“We’re not ready to discuss our future product roadmap . . . but it was a useful tool to demonstrate to the FCC where innovation is headed in the TV space for both over the top and over the air/QAM,” we were told by Boxee VP of Marketing Andrew Kippen. The filing itself also states that “both the Boxee Box with Live TV and the products under development provide consumers with competitive alternatives to traditional pay cable delivered via rented set top boxes.” Of course, one could argue that any over-the-top offering with access to online sources like Netflix can be an alternative to your cable box — but that is already true for the existing Boxee Box. The need to black out two entire paragraphs in the filing leads me to believe that Boxee is instead working on additional ways to access and consume over-the-air broadcast and cable TV.

So what does it have in store for us? Here are some possibilities:

• DVR functionality. This has been the most-requested feature ever since the Boxee Live TV tuner came out earlier this year. The tuner currently only displays what’s airing at any given time, but a software update and an attached hard disc could turn the combination of Boxee Box and Live TV tuner into a full-fledged DVR.
• A Boxee TV. Viewsonic was supposed to release a TV set powered by Boxee last year, but it scrapped its plan when consumer demand for smart TVs didn’t materialize. Of course, that doesn’t mean that another TV manufacturer couldn’t fill the gap. A TV with a built-in tuner would obviously also have access to Boxee Live TV and as such be impacted by any attempt to encrypt basic cable.
• A revamped Boxee Box with internal storage. This would go well with any DVR offering, in part because not every consumer wants to have an external hard drive and a USB dongle dangling from their Boxee Box. Of course, it would also be possible to directly add the TV tuner to the Box. But this could bring costs up even further, so I would expect this to be sold separately for the foreseeable future. Iomega is already selling a Boxee device with a hard drive in Europe, but the company told us it doesn’t have any plans to bring the device to the U.S.
• A cable set-top box. Yes, you read that correctly. Boxee has been big on cord cutting rhetoric lately, but the company is reportedly also talking to smaller cable operators about using Boxee’s platform as an alternative to the traditional cable box. This could be done with the existing Boxee Box and a Live TV tuner, but one could also imagine slightly revamped hardware that could offer subscribers online video, basic cable channels and a DVR for a small monthly fee, much like Sezmi used to offer. But instead of selling it directly to consumers, Boxee would offer the device through a regional cable company.

We will likely have to wait a while until we know what the company has up its sleeve. However, the success of the Live TV tuner — the device is currently sold out and on back order — shows that the company is clearly on to something here. And while the list of possible products above is admittedly pure speculation, it goes to show that there is a lot of potential for Boxee to innovate in this space.

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A significant part of this has been driven by the smashing success of the Khan Academy. Salman Khan’s no-frills biology, calculus and physics lessons have clocked close to 120 million views on YouTube since he started uploading them in 2006. However, there is a growing movement toward more entertaining and visually appealing lessons that speak the language of the YouTube generation.

The most recent examples for this type of programming include some projects launched in January as part of YouTube’s new channel initiative: Crash Course, for example, combines lessons about biology and world history with smart humor, a YouTube-typical in-your-face style of narration and professionally animated graphics.

Crash Course is a co-production of Hank and John Green, of Vlogbrothers fame. The channel launched just days ago, and the duo have already managed to get around 275,000 views with little more than two lessons posted. John Green told me during a phone conversation this week that he has been very excited about this initial success: “It really stabs in the heart the lie that YouTube is about cat videos,” he said.

The Vlogbrothers are among dozens of content makers that have been receiving sizable advances from YouTube to professionally produce content. Reports put the total spent by Google for this kind of content north of $100 million. That money buys YouTube participation from stars like Rainn Wilson and Tony Hawk, but the initiative also includes around a dozen channels with news and educational content.

Many of these channels are part of YouTube for Schools, a program launched last month that offers educational institutions access to a controlled YouTube environment to ensure that students don’t goof off watching the latest music videos. Green told me that he has already received “dozens of emails” from students who were introduced to his new show by their teacher. “People are already watching Crash Course in classrooms,” he said.

But with great power comes great responsibility; in this case, there is a duty to get the facts right. Green has been using a real-life educator to make sure that he doesn’t get his history dates mixed up. Fact-checking is absolutely necessary for this kind of content, he told me, admitting, “I don’t trust myself.”

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At the D:Dive Into Media conference on Tuesday, Kilar highlighted that the company’s content offering is much bigger today than it’s ever been, with more than 330 content partners, not just the three (Fox, NBC and Disney) that hold an ownership stake. He said there’s more content for users, more users and a lot more usage of the site now than at launch.

But while that growth could be seen as a positive for the industry, there’s been some worry that services like Hulu, Netflix and others could eventually eat into existing business models. In response, Kilar likened the onset of Internet video to the invention of TV. When movie studios first looked at that new invention, there was some fear that TV could be a potential threat to their existing business models. And yet, TV created a huge amount of value for the industry.

In the same way, while Internet video is seen as a potentially cannibalizing force to existing models, Kilar theorized that it would grow to become a huge opportunity for Hollywood as time goes on. The important thing is that those media companies should not be blind to consumer behavior and demand as it evolves. “You need to balance that existing business while also planting seeds that can bear fruit as time goes on,” he said.

He also had a very positive view of the online video ecosystem beyond just his own business. “There’s going to be many winners in this space in the next 10 to 15 years,” he said.

Some other takeaways from his interview:

• Kilar said that the $420 million in revenue that Hulu announced at the end of 2011 was not a revenue miss. He said the board plan for the year was for $408 million, but in the first half of the year the company was pacing well above that, which led to the forecast that Hulu could near $500 million for the year. But in the third quarter the ad market softened and pricing changed.
• Hulu expects to spend $500 million on content next year, but won’t need to raise additional capital to pay for it, Kilar confirmed.
• When discussing the various online, mobile and other connected device rights that Hulu and others need to secure, he said it wouldn’t be surprising for our grandkids to look back and chuckle about how a laptop with keys is seen as different from a mobile phone, which is different than a tablet.

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Chill founder Brian Norgard likened it to the way people interact with content on media-focused social networking sites like Path and Instagram, telling me during a phone call Wednesday: “There isn’t a great networking approach to video.”

The new Chill.com.

Chill has been going through several product iterations since its launch last August: The site started off as a Turntable.fm-like platform that allowed users to curate video playlists in real time, went on to focus on live streaming and eventually brought in content from Hulu.com to allow users to watch their favorite TV shows together in a group setting. Norgard admitted Wednesday that his team may have underestimated the challenges with this model: “To do that kind of scheduled programming around archived content – it’s just hard,” he told me, adding that synchronous interaction around video content may still be a few years away.

The new Chill.com takes some of the social aspects of its old model, but without the need to be watching the same content at the same time. Users are for example being notified if one of their friends watches a video they posted or reshared and have the option to chat with them about the clip – something Norgard called “hyper-addictive.”

Norgard told me that his team hasn’t made a decision yet on the future of its chat rooms, but admitted that the new site was “a major shift in focus.” Chill wants to now see how users react to the new service, and may work on mobile or connected TV apps to bring it to other platforms later.

Of course, Chill isn’t alone in the aggregation space. Apps like Fanhattan and Squrl have been trying to establish themselves as leaders in the social curation and discovery space, and YouTube has been moving towards a more social approach as well with its most recent relaunch that includes a Facebook-like news feed.

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Last week at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, China’s online video provider PPTV announced a strategic partnership with WASU Media Group. WASU is a local cable TV operator in one of China’s many provinces, but it has something really valuable for PPTV: A license to bring online video to the living room, which it has been using to bring triple play offerings to their customers. However, WASU’s license isn’t just restricted to the territory it works in. Instead, it’s able to launch online services on connected devices everywhere.

PPTV, which is also known as PPLive, has been trying to get into the living room for years. The company’s P2P video client is installed on 240 million PCs across China, and it has been adding some 30 million users with its iPad app and other mobile clients in recent years. The company worked on its own set-top box project some three years ago, but never shipped the device because China’s regulators were starting to crack down on similar offerings from competitors.

At the core of the issue is China’s complicated licensing framework, which requires that online video operators get separate licenses for addressing PC, mobile and connected TV usage. The TV space has been the most heavily regulated, and regulators have effectively been treating any video startup the same way they would treat an established cable TV operator.

The result has been that there hasn’t been a move towards streaming in the living room, as there has in the U.S. PPTV and WASU hope to change this by combining their efforts, while also securing a big share of the coming connected TV boom in China. Digital TV Research expects the Chinese online video market to grow from $50 million in 2010 to $1.38 billion in 2016, and connected devices could play a huge role in that growth.

The good news for PPTV’s competitors is that there are still other ways into the Chinese living room. Lenovo announced an Android-based TV set at CES, and Chinese CE manufacturers have been introducing countless Android-based set-top boxes in recent months. None of these devices has access to Google’s Android Market — which isn’t available in China — but consumers will nonetheless be able to install third-party apps from a variety of sources. This in itself could lead to a connected TV revolution within China, and possibly even force regulators to rethink their stance on online services in the living room.

Image courtesy of (CC-BY-SA) Flickr user x-ray delta one.

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Not surprisingly, the number of viewers that are considering canceling skews higher the younger the respondents are: Nineteen percent of “leading Millennials” — those aged 23 to 28 — said they were considering canceling cable, with 13 percent of Gen Xers saying they were thinking about doing so. Of baby boomers, only 7 percent said they would consider cutting the cord, and older respondents were even less likely to do so, at just 5 percent.

The findings come as a greater number of viewers are catching on to free and subscription-based video services available online and streaming to their TVs and other devices. Twenty-two percent of respondents said they had watched their favorite TV show on a free online video source, and 21 percent said they had viewed that show on its own video site. The good news for networks is that those views are increasingly coming from legitimate sources: That compares to 15 percent who watched on a video sharing site or 4 percent who watched on a peer-to-peer network.

Viewers are also becoming more comfortable with watching TV shows on other devices: Nine percent watched shows on a gaming console, compared to 6 percent a year earlier. Smartphone viewing — up to 6 percent from 5 percent — and tablet viewing — 3 percent vs. 2 percent — also increased.

With movies, viewers are even more connected, according to the survey. Deloitte reports that 42 percent of users had streamed a movie in 2011, which was up from 32 percent a year earlier. Twenty-five percent did so as part of a paid subscription like Netflix or Amazon Prime Instant Videos. That’s significantly higher than those who streamed as part of a onetime purchase, which 9 percent of viewers did.

While Deloitte makes the point that greater accessibility ultimately means more people accessing more content, it also means more people are realizing there are more choices for content outside the traditional cable model. As that happens, we expect even more to consider cutting the cord and finding their content elsewhere.

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Vevo also was able to achieve significant growth within the U.S. as well as on mobile platforms, but all those music videos didn’t come cheap. Here are some key metrics for the platform:

• In the U.S. alone, Vevo delivered 827 million video streams to 57 million unique viewers in October.
• The average Vevo viewer watches 14.5 videos on the site a month, spending 66 minutes to do so.
• Vevo’s mobile apps have been downloaded more than 13 million times.
• Vevo had 3.9 million active users for its mobile apps in October, with Android being the platform with the most engagement. Mobile viewers spent 55 minutes on average with the apps in October.
• Vevo’s catalog includes more than 300 episodes of original music programming, which have been watched around 200 million times.
• Vevo now has a staff of more than 120 people.
• The company has paid more than $100 million in royalties to artists, labels and publishers, according to a report from the Los Angeles Times.

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The site announced the partnership with a video on Tuesday:

Hulu’s new Spanish-language section, which is featured prominently on the site, so far only contains content from existing partners Univision, Galavision and Telefutura. Hulu Plus subscribers will be able to access entire current seasons of prime-time shows from these broadcasters, whereas users of the free Hulu service will have access to a more limited catch-up catalog on a next-day basis. Shows from new partners Azteca America, Butaca, Caracol Televisión, Comarex, Estrella TV, Imagina US, Laguna Productions, Maya Entertainment, RCTV, Todobebe Inc and Venevision will be added in 2012.

Hulu’s SVP of content, Andy Forssell, emphasized in the announcement blog post that this “is the first time that such a robust, Spanish-language premium content collection has been available through an online video service in the U.S.” Targeting the country’s Latino population makes a lot of sense for Hulu: After all, it represents an audience of more than 50 million, according to the most recent Census Bureau numbers. Latinos are also watching way more TV online than their white counterparts, according to Nielsen: The media research company revealed in May that Latinos on average watch 6 hours and 22 minutes of online video per month, whereas white viewers clock 3 hours and 44 minutes on average. Back then, I wrote:

[This] raises questions about whether the industry is doing a good enough job to reach out to its most engaged audiences. In other words: If Hispanics watch close to twice as many streams as white consumers, why aren’t there more video services or even web series specifically targeting this segment of the market?

Looks like Hulu did its homework.

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The legal spat ensued after the BVG transit authority sent cease-and-desist letters to both the filmmakers and their distributor, arguing that they should have obtained filming permits for footage shot at train stations and on other premises owned by BVG. The filmmakers responded by saying that they didn’t actually shoot any of the numerous clips that show how masked graffiti artists rush onto platforms, sneak through underground tunnels and climb over high-voltage electric third rails. Instead, all of the footage was submitted to them by the more than two dozen crews responsible for the graffiti shown in the movie.

The filmmakers contextualized this raw footage with a number of interviews both with graffiti artists as well as law enforcement officials who pursue them — and the interviews openly touch on subjects like fatal accidents as well as legal actions taken against people who get caught. “You get to know each other,” comments one masked artist about the relationship between the scene and police officers.

Of course, one can have differing opinions about graffiti, especially when it’s applied to third-party property — and I realize that even me using the term artist in this context may open me up to criticism.

However, to me, the bigger issue is that BVG is trying to fight windmills: With digital cameras being readily available to graffiti crews, there’s no way to prevent footage of trains getting repurposed as moving canvases popping up on YouTube and similar sites. In fact, this has been going on for years. Now to turn against filmmakers who put all of this into context — and include dissenting voices — is more than questionable.

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The pages of video publishers are also getting a significant face lift, emphasizing the notion of subscribing to channels and focusing more on filtering and curation. “Curators are going to be be really great for organizing this massive amount of content that YouTube has,” said the site’s channels product manager A.J Crane.

This focus on channels is part of YouTube’s attempt to evolve from a site that is on average frequented for 15 minutes a day to a destination that invites users to watch for hours. It also ties in with its recently announced professional content initiative that will bring around 100 new channels from celebrities like Madonna and Tony Hawk as well as prominent YouTube stars like The Young Turk’s Cenk Uygur to the site in the coming months.

Some of the highlights of the new design include:

• The overall design is closely aligned with the visual changes on other Google properties, including Google+ and GMail.
• The home page features a kind of activity stream that includes video uploads, likes and favorites, comments as well as announcements for upcoming live events.
• Users can pin up to ten of their favorite channels on YouTube’s homepage, giving them easier access to uploads and video recommendations posted on those channels.
• A new Favicon in the form of a play button replaces the stacked YouTube logo.
• Registered users will be able to choose from four default templates for their own channel pages, with individual templates appealing to the needs of avid YouTube networkers, creators who simply want to showcase their best work through playlists or video bloggers with a lot of output that will be arranged in reverse chronological order.
• Video pages now feature a grey background that is supposed to be less distracting that the site’s previous use of bright white.

These changes are expected to go live to all users at 2pm PT, and YouTube is offering a detailed look at all of the new features here.

The focus on channels and the homepage is also YouTube’s answer to the rise of third-party curation through platforms like Facebook and Twitter. YouTube has been clocking around 200 million visitors to its old home page every day, but the site recently announced that it is seeing 3.5 billion video views every single day. That means that most of YouTube’s traffic isn’t coming through YouTube’s homepage, which entails the danger that people quickly jump off after watching a single clip.

YouTube VP of Product Development Shishir Mehrotra emphasized on Thursday that this was just a first wave of changes across YouTube’s properties. “We are just geting started,” he said. Up next are changes to YouTube’s mobile apps and sites as well as efforts to bring this channel-centric approach to connected devices. YouTube representatives also hinted at further personalization options for channel content, which would presumably work in conjunction with Google+, as well as the ability to view private and unlisted videos shared with you within your homepage’s activity stream.

One of the platforms that will see some of the new channel-centric approach next is the Xbox, where the launch of a new UI for YouTube is imminent. “Any of the channels on YouTube may be a great channel on TV,” said YouTube Group Product Manager Shiva Rajaraman, and Mehrotra went on to predict that distinctions between traditional TV channels and YouTube content channels would eventually become irrelevant. “This term of online video is about to disappear,” he said.

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The app also puts a big emphasis on audio-only content: All TED talks are available for listening, and a dedicated radio mode makes it possible to stream curated TED talks nonstop. TED’s developers said Tuesday on the site’s blog that the audio content will soon be available on the iPad as well.

TED has been hugely successful with bringing recordings of its exclusive conferences online. The TED.com site hit a benchmark of 500 million streamed videos this summer, which is remarkable for content that largely consists of 18-minute long talks about subjects like technology, design and science. Mobile devices have been playing an increasingly large role for TED as well: A spokesperson told me via email the iPad app has seen 1.9 million downloads so far.

Update: A TED spokesperson told us that an Android app will follow early next year.

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Hulu started talking to potential partners in Europe years ago, but wasn’t actually able to follow through on any of its plans. Part of the problem was that TV networks preferred to launch their own catch-up platforms. However, these attempts haven’t always been successful: Regulators put a stop to plans by the two biggest commercial German TV entities RTL and Pro Sieben Sat 1 to launch their own catch-up site earlier this year, and the British Hulu lookalike Seesaw recently shut down when a proposed acquisition fell through.

Horizont is now reporting that Hulu has been struggling to acquire some of the rights necessary for a full-blown launch in Germany, which is why it wouldn’t launch “with the same offering” as in the U.S. The news site didn’t provide further details, but it’s possible that Hulu would approach the German market with a subscription-only offering, just like it did when it expanded to Japan earlier this year.

Update: Hulu declined to comment when contacted for this story.

Image courtesy of (CC-BY-SA) Flickr user gfhdickinson.

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The announcement blog post highlights a few popular titles covered by the deal:

“Fans of animated movies? We’ve got the beloved animated classic, Alice in Wonderland and the newly envisioned Winnie the Pooh. Love Disney·Pixar? We have hits like Cars and Cars 2 all in one place. Up for a little bit of adventure? We’ll take you from the darkest depths of the oceans with all four of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, including the most recent blockbuster in the franchise Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides.”

YouTube didn’t make any announcements beyond the availability on its own site, but it’s safe to assume that the same titles will eventually be available as mobile rentals through Google’s Android Market as well.

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Prior to Watson’s presentation, the last viewership milestone was announced in May as YouTube celebrated its sixth birthday. At that point, the site was delivering 3 billion views per day — so it’s added about 500 million views a day in the past six months. A year earlier, in May 2010, YouTube broke 2 billion views a day.

The increase in videos served comes as YouTube is capturing more eyeballs around the world. It now has more than 800 million unique viewers per month, and more than half its views come from non-English speakers.

Already, some of the site’s top producers have audiences that rival some cable networks. That’s important, as YouTube plans to introduce more of its own content, by launching 100 original channels to provide an alternative to traditional broadcast and cable TV content.

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When you launch the Netflix app on Wii, you can choose the Just for Kids section, letting the kids browse without worrying if they will come across content not intended for young viewers.

We first reported in July that Netflix was working on a kids-centric UI, and the company rolled it out to all its users on the web a month later. Netflix made the new Wii UI available to its subscribers in South America earlier this month, and a spokesperson told me at the time it would bring a kids-specific section to the PS3 soon after.

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While the period between August 2008 and August 2009 showed the most dramatic increase in viewing activity, it shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise. After all, Hulu was pretty new back then, as was Netflix’s streaming video service. As those services and others have grown in terms of content available and users tuning in, there was bound to be a sharp uptick in total number of streams.

But the real interesting growth curve is the number of minutes spent watching those streams, which is increasing even faster. Part of that growth is coming from streaming becoming more mainstream as a way to watch on-demand and even live videos. But part is also coming from the influx of connected and mobile devices that are giving people access to streaming video on the big screen and on the go.

At what point will streaming video start to cut into more traditional TV viewing? Internet-delivered video has been seen as mostly complementary to traditional TV. As stats from Nielsen and others have shown, despite the increased adoption of streaming video, the amount of time people spend watching TV continues to grow. But at some point that might change — there are only so many hours in the day, after all.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Kiersten Balukas

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