Apple first announced the new Apple TV broadband set-top box on September 1, pricing it at $99 and announcing a new business model for streaming rentals of TV episodes and movie files. With the new streaming model, Apple rents TV episodes from Fox and ABC for 99 cents, compared to the $1.99 price for standard definition episode downloads and HD downloads for $2.99.

To put that into perspective: Roku reported at the beginning of this year that it had sold 500,000 of its set-top devices after about a year-and-a-half on the market, and hopes to have sold more than a million of its box by the end of the year. So Apple is tracking well ahead of other, similar devices already in the market.

That said, Apple TV is still very much a hobby when compared to the other products it makes. Apple sold 4.2 million iPads and 3.9 million Macs in the third quarter, as well as 9 million iPods and 14 million iPhones. While those products were available all quarter, compared to just the last several weeks like the Apple TV, it’s clear that it could be some time before Apple’s video set-top box becomes a significant portion of Apple’s business.

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Verizon FiOS TV Director of Interactive Video Services Maitreyi Krishnaswamy reported that the company has been reaching out to academic institutions as well. “We would love to be the incubator for these innovative applications,” she said, explaining that Verizon started the beta version of its FiOS developer program in October. It has since launched 25 apps on FiOS. “That is big in the cable industry,” Krishnaswamy said. Boxee co-founder Idan Cohen was quick to chime in and report that there are now over 300 apps available on his own company’s platform.  “Everyone has a Facebook and Twitter app,” he said. “That’s not interesting.”

Two of the apps mentioned by Van Every are Qurious.tv, which provides contextual information gathered from Wikipedia, Flickr and YouTube based on the metadata of a video served by Boxee, and Trendlines.info, which compiles a video playlist based on trending topics on Twitter, Google, NYTimes.com and CNN.com. A big reason to go with Boxee was its openness, according to Van Every, who compared the low barrier of entry to the development of web apps. Usually, app developers would “face some uphill battles” when they tried to develop applications for TV, he said.

Krishnaswamy responded by saying that Verizon gradually wanted to open up its platform as well. The company currently has 20 partners developing widgets for FiOS, and it’s providing these partners with APIs as well as a FiOS TV interactive media guide emulator for PCs. It plans to open up its developer community in June, offering easier access to its FiOS SDK. However, there’s always going to be some level of consideration before apps get deployed.

Verizon also offers different levels of access for its APIs to different types of developers. There is going to be a basic tier for free and ad-supported apps without the need for rich metadata, an advanced level for content partners that want to develop apps that are closer related to FiOS programming and an academic level. Verizon will give content partners access to a wider range of APIs and metadata in exchange for revenue share agreements based on advertising, one-off charges or subscriptions. Academic institutions, on the other hand, will have access to the whole set of APIs for free, according to Krishnaswamy.

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The iPad might not be the first mass market portable media device to offer the ability to watch digital video on the fly, but it will probably be the most important one. Apple has been selling online video for viewing on the iPod and the iPhone for years. But those devices had some serious limitations — notably their screen size. With just a 3.5-inch screen, the iPhone was never an ideal video device, though it was “good enough” for watching video on the go. But with a 9.7-inch screen, the iPad is basically a portable TV screen, ideal for consuming video anytime, anywhere.

This is arguably why Apple is pushing content partners to lower the cost of their movies and TV shows, according to reports. It’s betting that the launch of the new device will drive more demand for those files, and that a price decrease will only accelerate that demand, making up for any revenue losses due to halving the price by an increase in volume. By integrating iTunes into the device, Apple is betting that consumers will finally have a platform with which to embrace online video.

And why wouldn’t they? There’s already a huge number of consumers that use their laptops for “bedroom viewing,” tuning to Hulu, YouTube, and other sites before turning off the lights and going to bed. Commuters have turned to watching video on their iPods or iPhones instead of reading a book. And now, Apple has presented those users with a devices that bridges the divide between those two use cases. A device that is big enough to comfortably watch a full-length TV show or movie, but not so bulky as lugging around a laptop. Apple has, in short, created a whole new market opportunity by introducing a device that solves a problem most didn’t even think existed: how to make it easy for users to watch video on the go.

The iPad will cause ripples in multiple industries — including news, book publishing and gaming — but at the end of the day, I’m betting that what the iPad will be used for more than anything is watching video. Like the iPod, it’s only a matter of time before the iPad becomes the defining product with which to consume that type of media.

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The first social game that Break plans to release, MMA FightPicker, will be featured on its mixed martial arts site, CagePotato.com. The game, which combines social gaming and fantasy sports elements, enabling players to join pools and make predictions on upcoming MMA matches, will also be available on Facebook and other social networking sites. It’s set to be released Feb. 1.

Break’s new social gaming studio, located in Shanghai, is being managed by Alex Lien, former COO of game development company Winking Entertainment. According to Break CEO Keith Richman, the studio was first opened in October with about a dozen employees, but it plans to expand that number to more than 30. As a result, Break expects it to quickly ramp up production and push out about half a dozen new games by the end of this year.

The move comes as part of Break’s effort to diversify its business, spending more money on user-generated content acquisitions, as well as producing its own original and branded content. Last January it launched an in-house production organization called Creative Lab, and later acquired HBOlab to bolster its production capabilities. Over the past year, Richman says Break has grown substantially, to 110 employees from 70, and that such growth is set to continue into the new year.

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Adding to the confusion is the fact that the current test is limited to subset of YouTube’s videos as well as new versions of Safari and Chrome. Firefox users won’t be able to play any videos with the new, Flash-free HTML5 video player because their browser doesn’t support Google’s video format of choice, H.264. The decision to go with a proprietary rather than an open video codec immediately enraged the very open source user base that has been advocating for YouTube to drop Adobe Flash.

Chrome and Safari as well as IE users that have installed Google’s ChromeFrame can go to YouTube’s TestTube page and opt into the HTML5 test, after which they’ll be able to watch many videos on the site completely without Flash. Videos with ads are still playing as Flash streams by default, and some other videos also don’t seem to be available as part of the test yet. I browsed the PBS Newshour archive and found the results to be inconsistent. Some clips played in Flash while others were available in HTML5.

Playback in HTML5 generally worked smoothly, but a few features are still amiss: Annotations and subtitles aren’t available, and videos can’t be played back in full-screen mode. Also missing is an option to switch between various video resolutions. However, a quick glance at the page source code revealed that this is apparently in the works, with the player’s JavaScript code in the case of one Newshour clip referencing the three video formats “medium” “hd720″ and “hd1080.” The same video was available in four different resolutions (360p, 480p, 720p and 1080p) when watched with Flash.

Also interesting: The HTML5 player itself is referenced as “new yt.player.VideoPlayer.” One could speculate that this could be a sign for YouTube’s determination to roll out wider support for HTML5 and in fact one day treat HTML5 as the new standard to play videos. YouTube’s announcement wasn’t quite as committed, but certainly optimistic about the format’s future, closing with the words: “We are very excited about HTML5 as an open standard and want to be part of moving HTML5 forward on the web.”

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Sling Unleashes a Placeshifting Quartet; the Sling Monitor 150, Sling Receiver 300, Slingbox 700u and Sling Touch Control remote are all new, but they won’t be available for sale direct to consumers. (Zatz Not Funny!)

NAB Says the Retrans Process Works; association praises the retransmission-consent agreements between Fox and Time Warner Cable, as well as between Fisher Communications and Bright House Networks. (Multichannel News)

Fox’s Digital Publishing Group Sold To VantagePoint; News Corp has offloaded the group that develops and manages content management and digital publishing systems for Fox local affiliate TV station websites. (paidContent)

BT Launches Hybrid Set-Top Box for BT Vision; the new set-top box for BT’s Microsoft Mediaroom-powered service will connect to existing TV antennas and also connects to BT broadband lines in order to provide access to on-demand and interactive content and services. (InteractiveTV Today)

Marseille Networks Touts Faster, Cheaper Way to Make Chips; the company says it has designed chips using a new kind of virtual prototyping tool that can cut the costs of chip development dramatically. (VentureBeat)

ReelSurfer Offers a White Label Solution for Video Search; the startup processes long-form video and turns it into short, relevant segments that are easy to watch and search through. (TechCrunch)

Tremor Unveils New Video Ad Formats; the company introduced six new ad formats, each designed to move advertisers away from pre-roll and toward greater engagement with consumers, either by letting the audience choose which ads they want to watch or by delivering a greater variety of ads. (ClickZ)

Blockbuster Starts Converting Stores to Outlets; some of its lesser-performing stores are being converted to outlet-type operations that offer only sell-through DVDs and consumer electronics for sale, but no movie rentals. (Video Business)

Dailymotion Announces Broadband TV Advertising Formats; the newly launched ad formats bring the rich, interactive experience of Web advertising to Internet connected TVs. (IPTVwatch)

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How does it look? Awesome. Take a look for yourself. (The demo of YouTube kicks in around the 1:50 mark)

Watching YouTube HD on a big screen, you get a glimpse at YouTube’s future: premium content from networks and studios delivered straight to your TV sans any cable provider. And it makes you realize why the company reversed its position on pre-rolls as they will look just like commercials on a big screen and probably be more tolerated since people will be in their living rooms.

Beyond YouTube, the Netgear box can manage your BitTorrents as well as other video content on your network, and streams other web video like podcasts and such. It currently doesn’t stream Netflix content, but the Netgear rep didn’t rule that out as a possibility. The Digital Entertainer Elite will ship in the first quarter of next year and will be priced at $399. By Netgear’s own admission, the Digital Entertainer Elite is more for the tech-savvy, early adopter, not your average Roku user.

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Sling Media also announced a new version of its SlingPlayer Mobile software for S60 software on Symbian OS platform that Nokia N-series and E-series phones. The new software costs $29.95, but will be free for N95 customers. If you remember, Sling CEO Blake Krikorian had showed up with a 3G Nokia N95 phone with this special software installed on our The GigaOM Show. Here is our beta review.

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title=”Photo Sharing”> src=”http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1242/575774268_1f15aca7c8_o.jpg”
width=”389″ height=”219″ alt=”AppleTV with YouTube” />

I just updated my href=”http://www.apple.com/appletv”>AppleTV with the latest
software to get access to YouTube
and I have to say that the H.264 quality is excellent! We all know
what the majority of YouTube video looks like, but this is something
well beyond what you normally see and bodes very well for the iPhone
when it’s released next week.

Once you connect and login, you can see your favorites and rate or
report video. You can’t however see your own videos or those of your
friends / subscriptions which seems like an oversight to me. I would
expect to see that in a future update since that’s a large part of the
community aspect within YouTube.

I shot some video of the process which should give you some insight
into the update process as well as the quality of the experience.
It’s not the most exciting of videos, but here you go:

Jonathan Greene is a long-time contributor to GigaOM network. He is an entrepreneurial marketer focused on bringing the benefits of ROI-driven direct response techniques to the digital arena.

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Called the CONE (for Collaborative observatory for natural environments) Sutro Forest, the Cal-Berkeley project is the latest step in a series of nature-cams, of which there have been others before. But since this one involves the no-billions-for-me nice-guy Newmark, we’re betting the attention level will ratchet up a bit, from the mainstream media as well as from Internet time-wasters who will simply think it’s cool to control the cam on Craig’s porch.

Ostensibly there is going to be some real bird-watching going on, but we are also thinking of offering a betting line on how long it takes some geek to try to turn the camera around for a peek inside Craig’s house.

(Seagull photo by Paul Kapustka)

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Enter Make Internet TV, a newly released site from the Participatory Culture Foundation that also brought you the Miro, nee Democracy player, Broadcast Machine and other free, open-source alternatives to offerings from Microsoft, Apple and Google.

I got a sneak peek at it back in Austin during South by Southwest, and was impressed with the slick design, but now there’s actually lots of content. It will be particularly interesting to see how much activity the MITV Wiki attracts. It certainly achieves the goal of being a brief and simple tutorial to help people determine what they need, and need to know, in order to accomplish an online video project.

When people asked me how to get started in online video, I have been recommending Freevlog, which recently was redesigned. Freevlog has more video content, especially tutorials, and a larger community already in place, though I imagine there will be plenty of cross pollination between the two. Make Internet TV promises to post more video soon, but going forward I’ll be recommending them both.

Where Make Internet TV shines is in the explanations of actual filmmaking techniques — everything from the “vlogger hold” for interviews to three point lighting, dollying and homemade steadycams to editing tips for Windows Movie Maker.

It’s a laudable effort, and is part of a wider movement in online video circles – especially amongst those with previous experience in production – to improve the quality of citizen media through education. After all, now that anyone can theoretically compete with the studios and networks, the reality is that the hard part is crafting quality content that people will actually prefer to watch.

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The San Francisco event was largely put together by FreeVlog creators and well known vlog community boosters Ryanne Hodson, Michael Verdi and Jay Dedman. After a discussion of copyright law and Creative Commons licensing in the park kick started the conversation, dozens of people filled the Hat Factory to shoot footage, edit and otherwise clog the intertubes with creative output, while dozens more were happy to chatter over drinks and snacks.

Tips were exchanged, newbies were introduced to the tools, organizers checked in with other meetups in real time and a generally infectious energy pervaded. It was hard not to be inspired to do something — rock star web developer Tantek Celik posted his first video, No There There‘s George Kelly helped a pair of filmmakers new to the vlogosphere set up their own sites, Geek Entertainment TV‘s Eddie Codel egged colleague Irina Slutsky to call Justin in the wee hours as we watched him getting turned away by the bouncers at the Endup, and even I got in the spirit by completing a Creative Commons license bumper for anyone to use.

The idea behind the event and Video Blogging Week is to promote the form and encourage more people to join the “conversational media” party, in the hopes that the talented people Barry Diller says don’t exist will continue to emerge from their closets. As Justin proves, you can create something compelling with minimal effort or expertise in crafting video content. Marcel Duchamp would be proud.

Photo by Luca Venturini.

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A Gizmodo reader has done what Apple should have done months ago, when the device was announced — expand the hard drive. In this case, they managed to triple the internal storage to something more in keeping with a box you could fit four iPods in. And if you think it’s incredibly complicated, Make Magazine offers a guide to cracking open your Apple TV in four easy steps. Then it’s just a matter of shoehorning an aftermarket drive in there.

Now how about the Apple TV’s insistence on m4v encoded media? Perian will fix that! A proof-of-concept hack to run xVid media has already been posted to the Something Awful forums. Of course, it doesn’t have on-board BitTorrent support like the Netgear EVA8000, but this opens up the Apple TV market to folks with a library culled from The Pirate Bay instead of the iTunes Store.

Keep ‘em coming, kids! But I promise not to publish another Apple TV post until someone ports Debian or Ubuntu onto the thing (or OS X, for that matter). Until then, the folks at HD for Indies have started a new blog, Apple TV Hacker. In the meantime, I’ll see if Om will let me come over with a screwdriver and a soldering iron.

Photo from the Make Magazine blog.

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Jeroen Wijering’s Flash player (above) has a lot of these features without abandoning extant standards like SMIL, RTMP and ATOM, and the code is licensed under Creative Commons so it can be used non-commercially for free or licensed for a paltry €15.

1. Closed captioning: This should be supported as a standard for so many reasons, starting with accessibility. Imagine YouTube clips failing gracefully into transcripts for text-based browsers, captions appearing when you muted the audio (great if you’re at the office), and a pop-up menu of alternate language subtitles. There are already standard timed-subtitle file formats for DVD video, and ReviewTube is a valiant effort, but if anything should be universally supported, this is it.
2. Full-screen button on embeddable players: Sure, you can click for full-screen view on a clip’s home site, like at YouTube. But why not in-line full screen for embedded players? SplashCast has a neat implementation of this very feature, as does the Flash FLV Player I mentioned earlier.
3. Boss button: Who hasn’t been at work, heard the boss coming and scrambled to alt-tab from a music video back to a boring spreadsheet. CBS is doing it for the NCAA’s, and combined with subtitling, it would vastly improve the experience for the average cube dweller. Flash can even track keystrokes, so there’s no reason a common hotkey combo couldn’t emerge across players.
4. Easy access to FLV source: Right-click on a Flash area of your screen and the choices are less than entirely useful. Where’s ‘Save as,’ for instance? I know that part of the appeal to content types is that the Flash format is a proprietary one that serves as a thin layer of content protection. But why couldn’t people who want to leave their content open given the choice?

   Even a custom button in the player itself that reads ‘save this video’ would be welcome. It’s not like eBaum’s World isn’t ripping off your content anyway, and it would probably save you some hotlinking bandwidth by encouraging people to mirror.

5. Rolling playback: Quit asking me if I want to keep watching content, just play it already — though the more relevant, the better. This could work especially well if tied to the full screen feature. Let embedders or content creators compile a list of relevant clips to seed the initial playlist, and then let those roll after the first clip closes out if in full-screen mode.

   I probably won’t even mind too much if you slip a short ad in between. Of course I can always just click stop or close the window. If you need buzzword reinforcement, wouldn’t this help with stickiness and findability?

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The latest episode of Star Trek: New Voyages, a fan funded and produced continuation of the original series, will be based on a script written by Next Generation veteran David Gerrold called “Blood and Fire” and will feature the homosexual nephew of Captain Kirk, Peter Kirk, in a plotline about a blood-borne pathogen that’s intended as an allegory for HIV.

The last episode, “World Enough and Time,” starred none other than George Takei. Takei made news two years ago when he came out, and has since become an activist and spokesperson for gay causes and issues. Recently, he appeared on the Jimmy Kimmel show in a hilarious send up of NBA star Tim Hardaway’s homophobic rant.

According to the After Elton article, Gerrold says that he got permission years ago from creator Gene Roddenberry, who felt that it was due time to feature gay characters in the universe. The episode is planned to commence production in June, and will include contributions from other show veterans such as visual effects guru Daren Dochterman and director Charles Washburn.

The ultimate goal is to produce a full, 22 episode ‘season’ of the show — though at the current production rate, they won’t be done until 2020 at the earliest.

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