video battle. Also, with Echostar behind them, and Charlie Ergen's support, they are in it for the long haul. Also, online is just one part of the full spectrum for them: with Slingbox, users can watch home TV and DVR online; with doing the same on mobile with SlingPlayer Mobile, with its SlingCatcher service, users could do the reverse: bring online video onto their TVs. Sling.com is another in that spectrum. The convergence hope, in other words. The company also recognizes that the Slingbox is an intermediary product, and that it will soon be integrated with Echostar's boxes itself. Echostar is the number-two satellite player, so Sling's distribution will be through those channels in the long term. Conceivably, it could also white label its video portal for cable and satellite providers. But if it could pull this convergence thing off, it would be in competition with the likes of Apple and Comcast, not the online video players

The big internal challenges would be: how long does Echostar keep supporting it; how long before the main entrepreneurs within Sling, the founder Krikorian brothers and Hirschhorn stay with the company; where do they get the big online traffic funnel, being a company with little online consumer presence; and how do they build up monetization and a sales team, not something the company has been known for till now. And then, that economy thing…
More screenshots of the service here.

News Bytes: October 27-29

2008-10-29T19:38:00.000-07:00

Sony shapes snappier Crackle

New management, full-length content part of upgrade

Via The Hollywood Reporter

Sony Pictures Entertainment is ready to make Crackle pop.

The studio is shaking up its online video hub with new management, headquarters and an infusion of full-length TV and movies from the Sony library to complement the increasing slate of short-form originals already rolling out.

Sony has been gradually transforming Crackle, which it acquired in August 2006 when the site was a user-generated content depository known as Grouper, into an online version of a programmed channel.

Eric Berger, who formerly oversaw strictly mobile entertainment at Sony, will extend his oversight to Crackle. He'll take the reins from Jonathan Shambroom, who was elevated to the top job at Crackle in February.

"What we want to do with Crackle is make it a next-generation TV network," Berger said.

Previously based in San Francisco, Crackle will move to Culver City, Calif., and be formally folded into Sony's digital content operations, which include brands Minisode Network and Pix.

Redundancies will mean a few positions will be eliminated, but some employees will make the move south, where Crackle will function as a 20-man team.

In keeping with its vision of Crackle as a cable network without actually being on cable, Sony will begin supplementing the originals with library films including "Jerry Maguire" and "Ghostbusters," as well as TV series including "Married ... With Children," "The Tick" and "Voltron." Most cable channel are built on a foundation of library content, supplemented with originals that shape brand identity.

But a key ingredient to Crackle that differentiates it from traditional television is a suite of interactive tools including DVD-like content extras and chats with content creators.

Crackle is something of a subtle but fundamental departure for Sony, which has always stayed away from the channel business in favor of remaining a content supplier. But with little of the barriers to entry that come with formal multichannel distribution, more and more content companies are bypassing MSOs and satellite services to go online, as Warner Bros. recently did with a resurrected version of defunct brand the WB.

"We're controlling our own distribution and building direct consumer relationships and that's critical for an independent studio," Berger said.

With a mix of comedy, action and unscripted material, Crackle is being positioned by Sony as a brand that transcends genre but appealing to video enthusiasts, particularly the demographic focus of men 18-35.

In keeping with its channel orientation, Crackle plans to roll out as many as five 13-episode original series each quarter. Each of those four seasons will be anchored by one main attraction beginning in the first quarter, with "Angel of Death," an action thriller from comic book writer Ed Brubaker.

In addition to selling advertising for Crackle video, Sony will seek additional revenue streams by repackaging content for DVD and licensing it internationally.

For original content, Crackle is expected to find new talent as well as bank on Sony to bring in more established stars. Crackle has already put TV stars including Brad Garrett and Penn Jillette in programs on the site.

In addition to the Crackle.com destination site, content will also be syndicated to leading portals including YouTube and MySpace. However, not everything on Crackle.com will be available with the content partners, which are expected to drive traffic back to the destination site.

Now senior vp digital networks, Berger reports to Sean Carey, senior executive vp Sony Pictures TV, the division led by president Steve Mosko.

Shambroom, who was with the site before the Sony acquisition, took over for original founders Josh Felser and Dave Samuel amid a layoff of eight employees in February.

Web Site’s Formula for Success: TV Content With Fewer Ads

Via New York Times

“THUMBS up” and “thumbs down” ratings for commercials. Choose-your-own-advertisement options before shows begin. Interactive games during advertising breaks.

In the last year these online advertising innovations have been popularized by Hulu, the online video Web site that will celebrate its first anniversary on Wednesday. For all that has been written about Hulu’s easy-to-use, aesthetically pleasing interface, the advertising experience is equally important.

In the place of the long commercial pods that TV viewers have become accustomed to, only one ad is shown during each segment break on Hulu. Fewer ads make the ones on the site more memorable, Hulu executives say, allowing the site to charge higher prices for the ad units.

“The notion that less is more is absolutely playing out on Hulu,” Jason Kilar, the chief executive of the site, said. “This is benefiting advertisers as much as it is benefiting users.”

Read the full article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/29/business/media/29adco.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin

Broadband Content Bits: TidalTV-CNBC; Crackle.com Show

Via Paid Content

-- TidalTV taps CNBC for long-form content: Expanding its business offerings, the broadband TV platform has signed a deal with CNBC for streaming rights to The Hunt for Black Gold, The Millionaire Inside, and Saving General Motors, TVWeek reports. TidalTV will also stream news updates from CNBC.com; it already carries news features from NBC News and MSNBC, as well as WSJ, AP and AFP.

-- Actor fka Bud Bundy snags Crackle.com show: In case you were wondering what ever happened to Married with Children‘s Bud Bundy, the actor is slated to star in an original series on Sony’s Crackle.com, Variety reports. Star-ving is based on an exaggerated version of Faustino’s own life; in the show he runs his own struggling porn shop and loses his wife to a rap star. (Not sure we want to know what’s true.)

Brightcove Scores AOL

Via NewTeeVee

Brightcove, which just saw its investors at the New York Times fully deploy its product, now has fellow investor AOL using its video publishing platform.

Brightcove will take over from AOL’s terrible home-grown video product “beginning in early 2009,” according to an emailed press release. Brightcove will also be integrated into AOL’s Platform-A advertising offering.

This is a pretty big coup for a white-label video service, considering AOL is the ninth-largest U.S. online video property according to comScore.

While AOL’s video player may not have been top of the line, the portal got in early to the web video space race, with its acquisition of Truveo nearly three years ago. It has expanded Truveo as a leading video search destination and tool. It was a launch partner of Hulu and is one of only two sites (the other is Veoh) with whom ABC shares revenue from its video syndication. But it also had failed efforts like a high-definition premium video service that required a download.

Brightcove has raised some $90 million in funding from investors including Accel Partners, General Catalyst Partners, AOL, Allen & Company, Maverick Capital, Brookside Capital, AllianceBernstein, The New York Times Company, Transcosmos, Dentsu, J-Stream, and Cyber Communications.

TMZ Drops Brightcove for Digitalsmiths

Via NewTeeVee

It’s hard to measure total reach for white-label video providers, but at least in terms of marketplace perception, Brightcove leads the pack. Be it thePlatform, Ooyala, Fliqz — it’s a long list — no enterprise video player comes through our door without mentioning Brightcove as a competitor.

And the video platform dogfight gets nastier by the day, with established relationships getting ditched for the competition. We learned recently that big-shot celebrity news site TMZ has ditched Brightcove, its long-time video provider, for the search specialists at Digitalsmiths.

Digitalsmiths only recently started offering its video indexing and ad targeting technology bundled with a white-label video service; in the past it had offered it as a plug-in for other platforms. After it executed a deal to power the new TheWB.com — including using picture (computer vision) and audio analysis to index videos and to figure out dynamically what relevant video to promote — Digitalsmiths got the call to redo its Time Warner sister site TMZ.

For viewers, one nice thing about the switch is that TMZ no longer automatically resizes your browser window to play videos, as it did with the Brightcove platform. But it still employs tactics like replaying the same annoying ad every other video (for me it’s Aussie hairspray on repeat — I guess they think that ad targeting really hits the spot!), autoplaying the next video on its playlist, and disabling sharing or embedding to encourage visitors to come directly to its site.

TMZ’s site as a whole had 10.5 million uniques in August, according to comScore. While we don’t have broken-out figures for TMZ video traffic, but when we asked Brightcove CEO Jeremy Allaire on The GigaOM Show at the beginning of this year what drives traffic on his network, the first thing he mentioned was celebrity news.

To be fair to Brightcove, it’s not that there’s any clear momentum to shift away from its service. Today AOL announced it will ditch its home-grown video platform for Brightcove starting next year. And just last week, the New York Times relaunched its video section, moving fully to Brightcove from its previous provider The FeedRoom. The lesson? White-label video providers, try as they might to ingrain themselves into the core of their customers’ video initiatives, know that no deal is safe. That goes for Brightcove, and it goes for Digitalsmiths too.

News Bytes: October 15

2008-10-15T18:19:00.000-07:00

@ Mipcom Interview: Danny Passman, Head Of Programming, Joost: 'We've Learned From Our Mistakes'
via paidContent.org

Joost has been robustly criticized since its 2007 launch, in part for lacking decent content. The man in that firing line, Danny Passman, sympathizes with many of the concerns - nay, he echoes them and is in full-on repent mode for some moves he admits were missteps - but, Passman says, things are about to change…

"The old Joost was, 'let's just put the beta invite on Silicon Alley Insider and call it a day'," Passman told paidContent.org. "When I first started, I don't think we maximized the relationships we had with studios and the labels. The content discovery was undiscoverable. There was a barrier-to-entry to the site. The other mistake that maybe Joost had made was the focus on long-form."

Hairshirt aside, now "I feel like we've learned from our mistakes" and a "re-education campaign" is starting. Speaking on a sunny seaside promenade during Mipcom in Cannes, Passman draws a clear line between "old Joost" (the sins of the past) and "new Joost", the overhaul began when a shakeup brought him from Dailymotion and new engineering VP Matt Zelesko from Comcast (NSDQ: CMCSA) earlier this year.

The result: the long-awaited Flash version unveiled here today includes plenty of sharing features and an activity stream designed for inclusion on social sites - a feature that could attract new eyeballs. A big on- and offline marketing campaign will now begin, Hulu-like embeddability will come in the next update and Passman is most keen to find that holy grail of original content. But a spokesperson ruled out need for more VC funds right now.

-- CBS' (NYSE: CBS) Hulu?: With CBS holding out on Hulu in favor of YouTube and Passman's site, in which it is an investor, the relationship between the two is one to watch. The network is "a great partner of ours", Passman said, this month supplying its clip of John McCain's Letterman no-show and saying "here you go, go promote it". "They go above and beyond most of the other partners. They go, 'we're handing you this, the reason why it's relevant is X/Y/Z - if you'd like to promote it, you can promote it this way'; they've figured it out, they're very strategic. As we show them that we can build an audience around their content, I'm sure they'll give us more and more exclusive things." So can we consider Joost CBS' Hulu, against the NBC-News Corp (NYSE: NWS) site? Not exactly - CBS distributes to over 400 partners, Passman said.

-- Closer to producers and programs: "It kills me that people (criticize us) because we have such great content." "When I first started ... the first thing I did was to pinpoint the content owners that I felt would drive viewers ... understanding the content we're creating, not just slapping something up because it was on TV last night. Whereas the site used to be a hodge-podge of random classifications, it's very easy now to discover content. (Critics are) basing off the old client ... there was so much content being ingested, there wasn't a proper hierarchy to find that content. There also was no promotion areas and was sort of a disconnect between the website and the downloadable client."

-- Long vs. snackable: On the early penchant for long-form: "You need to have a mix of types of content ... if (some clips) were over a minute long, I wouldn't watch 'em. You need content that, if I sent it to you, you can watch really fast and be like 'I wanna go back to that site, it's cool' - and I don't think you can do that with a two-hour documentary of manatees."

-- The move to browser-based: It's not just about Flash but about the social sharing features; the idea being, those who see a Joost user's JoostFeed on, say, Facebook or FriendFeed might be inclined to try Joost themselves. And the departure from the desktop app is also prompting Joost to engage in search engine marketing and optimization, to bring folk to its new web pages. A marketing effort will include "reaching out to niche communities about the content we have, not necessarily telling the story of Joost a thousand times" - another nod to the past.

-- Hulu envy? "It's a very different offering - it's catch-up TV for two major studios. We also have a huge music following that they don't have, we are global, have Turner and Warner Bros. It's the difference between eating pretzels and potato chips - I'm pretzels."

@ Mipcom: Chad Hurley Keynote: 'No Silver Bullet' To YouTube Profit
via paidContent.org

A prosaic and clear business pitch from an initially nervous YouTube CEO to international TV execs at Cannes' Mipcom broadcasting conference: "We want to continue to be your partner ... let's talk backstage".

Well, YouTube may have over 900 pro media partners alongside the skateboarding dogs nowadays (and new deals with RAI and Panini announced this week) - but lawsuits from Viacom (NYSE: VIA), Telecinco, TF1, Mediaset et al suggest its favored branded channels model has far from convinced the entire TV industry yet…

Moderator Ross Westgate (CNBC) suggested what Hurley called "partners" are actually "frenemies"; "it's a truly mixed up landscape we're going in to" - but Hurley wouldn't bite, talking again instead about partnerships and inevitable overlaps, in a pitch that heavily sold "reach, revenue and rights management" to TV folk: "For those of you wary of this new distribution model, understand that YouTube exists to give you control ... do you circle ranks and push against change?"

"I always get the question, 'where's the revenue, when are you guys going to make money?' I don't think there's going to be a silver bullet that answers all those questions - we're developing a suite of solutions for people to be creative and see how the audience engages with those (different forms of) ads." Hurley joked: "We act confident, get up on stage and pretend we have all the answers - but we surely don't."

-- On Google: "They've continued to tell us to focus on the user; we've been doing that. They feel if we do that we'll have a good model for monetization in the future ... (because) it's important that content producers be paid for what they make."

Westgate wondered if YouTube's share of the web video market could attract antitrust investigators - something he said could be soothed by licensing YouTube's underlying components to those partners (ever heard of an API?: "We're definitely looking at opportunities to do that. We don't necessarily want the entire online video market to suffer because of that.

We're definitely looking at those options to help support everyone in the online video world."

-- Challenges to address: Hurley acknowledged a concern I heard a lot in town last night - that YouTube's too big to find any decent content: "We still have a lot of work to do on the discovery site - when you're receiving 13 hours of content a minute it's, its impossible to watch everything; there need to be better ways of finding content."

-- New CBS (NYSE: CBS) long-form partnership: Hurley said CBS' channel has had over 8,000 subscriptions and 250 million video views: "CBS has received a strong and positive response from the YouTube community about the quality of its programming." He told Westgate broadcasters like CBS had earlier been reluctant to come aboard because "the business reasons" weren't there, referring to available advertising options; now available ad formats are growing.
A remark in a later panel from Joost's chief creative guy Henrik Werdelin: "I don't think they've found a way to satisfy their customers that they can monetize their content."

Sony to beam Hancock to Bravia TV owners
via Consumer Reports Electronics Blog

For the first time, a major motion picture will be available as an Internet download before it comes out on DVD and Blu-ray. The movie, Hancock, which was in theaters this summer, will be available as a 24-hour rental from Oct. 28 through Nov. 19th to Sony Bravia TV owners.
To receive the movie, which is priced at $9.99, Bravia owners will need Sony's $300 Bravia Internet Video Link adapter and a broadband connection. As part of the promotional offering, those who buy the video stream and register online will receive a free Blu-ray copy of the movie when it's released at the end of November.

Three different streams of the movie will be offered: one 720p HD version, and two DVD-quality (480p) versions that will use different encoding for those who have lower-bandwidth connections. Once connected to the Sony website through the Bravia Internet Video Link, the service will automatically check the available bandwidth and select the most suitable stream for the customer. Presumably that means that some who'd like to get the HD version of the movie, but who have slow Internet connections, will instead be sent a 480p version. It's unclear whether you can cancel the movie after it starts playing if you decide the video quality is lower than you’d like.

This should be an interesting test of whether consumers will pay a premium for being able to access movies prior to their release on DVD and Blu-ray—and if so, how much they're willing to spend. Sony is expected to offer other Sony Pictures releases via Internet streams the day-and-date of home video availability. While other TV manufacturers have Internet-connected TVs, Sony is unique in that it also owns a major Hollywood studio.

News Bytes: October 13

2008-10-13T18:06:00.000-07:00

Hulu Envy: SNL Planning Standalone Site; So Does HBO

via paidContent.org

NBC Universal (NYSE: GE) is looking at launching a standalone site for Saturday Night Live, high on its success with SNL clips on Hulu and NBC.com in this election season, reports B&C. Though the plans are still in early stage, the site could include SNL's current sketches library, as well as dress rehearsal skits that have never aired, the story says, and would also feature additional original comedy from the cast. The idea is similar to what Viacom's (NYSE: VIA) Comedy Central has done with The Daily Show and Colbert Report, with their own standalone sites. My two cents: SNL beyond the election skits still sucks, so stick to the knitting, don't get into the rights-clearing quagmire, and keep pushing on Hulu and NBC.com. NBCU is a founding partner in Hulu, along with Fox.

Meanwhile, others not part of Hulu are also considering their own standalone site, or at least beefing up their present ones. We have mentioned about Universal Music Group's plans to develop a Hulu-like site for music videos. According to AdAge, HBO's on-again-off-again digital strategy now includes developing a video portal at hbo.com, with show offering clips and some full episodes.

Microsoft to Release Silverlight 2 Tuesday

via NewTeeVee

Microsoft officially announced the release of its Silverlight 2 media player today; the new version will be available for download starting tomorrow. Microsoft also said it’s signed up new customers for the video player, including CBS College Sports.

The Silverlight 2 beta underwent a pretty massive stress test as it was the video player NBC used for the most recent Olympics; according to a Microsoft press release, the player served up 70 million video streams and 600 million minutes of video watched. Silverlight was also used by broadcasters in France, Russia and other countries to deliver the games online.

But the Olympics did more than put Silverlight through its paces. Microsoft said that the Olympics boosted its market penetration for Silverlight in the U.S. by more than 30 percent. But that stat rings a little hollow as the company didn’t offer up a definitive number of people using Silverlight.

On a conference call today, Scott Guthrie, corporate vice president of the .NET Developer division at Microsoft, said that “one in four consumers now have access to a machine that has Silverlight installed,” and that he expects Silverlight to be running on hundreds of millions of PCs “very quickly.”

Microsoft also announced a host of new customers that will be using Silverlight, including CBS College Sports, Blockbuster’s MovieLink movie service, Home Shopping Network and Hard Rock Cafe International.

The online video battle between Microsoft and Adobe is certainly heating up. Silverlight 2 is available imminently and Adobe’s Flash 10 is in beta.

DISH Network's 1080p VOD service gets inspected, looks impressive

via Engadget

A couple of months back, we saw what was to come with DISH Network's 1080p video-on-demand service. Now, the cats and kittens over at Sound & Vision have a definitive writeup explaining the value of the aforementioned offering. At the time of review, Speed Racer was DISH's 1080p VOD movie of the month, so critics fired it up via the satcaster's set-top-box while comparing it to the version on Blu-ray. Obviously, DISH's 1080p isn't the same quality 1080p as what you'll find on a BD-50, but the results were pretty astounding, regardless. In fact, critics had a tough time deciphering between the two from a normal viewing distance, and while they were fully expecting to be underwhelmed by DISH Network's 1080p material, they were actually stunned by just how impressive it looked. Of course, the dearth of titles available at any given time means that this won't sway potential customers in and of itself, but you can rest assured DISH is looking to beef up its 1080p HD VOD lineup as quickly as possible.

AT&T Takes U-verse to Circuit City, Walmart

via Digital Trends

Telecommunications operator AT&T has announced it will begin selling its U-verse broadband Internet and digital video service through retailers Circuit City and Walmart beginning this month. The offerings will be available in more than 600 retail locations in and near neighborhoods where U-verse services are available: right now, that includes regions of Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, Nevada, Ohio, Oklahoma, Texas, and Wisconsin, although AT&T plans to expand the offering to other locations in the future.

News Bytes: October 8

2008-10-08T18:51:00.000-07:00

Sprint, AT&T Coordinate Wide-Ranging Honda Ad Campaign with Sony
via mocoNews.net

Wireless carriers Sprint (NYSE: S) and AT&T (NYSE: T) are working with Sony (NYSE: SNE) Pictures Television on a wide-ranging marketing campaign that places the carmarker on all available ad space on Sony's online and mobile sites. WSJ has the details, which include giving Honda the run of all ad space on Sony Pictures' video site Crackle and record label Sony BMG's web properties and music videos. In addition to outside partners Sprint and AT&T, ads promoting the Honda Fit will appear with Sony-created programming on MySpace and Facebook, YouTube, Hulu, and virtual community Gaia Online. By coordinating the campaign across a range of online and mobile properties, the $500,000 ad deal is designed to "cut through the clutter" of the thousands of ads that users are exposed to. Sony is betting heavily on Honda's success—though how it defines success in this case wasn't made clear—and plans to strike similar blanket deals with other companies.

Net-flix to charge more for Blu-Ray
via Net-flix

As you may know, Blu-ray movies are more expensive than standard definition movies. As a result, we're going to start charging $1 a month (plus applicable taxes), in addition to your monthly membership charge, for unlimited access to Blu-ray movies.The additional charge for unlimited Blu-ray access will be automatically added to your next billing statement on or after November 5th, 2008 and will be referenced in your Membership Terms and Details. If you wish to continue getting Blu-ray movies for $1 a month more, you don't need to do anything. If not, you can remove Blu-ray access anytime by visiting Your Account at the Netflix website.

Crackle Shutting NorCal Office to Move in with Parent Sony
via NewTeeVee

Crackle will be closing up its Sausalito, Calif.-based shop at the end of the month and moving down to Culver City to join its corporate parent, Sony Pictures Entertainment. The move comes more than two years after Sony acquired Crackle, then called Grouper. It is also being accompanied by the departure of most of Crackle’s staff, many of whom were given job offers but declined to move to Southern California.

“It’s really the next logical step in the asset’s evolution,” said Sean Carey, senior executive vice president of Sony Pictures Television. “When we acquired Grouper, it was really about a technological platform. It’s evolved from a technology company to a media network.”

Until very recently, Crackle employed some 35 people, according to Carey, and “half or less of that” will be moving to LA before the end of the month. Sony will be replacing most of those positions with local hires. In February of this year, the site employed 60 people and laid off eight of them as part of a general restructuring. At that time co-founders Josh Felser and Dave Samuel stopped being involved on a day-to-day basis, though they officially left the company more recently.

Grouper was indeed a technology company; it had built desktop applications for P2P sharing and personal video making back in the day, before scoring a $65 million acquisition that preceded YouTube’s sale to Google. Crackle, which launched last summer as a site for discovering the best amateur content on the web and bringing it to the attention of the execs at Sony, has evolved to be more about commissioned professional content. Carey said a key example of what’s to come is the site’s new series Dating Brad Garrett, which makes use of that actor’s relationship with Sony from its show ‘Til Death.

Crackle has consistently built traffic, but it’s not showing up on any top video site rankings just yet. We haven’t been blown away by its original efforts thus far.
Felser said he heartily approved of the move to be closer to Sony, saying it would hopefully set up the site for getting a bigger piece of its parent’s mindshare and assets. “It’s so crowded out there, you need every advantage you can possibly get — outside of being YouTube,” said Felser. “I wouldn’t dream of starting an Internet video site today unless it was highly, highly targeted. Those sites are doomed.”

(Felser himself has started a new video site as a side project — it’s called Blinky TV and its for kids — and he’s also raising a fund to make investments.)

For his part, Carey said Crackle will try to stand out based on its original content — which is arguably a niche in this day and age. “Movies and television shows on the Internet are almost a commodity at this point,” said Carey. “What we believe will differentiate our service is short-form original production with high-caliber content that you can only find — at least in the first instance — at Crackle.com, and secondly, building a much more robust experience around that content.”

Vid-Biz
via NewTeeVee

Universal Music Puts Vids on Kiwibox; music videos will be distributed through the teen social network’s “KiwiboxTV” before the end of the year. (CNET)
Eisner on Hulu and MySpace; former Disney CEO says Hulu is not an end game, but more of a “middle game,” and says MySpace is squandering its video opportunity. (MediaWeek)

Comcast, KIT Digital Make Acquisitions; Comcast Media Center acquires asset delivery systems provider Radiance Technologies for $5 million. (Multichannel News) KIT Digital buys Czech digital media and IPTV company Visual Connection. (paidContent)

RealDVD Injunction Stands For Now
via Digital Trends

U.S. District Judge Marilyn Patel has ruled that a court injunction barring the sale of RealNetworks' RealDVD DVD-copying software will stand for at least another month until she has an opportunity to ramp up on the details of the licensing arrangement, how the software functions, and copyright issues involved in the case. Judge Patel indicated after the hearing that the case raises serious issues of licensing and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and she wasn't satisfied at first hearing that RealDVD was not in violation. As such, she is letting the current injunction blocking the sale of RealDVD stand, and indicated she is next ava …

News Bytes: September 23

2008-09-23T18:31:00.000-07:00

Engadget HD reviews ZeeVee's ZvBox
via Engadget
If you've been looking for a way to stream any HD web content -- we do mean any: Hulu, mkv, Amazon -- to any HDTV in the house, without running any new wires, dealing with the woes of WiFi, or even needing yet another box hanging off your shiny new HDTV; you should head on over to Engadget HD and read all about ZeeVee's ZvBox. We take the $500 box and put it through the paces to see if broadcasting your own QAM HD channel is worth the price.
Read

T-Mobile Unveils First Google Phone, Amazon MP3 Link
via Digital Media Wire - connecting people & knowledge
New York - Mobile network operator T-Mobile USA on Tuesday introduced the G1, the first mobile phone to feature Google's Android operating system, which will sell for $179 with a two-year voice and data agreement when it goes on sale first in the U.S. on Oct. 22. Viewed as a smartphone that will challenge Apple's iPhone, the G1 -- manufactured by Taiwan's HTC -- features both a touch-screen display and a full QWERTY hardware keyboard that slides out from underneath. read more

Hulu Adds Genres, Discussion, Search Features
via NewTeeVee
Popular video aggregator Hulu, which says it now has roughly 900 titles from more than 100 providers, has added genre-based channel browsing to its list of features, as well show recommendations, discussion forums and actor-based search.

The site debuted 17 new genre-based channels, among them action, comedy and horror. Meanwhile, Hulu launched an anime channel with shows like Naruto and Death Note, as well as a “Web Originals” channel featuring such high-profile shows as LG15: The Resistance, The Line and Gemini Division.

Hulu has also added show recommendations, though they are inconveniently buried way down at the bottom of the page beneath the new show and episode-specific discussion forums. The actor-based search works as you would expect it to; a search for “Tina Fey” brought up 30 Rock along with red carpet interviews, and results were broken down by TV network.

Rival online TV service Joost recently ditched its download client to become more web-based like Hulu, and added more socially oriented content discovery. Hulu will be making its own leap into deeper social functionality when it rolls out its Facebook Connect integration, which was supposed to launch in August.

Netflix Makes Deals With CBS, Disney on TV Shows
via paidContent.org
Netflix is on a content and services dealmaking frenzy. After embedding its service in LG, XBox, Roku and others, it has now done deals with CBS and Disney for making their TV shows available on the online version of its service. This will add about 500 older TV episodes from the Disney Channel and 350 episodes from CBS....others like NBC are already on Netflix (NSDQ: NFLX). The streaming service on Netflix is available for free for its DVD rental subscribers, and will be commercial free. Netflix has about 12K video available for streaming, compared to bout 100K DVDs in its service, but Ted Sarandos, Netflix's chief content officer, told WSJ that the company expects to have dozens of major new TV shows available over the next couple of months.

News Bytes: September 18

2008-09-17T18:28:00.001-07:00

No Download Required: Joost to Go Flash

via NewTeeVee

As we previously reported, Internet TV startup Joost is ditching its downloadable desktop software. But now the company is taking things a step further, to give users the option to access the site without even downloading a P2P browser plug-in. All its content and new social features will be available in Flash, with higher definition, live, and some international programming only available with download of a “premium” (but still free) plug-in.

What’s more, the company says it expects the majority of its users will come to its content through the Flash player. The premium version of the site is open to the public today; the standard version will launch in mid-October.

Also — yay! — Joost is improving its terrible navigation system. The site will now organize shows, films, and music into hierarchical categories.

Joost is also adding new content throughout the course of the fall. Its library of 28,000 shows includes some that no other web video sites offer, for instance the largest collection of anime on the web, according to a spokesperson.

With general consumer knowledge and adoption of the availability of TV online just beginning, Joost may just have an outside chance at reclaiming the ground it lost with its (often faulty) desktop client.

Mobile Video Is Next for MySpace, Facebook

via NewTeeVee

At a panel at GigaOM’s Mobilize conference today, representatives from MySpace and Facebook both said they saw emerging opportunities to bring video uploads to cell phones. Here are my notes:

John Faith, General Manager and VP, MySpace Mobile, MySpace:

Opportunities in mobile: Right now it’s all about communication, getting info and reacting to it. User-generated content has not had social network applied to it for mobile… New products: Video transcends the actual interface between a user having to type something in, being able to upload that to a social network is rather powerful. We just recently announced the ability to upload video directly, so the extension of that on mobile devices is the next step.

Chamath Palihapitiya, VP of Growth, Mobile and International, Facebook: Mobile strategy:

Uploading photos from mobile is very popular. Video is the next logical place to go. Qik, Flixwagon — that’s really cool stuff. To the extent that we can enable people to upload directly and then share that with their friends, I think that’s very powerful.

Sony Launches Life with Playstation Web Service

via TechCrunch

Life with PlayStation is now available for your PS3. The service, which can be downloaded by selecting the Folding@Home icon in the PS3’s dashboard, lets gamers view real-time news, weather and relating info right from their TV. Visually it’s quite impressive, with a focus on ease of use and simple data display. This is not, however, Playstation Home, Sony’s PS3-based free virtual world that will allow players to socialize in a Second-Life-like environment.

Sony’s touting it as something you turn on in the morning before heading to school or work. “Do I need an umbrella today, or a jacket? How did the Yankees do? (Just assume they lost.)” That type of thing.

News Bytes: September 17

2008-09-17T18:28:00.000-07:00

Verizon Wireless Quietly Launches Flash-Based Storefront

via mocoNews.net

Verizon Wireless (NYSE: VZ) has quietly released Dashboard, a new storefront found on its phones using Adobe's (NSDQ: ADBE) Flash technology, mocoNews has learned. So far, Dashboard has launched on the LG Chocolate 3, and more phones are expected by the end of the year, making it one of the largest mobile implementations of Flash in the U.S., both Verizon Wireless and Adobe confirmed. Todd Murphy, Verizon Wireless's director of digital media programming, explained to us the platform stands alongside the carrier's Get It Now platform, and is designed to be an easy place for consumers to find both content from Verizon's deck, but also links that take you to the mobile Web, "It's a dynamic real-time store. It's one click up on the Chocolate 3. We have a system on the back end that allows you to merchandise and change things every couple of hours."

The launch of Dashboard comes just before Adobe's CEO Shantanu Narayen keynoted at CTIA, where he pleaded for more standards in the industry, so that content can be developed once and published across many mobile devices and also the Internet and TV. However, operators in the U.S. have been slow to adopt Flash, even though it's embedded in a lot of handsets. Lack of Flash is a constant complaint about the iPhone. Verizon has been one of the more aggressive companies on that front, providing a Flash Lite extension to its Brew platform, which features content from game companies, such as Smashing Ideas and Mobitween, but also videos from MTV's Atom Entertainment. Anup Murarka, Adobe's director for technical marketing, who also appeared at CTIA, told us: "In terms of Flash Lite, Japan has been the first and foremost, and then Europe and now it is gaining in the U.S." For instance, little do people know that Flash is used on some of the popular phones, including the LG (SEO: 066570) Shine, Venus and Voyager. "We can enable these experiences to be richer, or more engaging, and the end-user doesn't even know it...You'll see additional examples over the next six to nine months." Read more

Mobile Content Bits: Games Go Mainstream At Handango

via mocoNews.net

-- Games and entertainment are hottest categories at Handango: Handango released its Yardstick for the first half of the year and reported that games jumped from fourth place to first place in just six months, followed close behind by the entertainment category—a first since the mobile content storefront began releasing the report. Entertainment and games comprised 42 percent of all sales in the top ten categories while business applications stood at 15 percent and productivity apps came in fourth place at 9 percent. Strong sales from EA Mobile and Capcom Interactive helped drive the surge in game-related sales. Handango also added more than 370 developers to its roster of more than 23,000 in the first half of the year. (Release).

NBC.COM New Digital Line-up

Planning to expand upon past successes NBC.com announced a new digital line-up of programming built around the fall television season. Here's a sampling of what's to come:

Heroes will feature more micro-sites delving into secrets revealed on air, more graphic novels, more cast commentaries and more webisodes beginning in December. A special heroes vs. villains social network launches in October
Knight Rider fans will be able to investigate the back stories of some of their favorite characters, play an all-new KITT game and interact in Attack KITT and the KITT cave
The Dunder Mifflin Infinity social network built around The Office will feature new branches, new tasks and new prizes. New features include Meredith's blog, Angela and Andy's wedding planning microsite, a Serenity by Jan microsite and a second installment of webisodes slated for November

Executive Moves

Marketing firm BrightLine iTV named Audrey Marco to the role of VP/Business Development in BrightLine's L.A. office. Audrey spent 11 years at Sony Pictures Entertainment where she helped found its Digital Division.

News Bytes: September 16

2008-09-16T18:39:00.001-07:00

Chad Hurley On The Future Of YouTube: We Will Conquer Every Screen

via TechCrunch

YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley wrote a post this morning about the future of online video and YouTube specifically. Hurley notes that 13 hours worth of videos are uploaded every minute to YouTube (a figure we’ve reported before). And he predicts more of the same: more videos will be uploaded to the Web, more video creators will be uploading those videos, and more viewers will be watching them on all sorts of screens from the living room to their mobile devices. In other words, more of the same means more exponential growth of videos on the Web.

Hurley’s vision of the future, though, pretty much describes the world as it is today. You can watch YouTube on your TiVo, iPhone, or PC. But if you read between the lines, he does hint that mobile might be the next really big step for YouTube:

Our goal is to allow every person on the planet to participate by making the upload process as simple as placing a phone call. This new video content will be available on any screen - in your your living room, or on your device in your pocket. YouTube and other sites will bring together all the diverse media which matters to you, from videos of family and friends to news, music, sports, cooking and much, much more.

The mobile opportunity for YouTube is bigger than just making all the video in the world available in your pocket. Mobile phones are also the new video cameras. Once it becomes truly easy to upload video from your phone to YouTube, it could truly become the repository of every captured moment in people’s lives.

For all his visions of the future, however, Hurley still has to figure out how make money from all of those videos.

Samsung makes a hostile bid for SanDisk

via Engadget

We'd heard rumors Samsung was wooing SanDisk, but it looks like the four-month courtship is over -- Samsung just announced that in reponse to SanDisk's "unrealistic expectations" during negotiations, it's going hostile and will offer $26/share for the company. That's bound to cause some waves in the storage industry, especially since Toshiba and Seagate were also rumored to be interested in SanDisk. We'll see what happens -- things always get a little crazy when there's nearly six billion dollars in cash on the table.

Update: SanDisk's board rejected the bid unanimously, saying the bid undervalues the company and is, like, totally uncool, man.

Read - WSJ article
Read - Samsung letter to SanDisk

Amazon's IMDb.com Begins Streaming Free Movies, TV Shows

via Digital Media Wire - connecting people & knowledge

Seattle - Amazon.com (NASD: AMZN) announced on Tuesday that its Internet Movie Database (IMDb.com) subsidiary has launched free streaming of full-length movies and TV shows. The new feature launches with some 6,000 titles provided by CBS, Hulu, Sony Pictures Television and over 500 independent filmmakers, including movies like "Fever Pitch," "Hoop Dreams" and "Raising Arizona," and TV shows such as "24," "CSI," "The Simpsons" and "Buffy the Vampire Slayer."

News Bytes: September 15

2008-09-15T18:08:00.000-07:00

YouTube Bans Violent Videos

via Digital Trends

In recent months YouTube has come under increasing criticism from both the US and UK for the fact that it has violent videos that have been uploaded available. But that has now changed as the Google-owned site has updated its community guidelines to prohibit videos that “directly incite violence,” the Guardian reports. There are two big changes in the community guidelines. One states: "Graphic or gratuitous violence is not allowed. If your video shows someone getting hurt, attacked or humiliated, don't post it." The other says: "We encourage Read

Hollywood Wants to Remake Content Ecosystem

via Digital Trends

A large collection of Hollywood players, retailers, online powerhouses, and consumer electronics firms have announced they've formed a new consortium called the Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem (DECE), with the goal of making the purchase of digital media like music and movies a "buy once, play anywhere" experience. The idea is that when a consumer buys digital media, he or she will be able to play it on any DECE compatible device anywhere they like—and if they don't have a copy with them, they'll be able to access their content from a cloud-based media locker. The consortium plans to work on their technology and standards, an Read

News Bytes: September 11

2008-09-11T17:44:00.000-07:00

CTIA Wire: Comcast-Thumbplay; mywaves-Sony Ericsson; PointRoll-USA Today; Truveo
via mocoNews.net

-- Comcast adds entertainment library to Thumbplay site: With Thumbplay Open, a digital content management system, now in beta, Thumbplay will offer extensive content to Comcast High Speed Internet customers and Comcast.net users can download music, ringtones, videos and games directly to their phones on m.comcast.net.. Thumbplay Open enables indie music artists to package and sell their own data to customers and allows site publishers and app developers to sell downloads from any site, app or widget. These users will also get a cut of the subscriber fee, $5-8 per subscriber.

-- mywaves launching new content, partners with Sony Ericsson: mywaves has launched "Captivate," its new service integrating ringtones, wallpaper and games with free mobile video and has expanded its distribution with Sony (NYSE: SNE) Ericsson (NSDQ: ERIC) by incorporating its mobile app on its multimedia handsets. mywaves has also teamed up with Audible (NSDQ: ADBL) Magic to develop a content filtering technology to protect ownership rights. Heavy users will be charged a $9.99 per month subscription fee, though not clear what exactly constitutes a "heavy" user.

-- PointRoll and USA Today premiering expandable ad unit: The companies have launched an expandable rich media unit created specifically for the iPhone. Initially launching on the USA Today mobile site, it will feature campaigns for the Ford Flex and the new George Clooney-Brad Pitt flick from NBCU's Focus Features, Burn After Reading. The mobile ads are expandable upon user initiation and include video click-to-play, coupon downloads, mapping technology directly linked to Google (NSDQ: GOOG) Maps and user-initiated click-to-call.

-- Truveo launches public beta of video search site: Users can now access the Truveo Mobile Video Search beta site from realtime streaming protocol-supported phones by going to its WAP site. The site organizes millions of videos on over 300 sites whose content has been optimized for mobile devices and search results can be sorted by popularity, ranking or date.

Verizon Wireless Releases Dozens Of Games From 10 Publishers
via mocoNews.net

It's all about games today for Verizon Wireless (NYSE: VZ). The carrier released dozens of mobile games from 10 publishers. Gameloft (EPA: GFT), Glu Mobile (NSDQ: GLUU), Konami Digital Entertainment, Mobitween, Namco Networks, RealNetworks (NSDQ: RNWK), SkyZone Entertainment, Smashing Ideas, Capcom Interactive and Sony (NYSE: SNE) Pictures Television all teamed up with the carrier to launch games such as The Dark Knight and Sally's Salon. The carrier said it is over performing in the mobile games space and increasing its market share. (Release).

TiVo Coming to BlackBerries, Eventually [TiVo]
via Gizmodo

BlackBerry manufacturer RIM and TiVo manufacturer TiVo have teamed up to offer what sounds like SlingBoxesque mobile entertainment on RIM phones. There aren't many details now, but the press release explains:

Initially, BlackBerry smartphone users will gain the convenience of being able to discover what shows are on and schedule television recordings while away from the living room and on the go. Future collaboration between the companies will focus on software applications that further simplify mobile access to video content.

Hopefully that "future collaboration" part isn't too far off.

RIM & TiVo Partner to Provide TiVo Mobile Entertainment Services on BlackBerry Smartphones

ALVISO, CALIFORNIA and WATERLOO, ONTARIO—(Marketwire - Sept. 11, 2008) - TiVo Inc. (NASDAQ:TIVO), the creator of and a leader in television services for digital video recorders (DVRs), and Research In Motion (RIM) (NASDAQ:RIMM)(TSX:RIM), a global leader in wireless innovation, today announced a partnership to bring customized TiVo services to the BlackBerry® wireless platform.

The new relationship brings TiVo and RIM together to develop a variety of mobile entertainment services that marry RIM's leading BlackBerry® smartphones with the content delivered to consumers through the Emmy-winning TiVo® service. Initially, BlackBerry smartphone users will gain the convenience of being able to discover what shows are on and schedule television recordings while away from the living room and on the go. Future collaboration between the companies will focus on software applications that further simplify mobile access to video content.

"TiVo subscribers will soon be able to wirelessly control their TiVo DVRs using a BlackBerry smartphone - anytime, anywhere - and that is a powerful example of how our respective technologies can complement each other to serve our mutual customers," said Jim Balsillie, Co-CEO of Research In Motion. "As the BlackBerry smartphone continues its evolution as a modern lifestyle device, the importance of home entertainment integration will continue to grow and TiVo will be the key in providing consumers with greater flexibility in accessing television content."

"TiVo continues to transform and revolutionize the way people control and watch television and broadband video," said Tom Rogers, CEO and President of TiVo Inc. "RIM and TiVo share a commitment to great user experiences, which cause our products to become seamlessly integrated into the consumer's lifestyle. We also share a vision for the future of mobile entertainment services and we look forward to a variety of future innovations as a result of this relationship."

The first software application from RIM and TiVo is expected to be available later this year.

News Bytes: September 10

2008-09-10T18:12:00.000-07:00

YouTube: 5 Billion Served
via Portfolio.com: Tech Observer

Sam Gustin writes: Google's YouTube is absolutely crushing the competition in Web video, according to new data from market research firm comScore.In July, Web users watched a staggering 5 billion videos on Google sites, (YouTube accounts for 98 percent of Google's video traffic), earning it 44 percent market share.The next closest competitor was Fox Interactive Media, which came in at a paltry 3.9 percent market share. Microsoft and Yahoo's video offerings earned 2.5 and 2.4 percent market share, respectively. Hulu, the ad-supported Web video partnership between Fox and NBC earned an anemic 1 percent market share.In terms of unique viewers, YouTube was dominant as well, drawing over 90 million unique visitors for the month. The next closest was Fox Interactive Media, with 54 million visitors, most of whom were watching videos on MySpace, the social network.Perhaps the most telling stat involves YouTube's stickiness, which is driven by the social nature of the site that no competitor has been able to replicate.YouTube users watched an average of 55 videos in July -- no other Web video service had users who watched more than 12 videos on average.

@ CTIA: Sony Pictures Integrates Dynamic Ad Service On Minisode Network
via mocoNews.net

Sony (NYSE: SNE) Pictures Television is revamping its mobile advertising capabilities with a new service that will enable the entertainment giant to automatically insert ads, a first of its kind for WAP sites in the United States, according to the company. The company's Minisode Network, which is on the carrier decks at Sprint (NYSE: S) and Verizon Wireless (NYSE: VZ), also operates off deck through the support of ads. "None of these video-on-demand services have the ability to dynamically serve ads," said Eric Berger, SVP of mobile entertainment. "If you want to have video-on-demand with advertising you have to do what we call stitch the advertising onto the video."

After a sponsorship campaign ends, Sony and its competitors have had to pull down the content, edit new ads into video clips, re-encode the video and post it all over again. The new system, which is powered by Mobixell Networks, will stick the video advertisement into existing clips as a pre-roll, post-roll or interstitial ad with no downtime. Berger: "It enables us to move in and out of campaigns more quickly and put more advertising partners through this service so they can deliver more impressions." Sony's Minisode Network uses pre-roll ads before each clip and uses just one sponsorship at a time. The company hopes its ad-supported network will flourish outside the carriers' walled gardens, but Berger admits there are shortcomings: "The challenge for us is the business doesn't really scale today." Mobile ads aren't simply given away, but get bundled into packages at the company's ad unit.

@ CTIA: Verizon Wireless Roundup: V CAST Video Service Expands With 13 New Content Providers
via mocoNews.net

Verizon (NYSE: VZ) added a whole mess of new video content to its V CAST Video service today from at least 13 content providers. The carrier added the following channels to its programming line-up: Tuned In from 60Frames; Comedy Time Latino from Comedy Time; TLC, Animal Planet, Planet Green and Discovery Kids from Discovery Communications; ES Musica and Rock On: Altitude from GoTV Networks; the G4 Channel from Comcast (NSDQ: CMCSA)

Entertainment Group's G4; The WB Channel from Warner Bros. Television Group; SayHeyHey from SayHeyHey.com; the Relix Channel from Zenbu Media; HGTV and Food Network from Scripps (NYSE: SSP) Networks; and DC Comics and Scooby-Doo & Friends from Warner Bros. Digital Distribution. (Release).

Samsung Considering Acquisition of SanDisk
via MediaBytes with Shelly Palmer » MediaBytes

SAMSUNG announced that it is considering an acquisition of SANDISK (NASD: SNDK), which could adversely affect TOSHIBA, whose chip plants are co-financied by SanDisk. WIth competition looking to take over, the ties between SanDisk and Toshiba would inevitably erode and leave Toshiba without one of its biggest clients in its core business, memory chips. Things could be bleak for Toshiba if the alliance goes through, however, anti-trust violations could keep the deal from going through.

Family Guy Creator Launches Cavalcade of Comedy
via NewTeeVee

Seth MacFarlane kicked off his long-anticipated, multimillion-dollar, Google AdSense-distributed Cavalcade of Comedy animated series today. Two new shorts are live on both MacFarlane’s sethcomedy.com and on the show sponsor Burger King’s YouTube channel.

Fans of Family Guy will be pleased to know that MacFarlane’s new apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, featuring much of the same kind of pop-culture-filled humor that made MacFarlane a frat house name.

As we’ve written before, Cavalcade is unique in the web video world in that it will be distributed via Google AdSense to sites that are demographically aligned. There will be 50 episodes with “new Cavalcade shorts every week.”

Vid-Biz: DTV, Motherhood, Verizon
via NewTeeVee
DTV Switch Tested in Wilmington, N.C.; town shuts off analog system in a test for the larger, national switch in February. (The Wall Street Journal)

ABC Orders 13 Episodes of In the Motherhood; the former web series has been in development at ABC since the spring; casting is still not in place for the series. (TVWeek)

Verizon Offering More TV Shows; wireless network to get full-length episodes of programs from NBC, MTV, HGTV and more. (Multichannel News)

Global Media Exchange Acquires inDplay; division of Ascent Marketing buys online content licensing marketplace inDplay, which was backed by Google CEO Eric Schmidt. (release)

Disney Serves Up 186.7 Million Streams in July; record month tied to web originals featuring High School Musical, Miley Cyrus and the Jonas Bros. (Variety)

U.S. Open Online Attracts 300,000 Users
via NewTeeVee

Roughly 300,000 users watched the U.S. Open’s final men’s tennis match online this past Monday, according to numbers from CBS Sports. The rain-delayed match was live-streamed on both CBSSports.com and the USOpen.org, where each of those 300,000 users watched approximately 49 minutes of video for a total of 243,000 hours of video.

While those aren’t Tiger Woods numbers, they aren’t too shabby given that they didn’t have a similar brand-name star (easy, Federer fans, it’s just the truth). And since the game was on a Monday at 5 p.m. ET, it’s probably 300,000 more than they would have gotten had the network only showed it on TV. And it looks like CBS is just getting warmed up when it comes to sports online.

CBS Sports announced yesterday that it will live stream all of the 17 scheduled home college football games of the Southeastern Conference on CBSSports.com. This is the first time college football fans can watch games online for free. Coverage “kicks off” on Sept. 13 as Georgia takes on USC.

Sports is only beginning to spread its wings online, and it will be big business as more online options open up. The NFL started streaming games last week, ESPN will start live streaming Major League Baseball games, and the NBA is in negotiations to stream local games.

News Bytes: September 9

2008-09-09T18:01:00.000-07:00

Apple Brings Back NBC; HD TV Shows for $2.99

via NewTeeVee

iTunes will offer HD versions of TV episodes for $2.99, and start selling NBC shows again, is the word from the special Apple event today in San Francisco.

Updated: Industry Moves: Disney-ABC TV; Spot Runner; Operative

via paidContent.org

-- Disney/ABC-TV: The broadcast and cable unit has added three execs to its digital team… Karin Timpone and Lauren DeVillier are joining from Yahoo. Timpone will serve as SVP, marketing and product strategy for the Digital Media team, while DeVillier will serve as VP, digital media at the Disney Channel. At Yahoo, Timpone was chief marketer for the Yahoo Media Group, overseeing marketing for the portal's content operations, including entertainment, news, finance, sports, lifestyles and health verticals. During her time at Yahoo, DeVillier managed Yahoo Kids and the eco-focused channel Yahoo Green. Rounding out the trio of new faces at Disney/ABC's digital team is Beth Johnson, who arrives from NBC Universal's Bravo, where she was editorial director for digital media. Before that, Johnson part of the launch team for InStyle magazine's InStyle.com. In her new role at Disney, Johnson will be VP, digital media for ABC Daytime & SOAPnet.

-- Spot Runner: Separate from the loss of national ad sales exec Joanne Bradford to Yahoo earlier, the online TV ad agency has tapped two new execs to its Local Marketing Services group. Former Autobytel and AOL exec Jon Rosen is in as VP of sales and business development; and Elizabeth Carrasco, formerly of web traffic analyst Authenticlick, as VP of online engineering. Release (PDF)

-- Operative: Microsoft has another space to fill following the exit of Kevin Johnson in June and Bradford leaving, however briefly, for Spot Runner this past spring. Now, Microsoft vet Mike Hard is gone. He ran U.S. digital advertising sales at MSFT, and will now oversee global sales and marketing for Operative, a provider of ad management tools to web publishers. Hard spent 17 years in a variety of executive roles at the Redmond software giant. Release

AT&T Overhauls U-Verse DVR; Still Playing Catch-Up To Verizon FiOS, Cable

via paidContent.org

With recent expansion of the deal between DirecTV (NYSE: DTV) and TiVo (NSDQ: TIVO), the DVR wars are ramping up. Now, after past struggles, AT&T (NYSE: T) is rolling out what it says is an "enhancement" to its IPTV product U-Verse. The new service, dubbed Total Home DVR, is being made available in the Bay Area first. AT&T plans to hook up the rest of its national subs later this year. Noting that most DVR recordings are limited to a single TV set-top box, AT&T says this service allows recorded shows to be played on any set in a subscriber's home. It also boasts up to 37 hours of high-def content storage space or up to 133 hours of standard content. And users will be able to set the DVR from their PC or cell phone as part of its AT&T Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) Web and Mobile Remote Access DVR feature. Release

-- WSJ: At least for the moment, AT&T has a lot of catching up to do against Verizon (NYSE: VZ) and the cable providers. Verizon's FiOS TV service claims 1.4 million subs compared to U-verse's 549,000—though AT&T says it expects to top one million subs by the end of the year. The Total Home DVR service will be free as part of a U-verse subscription, which runs from $44 to $99 monthly.

Gossip Girl Returns to Streaming

via NewTeeVee

You’ll be happy to know that the CW, either egged on by our post asking for online episodes (probably not) or sticking with a stupidly long planned delay, has, in fact, posted the season two premiere of Gossip Girl online. TVbytheNumbers‘ Robert Seidman kept his eyes on CWTV and let us know he caught sight of last week’s episode posted yesterday afternoon, a few hours before the new one aired on the East Coast.

So it appears, for now, that the CW’s new strategy is to post streaming versions of its primetime shows a week after they air (Gossip Girl is on Mondays). In keeping with that schedule, the series premiere of the new 90210 (which aired last Tuesday) is live today. I believe that, in the past, CW posted new episodes after a couple days’ delay, but not a week. All along it has been posted to iTunes with much more alacrity.

This new posting schedule follows the network’s attempt to drive up oldteevee viewership of Gossip Girl last year by discontinuing ad-supported streaming of new episodes. Over the summer the network announced it had changed its policy and would be bring the show back to the web, but when no new episodes had appeared six days after the season premiere we had started to wonder if it was having second thoughts.

News Bytes: September 8

2008-09-08T18:07:00.001-07:00

HBO Launches A Web Video Show

via TechCrunch

HBO on Monday announced that it will try to use the Web in a slightly different way than its colleagues at NBC and Fox have used it with Hulu: it will launch its own Web video series called “Hooking Up.”

Jessica Rose of “lonelygirl15″ fame will star in the new show and will be accompanied by video bloggers, sxePhil and KevJumba. The 10-part show will start airing on October 1 and will be offered on its own site, Hookingupshow.com, as well as MySpaceTV, and YouTube.

Ironically, HBO said it will not monetize the show during the first year. Instead, it will let users watch the show during the first year and try selling advertising if the show continues for another season.

More importantly, “Hooking Up” is just the first major announcement HBO has made with its HBOlab brand, which aims at expanding online programming and establishing the company a foothold online. But the question remains: can TV networks establish the same basic business model online? Hulu’s success suggests it’s easier to place TV content online instead of creating original content.

Real Networks’ Legal DVD Ripping Will Cost You

via NewTeeVee

Today at DEMO, Real Networks launched its own DVD “storage” service that allows a user to rip a DVD he owns onto his computer, an external hard drive or a flash drive. For $29.99 Windows users (Mac software will launch next year) can copy DVDs and watch them on their PCs. There is a free 30-day trial period as well. Unlike competing services such as HandBrake or Mac the Ripper, Real’s product is legal. But being above board is going to cost users in both dollars and storage.

There are three reasons the service is legal, according to Real Networks VP Jeff Chasen, who showed the product. It doesn’t change the change the content of the DVD at all. No compression, no DRM cracking or sharing, but it does add an extra layer of 128-bit encryption to the stored file. In all, it means you need to have a heckuva lot of storage to store your DVD library (and even more for Blu-Ray), but with fancy terabyte drives in the sub-$500 range, that’s not a huge kicker. Second, you have to pay for the Real software for every computer you’re going to watch the movies on (the added Real encryption tracks this.) Chasen says a user can put the software on up to five computers to manage a single library of movies, and there will be discounts for buying multiple copies.

Finally, the courtroom defeat of industry players suing Kaliedescape, a startup that stored DVDs onto a hard drive, four years ago paved the way for a legit DVD storage service, Chasen says. That doesn’t address the issue of copying a Netflix DVD onto my computer, but so far RealDVD software has protected itself with a handy little statement that appears when trying to watch or rip a device. It reads, “RealDVD is for saving a DVD you own. If you do not own this DVD select play.”

With cheaper storage and a way to make sure every DVD-watcher has a license to the software, the technology may be ready, but I doubt people’s scruples are.

Shouldn’t Gossip Girl (and the CW’s Other Shows) Be Online by Now?

via NewTeeVee

For the last five weeks of its freshman season, the CW discontinued posting its buzzy but largely unwatched series Gossip Girl online, as part of an effort to drum up its oldteevee viewer numbers. We newteevee watchers booed and hissed, hoping the ploy wouldn’t work and set an example for other networks. Ratings stayed low, but the series got renewed, and then over the summer, the CW said it would reverse its policy and post Gossip Girl online when it returned to the air in September.

But…It’s been nearly a week since the series’ sophomore debut, and episode 1 still isn’t online. Standard practice among the TV networks is to post shows online after they air in Hawaii; if not then, sometime soon the next day. A week is pushing it. We have to wonder if the CW is reneging on its reversal.

Furthermore, as far as I can tell, the CW hasn’t posted any episodes from its new season; what seems to be the most recent video in its full episode queue is an episode of Everybody Hates Chris that originally aired in May. Either the guy who loads new videos into the system quit last week, or there’s been an unacknowledged policy reversal. And this at a time when networks across the board are posting more and more of their shows for free, ad-supported streaming online, in some cases before they air on TV.

As for actual broadcast television, interpretations of Gossip Girl’s season premiere’s ratings were mixed; on the one hand, the episode failed to top last season’s premiere, and it got beat by the CW’s 90210 revival the next night; on the other hand, it apparently did amazingly great with women aged 18 to 34. Meanwhile, Gossip Girl was promptly posted on iTunes after it aired. And nearly a week later, it still occupies the No. 1 slot. (The show has done well all along on iTunes, and probably since people actually pay $1.99 for it there the CW hasn’t messed with that success.) One Tree Hill is at No. 2, while 90210 doesn’t seem to have been posted at all.

We’ve tried to contact the CW’s press department through official means, but that hasn’t worked so far, so maybe blogging will do the trick. Hey CW, whatever happened to posting your shows online?

News Bytes: September 4

2008-09-04T18:15:00.001-07:00

19% of U.S. Households Watch Online TV

via NewTeeVee

Probably one of the most important benchmarks for online video, in my opinion, was the study conducted by TNS and the Conference Board last year that found 16 percent of American Internet households watch TV broadcasts online. That seemed pretty impressive at the time, especially given that it pre-dated the existence of Hulu along with widespread promotion of other network’s streaming offerings. It signaled that there was a real audience for premium entertainment on the PC screen.

Well, perhaps as expected, but certainly as an important milestone, that number is now larger: “Nearly one-fifth” of American Internet households watch TV broadcasts online, according to a release put out by the two firms today. So assuming the number is something on the order of 19 percent, it’s actually not that dramatic of an increase year-on-year. (We’ve asked if they can send over a more precise percentage. The firms do say this year’s figure is double what they measured two years ago.)

In its study of 10,000 households, TNS and the Conference Board found that of those who watch TV online, 43 percent tune into the news, the most popular category. Thirty-nine percent watch drama shows, 34 percent sitcom/comedy shows, 23 percent reality shows, 16 percent sports, and 15 percent user-generated content.

Almost nine out of ten online TV viewers watch online broadcasts at home, while 15 percent watch from their office. Some 68 percent of online TV watchers stream video, while 38 percent utilize free downloads (Meaning illegitimate downloads, I assume. Most places offering authorized downloads, like iTunes, do it for a fee.) The top streaming destinations are official TV sites, with 65 percent of viewers, and YouTube, with 41 percent.

Analysis: Set-Top, Shmet-Top: TV Makers Take It Inside

via Digital Media Wire - connecting people & knowledge

The annual CEDIA Expo has been underway in Denver this week, where consumer electronics manufacturers were unveiling their newest top-of-line hardware for an audience of custom home theater installers. This year's show was heavy on (very) high-end Blu-ray Disc players from Sony, Panasonic, Pioneer, JVC and others (not much for the Wal-Mart crowd there). But it also featured hardware makers' first substantial forays into Internet-enabled TV sets, which are designed to serve as their own bridge between the Web-delivered video and the big-screen TV in the living room without the need of a separate set-top box or PC.

What You Need to Know about the LG-Netflix Box

via NewTeeVee

LG and Netflix have been doling out more details on their joint hardware project day by day. Here’s what we know about the BD300, with thanks to Wired Gadget Lab, The New York Times Bits Blog, and of course, the official press release.

It’ll be available the first week of October at Best Buy, Circuit City and specialty retailers.
It will cost $399.95 (the Roku Netflix player is $99.99).
It will be a Blu-ray disc player with BD Live (though accessing the Internet will require an additional memory dongle).
You’ll have to have a Netflix subscription, but LG will offer two weeks free Netflix service for new members with the player.
It will play 12,000 Netflix movies and TV episodes, but you’ll have to queue them up in advance from your PC.
Netflix content will not stream in HD, but rather “near DVD-quality,” depending on the speed of your Internet connection. Netflix hopes to stream movies in HD by next year.

The appeal of this particular device is in getting Blu-ray and streaming movies in the same place, even if the difference in quality is that much more apparent. But the Xbox 360 is also getting Netflix streaming, as well as a hefty price drop. Meanwhile, Amazon doesn’t have its own box, but it does have 40,000 titles and multiple hardware partnerships.

News Bytes: September 3

2008-09-03T18:09:00.000-07:00

Amazon Adds Streaming for Both PCs and Macs

via NewTeeVee

Amazon has extended its paid video service to streaming, Macs, and compatible Sony BRAVIA devices and televisions. It previously only made movies and TV shows available for download to PCs or on TiVos. The moves were all expected and forecast, but they are no less important for Amazon to have a viable online entertainment portal.

Amazon bridges current offerings from iTunes, Hulu, and Netflix, though it’s important to note that, like iTunes, none of its content is ad-supported. It beats iTunes on TV because it has NBC, and it beats Hulu on movies because it has far more of them. Netflix’s movie service, meanwhile, only provides streaming for PCs.

The service is now called Amazon Video on Demand, with the previous brand name, Unbox, now just referring to the download helper application. Amazon has a large, but not exhaustive, library of 40,000 movies and TV shows. It also works on Windows Media Center extender devices such as the Xbox 360. It’s worth making special note that downloads still only work on Windows.

Movies cost on the order of $9.99 to $14.99 to own, and $2.99 to $3.99 to rent. Most TV episodes are $1.99; some older TV episodes are free, and there are some Internet TV originals in there too, like A Comicbook Orange.

In my early tests, streaming on a Mac works great, even over the EVDO connection I’m using right now. The video picks up nicely wherever you scan through the status bar. Amazon is also offering free 2-minute previews of each movie and episode.

Zuckerberg, Huffington and Mossberg on Vanity Fair 100 List

via paidContent.org

The Vanity Fair 100 list is out, and the usual litany of powerhouses and powerbrokers..the magazine calls is "The Vanity Fair Top 100 Leaders of Information Age", so in that spirit, some new names, including Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook; Arianna Huffington, founder of HuffPo; Matt Drudge, founder of DrudgeReport; and everyone's favorite reviewer Walt Mossberg. Then the familiar big media names such as Rupert Murdoch, Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Jeff Bewkes, Barry Diller, Peter Chernin, Howard Stringer, Philippe Daumann, and others.

Then on the rising stars, the "New Establishment" as it calls them, includes some names which we write about regularly here: Mika Salmi, Quincy Smith, MySpace founders, Max Levchin, the iLike founders, Dmitry Shapiro, founder of Veoh, Evan Williams, founder of Twitter and others…

Comcast’s Fancast Offers Downloads… For a Price

via TechCrunch

Comcast has now jumped into the downloadable video content game with the Fancast Store. It’s a lot like many other video download stores in that you can either rent or buy movies and TV shows, it requires you to install proprietary media management software in order to download and view your content, and it’s not Mac compatible (you can, however, order content from a Mac and download it on a PC later).

Purchasing content allows you to download it on up to three computers, while renting content ties you to whichever computer you use to download the content. Rented video files must be consumed within 30 days and, once initially played, must be watched within 24 hours or they’ll expire.

Industry Moves: Virgin Mobile USA; Thumbplay; Motorola

via mocoNews.net

-- Virgin Mobile (NYSE: VM) USA: Naval officer Daniel Acton is joining as Virgin Mobile's new chief information and technology officer. He will be responsible for the Virgin Mobile USA's current IT infrastructure and product development, but in addition, with the recent close of the Helio acquisition, he will lead the new postpaid engineering and financial systems. Throughout his career he has held a variety of executive roles in engineering and M&A at GE, Lockheed Martin and IBM, among others, while serving concurrently as an information operations officer in the Navy Reserve. Release.

-- Thumbplay: The mobile entertainment provider has tapped Bradley Blanken to lead wireless carrier relationships as VP-carrier business development. Effective today, he will report to Ken Hayes, EVP-carrier relations. Blanken joins from iSkoot, where he served as VP-carrier sales, and had earlier led carrier relations at AOL-owned Third Screen Media.

-- Motorola: Beefing up its marketing team with up to 15 new roles, Motorola (NYSE: MOT) has hired former BT (NYSE: BT) Vision sales director Simon Collinson as director of marketing strategy for Europe, Middle East and Africa, Marketing News reports. Collinson will report to Andrew Morley, VP of marketing for Europe, Middle East and Africa. Last week, the company hired back James King from Samsung as its European marketing director. King had defected to Samsung about a month ago.

Vid-Biz

via NewTeeVee

YouTube Charging for “Promoted” Video Placements? Advertising sources say “promoted” video slots are regularly negotiated into ad deals on the site. (Silicon Alley Insider)

DirecTV Getting a New HD TiVo; satellite company and DVR maker are hooking up for a new HD DVR in 2009. (Zatz Not Funny)

News Bytes: September 2

2008-09-02T18:22:00.000-07:00

Hulu to Get Some Premieres Early

via NewTeeVee

It pays to have big media backers. Case in point: Hulu, which will not only be offering season premieres of hit TV shows from FOX and NBC, but will be debuting a number of shows online before they appear on television.

Over the next seven weeks Hulu will kick off the fall TV season with shows like Prison Break, Bones, House, Heroes, The Office and 30 Rock.

Additionally, in a bid to generate some online buzz, the site is getting Knight Rider, Lipstick Jungle, Chuck and Life a week before launching on television.

Putting select shows online before they air on oldteevee is becoming par for the course for networks. Last year, HBO released the Flight of the Conchords pilot on MySpace, iFilm and iTunes before it went up on the pay cable channel, and earlier this year NBCU launched season four of Battlestar Galactica on SciFi.com 10 hours before it was on television, and Showtime premiered the season two opener of The Tudors on YouTube.

Vid-Biz

via NewTeeVee

The CW Adds Mobile Video; wap.cwtv.com to offer clips and full episodes of shows like America’s Next Top Model and Gossip Girl (which are broken up into clips). (AdWeek)

Web Video: Easy to Produce, Hard to Find Success; The New York Times looks at the hits, misses and challenges of creating content for the web. (The New York Times)

Philips Demos Net TV; television set has an IPTV chip to deliver web video from select partners into living rooms. (paidContent)

News Bytes: August 8-11

2008-08-11T17:50:00.000-07:00

Mobile Content Bits: Metacafe Goes Mobile
via mocoNews.net

Metacafe Goes Mobile: Metacafe, an online video site, said it has picked Quattro Wireless to make its catalog of short-form videos available on mobile devices. Quattro will sell and serve mobile ads for Metacafe.

The WB Returns as a Beta Online Network
via Cynopsis

The WB will officially rise from the ashes as a beta online network on Aug. 27, reported Mediaweek. The site will launch with archived classics such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Smallville. The 40-episode web mystery Sorority Fever (from Big Fantastic, the producers of Prom Queen) debuts on WB.com on Sept. 8 starring LG 15 herself Jessica Rose.

Is Content King Again?
via NewTeeVee

Which is a better business to be in right now: content creation or distribution? The New York Times alluded to this question in a piece about Warner Bros. this weekend. From the article:
For Mr. Bewkes and his team, the core of the strategy is a wager that the media pendulum will swing away from distribution and back toward content. “The last number of years, all you have heard about is new and better ways to distribute content,” says Mr. Meyer, sitting in his office on Warner’s lot in Burbank, Calif. “At some point, I think distribution gets commoditized,” leaving, he says, content as the more valuable component.

The Times is quick to point out that Apple has benefited more from the digital music revolution than the record labels. But is that an exact parallel? Music settled (for now) on a paid model and Apple quickly set the benchmark price. Even though iTunes and Amazon charge for video content, when it comes to short-form vids and TV shows, there is no price differentiator in the market because everything is free.

Plus, super-distribution is already ingrained into web video. Putting a video up on many outlets (YouTube, Veoh, MySpace, etc.) is part and parcel for any distribution strategy — even NBC, Fox and CBS put their content up elsewhere. And for the most part, all of the experiences for the viewer are the same: a small video player, decent playback quality (that’s getting better), the ability to comment and share.

How we watch is all the same. What we choose to watch, however, is a different story.
While there is a flood of video, and new series pop up online all the time, they are not all created equally. Dr. Horrible is much more enjoyable than Carpet Bros. whether I watch them on Hulu or on iTunes.

As we move towards an all-HD-all-the-time world, the picture will always be pretty, so there won’t be a visual difference between distributors, and assuming the ad model holds, price won’t be a factor. As a result, we’ll just go with whomever can get us the content when we want it. However, with so many shows to choose from, we won’t watch something just because it’s on, we’ll want to watch something because it’s good.

Updated: T-Mobile USA To Take Extreme Measure; Will Ditch The Traditional Content/App Deck
via paidContent.org

From our sister site MocoNews: Starting this fall, T-Mobile USA will take the extraordinary step of ditching its traditional deck on the phone and replacing it with a platform that's open to almost any developer, multiple sources have told us. Think of *Apple's* App store, but for the entire carrier's handset line-up from smartphone to feature phone. As one developer, who was briefed on the matter, said: "The App store was a big deal, but that's one phone. This is an entire carrier." More here after the jump and full details on sister site on MocoNews.

In other words, we are talking about T-Mobile's 31.5 million subscribers today vs. the 10 million iPhones Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) expects to sell by year-end (granted, the iPhone users tend to be more engaged as early adopters). The impact of this move by T-Mobile could set off a wave of changes in the industry, as other carriers feel pressure to offer new applications on their networks. Clearly, for this to happen, T-Mobile will have to follow through on its promises to encourage developers to participate. We are waiting for a statement from T-Mobile and will update when we have it....full details on MocoNews.

UPDATE: T-Mobile declined to comment on specifics, but issued a statement from Venetia Espinoza, T-Mobile's director of Mobile Applications and Partner Programs, saying that people to stay tuned for more details in the coming weeks.

News Bytes: August 7

2008-08-07T17:10:00.000-07:00

Broadband Content Bits: Hulu HD; Bebo Series; 'Scary City'; 'Tropic Thunder'
via paidContent.org

-- Hulu expands HD gallery: Hulu expanded its HD offerings this week, featuring a total of 27 documentaries, sports and movie clips (including Whedon's Sing-Along), and full TV shows such as The Office, 30 Rock, Heroes and 24. The gallery, having launched last December with movie trailers, does not offer embed codes but is streaming ad-free, at least for now. In June, CBS Interactive (NYSE: CBS) announced it added HD embeddable clips on its video player, while ABC began its HD offerings in May, in addition to new navigation and embedding features.

-- Bebo premiering new series: After the success of Kate Modern and Sofia's Diary, Bebo has launched another interactive series dubbed The Secret World of Sam King. Produced with Universal Music Group, the show follows Sam King, a mailroom worker who starts his own record label and features guest stars including tween sensations the Jonas Brothers. VideoEgg will host the 3-5 minute webisodes and Virgin Mobile (NYSE: VM) and Sony (NYSE: SNE) Ericsson (NSDQ: ERIC) have signed on as integrated product sponsors.

-- LonelyGirl15 exec creating mystery series: Yumiko Aoyagi, an exec producer on LonelyGirl15, is gearing up for the U.S. launch of her Japanese murder-mystery web series, The Scary City. Beginning Sep. 15, viewers can tune into five 2-3 minute episodes and embed them onto third party sites. Aoyagi plans to eventually distribute the show to mobile phones and adapt it as manga graphic novels, with ultimate hopes of turning the venture into a full-length film.

Ultimate Blu-ray Database for Movie Geeks [Blu-Ray]
via Gizmodo

If you're a total movie geek who wants quick access to every sliver of minute about every Blu-ray disc out there—release date, studio, IMDB rating, disc size, codec, audio encoding and price comparisons—Blu-ray Statistics has them all in a neat table that you can sort by any of those criteria. It's not a pretty site, but damn handy if you wanna know every Fox movie released on a BD50 disc with MPEG-2 encoding, thereby averting bloodbaths with pasty white dudes arguing about codecs or Dolby vs. DTS. [Blu-ray Stats via Crave]

Motorola's New Leader Estimated To Make About $94 Million In Compensation
via mocoNews.net

Motorola (NYSE: MOT) shareholders may have felt a big relief when the handset company finally appointed Sanjay Jha to run the company and its struggling handset division, but they better not think they aren't paying big bucks for someone of his caliber. The Wall Street Journal estimates that his compensation package may be worth as much as $94 million, including restricted stock, options, base pay and a special payment, reports MarketWatch. To put that in perspective that is nine times more than what he was making as Qualcomm's (NSDQ: QCOM) COO and would make him one of the highest paid CEOs in the country, according to rankings compiled by Forbes. Most notably, however, is that Jha will be paid $30 million if the company does not spin-out the mobile devices business by Oct. 31, 2010 (as the company said it wants to do after being strong-armed by Activist Investor Carl Icahn). Given that the company's goal publicly stated goal is to spin off the division by the end of next year's third quarter, that's a pretty cushy time frame. Still, MarketWatch points out that to offer him a $30 million bonus if the division doesn't get spun out is contradictory. What's the motivation if he is guaranteed $30 million for failing? However, it appears a compensation of this size was likely unavoidable given the challenges Motorola faces, and the kind of leader they were looking for.

5.2B Mobile Subscribers By 2011, 1.7B On Mobile Web And 2.1B Mobile Purchases By 2013: Reports
via mocoNews.net

A trio of new research reports detail the dramatic and swift rise of mobile in terms of subscription growth, mobile web usage and mobile payments for goods downloaded to mobile phones.

On Pace For 5.2 Billion Mobile Subscribers By 2011 Last year there were three times as many people using mobile phones than land lines worldwide (3.3 billion and 1.1 billion respectively), according to Infonetics Research. Mobile subscriptions jumped 31 percent year-over-year while land line subscriptions declined 5 percent in the same period. Latin America and the Caribbean are the only regions where land lines are expected to grow. Strong growth, no surprise, is expected to be primarily driven by voice services in Brazil, Russia, India and China – countries where double-digit GSM subscriber growth rates are common, the firm concluded. Based on the current rate of growth, it predicts there will be 5.2 billion mobile subscribers by 2011, at which time there will also be one wireless broadband subscriber for every four wireline broadband subscribers. (Release).

1.7 Mobile Web Users By 2013 The number of subscribers using the internet on their mobile phones is expect to nearly triple from 577 million today to more than 1.7 billion by 2013, according to a new report from Juniper Research. Social networking, user-generated content, instant messaging, location-based services and search and discovery are all driving a more open environment where users can share, collaborate and exploit content free from carrier restrictions, the firm wrote. Asia is expected to be the largest market for mobile web where
almost 416 million users are anticipated to be surfing the internet on mobile phones in five years.

Currently, 190 million users are accessing the mobile web there in those regions. Juniper Research predicts South America holds the "greatest untapped potential for mobile web" because of relatively low wireline broadband penetration in those countries. (Release).

2.1 Billion Mobile Users Will 'Pay By Mobile' By 2013 Finally, Juniper Research predicts more than 2.1 billion mobile subscribers will "pay by mobile" for digital goods downloaded to their mobile phones by 2013. The firm defines digital goods as music, tickets, TV, user-generated content, information, entertainment and games – essentially any content by via the phone and delivered to the phone. Users are expected to make at least two transaction per month for mobile content by 2013 and nearly half of all mobile phone users will have made such a purchase by the same year. Western Europe and Asia are slated to account for more than half of all mobile content transactions less than five years from now. (Release).

Verizon wraps up acquisition of Rural Cellular
via Engadget

It's taken more than a year, but Verizon has just officially announced that it has completed its purchase of Rural Cellular, which you may also know by its business name, Unicel. This latest announcement follows a conditional approval from the FCC earlier this week, which required one of the two companies to sell licenses in six markets in order to "improve competition" -- a compromise Verizon seems to have been more than willing to accept. All told, Verizon will be forking over $2.66 billion in cash and assumed debt for the company, which will increase its customer base by more than 625,000, and expand its coverage area by 4.7 million people, including markets in Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Alabama, Mississippi, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wisconsin, Idaho, Washington and Oregon.

Nokia N85 hits FCC in two flavors, one with just a touch of North American 3G
via Engadget

We're still trying to figure out exactly how Nokia intends to position the N85 slider in its Nseries lineup, and frankly, the FCC documentation that's been outed for it isn't helping much. Seems there are two versions of the thing: one with no 3G -- likely for China -- and another with WCDMA on the 900, 1900, and 2100MHz frequencies. That little dose of 1900 in there will be enough to give owners partial access to 3G while out 'n about in the colonies, but by and large, the phone appears destined for Europe where 2100 (and to a lesser extent, 900) is the name of the game. Both do quadband EDGE, so at the very least, you'll be able to roam the better part of the globe and get some semblance of coverage -- just don't expect it to be particularly speedy everywhere you go. To be fair, Espoo's been getting pretty good about crafting special versions of its hottest handsets that are ripe for North American use, so we're not giving up hope just yet that there's a third version floating out there.

Apple working on streaming your iTunes library to your iPhone?
via Engadget

Apple's experimented with allowing iTunes to stream over the internet as well as your LAN in the past and quickly removed the feature (probably due to RIAA pressure), so we're not placing too much stock in this, but AppleInsider's unearthed a patent that seems to describe a way to stream music over the 'net to your iPhone / iPod touch. The goal is to prevent you from having to selectively sync content to your device -- instead, you'd sync just the metadata and stream whatever you wanted direct from your machine as though it was all stored locally. There are some obvious problems here -- it wouldn't work if you didn't have service (or over EDGE, really), most home upstream connections aren't that fast, etc., etc., -- but it's certainly interesting, and a welcome addition to local storage if it ever makes the scene. In the meantime, how about working in some of those new UI elements from the Remote app into the iPod app?

News Bytes: August 5

2008-08-05T18:18:00.000-07:00

MobiTV Subscriber Base Surpasses 4 Million
via Cynopsis

Mobile/Broadband TV service MobiTV announced its subscriber base surpassed 4 million subscribers, up from 3 million less than 10 months. MobiTV provides TV programming for 15+ mobile carriers including Sprint, AT&T Wireless and Alltel.

Consumer Electronics Association To Establish Technical Standards for Portable and Handheld Devices
via NewTeeVee

The Consumer Electronics Association announced it will form a discussion group to establish technical standards for portable and handheld devices such as MP3 players, GPS devices, video displays and cameras. The Discovery Group will meet at CEA's Industry Forum on Tuesday, October 21, 2008 at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino in Las Vegas, NV.

Executive Moves
via NewTeeVee

Harry E. Sloan signed on for another 3 years to continue as Chairman and CEO of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. Interactive TV pioneer John Callahan joined San Jose-based ActiveVideo Networks as Chief Technology Officer after spending 15 years with Time Warner Cable, most recently as SVP/Software Engineering for the company's Advanced Technology Group. John received Emmys for his work on Time Warner's Start Over and VOD services.

Rebecca Keszkowski was upped to VP/Digital Integrated Marketing for MTV Networks' Entertainment Group, a multi-platform portfolio of brands featuring the Comedy Central, Spike TV and TV Land and their respective Web sites as well as newly rebranded Atom.com and GameTrailers. Rebecca will report to Dario Spina, SVP/Integrated Marketing for the group.

Hulu Amps Up HD
via NewTeeVee

Hulu today beefed up its HD gallery, which continues to be a testing ground for higher-quality video rather than a more pervasive aspect of the video site. The HD gallery launched in December with 10 movie trailers; now it contains a total of 27 full TV episodes, documentaries, and sports and movie excerpts (and whoo-hoo, the first game of this year’s NBA finals). That includes Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog in its HD entirety, which is pretty cool seeing as the original plan called for that show to be offline by now.

Hulu’s HD video is streamed in 720p and requires a 2.5 Mbps connection. Embedding is disallowed. What’s a little bit strange — and makes the HD gallery seem more separated from Hulu’s long-term strategy — is that all the content is being streamed ad-free. I suppose there must be some logistical explanation for that, but I don’t think watchers would have any problem with seeing ads alongside higher-quality content. According to an email from Hulu PR, the lack of ads is “for a limited time.”

By contrast, ABC has all four seasons of Lost available for HD streaming on its site (if you have the Move Networks plug-in) and CBS is adding HD streaming (without a plug-in) as well.

Internet Ad Spend To Pass Broadcast By 2011, Despite Slowing Economy: VSS
via paidContent.org

The economy remains in the doldrums and by all accounts online ad growth continues to slow. But total communications spending is projected to rise 5.4 percent to $923.91 billion in 2008, thanks to strong gains in the institutional and alternative media sectors offsetting the declining traditional ad industry, according Veronis Suhler Stevenson and PQ Media.

-- Alt offsets traditional: In particular, spending on "alternative media" (includes word-of-mouth marketing, pure-play internet & mobile services, branded entertainment, out-of-home media, among others) will climb 21 percent to $81.67 billion in 2008. Alt media will account for 17.7 percent of total ad and marketing spend, up from 6.9 percent in 2002. By comparison, traditional advertising and marketing will be essentially flat, growing only 0.4 percent in 2008 to $378.48 billion. That number includes a 1.8 percent decline in traditional ad revenues, despite the flood of political and Olympics advertising, which will not balance out the drop-off in revs at newspapers, consumer magazines and broadcast radio. If it looks like VSS is more sanguine than the more pessimistic forecasts over the past few weeks, it's mainly due to the broadness of the "alternative" category it measures.

-- Alt's first slowdown: As a result of the range of segments in alternative, VSS expects the category to weather its first major downtown pretty well this year. Looking ahead, as the economy picks up, the segments within that category will see healthy increases. Alternative media will continue to spur growth in advertising and marketing through 2012, posting a 17.6 compound annual growth rate. As a result of the shift to alternative, VSS projects that newspapers will be particularly weakened, as broadcast TV will become the largest ad medium by year-end 2008—the first time in U.S. history that newspapers have not held that position. Release