Audio and video

YouTube users in the U.K. can now rent feature films on the video service.

The movie-rental service boasts more than 1,000 films from both Hollywood and British studios, YouTube said in a blog post today announcing the launch, including "The Dark Knight" and "Reservoir Dogs," as well as Monty Python's "The Meaning of Life."

Film rentals have taken a long time to make their way across the pond. In May, YouTube announced the availability of major movie rentals in the U.S. Last month, the company rolled it out to users … Read more

At any given time, the majority of Netflix users are watching television shows, rather than movies, a company executive has revealed.

Speaking yesterday at the Mipcom conference in Cannes, France, Netflix Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos said that "50 percent, and sometimes, 60 percent, of viewing (on Netflix) is TV episodes now," according to PaidContent, which was at the event,

Sarandos was quick to add that those statistics won't stop his company from focusing on bringing more movies to the streaming service. He reportedly said during his keynote address that the stats "can be misperceived as … Read more

Netflix's decision to split its business into separate streaming and DVD entities has gotten boos from its users, but co-founder Marc Randolph thinks it's a brave and smart move.

Netflix managed to tick off a sizable number of subscribers this summer with its decision to raise prices on certain plans. In a mea culpa issued early last week, CEO Reed Hastings finally admitted the price hike was poorly orchestrated and communicated.

But in the same breath, Hastings announced that the company's operations would be split into two separate businesses--Netflix to provide the streaming content and Qwikster to … Read more

Although Google TV's lack of support from content providers has proven troublesome for the platform, it appears that at least one network is ready to try its luck with the service.

According to GigaOm blog NewTeeVee, Turner Broadcasting, which owns both TBS and TNT, will bring full-length episodes of its shows, including "Closer" and "Falling Skies," to Google TV. In order for people to watch the shows, they will need to verify that they are, in fact, subscribers to Turner's networks, NewTeeVee says.

Google TV launched last year to much fanfare. However, soon after … Read more

Discovery Communications, which owns the Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, and TLC among other networks, has inked a two-year deal to bring its programming to Netflix.

A host of popular shows from Discovery's networks, including "Man vs. Wild" and "Say Yes to Dress," will be coming to Netflix's streaming. All the content will come from prior seasons and specials. Reuters, which reported on the deal before it was announced, cited sources who said that the deal is limited to the U.S.

The range of content Discovery will be bringing to Netflix is quite extensive. … Read more

The FoxNews YouTube channel has received over 16,000 questions from people for this week's upcoming Republican presidential debate. And now, YouTube is offering some insight into the questions for the candidates.

According to the online video site, 17 percent of all questions relate to government spending and the U.S. national debt. Jobs and the economy came in second place, representing about 16 percent of all questions asked. Social issues came in at 12 percent of all questions.

On Thursday, the top Republican presidential candidates will be in Orlando, Fla., for the debate. The debate, which will air … Read more

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings tried yesterday to assuage customer wrath about the company's price hike, but instead ended up triggering a new round with news that its streaming-video and DVD-by-mail services will be almost completely separated.

Hastings on Sunday night offered an apology for the company's customer communications shortcomings, an attempt to justify the separation of the services, and some details about how customers who want both will now have two separate Web sites, movie queues, rating systems, search boxes, and payments.

The apology sounds genuine, and Hastings also is engaging with customers in the post's comments. … Read more

In an effort to make it easier for YouTube users to make changes to their videos after uploading them, YouTube is rolling out a brand new video editor.

No, this isn't the standalone video editor meant for splicing together clips from multiple videos that's been available in the service's TestTube labs since last year. Instead, it's a new one designed to give users a way to do quick fixes without having to re-upload the video. It's like a retouching tool for photos, but for non-commercial video.

The idea for including an editor came out of eyeballing videos that had been uploaded to the service, YouTube product manager Jason Toff told CNET.

"We noticed a lot of the videos that were uploaded to YouTube could use some polish, some basic video editing," Toff said. "We noticed a lot of videos that had extra footage at the beginning that could have been trimmed off, or some footage at the end that could be trimmed off, a lot of videos that were really shaky and could use stabilization, and dark videos, etc."

The answer is the new tool, which lets users make both quick fixes and more substantial edits to their videos.

… Read more

Motorola Mobility's investment arm, Motorola Mobility Ventures, has offered up some cash to video-services provider, Ooyala, the companies announced today.

Founded in 2007, Ooyala has quickly become a well-known, behind-the-scenes provider of video services to major brands. The company currently offers online video management, analytics, monetization, and publishing to more than 1,000 customers delivering video to more than 100 million consumers per month. All told, the service provider's customers deliver 1 billion streams each month.

Motorola Mobility, however, seems to care most about Ooyala's "multiscreen experiences." Ooyala recently unveiled a service called Ooyala Everywhere, … Read more