Wal-Mart is buying over-the-top video company Vudu, according to a report by the New York Times. Apparently talks are already underway with Hollywood studios and television manufacturers. Here’s what else you need to know. Read more »
Turns out we’re not the only ones speculating about what Google might do with ON2 Technologies, the video encoding company it finally acquired late last week after months of negotiations with shareholders. The Free Software Foundation (FSF) has published an open letter to Google this weekend, […] Read more »
NBC’s decision to restrict live streaming of the Vancouver Winter Olympics to subscribers of cable, satellite or IPTV services is making many cord cutters scramble. We’ve heard anecdotes from former cable customers flocking to gyms or stop by friends for surprise visits while figure skating and […] Read more »
Yahoo just sent us a gloating press release letting us know that its Olympics web site has been getting more traffic than either NBCOlympics.com or ESPN.com. The site saw 9.3 million unique visitors from February 8-14, according to comScore numbers quoted by Yahoo. NBC’s Olympics site […] Read more »
UPDATED We’re usually not much into celebrity gossip, but we have to admit that Tiger Woods’ rapid descent from golf stardom to yellow press fodder has been fascinating, if only for the fact that it seemed much more like a bad TV movie than real life. […] Read more »
Revision3 CEO Jim Louderback contributed an interesting article to Adage.com today, expressing his distain for pre-roll ads and at the same time predicting that the format will stay around, simply because it happens to be the most effective form of advertising in the online video space […] Read more »
RealNetworks is officially releasing a new version of its RealPlayer SP for Windows today that comes with some basic video editing features aimed at making the sharing of video clips more meaningful. Users are now able to trim a video and save only a selected part […] Read more »
Where do you go to watch the Vancouver Olympics online if you’re living in Canada, Europe or Asia? Those were some of the first questions we got when we published our Where to Watch the 2010 Winter Olympics Online guide a few days ago. And yes, we’re […] Read more »
Early birds can tune into a 360-degree live stream of the Today Show this morning, making it possible to take a peek behind the scenes and see the whole set of the show, which is being broadcast from Vancouver’s Grouse Mountain this week to cover the […] Read more »
None other than YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley dropped by the company’s blog yesterday to remind us that he and his two co-conspirators registered the domain YouTube.com exactly five years ago. It wasn’t until two months later that the first video actually appeared on YouTube, but Hurley […] Read more »
TV networks and advertisers alike have long been looking for ways to make ads more relevant to consumers prone to skipping, or simply ignoring advertising. This quest has become even more urgent with the advent of new advertising opportunities online that are increasingly rivaling the 30-second […] Read more »
Figure skating! Snowboarding! Curling! The Winter Olympics are about to start in Vancouver today, and sports fans of all colors are ready to tune in and count the gold medals. Of course, having the Olympics in Canada is nice, because we don’t have to get up […] Read more »
The now-defunct online video site TV-Links.co.uk prevailed in court this week, according to a report from Torrentfreak.com. TV-Links used to be one of the most popular online directories for TV show episodes hosted on streaming video sites like YouTube, Megavideo or Veoh. The site was taken […] Read more »
UCLA students trying to catch up on classes online may feel like they’re missing out on something these days: The school in January instituted a ban on using videos as part of course web sites in response to threats of lawsuits by copyright holders. The move […] Read more »
UPDATED Turns out D.C. isn’t the only place shut down by really bad weather this week: The 33rd America’s Cup, which was supposed to start on Monday in Valencia, has been delayed for the second time now due to “unsettling weather,” according to the Cup’s website. […] Read more »
The Boxee Box isn’t even on the shelves yet, but Boxee is already working on plans to bring its software platform to other devices as well. Boxee’s vice president of marketing Andrew Kippen sat down with me a few days ago to talk strategy, and he […] Read more »
Norway’s largest ISP prevailed in court once again this week, with the country’s High Court court ruling that Telenor won’t have to block access to The Pirate Bay’s website, according to a report from Norway’s Computerworld. The decision comes after record labels and other rights holders […] Read more »
Netfix plans to start streaming some of its VOD content in 1080p later this year, doesn’t plan to support 1080p streaming in 2010, according to a CNET report, which was updated after the company reportedly said its own road map had incorrectly identified 1080p streaming as […] Read more »
Kevin Nalty, better known in the online video world as Nalts, published the second edition of his free e-book “How to Get Popular on YouTube Without Any Talent” a few days ago. Nalty, whose videos have attracted more than 120 million views on YouTube, published a […] Read more »
UPDATED with new data from Trendrr, TiVo and GoDaddy. Who would have thought that passing the ball to the wrong guy can not only cost your team the Super Bowl, but also break Twitter? Yesterday’s surprise victory of the New Orleans Saints over the Indianapolis Colts […] Read more »
People tend to equate BitTorrent with piracy, and we’re not going to pretend that there isn’t a lot of loot out there on torrent sites. However, there’s also plenty of opportunity to download lots of legal goodies, from free documentaries to Creative Commons-licensed music to indie […] Read more »
Both BitTorrent Inc. and Vuze released significant updates to their clients this week that include features to remotely control the applications from devices like the iPad or smartphones. BitTorrent Inc. also included a new protocol dubbed uTP into its flagship uTorrent client that could help to […] Read more »
HDMI Licensing, the company responsible for (you guessed it) licensing the HDMI standard, has announced that it’s working on an update to the current HDMI 1.4 specification to help with the standardization of 3-D TV. HDMI Licensing also released the parts of the current specification that […] Read more »
The threat of cord-cutting is real, but not as big as one might expect, according to new research from Parks Associates. The Dallas-based market research company is estimating in its new “All Eyes on Video” report that less than 8 percent of U.S. households are thinking […] Read more »
Hulu clocked more than a billion video views in December, according to comScore data reported by USA Today this morning. The paper took this as an opportunity to look into Hulu’s future plans for premium pricing, but Hulu CEO Jason Kilar kept his lips shut (as […] Read more »
There’s no question: The Grammys were the biggest online event of the last couple of days. There were 135,000 Grammy-related tweets by midnight Sunday night, according to new data from Trendrr, and the music awards show was subject to thousands of news stories and millions of […] Read more »
Looking for where to watch the 2011 Oscar nominations? Well, then, you want to go here! Inglorious Basterds, Up and Avatar — 2009 was a good year for movies, which means we’ll have an interesting Academy Awards show on March 7th to look forward to. The […] Read more »
London’s High Court of Justice will hear the opening statements in the case of Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation & ors v Newzbin Ltd. tomorrow. Invite-only Newzbin is part of the huge and growing Usenet phenomenon, indexing posts made to Usenet and helping to download large […] Read more »
Robin Sloan, former media strategist at Al Gore’s struggling TV network Current, is starting to work for Twitter this week, according to a report from Venturebeat. Sloan is joining the micro-blogging service to handle partnerships with media organizations ranging from citizen journalism initiatives to TV networks […] Read more »
This week, it almost happened. The servers hosting all of Wikipedia’s media were ready to burst, filled up to the max with almost six million files totaling close to eight terabytes of data. Wikimedia Foundation, the organization behind Wikipedia, was able to install a new server […] Read more »
