Posts Tagged: ‘streaming video’

Consider the content spectrum on the Internet. On one side, you have purely original content, generated by the webmaster or by those who work for him/her. On the other, you have user-generated content. With this model, the Web site is really just a forum in which users can post their own content for the enjoyment of other users. Most Web sites fall somewhere between the two extremes. Justin.tv, a site that allows users to stream video over the Web, slants more toward the user-generated model than the other. That’s what has caused the UFC to take notice.

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Those of us who live in the United States and love shows from the BBC will have another option to catch our fix of British TV — Luke Westaway of CNET’s Crave blog wrote that Auntie Beeb will be launching an iPlayer application in Apple’s iTunes Store for the iPad, courtesy of BBC Worldwide.

The new app will be following on the heels of subscription services such as Netflix and Hulu Plus.

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This Saturday, I was extra excited about my weekend ritual of doing laundry and watching TV on Hulu. Last week, I got an invite to Hulu Plus. I also have a PlayStation 3. With this combo I could, in theory, watch my shows on my TV instead of my laptop screen, with a minimum of muss and fuss. What I got was a little different from what I expected.

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Streaming TV seems to be one of the big stories of the day. In the United Kingdom, the BBC has announced that it’s moving forward with Project Canvas, an initiative in which its partners ITV, TalkTalk, Channel 4, BT and Five are working together on a standard protocol for streaming online video.

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The other day on TechStuff Live Jonathan and I talked about Apple’s acquisition of streaming music provider Lala. As we said, lots of people are trying to figure out what’s in it for Apple, since the company hasn’t simply come out and told us all. But yesterday Brian X. Chen at Wired.com put that acquisition together with some other Apple initiatives n a post on the Gadget Lab blog, and he thinks the electronics and computer company may be making a break for the streaming video market.

One of these pieces he’s putting together in the puzzle is Apple’s construction of a 500,000-square-foot (46,452-square-meter) data center in North Carolina, work on which apparently began late this summer.

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As Jonathan and I discussed in TechStuff Live Tuesday, Comcast has officially purchased a controlling interest in NBC Universal from General Electric. There are many things people have discussed as potential problems, and I’m sure they’ll come up during the FCC’s review of the deal. Comcast will have to reassure everyone that the company won’t promote NBC Universal networks at the expense of other channels.

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The news is full of stories about how TV and other media are moving online. But anyone who’s tried to tune in realizes that it can be difficult finding out what’s on and where. One of the complicating factors, of course, is that there’s no one site where you can go to watch everything that’s available online.

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This morning the big news is that Swedish Bit Torrent tracker site the Pirate Bay has been sold, to Global Gaming Factory X AB. You can see the press release on MarketWatch, which states that Global Gaming Factory plans on a new business model that will compensate copyright holders.

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If you’re like me, you enjoy using services like Hulu to catch up on shows and watch a movie now and then. It’s convenient — you can tune in whenever you like and watch streaming video. Who needs a television when you can access great content online?

That’s exactly what cable companies like Comcast and Time Warner are worried about. I first heard about this service on CNET’s Buzz Out Loud program. These companies recognize that customers want to access entertainment on their own terms. But that might also mean customers could decide to give up cable subscriptions and switch to the Internet for all their entertainment needs. In order to meet customer needs without giving up too much in the way of profits, Comcast and Time Warner have devised a program called TV Everywhere.

As Wired reports, the program will allow existing cable subscribers to access premium television content online. Only cable subscribers will be able to view the content. In other words, you can’t just dump your cable service and expect to watch the programs under this “premium content” umbrella. Even if you never turn your television on again, you’ll still need to pay the cable fees to watch the shows.

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I think I figured out why Hulu’s partners wanted Hulu functionality disabled in the Boxee application: Last night I was surprised to find out that the streaming video company had a division called Hulu Labs and that it’d released a desktop application for both Windows and Mac OS.

I read about it in an article by Seth Rosenblatt on CNET, who pointed out that there are four applications in development at Hulu Labs (that we know about, anyhow), but the desktop application is the only one that’s an actual download. The others are Video Panel Designer, which enables embeddable widgets; Recommendations, in which Hulu guesses other shows you might want to watch based on stuff you’ve watched in the past; and Time-based Browsing, which is great if you’re trying to watch shows from a particular era, because it groups shows together by original air date.

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