streaming-video

Links from Wednesday's episode of Loaded:

Doodle-4-Google gets the search giant into more privacy trouble because of the possibility of storing children's Social Security numbers

iPad 2 might get a launch date as early as next week

Amazon Prime customers get Instant Streaming video with over 5,000 titles

China launches an official government search engine with Panguso

Mint.com gets new "Get Out of Debt" tools

Yahoo! Video gets rid of user-generated content, so download your uploads before March 14th

Amazon.com's new video plan launched yesterday, enabling Prime customers to stream content to a Mac, PC, and a number of set-top boxes, HDTVs, and other devices that consumers may have in their living rooms.

The question is, which products are supported and which are not?

The official Amazon word on Prime streaming is that it works with "more than 200 devices." The company also has a page on its site where people can see which products are supported.

However, that list isn't entirely correct.

According to Amazon's list of "compatible set-top boxes and … Read more

Amazon said today that it is offering Amazon Prime members free, instant streaming of more than 5,000 movies and TV shows.

In a press release, the company said the feature will be offered at no additional cost above the $79 that Prime members already pay annually. The movies and TV shows can be watched instantly on Macs, PCs, and nearly 200 models of Internet-connected devices, Amazon said. Amazon Prime is a membership program that offers customers free two-day shipping.

Some of the movies and TV shows that Amazon will stream include "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo," &… Read more

Well, it's about time.

Boxee announced today that Netflix streaming is finally available to owners of the company's Boxee Box. In order to access Netflix streaming, users will need to either wait for the automatic update to take effect within the next 24 hours or manually update their set-top boxes.

"Netflix support was the most common request we had on our blog comments, forum posts, tweets, etc.," Boxee CEO Avner Ronen said in a blog post accompanying the announcement. "We heard you loud and clear. We were bummed that we could not make it happen … Read more

Home video innovations always seem to lead back to porn.

The fingerprints of the adult-film industry can be found on the development of VHS and Blu-ray disc. Soon, the sector may teach us about the cloud.

Pink Visual, a porn studio with a history of embracing new technologies, appears to be among the first filmmakers in the United States to offer the kind of streaming-video features that Apple and Google were said to be considering last year.

Instead of storing digital movies they own on computer hard drives, Pink Visual customers will be able to store clips they buy from … Read more

Toast.

That's what Jason Kilar's career at Hulu is supposed to be soon if all the media speculation is correct.

Hulu is controlled by broadcast networks, NBC, ABC, and Fox, but that didn't stop Kilar, Hulu's CEO, from writing in a blog post Wednesday that TV is cluttered with too many ads and he predicted that prices and profit margins for the TV sector would decline. He even lamented the tendency of "incumbents" (read: TV execs) to fight change. Much of his post was about what Hulu needed to offer consumers if it is … Read more

Speed is only one way to measure an Internet service provider, said Clearwire, the wireless network that appeared to get slammed last week by a Netflix report on which ISPs were best at delivering streaming video the best.

Last Thursday, Netflix published data on how well various ISPs delivered the company's streaming video. Out of 16 companies, Clearwire came in last. The wireless carrier responded to Netflix's data in a blog post on Friday.

While Clearwire said it was "jazzed" about being the only wireless carrier on the list, the company suggested that Netflix omitted important … Read more

Lots of apps can stream music, photos, and video from a PC to an iOS device, but very few support TV shows recorded with Windows Media Center.

That's a shame, because WMC has been my DVR for years (and it's more awesome than ever now that it has a Ceton InfiniTV 4 CableCard adapter).

Enter Remote Potato ($6.99), a new app that streams just about anything stored on your PC: music, photos, videos, and, hallelujah, recorded TV. What's more, it provides access to your TV guide, meaning you can schedule recordings on the go.

Now for the bad news: the app's pretty buggy at this stage, and getting it connected to your PC can be a hassle.

The latter requires the Remote Potato server client (for Windows 7 only). It's easy enough to install, but doesn't offer any way to automatically connect to the iPhone app. Thus, you have to supply the PC's IP address. And if you want to use Remote Potato outside your home (i.e., outside your network), you'll need to sign up for a dynamic-DNS service (like DynDNS) and do some port-forwarding on your router.

Other media-server solutions don't force you to jump through these kinds of hoops, so I have to give Remote Potato a demerit on that.… Read more

After a couple of months of getting pummeled in the press by doubters at the studios and Time Warner, Netflix will have a chance today to silence its critics.

Netflix is scheduled to report the video service's fourth-quarter earnings after the close of trading. It's a safe bet that many in Hollywood will be watching to see whether Netflix's popularity with consumers has continued to soar.

In October, the company said it expected to add 2.7 million subscribers for the quarter that ended December 31, an unprecedented number for the video-rental service. Netflix predicted it would … Read more