Webware

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."

Wow. With all the drama and in-fighting among cable companies, TV content creators, and Web video companies this week, you'd think the whole industry was one big junior-high cafeteria. Oh, wait, it kind of is.

First, Hulu--a joint venture between NBC Universal and News Corp.--pulled its content from TV.com (which is owned by CBS, publisher of CNET News). Then it did the same with Boxee, a company that makes software designed for watching online video on TVs via set-top boxes. The reason for these measures appears to be either mounting pressure from the TV content owners that have licensed their video to Hulu, or mounting pressure from the cable companies, or both, or something like that.

Now, we've got a report in The Wall Street Journal indicating that cable giants Time Warner Cable and Comcast are in talks with some of the companies that operate pay-cable channels, for a plan to make some of the networks' content available online to subscribers. It'd probably be on a streaming, ad-supported basis, and probably available for free to existing subscribers.

I've been watching all this with quite a bit of curiosity and amusement. You see, I canceled my cable subscription and ditched my TV a few months ago, and have since been relying on a combination of Netflix (which may offer a streaming-only option as early as next year), iTunes, Hulu, and randomly dropping in on friends' apartments if I really, really want to watch something live. If I show up with a pizza and a nice friendly smile, most of them are OK with it.

In this Digital Age, cable subscriptions just seem a bit convoluted to me; no offense to the people who run the Game Show Channel or Boomerang, but those aren't my cup of tea and I'd prefer to not have to pay for them.

If this shadowy, in-the-works cable deal involves any kind of Web-only cable subscription where, say, you can pay by the stream or by the channel, I'd be all for it. And if the content providers finally work things out with the set-top box makers and Web video hubs, it could be terrific for me and other people who've gotten totally fed up with Stone Age TV offerings. For now, however, it's just a dramatic mess and recent signs are indicating that it's taking steps backward as opposed to forward.

Consequently, I'm riding out the storm for now. I'm holding off on purchasing any kind of set-top box--or a television, for that matter--until the future-of-television compass stops wildly spinning. In a few years, I'm sure, the solution to it all will seem like it should've been obvious the whole time.

Isn't that always how these things are?

(Credit: Boxee)

Boxee is expanding its content and potential audience.

The free software that streams Web content directly to the TV has added ABC to its arsenal of content providers. Boxee already offers access to Hulu, Joost, YouTube, Netflix, and CBS (parent company of CNET publisher CBS Interactive).

The software is publicly available to Mac, Linux, and Apple TV users. Windows users can join too, but they have to ask for an invite, as that version is now a private alpha release.

Boxee says 200,000 Mac, Linux, and Apple TV users signed up as of early January.

President Barack Obama's inauguration didn't set all-time Internet traffic records but did mark the most simultaneous streaming-video viewers in the Web's history, according to content delivery network Akamai Technologies.

About 7.7 million video streams, primarily live, were being viewed at peak time Tuesday, which was at about 12:15 p.m. EST, Akamai said. Part of the reason, the company rationalizes, is that the inauguration ceremony happened when most Americans were at the office, and hence more likely to be watching via a computer screen rather than a television.

"In addition to the historic nature of the inauguration, it is now clear that this event has driven unprecedented demand from a global online audience," Robert Hughes, Akamai's executive vice president of global sales and marketing, said in a release. "With the inauguration occurring during workday hours in the U.S., we witnessed record numbers of live streams served in support of many leading news businesses."

Video from the inauguration ceremony and surrounding events was streamed all over the Web, from online video hubs like Hulu to streaming sites like Ustream to the sites of major news outlets. Demand was unprecedented: CNN.com, one of the most popular viewing destinations, had to cut off viewers and establish a wait list.

First announced last week, live video streaming service UStream.tv's iPhone app is finally out and free for downloading. It lets you view live and pre-recorded UStream content from the comfort of your phone. I was using it to watch some of the inauguration coverage earlier this morning, however for most it will simply be a way to get at pre-recorded content from their device.

The app lets you both search and browse through UStream content, and will begin playing shows almost immediately. Included is live user chat, which is displayed below or to the side of the video, depending on how you're holding your device. You'll need to be logged in to see and leave comments, otherwise the space simply stays grayed out.

Watching shows on UStream on the iPhone is a breeze, the connection drops and Wi-Fi requirement might kill some of the fun though.

(Credit: Josh Lowensohn/CNET Networks)

The one big caveat with this app is that you need to be connected to Wi-Fi to use it, as the app does not yet work over 3G or slower EDGE networks. Attempting to use it without being connected to Wi-Fi simply kicks you back to your phone's home screen. The same thing happens if you go too far out of range of that Wi-Fi network. I see this as the one big deal killer, since you may not always be near a Wi-Fi connection when wanting to access UStream programming.

Besides video, the standout feature is the audio quality, which is comparable to what you'd get on your computer. This is no doubt due to requiring Wi-Fi. The audio I was getting from CNN's inauguration feed came in loud and clear.

Not so hot were the frequent stutters and dropped connections that made me miss several chunks of live footage while watching a buffering screen. If UStream can iron out some of these kinks and let users get a more lightweight stream over 3G, this app would be a real keeper.

Updated at 6:41 a.m. PST on Wednesday to update statistics from CNN and Akamai.

From what early numbers are indicating, the historic swearing-in of President Barack Obama was not the biggest traffic day for the Internet. But for many social networks and digital-media sites, Inauguration Day shattered traffic and usage records regardless.

Here are the ones we've heard from so far. We'll be updating this list as we hear more:

Akamai. The content delivery network has some numbers out that indicate traffic on the Web peaked right before noon Eastern time, with about 5.4 million visitors per minute flocking to online news outlets. While this is 22 percent above normal online news consumption, per Akamai, it's not a record. Obama's victory in November pulled in nearly 8.6 million visitors per minute, and the 7 million mark has been broken by both a hotly contested World Cup soccer game in 2006 and last year's March Madness college basketball playoffs.

Akamai said later on Tuesday that the inauguration did break an all-time record for the number of simultaneous video streams.

Visitors attempting to access CNN.com's live stream of the inaugural address got this message instead (Click image for larger view). CNN was just one of many Web sites that got overloaded during the speech.

(Credit: Screenshot by CBSNews.com)

CNN. It was a big day for the Time Warner-owned news outlet's Web site. It's been continually updating its statistics, but at press time, CNN.com said it has served more than 18.8 million live video streams, including 1.3 million at the same time right before Obama gave his address, since 6 a.m. EST. That's a record: Election Day served up only 5.3 million live streams. Apparently, it wasn't all smooth sailing, though. CBS News reports that CNN.com had a note posted for potential viewers who came to see the historic moment that said, "You made it! However, so did everyone else." (See screenshot at right.)

At 6 p.m. ET, CNN.com updated its statistics: There were over 160 million page views in a 12-hour span, along with 25 million live video streams--a new record for CNN, which had a previous high of 5.3 million live streams on Election Day. At peak, CNN estimates that it was serving 1.3 million simultaneous live streams.

Facebook. The social network, which partnered with CNN for a live feed of "status" updates (sort of like Facebook's equivalent of a Twitter post) pertaining to the inauguration, has put out some usage numbers and is still updating them. As of 10:15 a.m. PST, 600,000 status messages had been set using the CNN app, and an average of 4,000 Facebook status updates were set every minute during the inauguration. They peaked the minute Obama began his speech, with 8,500 status messages set in those 60 seconds. "Millions" of members logged into the social network during the live broadcast.

Mogulus. The live-streaming service powered online inauguration video streams for C-Span, USA Today, and other newspapers owned by USA Today publisher Gannett (which has a minority stake in the company). Inauguration coverage broke Mogulus' network record, according to early numbers, with 105,000 concurrent viewers and more than 1 million visitors total.

Hulu. The video hub, a joint venture between NBC Universal and News Corp., declined to provide any viewership statistics for Inauguration Day.

Our colleagues at CBSNews.com report that they, too, ran into trouble with their live stream of the inauguration speech, saying that many people could not load the stream around the time of the address due to overwhelming demand.

Twitter. Co-founder Biz Stone put up a blog post after the craziness had died down on Tuesday, saying that the rate of "tweets" (Twitter messages) per second hit as much as five times the normal rate, and that the rate of tweets per minute hit four times the normal rate. He acknowledged, though, that there was a lag time of two to five minutes for many users. The good news? Twitter, once highly outage-prone, didn't crash entirely.

The New York Times. No official numbers have been released, but a representative for the newspaper's NYTimes.com division said that early data indicates the live stream of the inauguration pulled in a record number of viewers compared to all the live video it's ever run. Not surprising.

Disclosure: CNET News is published by CBS Interactive, which also publishes CBSNews.com.

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.

(Credit: Criterion.com)

Highbrow film company The Criterion Collection has launched Criterion.com, an "online cinematheque" for people who want to watch movies, delve into some editorial content, and socialize with other fans.

Perhaps the most notable aspect of the new site is the fact that you can rent many Criterion films (a melange of old and newish, domestic and foreign) for $5 per stream, and that $5 will be deducted if you then choose to purchase the flick on DVD. Kind of a cool model that nobody seems to be using yet.

Criterion has also teamed up with a new film-centric social site, The Auteurs, to host a monthly "film festival" that makes a handful of Criterion films available for temporary free streaming and discussion. November's picks, sponsored by IFC, follow a "cruel stories of youth" theme and feature the World War II drama Au revoir les enfants as well as the quintessential nasty-kids story, Lord of the Flies, among others. No, there's no Mean Girls.

I know, I know, it's all a bit pretentious. Now go put on a scarf and down a few macchiatos and think about something deep.