Ridley Scott is teaming up with YouTube to produce a new crowdsourced video project that aims to capture the lives of millions of users on film. Dubbed Life In a Day, it will feature videos shot by YouTubers around the world on a single day. Read more »
One big loser in the The United States Postal Service’s planned rate hike is Netflix, which could see its costs to support its DVD-by-mail business increase by an additional $50 million a year in postage and handling if the proposal goes through. Read more »
Today on the Net: Hackers took advantage of a cross-site scripting vulnerability on YouTube over the holiday weekend, Comcast raised its rates for California residents by an average of 3.8 percent and the BBC spent £199.3 million on its online service, according to its annual report. Read more »
Academy Award winner The Hurt Locker has proven to be a hit among file sharers, even a year after it was first released — so much so that a lawsuit targeting BitTorrent users sharing the file has failed to impact the number of users downloading it. Read more »
YouTube has added a new feature to its account controls making it easier for users to appeal when videos are taken down for a Community Guidelines violation. The process allows anyone to appeal a strike against his account from directly within their account settings page. Read more »
Hulu’s subscription service has finally arrived in an invite-only beta, and a number of news sites have gotten early access to the service, which means the early reviews are in. The response has generally been positive, but is it positive enough for people to pay? Read more »
Today on the Net: Dish Network sues the FCC over requirements to carry high-definition feeds of non-commercial channels, Disney releases an iPad app to allow users to purchase and download movies and Comcast has rolled out its multiroom DVR service in more than 20 markets. Read more »
Despite high early expectations, it wasn’t long before Apple TV was demoted to “hobby” status. But that could soon change, as there’s new evidence that Apple is looking to make a serious business out of online video with a major update to its Apple TV product. Read more »
More bad news for Blockbuster: The DVD rental firm announced yesterday that it will lose its place on the New York Stock Exchange next Wednesday, after it failed to get enough shareholder votes on a proposal designed to help it comply with NYSE requirements. Read more »
Apple could skip Blu-ray discs altogether and head straight to streaming video online, if we believe two reports that have popped up over the past few days. Considering Apple’s history of picking winning technologies, that could signal bad news for Blu-ray’s future. Read more »
Today on the Net: Apple is moving its iTunes music and movie service into the cloud, about a third of US residents watched the World Cup, according to Nielsen, and TiVo will supply software and services to power a next-generation TV initiative at ONO in Spain. Read more »
When Microsoft announced that ESPN would make live and on-demand video available through its Xbox Live service, the news had strong implications for mass adoption of cable services being delivered ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Authorities at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency seized the domains of nine websites that had been charged with illegally pirating first-run movies. But merely a day later, two of them have already reappeared, highlighting the problem of trying to enforce copyright globally. Read more »
Some see Hulu Plus as a potential Netflix killer, or even a cable TV killer — but the business that Hulu Plus is most likely to affect, at least in the near term, is the market for full-season collections of TV show DVDs. Read more »
Today on the Net: Hulu CEO Jason Kilar says the company’s new subscription service is not meant to replace cable services, Warner Music Group taps MTV to sell video ads across its sites and third-party sites and Netflix has a job listing for an Android developer. Read more »
With today’s news that Move Networks has laid off all its employees and is looking for a buyer, here’s a roundup of the rise and fall of the once high-flying startup, as it transitioned from making network TV watchable to selling IPTV technology to ISPs. Read more »
A curious tweet appeared on the Move Networks twitter stream this morning, suggesting that the online video company could be on the block — with an asking price of $150 million — and sources say the CEO is stepping down and resigning from the company’s board. Read more »
As one of the first major video publishers to create an HTML5 video player and push its own open-source video codec, Google has been a big backer of HTML5. Despite this, YouTube remains committed to its use of Adobe Flash for delivery of its video. Read more »
Today on the Net: YouTube plans to roll out skippable ads later this year, World Cup interest has led to more than 1 million downloads of the MobiTV iPhone app and Dyyno is helping its customers to drive streaming video viewing through Facebook. Read more »
Netflix has dominated the consumer electronics market with its $9-a-month streaming subscription service, but it could get some competition, as Hulu’s subscription TV service will be available across many of the same CE platforms that have helped drive adoption of Netflix’s Watch Instantly service. Read more »
Hulu has officially announced its long-awaited premium subscription service, giving users access to more shows and a wider range of content that they’ll be able to watch on multiple consumer electronics devices, such as the iPhone, iPad and Samsung Internet-connected TVs and Blu-ray players. Read more »
Roku announced this morning that it added the MOG on-demand music service to its broadband set-top box, expanding the number of streaming services that are available through its platform. The addition of MOG comes as Roku strikes partnerships with a growing number of content providers. Read more »
Social TV site Tunerfish just pushed a redesign that is set to put more of a focus on helping users find trending shows and videos that their friends and others are watching, with changes to the way show pages are displayed on the site. Read more »
More Internet users are tuning in to online video regularly, with half of all viewers watching video online each week, according to a survey conducted by Frank N. Magid Associates. That’s up from 43 percent of users who watched online video weekly the previous year. Read more »
Today on the Net: The FCC stops the shot clock in its review of the Comcast-NBCU deal, enterprising businesses are looking to offer FaceTime sex chat services on the iPhone 4 and Canoe Ventures is launching its first interactive ads with Comcast and Time Warner Cable. Read more »
Early online video pioneer JibJab announced this morning that it reached a new milestone, having completed more than a million transactions over the past 12 months, as it transitions from a business primarily driven by advertising to one selling personalized videos, pictures and other services. Read more »
Today on the Net: YouTube adds a vuvuzela button for World Cup fans who miss the horns while watching online videos, KickApps adds an application development suite for Facebook and licensing firm Rumblefish is pitching cheap music licenses for non-commercial use in YouTube videos. Read more »
Fox Mobile is rolling out its subscription mobile video service BitBop, making a wide range of TV content available on Blackberry mobile phones. The service, which costs $9.99 a month, includes full-length TV shows available for streaming or download on WiFi or 3G networks. Read more »
According to new data from MeFeedia, viewers watched about 25 percent more HTML5 video than Flash-based video. More importantly, HTML5 video viewers were much less likely to abandon a video, with a 70 percent lower bounce rate when compared to video delivered in Adobe Flash. Read more »
YouTube’s win in the lawsuit brought against it by Viacom could not only help clear it of the copyright infringement stigma it has held since the early days, but it could pave the way for the video share site to sign up more premium content partners. Read more »
Today on the Net: comScore will begin measure video views and ads separately beginning with its June Video Metrix numbers, startup VidMe launches with a new site for sharing personal videos with a select group of friends and NASCAR and Turner are rolling out 3-D. Read more »
Video processing firm RGB Networks acquired mobile transcoding vendor Ripcode in an all-stock deal today. With the purchase, RGB will add Ripcode’s technology to its Video Multiprocessing Gateway device. RGB also revealed plans to go public in a year, and is currently valued about $200 million. Read more »
White-label video management company thePlatform has expanded the number of connected devices that its customers can publish their videos to, adding features that will enable them to easily add distribution to new HDTV, Blu-ray players and other broadband-connected devices that viewers have in their living rooms. Read more »
In a petition to deny the Comcast-NBCU transaction, Dish Network says the deal poses “grave threats” to online video. With a TV Everywhere initiative and a stake in Hulu, Dish says the combined entity would have the incentive and ability to take anticompetitive action against competitors. Read more »
Today on the Net: Comcast and NBC Universal received the blessing of ABC, CBS, and Fox affiliates — but with some conditions, Brand.net raised $14 million amidst some strong sales growth and Dish has dropped four Disney HD channels due to a carriage dispute Read more »
Sonic Solutions has signed up another retailer to use its RoxioNow streaming video service to deliver Hollywood content to a wide range of consumer electronics devices. Sears has agreed to a licensing deal through which it will offer movies and TV shows for rental or purchase. Read more »
Israeli startup Libox has come out with new technology that will allow its users to access their music, photos and video files anywhere through its desktop application or even a mobile browser, while also being able to easily share those files with their friends. Read more »
Brightcove is introducing more support in its white-label video management platform for delivering video to Android mobile devices with the launch of a new software development kit for native Android apps as well as mobile templates designed for use with Adobe Flash Player 10.1. Read more »
Adobe is pushing out its new Flash Player 10.1 for mobile devices, which was designed to create a common experience for video and interactive applications between the desktop, smartphones and tablet devices while also adding features and increasing performance for interactivity on small screens. Read more »
In a Q&A with Akamai CEO Paul Sagan, we ask how the company defines its cloud services, why cloud optimization is important to its customers and how companies that provide cloud services can overcome enterprise questions about network security or outages in the cloud. Read more »
