Webware

As one of its weekly new features for Hulu for the Holidays, the company has rolled out new advanced search functionality. Hulu's blog notes that the new feature is part of an ongoing effort to improve in the area of search. This is going to be crucial for Hulu moving forward as users have more and more videos to sift through in their ever growing catalog.

This new advanced search allows users to filter their searches by fields like show title, season number, video type, network, air date, and people. This really helps you to narrow down a search if you have a specific video in mind that you want to track down.

When Hulu first launched, search wasn't as big of an issue since the library of videos that they offered was relatively small and easy to browse through. However, as the site has grown larger, it has become more difficult to find what you are looking for. By taking steps such as launching advanced search and debuting support for search operators back in April, it is clear that Hulu is making an effort to correct that problem.

Back in early 2007 YouTube released Active Sharing, a feature that keeps an eye on what videos you're watching and shares that information with other users. One thing that's missing, however, is a way to see that list outside of YouTube, something that's been remedied by a new service called Tubetrail.

Tubetrail does not depend solely on Active Sharing to figure out what you're watching. Instead you have to install a small browser extension (currently Firefox only) which keeps an eye on your viewing habits. Videos you've watched are then presented as embeds on a large, colorful grid where your friends can go and watch what you've been viewing in reverse chronological order.

As an added benefit, you can add a special comment that will only show up on your Tubetrail page, and not as a user comment on the YouTube video page. These show up underneath the videos, and are denoted with a large exclamation point on the grid.

The service has two weaknesses, which I think if addressed would make it more compelling than YouTube's offering. One of those would be to create an RSS feed out of items you've watched, which would let others view your picks, and see your comments from someplace other than your Tubetrail page. Second, if I'm going to install an extension that provides little utility outside of YouTube's built-in sharing tool, have it work on YouTube videos that are embedded off YouTube's site--something which is not currently offered.

Around this time last year we put together a comparison of various video sites to determine which ones had the best overall quality and user experience. Since then, high-definition-capable digital cameras and camcorders have taken off, and several major video hosts have rolled out official support for wide-screen, super high-quality Flash video in response. So we think the time has come to take another look at what these sites are offering now and crown a new leader in the realm of HD video.

The six sites we're putting head to head are: YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook, DailyMotion, SmugMug and Blip.tv.

What's being tested

Quality. For our tests, we looked at detail on two levels--both still and in motion. For the still, we used a shot of our corner Italian restaurant. From our test footage you should be able to read everything on the front awning.

For the motion element, there were plenty of cars and pedestrians outside our offices that would have made good test subjects. In this case, we went with a bicycle since it falls somewhere in between the two.

In last year's tests, we were able to do a neat mouseover trick to show you each site's original quality from the same part of a clip. We've done that again this time, but since the videos are too wide for this page, we're only doing it with a portion of the clip. While the player size on each service was different, we viewed each video at the maximum full-screen resolution (1280 pixels wide), in order to preserve the original quality.

Value. Some of these services aren't free. So what we wanted to find out is: for those that cost money, is the charge worth it?

What's NOT being tested

Unlike the last time we did this, we're not taking upload times into account, since everyone's connection is a little different. Likewise, we're not quantifying processing times, since the clip you're uploading at 4 a.m. on a Tuesday night will probably get processed faster than the same clip at 9 a.m. on a Monday morning. We have, however, noted the respective size limits at each site, which can be incredibly important. HD video files are big, even if you're talking about a relatively short clip.

All the services we used processed our videos within about 10 minutes. The one exception was Vimeo, which took nearly three hours from the time it finished uploading to show up live on the site. This could have just been a bad time to upload, and keep in mind that paying users of Vimeo's Plus service get their videos sent to the front of the queue.

About the test footage

To get a decent test shot, we went with a consumer-friendly, pocket-sized capture device. In this case it's the recently released Flip Mino HD (CNET review). It captures really good-looking video in 1280x720 resolution at 30 frames per second. It doesn't shoot in 1900x1080, also known as "full HD," but we're assuming that most folks are going to be using devices that shoot 720p anyway.

The footage is just a hair over three minutes long, which is about the standard for Web video, and has not been changed from its original camera formatting. It encompasses fast motion (the cars whizzing by), fine detail (local restaurant signage), and plenty of ambient sound.

You can find each version of the video at each site: Blip, DailyMotion, Facebook, SmugMug, Vimeo and YouTube.

The results

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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.

What a pairing: Hollywood slacker-hottie icon Ashton Kutcher and Silicon Valley slacker-hottie icon Kevin Rose have teamed up to create 24 Hours at Sundance, a Web-based reality show set at the eponymous film festival in Park City, Utah, later this week.

Backed by mobile live-streaming start-up Qik, the competition-focused show will pit four "social media mavens" against one another for 24 straight hours as they complete a set of challenges surrounding the annual film festival and broadcast them via Qik software on Nokia handsets. Rose (best known for founding Digg) and Kutcher, the Dude, Where's My Car actor whose production company Katalyst Media has created a Web show called Blah Girls, will co-host.

The four "social media mavens" are VentureBeat editor Matt Marshall, gadget blogger Meghan Asha, Konsole Kingz founder CJ Peters, and video blog personality Irina Slutsky.

"I kind of feel like there's been a trend in entertainment in general that moves toward a more visceral, more live experience," Kutcher told CNET News. "We have an idea of what we want to happen, but who knows what's actually going to happen."

"I don't think I've ever heard of anything else that's been done like this before, especially with the real time nature," Rose added. "It's only a matter of time before people in Hollywood and just everyone in general wants to participate and have a way to live-stream and connect with people they care about." Well, maybe not everyone.

From what it sounds like, dot-com culture geeks may find this fairly amusing. Kutcher told CNET News that one of the challenges will involve tracking down and interviewing dot-com icon Jason Calacanis, who will be present at Sundance. The Weblogs Inc. and Mahalo founder relocated to the L.A. area several years ago and has started to get a foothold in the Hollywood scene.

"It's unbelievable, it's like him versus (Robert) DeNiro for roles," Kutcher joked of Calacanis, who played himself in last year's film August, which chronicled a failing fictional dot-com. "It's getting out of control."

Click here for more stories from Sundance.

Boxee, one of the more promising media applications out there today, is announcing the launch of a few new content sources today at the Consumer Electronics Show.

Boxee now has added support for content from Joost and MTV Music. Joost is bringing its usual assortment of video content to the table, while MTV provides a huge amount of music videos. In the United Kingdom, Boxee has also added the BBC's popular iPlayer to its arsenal of content.

In addition, Boxee will be totally opening up its Mac, Linux, and Apple TV alphas to anyone who wants to sign up. The Windows version, however, will not be entering an open alpha, but rather an invite-only alpha while it scales.

Boxee, for those of you who don't know, is a media application that can act as a player for content on your computer or, where it really shines, as a conduit for viewing Web video from a variety of sources. Video sites that currently have a plug-in on Boxee include Hulu, Netflix, YouTube, CNN, Apple Movie Trailers, Revision3, CBS, Comedy Central, and more.

Boxee really does a great job of handling all of these different sources of content and presenting them in an easy-to-navigate way. In addition to these video sources, Boxee also integrates music sites such as CBS' Last.fm and Shoutcast. (Editors' note: CBS publishes CNET News.)

As you can see, there's a lot to be excited about here.

After its excellent implementation of Netflix instant streaming, people have been begging Microsoft to bring Hulu and other video sites to the Xbox. Boxee is beating Microsoft to the punch, even offering a Netflix implementation that is more full-featured than the Xbox's.

If Boxee can find a way to get its software off of computer monitors and on to more TVs (as it is doing with Apple TV), I think we could be looking at the next big contender in media software.

If ever there was a Web service that experienced a rapid fall from grace, it was online video start-up Joost. What started out as a much anticipated new service ultimately fell short of expectations and has recently struggled for attention. Friday, Joost released an iPhone app for its service that might be a game changer. Joost's iPhone app lets users stream and watch any of Joost's 46,000-plus videos for free.

Say what you will about Joost's library of content, the concept behind this app is fantastic. The ability to stream a movie, TV show, or other piece of video content on the go is great. I know the technology is nothing revolutionary--after all the iPhone has had a YouTube app, complete with streaming video, since the device launched. Even given that, when you load up Men in Black on Joost, it just feels like a whole different ballgame. This isn't a video of a dog on a skateboard anymore. This is real, Hollywood-produced content, delivered to your phone, for free.

I have not experienced the major hiccups that very early users, like MG Siegler did, so those issues seem to have been taken care of. I did notice some occassional stuttering of the stream over Wi-Fi. I am, however, disheartened by the lack of streaming support over EDGE or 3G. Joost requires a Wi-Fi connection to work.

Even though Joost appears to have a really slick UI (in many ways it does), it breaks some of the conventions for UI design set forth by Apple. Flicking to view the next page of search results does work. However, it does not slide over as you would expect, rather a spinning wheel is displayed while the next page loads. Joost also did not implement the incremental find that we have all grown accustomed to for searching.

For me, Joost's iPhone app falls just short of greatness. I really like what they are going for here, but I would certainly like to see more content added to Joost's library and support for 3G at the very least, if not EDGE. Even though the videos appear to choke at times, even over Wi-Fi, 3G should be more than capable of streaming video.

I hope that Hulu and Netflix, with their expansive content libraries, are paying attention to what Joost is doing because they are both prime candidates for this sort of mobile application. I get excited just thinking about having access to all of those videos (almost) anytime I want.

It would make sense that IMDb, the leading provider of movie and TV information on the Internet, would offer video on its Web site. After all, IMDb is a huge point of discovery of new movies for a lot of people, so the instant gratification of streaming that new movie that you just found is a big draw.

Previously, IMDb only offered videos in the form of clips and trailers. On Monday, IMDb took a step in the right direction and launched a selection of 6,000 full length films and TV episodes, available for streaming right now. All users have to do is click the big gold "Watch It" button as they are browsing through movie and TV pages.

Most of the content available is coming from Hulu, with a smaller portion from CBS, Sony, and independent filmmakers. (CNET is published by CBS Interactive, a unit of CBS.)

While it's anyone's guess as to why it took IMDb so long to realize the potential of streaming full length movies and TV episodes on their site, at least it's getting into the game now. This addition should keep users on the site longer instead of losing them to Hulu or similar sites as they search for the content that they just discovered.

This is really the first move that IMDb has made into the Web 2.0 space. VentureBeat's MG Siegler describes IMDb's user experience as being, "trapped in the 1990s." Being largely unchanged in a decade, there is a huge opportunity to introduce experience enhancing features to the Amazon.com-owned site here and it looks like they are moving in that direction.

Mentioned above, IMDb is also letting independent filmmakers showcase their movies on the site. This could provide for some much needed exposure for the indie crowd as IMDb drives people down the long tail of movies. Like the video content available from Hulu, IMDb's streaming service is limited to the U.S.

Finally, Joost is going to correct the error that badly hobbled the Web video service many once considered to be a serious YouTube competitor.

Currently available for Windows and Mac, Joost is planning to launch a test version of its new site later this month that will feature a browser-based plug-in and will no longer require users to watch via the company's much maligned desktop client. In a not so surprising move, users will be able to embed Joost's videos.

CEO Mike Volpi acknowledged in an interview with CNET that the desktop client was one of the company's missteps but that the new browser-based player would provide ease of use, a high-quality video experience, and more content. The new site, according to Volpi, will even be less taxing on laptop batteries. News of Joost's new site was first reported by The Industry Standard.

But the big question that Joost must answer is whether the site overhaul comes too late to catch to Hulu or Google's YouTube.

Joost pounced onto the online-video scene with seemingly the right combination of founders, investors, and technology. The media instantly christened it a legitimate YouTube killer.

The start-up was the brainchild of Janus Friis and Niklas Zennström, the founders of Skype and Kazaa. Among the backers were media conglomerates Viacom and CBS, parent company of CNET, publisher of News.com. Joost was powered by the same peer-to-peer technology that turned Skype and Kazaa into the most disruptive forces in the telephone and music sectors, respectively.

The public wasn't impressed. The content offering was thin. The player often stalled or stuttered, and it relied on the desktop client--meaning that you couldn't just log on to the Web from any computer to access your Joost account.

Volpi came on a year ago, and not much changed until January, when the company's CTO left and Volpi initiated a house cleaning. Volpi says it's still too early in the game to crown any site a winner.

"There is still ample opportunity to create a portal or aggregation site," Volpi said in an interview last week. "People will go where they can find the content they want."

Yes, but are Web video fans already used to getting what they want at Hulu, the company created by NBC Universal and News Corp? The competitor launched last spring to glowing press reviews, and traffic has continued to mushroom. A report issued this week by LiveRail reported that Hulu is probably already generating as much revenue as YouTube, which launched in 2005.

When it comes to YouTube, the Google property is still far and away the Internet's most popular video site. More than a third of every video viewed online is at YouTube. But YouTube is a user-generated site, with most of its content 10 minutes or shorter. Joost is much more like Hulu, a distribution platform for mostly professionally made content.

Volpi said Joost has greatly enhanced the content selection. The site will feature shows from Warner Bros., CBS, and Comedy Central, as well as other Viacom properties. Volpi said Joost will eventually offer a greater selection than Hulu. Volpi said Hulu offered little outside of the shows from NBC and Fox.

He called the selection "tired."

Joost's videos will follow a five-second advertisement or "preroll." Despite enabling users to embed video, the site will not concentrate on syndicating content.

"Our plan is to be a destination site where people go to watch their favorite shows," Volpi said.