Latest Video Download Services & Hardware News - Page 8

As Eric Cartman would say: Sweet!

Netflix reached an agreement with the creators of South Park to stream the first nine seasons of the Comedy Central cartoon series on Netflix's Web site, giving subscribers access to the profane musings of the rotund Cartman.

Netflix, the largest U.S. movie-rental service via mail, will have exclusive rights to video-stream South Park's first 181 episodes, Netflix spokesman Steve Swasey confirmed. The agreement, whose financial details weren't disclosed, was reported by The New York Times earlier this week.

For the past year, Netflix has been boosting demand for its video-streaming inventory, which totals more than 12,000 titles, by reaching agreements with both hardware companies such as TiVo and Samsung and content providers including the Disney Channel and CBS to make more content available for streaming directly to televisions through components.

The company said in January that its fourth-quarter profit jumped 45% from a year earlier as it widened its customer base by 26% to 9.39 million, while cutting subscriber-acquisition costs.

San Francisco Bay Area residents will soon have access to two faster Internet packages from cable and Internet provider Comcast.

Starting March 4 in Silicon Valley, Monterey and the Tri-Valley area, the service which enables downloads at either 22MB or 50MB per second, and is dubbed wideband will be offered to Oakland, San Francisco and other Bay Area residents as the year progresses.

Wideband utilizes our existing fiber-optic network in neighborhoods across our footprint, said Steve White, SVP of Comcast's California region. With this next generation of service, our customers' online experience is dramatically enhanced.

Comcast estimates users on the 50MB package will be able to download a high-definition movie in about 16 minutes and a standard-def movie in five minutes.

Interim Federal Communications Commission Chair Michael Copps was clearly feeling his oats on Tuesday at the government's "kickoff" of its national broadband campaign. "The years of broadband drift and growing digital divides are coming to an end," Copps told the gathering at the Department of Commerce's main auditorium.

"Too few consumers and small businesses in this country have the high-speed broadband they need if they're going to succeed," he added, and so "today we say: 'Enough.' We mobilize and we begin to build." Also attending this digital pep rally was Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and a small platoon of reps from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration.

Copps used the event to promise that the public will get its chance to weigh in on how the FCC should help contour the broadband section of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, which provides billions in broadband funding for "unserved areas of the United States." The act requires the Commission to come up a national broadband plan a year after its passage. President Obama signed the bill into law on February 17.


And so at the agency's next full Commission meeting on April 8, Copps announced, "we will kick-off an open, participatory, public process," including a Notice of Inquiry, to "marshal the data and expertise we need to make sure we meet our legislatively mandated date of one year for presenting Congress and the American people a national broadband strategy worthy of the name."

While most Twilight fans will be lined up at their local video store for the midnight March 20 release of Summit Home Entertainment's vampire hit, the couch potatoes don't have to miss out: Comcast will debut the film on demand right when the DVD streets.

We've gone day and date on demand with all of our titles, and Twilight is no different, said Steve Nickerson, president of Summit Home Entertainment.

Available in high-def, Twilight on Comcast on demand also comes paired with three featurettes, including one exclusive: a behind-the-scenes view of the Vampire Baseball scene.

Delivering this international pop culture phenomenon right into customers' living rooms demonstrates the power of Comcast on demand, said Derek Harrar, SVP and GM of video services for the cable operator, in a press release.

MovieFlix March 17 became the latest movie rental service to unveil a revised subscription program. Under the new plan, members have the ability to pay based on their appetite for movie consumption.

The new pricing plans offer three subscription packages:
One week of unlimited access for $9.95, a monthly subscription for $11.95, and quarterly subscription for $28.95.

No.2 DVD rental service Movie Gallery March 16 unveiled a point-based subscription program.

Analysts say the surge in subscription programs underscore the services' desire to lock in customers and cash flow during the current recession.

Walt Disney Co., signaling a dramatic shift in its Internet strategy, is negotiating with longtime media rivals to take an equity stake in Hulu.com, the fast-growing website where users can watch movies and TV episodes for free.

In exchange, Disney would provide episodes of ABC shows to Hulu, significantly broadening the program offerings to include such hits as "Grey's Anatomy" and "Desperate Housewives."

The discussions, which heated up in recent weeks, represent an evolution of ABC's Web strategy, which had focused on drawing viewers to the network's own site. Disney appears to have decided that the power of the ABC and Disney names is not strong enough for the company to compete and that it needs broader distribution for its shows.

Disney's willingness to join Hulu also validates the success of the joint venture created two years ago by rivals News Corp. and NBC Universal. The website, along with its quirky name, was initially greeted with skepticism as observers questioned whether the two media giants, longtime competitors, could create an online destination for professional content.

"This is an acknowledgment of Hulu's rapid growth and its ability to sustain a very large audience," said Michael McGuire, media analyst with Gartner Inc. . . .

Disney made a bet three years ago that the strength of its ABC and Disney brands would be enough to attract online viewers, and so it chose not to participate in Hulu during its launch. ABC shows, including "Lost" and "Desperate Housewives," have generated plenty of viewers on ABC.com, but it now trails other network sites, including Hulu and CBS, according to ComScore.

People within the company say the change in direction was mandated by Chief Executive Bob Iger, who has championed Disney's push into the digital media future with a deal to offer downloads of TV shows through Apple Inc.'s iTunes. Executives said Iger had been calling for another big move.

Disney would receive a stake in the joint venture on par with Fox and NBC -- likely 30% for each network. That would preserve Providence Equity Partners' 10% holding, which it received in exchange for an early $100-million investment. It's probable that the venture will need additional funding before it turns a profit, but the addition of Disney's content may well help it achieve a tipping point.

Another network also has been courting Disney: CBS, which owns TV.com, a Hulu rival. This underscores the popularity of ABC's shows online, which Nielsen VideoCensus reports included nine of the top 10 most viewed in February."

According to c21media.net, Hulu has brought on board Johannes Larcher from the search engine company Overture as its senior VP of international, charged with leading the video portal's expansion efforts outside the US.

MLB.com just went live with their new 2009 MLB.TV media player and is showcasing for free their newly improved HD video stream and improved player controls. The streaming is being done using H.264 and the HD feed is a true 720p at 1280x720. They are using adaptive bitrate encoding ranging from as low as 164K to 3MB for the HD feed.

Broadcasters “went out and did deals to put content on broadband without a whole lot of thought about the long-term financial model,” said Jeffrey L. Bewkes, chief executive of Time Warner and a principal supporter of the new subscriber-only Web video plan. “If people aren’t subscribing to the programming, you probably shouldn’t put it online, because then half of the financial support goes away. That isn’t good. It hasn’t been good for the newspaper industry.”

Some content owners, harboring their own new doubts about the profitability of online video, seem open to the subscription idea. Jeff Gaspin, the president of the Universal Television Group, which oversees NBC Universal’s cable channels like USA and CNBC, said the company wanted to figure out a model that “gets our content out there when and where people want it, but that also preserves that dual revenue stream and that relationship we have with our distributors.” ...

Almost no time was spent watching mobile video – just .1 minutes for the average adult.

The Walt Disney Co. is reportedly in negotiations to acquire a stake in Hulu, the digital streaming site co-owned by News Corp. and NBC Universal.

Initially posted March 27 by PaidContent.com, the move would be consistent with CEO Bob Iger’s stated desire to expand digital distribution of Disney content, including ABC TV programming such as Desperate Housewives, Grey’s Anatomy, Lost and Private Practice, among others.

Upcoming ad-supported video-on-demand system ZillionTV has signed on The Weinstein Company as new content partner.

TWC joins dozens of studios, including Walt Disney Studios, 20th Century Fox Television, NBC Universal, Sony Pictures and Warner Bros. Digital Distribution, already linked to the ZillionTV service. ZillionTV plans to offer on VOD films and TV shows from these studios when the service launches later this year.

ZillionTV will offer the content in a variety of ways, including free with required view of a 30-second commercial or as a paid rental or permanent download. Customers will be able to order the programming a la carte, with no attached subscription fee

Digital revenue may be small, but it is beautiful and growing and the era of free giveaways is over, execs at MIPTV said Monday.

"I have a pretty strong point of view that new-media rights should be viewed as a separate window, not just a throw-in," said Ben Pyne, president of global distribution at Disney-ABC Worldwide Television and Disney Media Networks. "It should be monetized. I think you are making a mistake if you just give things away."

Pyne said that Disney has established a strategy of monetizing on-demand and catch-up television through VOD, subscription VOD licenses and the launch of its own ad-supported video player. It's a strategy that's paying off -- somewhat.

"It is not a lot of money but it is an amount of money, and it sets the right principle, which is that even if its free to consumers, it is still part of a relationship that is monetized through a distributor," he said. "The bottom line is that there is value to the content."

"At Google, we think of online revenue as something that could eventually exceed search. There's a lot of experimentation in the types of different advertising formats being used, and there's been an enormous shift in the amount of money being spent around online video," he said, pointing out that online video revenue globally was forecast to grow from about $200 million in 2008 to $2.5 billion in 2012.

From an admittedly low base, online video advertising grew 81% last year compared with a net 1% decline in the U.S. television advertising market, Walker added.

"A year ago, Jeff Zucker referred to the 'digital pennies' as far as revenue; just recently he referred to 'digital dimes.' That's a business that's 10 times bigger in just a year," Starz senior vp digital media Marc DeBevoise told a packed room of delegates.

"Most industries don't grow that fast. And that's why we think there's real growth to come in digital media, but companies need to be patient and let them develop," he said.

It remains to be seen, however, whether the slowdown in global advertising as a whole also means that the nascent market for online content would also take a hit, said Joe Michaels, senior director of MSN Entertainment.

"We're past the crawl phase, and are in the walk phase," he said. "All the key areas are now in place -- so now the question is do we have the stomach to live through the growing pains we are going through with the economy today."

Originally Posted by PSound

http://www.videobusiness.com/article/CA6647675.html

Audiences may want to watch more television online, but there is little financial incentive for broadcasters to increase the flow of TV shows to the Internet, a new North American industry report suggests.

Much of the problem lies in the advertising opportunities online compared with traditional television, according to the study by Toronto-based Convergence Consulting Group Ltd., which tracks the Canadian and U.S. industry.

Online audiences have proven less willing to sit through ads than traditional TV viewers. Thus, there are about 75 per cent fewer advertising minutes in an online program than in a traditional television broadcast. And because those online ads draw smaller audiences, they also command less of a premium.

Time Warner Inc. intends to spend some of the $9.25 billion dividend from the April 3 split from Time Warner Cable on a variety of online video projects, including the previously announced TV Everywhere initiative, according to a March 30 company-wide memo from CEO Jeff Bewkes.

The executive said TV Everywhere, which offers hit cable series such as HBO's The Wire, Entourage and True Blood, and TNT's The Closer and Saving Grace, among others, online as value-adds is currently being tested via Time Warner Cable in Milwaukee.

The ad-supported content is disseminated similarly to repurposed network programming on Hulu.com, TV.com, MySpace, Yahoo TV and YouTube, among others.

Bewkes said he intends to produce a trial run of TV Everywhere later this year.