According to The Wall Street Journal retail giant Amazon.com may challenge the Netflix streaming product with a service of their own. Apparently the company has been in talks with NBC, Time Warner, News Corp. and Viacom to get content distribution rights to TV shows and film titles. If things fall into place, Amazon hopes to get the service launched this holiday season. Full Story
Apple has released a new, smaller Apple TV box geared toward streaming movies and TV shows. The resolution tops out at 720p (unfortunately) but highlights include Netflix streaming, 802.11n Wi-Fi, H.264 and MPEG-4 video support, and a footprint that is 80-percent smaller than the last Apple TV box. Full Story
Time Warner Cable has launched the online broadband channel Speed2 nationwide, offering live and on-demand streaming of motorsports events in both standard and high-definition. The channel is available to Time Warner Cable Sports Pass subscribers (formally known as Time Warner Cable Sports Tier) at no additional charge. Full Story
Dish Network has launched its DishOnline.com website in beta mode. When it officially launches, Dish will join other television providers in offering programmed content streaming over the internet, a service that allows subscribers to watch TV in more places than in front of their TV sets. (By the way, the beta is currently working for non-subs so have a look!) Full Story
Not a DirecTV subscriber? No matter. This season you’ll be able to purchase the NFL Sunday Ticket purely for online viewing. But, according to USA Today, the service is geared towards would-be DirecTV customers who cannot get satellite service. The article goes on to say that potential customers will have to prove they are unable to get DirecTV in order to purchase the $350 NFL Sunday Ticket online package (for example if they don’t have a clear south-facing view to place the satellite.) Full Story
Verizon’s FiOS TV online service is adding three more channels from Time Warner Inc., including Adult Swim, Cartoon Network and truTV. Content from these channels will be available online within 24-hours after the shows premiere on television. The channels join Turner’s TNT and TBS which became available to FiOS TV subscribers in June. Full Story
Earlier this week Reuters reported CBS in talks with Hulu to bring their TV content to the online service. Previously, CBS stayed clear of the popular website which offers content from (and is coincidentally owned by) the other big networks — NBC, ABC, and FOX. Now, with the launch of Hulu Plus (which charges a subscription fee), CBS has become more open to looking at content distribution agreements with the joint venture. Full Story
First they added 720p HD, then 1080p HD, now YouTube has gone even further by offering 4k HD video. The 4096×2304 resolution format is immense, takes much longer to stream, and can really only be appreciated on high resolution output devices such as a projector or giant TV. You also might crash your PC trying to view the 4k video. But all that doesn’t matter. YouTube has just become “cooler” by launching a resolution higher than even television service providers offer. Full Story
Relativity Media, the studio that brought recent films such as “Robin Hood,” “Get Him to the Greek” and “Grown Ups” to theaters, has made an agreement with Netflix to distribute titles during the “pay TV window,” the time during which studios have usually disallowed Netflix streaming of certain titles in favor of agreements with premium pay channels. Full Story
Netflix frequently adds new films to their streaming lineup. Although there never seem to be enough in HD, below are several titles worth checking out. It should be noted that while some titles listed on the Netflix website do not indicate they stream in HD, we checked them out and have discovered that indeed they do. The scrollable “New Arrivals” tab within the Netflix streaming interface on your TV seems to be more accurate in terms of what is available in high-definition. Full Story
You’ve seen Hulu, but what is Hulu Plus? Hulu Plus is the first ad-supported subscription service to offer current seasons of programming from ABC, FOX and NBC all in high-def via the internet. The service costs $9.99 a month and includes content from over 100 providers. Vizio and Hulu have now partnered to add Hulu Plus to Vizio’s Internet Apps which run on Vizio HDTVs and Blu-ray players. Full Story
Netflix has added a bunch of new titles to watch in HD on your PC or Mac, as well as adding a page to view the available titles. The service requires your PC have Silverlight 3 installed, a screen resolution of at least 800 pixels wide, and sufficient bandwidth to handle the high resolution files (at least 5Mbps suggested). Full Story
FiOS TV subscribers will be able to get Time Warner’s Turner networks programming on their PCs in June, and in the near future on their mobile devices. Shows such as “The Closer,” “Southland,” “Leverage,” Lopez Tonight” will be available 24 hours after they premiere on broadcast television — a time-delay common for prime-time content offered on demand. Full Story
TechCrunch wrote an article today which reports 600,000 television viewers pulled-the-plug on paid subscriptions in 2009 (adding up to about 800,000 over the last two years). The article, (citing a report from Convergence Consulting Group), estimates 1.6 million people will use other methods of watching television shows and movies (including over-the-internet and over-the-air) by the end of 2011. The studies from Convergence attribute much of the decline in paid subscribers to the growth of online viewing, using websites such as Hulu and Netflix. Full Story
Although Hulu recently lost popular Viacom content from “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” and “The Colbert Report”, they may make up for some lost viewership with the addition of content from NFL Network. The NFL channel on Hulu (http://www.hulu.com/nfl) is featuring nine football categories including 149 “Game of the Week” episodes, 18 “Greatest Games” episodes, and 43 “Super Bowl Highlights.” Each team also has its own sub-channel (For example http://www.hulu.com/nfl/carolina-panthers) which makes its easier to find content for a certain team rather than browsing through categories. Full Story
- Limited Time
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