YouTube, which is already trying out the movie rental business, wants to get into TV, too.
Google's video site has been trying to convince the TV industry to let it stream individual shows for a fee, multiple sources tell me.
YouTube already lets users watch a smattering of TV shows for free, with advertising. Now it envisions something similar to what Apple and Amazon already offer: First-run shows, without commercials, for $1.99 an episode, available the day after they air on broadcast or cable.
Sources say the site's negotiations with the networks and studios that own the shows are preliminary. But both sides seem optimistic, since models for such deals already exist. No comment from YouTube.
The biggest stumbling block may be consumers. That's because Google is talking about streaming the shows, instead of letting consumers download them to their computers, as both Apple and Amazon do. But the networks and studios, who control pricing, will want to sell the streamed shows at the same price as downloads--they fear that offering them at a different price will force them to go back and rework their existing deals.
Executives at YouTube and TV insist that the disparity is simply a perception problem, and cite studies that show that most people who download TV episodes only watch them once, anyway. But that's a tough sell.
It's also possible that YouTube may skirt the issue by launching a TV rental business without the big hits that Apple and Amazon offer. One possibility: It could start by moving immediately to long and mid-"tail" shows and videos that aren't available other places, and don't have to match existing prices.
No matter how it does it, YouTube is likely to be just one of several outlets trying to get consumers to pay for TV on the Web in 2010.
Among others: In addition to its a la carte offering, Apple is trying to create a monthly subscription service. Hulu, the free TV site co-owned by News Corp.'s Fox, GE's NBC Universal and Disney's ABC, is expected to launch a subscription service of its own. And cable operators like Comcast will be launching different versions of "TV Everywhere" services, which give subscribers expanded access to online shows.
TV executives are generally enthusiastic about all of the above, since they are meant to create additional revenue streams without threatening the industry's existing business. That is: They're supposed to protect it from the digital disruption that has ravaged music, newspapers, etc.
But while Web users have an insatiable appetite for video, they've yet to demonstrate much interest in paying for it. If any of this is going to work, that will have to change.
Story Copyright (c) 2009 AllThingsD. All rights reserved.
Additional stories from AllThingsD
(Credit:
Roku)
In its bid to put together a roster of compelling content, Roku has just acquired an ace.
Starting Tuesday, the set-top box--known to many as "the Netflix box"--will begin streaming Major League Baseball games. As with the current Netflix arrangement, you have to be a subscriber to the service, in this case MLB.com Premium, to access the content that normally would be available only on a PC or iPhone.
And while this is a boon to baseball fans, it's an even more important development for Roku. MLB.tv Premium is the first live content available on Roku's device, and by bringing that from the PC to the TV, the 50-person Saratoga, Calif., company is beginning to differentiate itself from similar consumer electronics products.
Roku currently has access to the Netflix Watch Instantly queue, as well as Amazon Video on Demand, which allows for rental and purchase of movies. More recently, Roku added content from Blip.TV and MediaFly, two content aggregators, for videos and podcasts.
MLB.tv will work the same way. It will be accessed via a new pane that can be reached via the small remote. Once a customer's account is synced, any live, out-of-market (as in, not your home team) game across the league can be seen, with the choice of both the home and away team's local broadcast feed. Games up to one week old are available in the archive, and previews appear of each team's scheduled games up to a week in advance. ... Read more
Fans sign a banner outside the Staples Center in Los Angeles--the site of Tuesday's planned Michael Jackson memorial service.
(Credit: CC famoussd/Flickr)Some 1.6 million people registered for a chance to receive 8,750 pairs of tickets to attend Michael Jackson's memorial service at the Staples Center on Tuesday. But if you weren't among the lucky few who won tickets but feel the need to bear witness to the spectacle, fear not--several Web sites plan to provide live streaming video of the event.
The service will be a star-studded event, with singers Stevie Wonder, Mariah Carey, Lionel Richie, and Smokey Robinson expected to perform in what some expect to be the biggest event in the Web's history.
Considering how news Web sites buckled under the weight of the public's thirst for news on the singer's death last month, how the Web will handle the public's demand for a live view of the service is the big mystery. Indeed, the surge of Michael Jackson-related searches on Google News was first interpreted by the search giant as an attack on its service.
Here's a sampling of the Web sites that plan to offer live streams from the service, which begins at 10 a.m. PDT:
News sites
CBSNews.com, which is owned by CNET parent CBS, plans to stream video provided by Los Angeles-based station KCBS, as well as other sources. TV.com, also a CBS property, plans to stream the CBSNews.com content as well.
CNN plans to stream the memorial service with hosts Anderson Cooper, Larry King, Don Lemon, and Soledad O'Brien.
ABCNews.com plans to stream live with commentary from Charles Gibson.
Fox News' live stream will be hosted by Shepard Smith, with Greta Van Susteren and Megyn Kelly providing live reports from the scene.
Local Fox affiliate KTTV is also providing live streaming.
U.K. news site SkyNews is providing live HD streaming.
Video and social networking
Hulu, as one of the most popular video Web sites, may be one of the best-prepared sites to handle the load. It plans to stream the Fox News feed.
Microsoft's InMusic is providing high-definition streaming via its Silverlight and SmoothStreaming technology.
MySpace members will have access to a live stream provided by entertainment titan AEG, which owns the Staples Center and was underwriting the planned Jackson tour.
Facebook members will have access to CNN Live feed thanks to a partnership with the TV news channel.
Updated at 10 a.m. with more news sites.
Viacom's MTV Networks has brought some of its television content to Netflix's library of streaming online video, the companies announced Monday.
Yaaaaaaay! SpongeBob is taking over your Netflix account!
(Credit: Nickelodeon)The offering consists primarily of kids' shows from the Nickelodeon network, with select seasons from the shows "iCarly," "Blue's Clues," "Dora the Explorer," "SpongeBob SquarePants," and a handful of others, as well as the first nine seasons of "South Park," the Comedy Central animated series that you probably don't want your kids watching.
Netflix's streaming-video service still very much takes the back burner to its DVDs-by-mail service, but the company has deals in place with TiVo, Boxee, Microsoft's Xbox, and some HDTV providers.
It's also the second streaming Netflix deal for Viacom, which licensed content from its Logo network last year. Viacom has also signed content deals with Joost (Disclosure: CNET News publisher CBS is an investor in Joost) and NBC Universal-News Corp. joint venture Hulu, which now runs episodes of Comedy Central's hit talk shows "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" and "The Colbert Report."
One major player in the video world with which you probably won't see MTV Networks making a deal any time soon: YouTube. Viacom still has an outstanding lawsuit against YouTube parent company Google over infringing content.
Media-center start-up Boxee, which aggregates Web video for television set-top boxes, has launched a new version that restores access to video hub Hulu. The NBC Universal-News Corp. joint venture had pulled its content from Boxee after content partners took issue with it.
But it's not really the same: Boxee has brought back Hulu by extending its support for RSS feeds, and is pulling the video content in that way.
"Like IE, Firefox, or Google Reader, the RSS reader supports Google Video, Yahoo, YouTube and feeds from many other websites," a post on the Boxee blog by CEO Avner Ronen read. "While it's not as attractive or robust as our previous Hulu application, it will additionally support Hulu's public RSS feeds."
Industry talks continue, the post continued. "While we don't come from an entertainment or cable background, we are learning quickly. It is a complex business. Our meetings with Hulu and their content providers reinforced that point," Ronen wrote. "They are trying to adjust to a new reality, but they need time."
Apple is preparing to allow iTunes customers to stream video from the company's servers to any Web-enabled device, according to a film industry source.
The source declined to provide details but did confirm a report published Wednesday by the blog AppleInsider, which broke the news.
An Apple spokesman declined to comment.
According to the report, Apple is working on a feature for iTunes 8 that will enable users to stream movies and TV shows "for playback anywhere," and in this way help them avoid having to store large video files on their hard drives.
The service will be called iTunes Replay, according to AppleInsider. It's unclear whether Apple intends to charge a fee for the streaming feature.
Apple would certainly need to secure licenses from TV networks and movie studios to offer the service. Almost as certain is that entertainment companies would require compensation.
I don't know that there's a need for this service just to save people room on their hard drives. But as AppleInsider points out, there are other benefits to the service. Owners wouldn't have to sync to Apple TV or download files to their computer in order to watch a movie or show, so it could also improve the experience of Apple TV. However, it's hard for me to believe that Apple would go to the trouble of securing complex licensing agreements just to streamline the download process.
Netflix includes the ability to stream video in the price of most of its subscription plans at no extra charge. Is it possible Apple plans to compete with Netflix's streaming rental service?
Universal Music Group continues to bolster its Internet profile via digital video.
The largest of the four biggest recording companies is expected to announce on Friday an agreement with Kyte, the video-streaming start-up. Under the terms of the deal, Kyte is to provide the mobile and online platform for the label's artists, including 50 Cent, All American Rejects, Lil Wayne, and Lady Gaga. Financial terms of the deal aren't being released.
Universal Music and Kyte have also agreed to develop new mobile entertainment applications. The question with a deal like this is why any of the labels need a video platform other than YouTube?
Ted Mico, the digital chief for Interscope Geffen A&M, one of Universal Music's subsidiary record labels, says Kyte's live-video streaming has impressed nearly everyone in the music industry. The service enables artists to shoot and distribute live video to fans from their dressing rooms, their limousines, or even from the stage. These aren't meant to be the glossy, heavily produced videos.
"Kyte offered artists and fans a fantastic value proposition," Mico said. "If you like the big budget stuff, this is really zero budget, but just as engaging in its own way because it has that immediacy and authenticity. We've waited a long time for technology that delivers on that and I think the Kyte platform does."
This kind of live Web TV will appeal to bands and artists who can engage an audience just "by being themselves," Mico said.
The deal comes as Universal Music--like the other top record companies--is in talks with YouTube about renewing its licensing agreements for music and music videos. YouTube pulled Warner Music Group's videos last month after talks broke down between the Google-owned video site and the third-largest label.
I reported last fall that Universal was considering building its own video site, and now my sources say the labels are considering working together with YouTube-rival Hulu.com on a jointly operated video offering. Could a new site offer live streaming? We'll see.
LG Electronics will add video streaming features from CinemaNow and YouTube to its 2009 lineup of networked Blu-ray players, the company said Tuesday.
The company will be showing off the new functionality at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) next week in Las Vegas. (Click here for CNET's complete coverage of CES 2009.)
LG launched its first network-connected Blu-ray player in July with partner Netflix. As part of the deal, ...
Read the full post at CNET's CES 2009 blog.
MySpace is going mobile with streaming video.
News Corp.'s social-networking site is expected to offer video clips from members' pages, as well as professionally produced ones, to video-enabled mobile devices starting Wednesday, according to a Reuters report. Professional video will be provided by the likes of celebrity gossip site TMZ, the National Hockey League, and National Geographic magazine.
The service will be free to users--supported by advertising. The move, which will make MySpace the first social network to offer mobile streaming video, is an attempt to tap into the small but growing mobile advertising market.
"These are the big guys doing it, and they're going to make some noise about it," David Card, a media analyst at Forrester Research, told Reuters.
The service will be available on devices such as the BlackBerry Bold, Palm Centro, Motorola Q9, LG Voyager, Nokia N95 and Samsung Instinct. But because the service will stream videos rather than download them, it will be incompatible with Apple's iPhone.
MySpace is working with video-transcoding company RipCode to make video available on a variety of different devices with different specifications on how they handle video streaming.
With little fanfare, Netflix previewed a feature many Mac users have wanted to see for quite some time.
A little tidbit tucked away at the bottom of a blog entry posted in the wee hours of the morning proclaims that the movie rental company will make its "Watch now" service work on Macs by the end of this year.
Separately, the company announced that it has forged a deal with Starz that adds 2,500 movies and TV shows to its streaming library.
Netflix still has a long way to go before its instant viewing library can compare with its DVD rental library (of 132 movies in my personal Netflix queue, only 21 are available for instant viewing). The relatively small number of videos available for streaming have limited the "Watch now" feature's usefulness for some time (not to mention that of the Roku player). But the added titles and forthcoming Mac compatibility does bring Netflix one step closer to being truly competitive with the iTunes Store for video rentals.
Now to get a few more deals made, and the streaming service working with Firefox.
