Warner Bros. may be using Facebook to rent its movies, but Sony Pictures has a different idea on how to lure more eyeballs towards its wares (Don’t worry, they’re also said to be in negotiations with Facebook over rentals). The studio is launching a new app for the iPad and iPhone called “My Daily Clip” which, you guessed it, offers …
VoD
Warner Bros Releases Streaming Movie Rentals Through Facebook
What’s that? You haven’t seen that movie that all of your Facebook friends have “liked”? Well, Warner Bros. has become the first movie studio to offer an immediate fix for such social network faux pas, by launching a test program allowing users to rent and watch movies on Facebook itself.
Facebook users in the US will be able to rent …
AnyClip Licenses Universal Movies, Makes Them Smaller and Searchable
Wanting to find that exact clip from Jaws for your Facebook page? What about that perfect moment from Mamma Mia? Well, they’ll both soon be not only available, but increasingly easy to find; Universal has become the first major movie studio to license parts of its library to AnyClip, a company that specializes in digitalizing films and …
BBC’s Global iPlayer to Cost Less than $10 a Month, Offer Uncut British Shows
We might not know exactly when the BBC will launch their iPad-only global iPlayer app, but at least we know that it won’t be too expensive to sign up. BBC Director General Mark Thompson has announced that the subscription cost of the international iPlayer, which will give users access to new and archived content from multiple British …
Boxee Raises $16.5 Million in Funding to Convince Users, Content Providers of Its Worth
With traditional television subscribers up during the last quarter of 2010, you might think that the idea of cord-cutting in favor of the internet is losing its luster for investors. But the dream is alive for Boxee, which has just picked up an additional $16.5 million in funding with which it plans to woo more content providers and …
Is Dish Network Aiming To Be The Next Netflix Instant?
Comcast may have no interest in offering Video on Demand to anyone other than its existing customers, but the same doesn’t appear to be true for Dish Network. On a recent conference call with investors, CEO Charlie Ergen admitted that the company is talking to providers about obtaining streaming rights to content beyond current …
YouTube UK: No Plans for Movie Rentals in the Near Future
Don’t believe what you read. That’s Google’s response to a New York Post article reporting that YouTube is about to launch a subscription streaming video movie rental service in Europe, as a trial for a similar service in the U.S.
The Post piece seemed very confident about the story, mentioning months of talks with Hollywood studios …
The End of the Cord Cutting Myth? DirecTV’s Subscribers Are Growing
The final nail in the myth of cord cutting? That would the news that DirecTV’s Q4 2010 showed the company’s largest customer growth in ten years, adding 289,000 subscribers in the US alone in the last three months of the year.
In total, DirecTV added 667,000 subscribers in the quarter, giving the company its second best year in its …
iPlayer Expands Beyond BBC In The UK, Prepares For Global Invasion
It’s taken nine months, but the BBC’s iPlayer has finally fulfilled its promise to become a VoD aggregator for British television. Content from competing networks ITV, Channel Four, Channel Five, S4C and SeeSaw has started appearing on the BBC service (along with content from MSN Video Player, oddly enough), which is the most popular VoD …
YouTube’s Future Improves With Cloudy Outlook
If you’ve noticed recently that YouTube videos seem to be uploading faster, and without as much buffer-stutter, then perhaps you should be thanking the Hydra. That’s the name of an internal project within YouTube to speed up video loading times, and in the process, lower both user frustration and operating costs. The key? Google …
Cable Companies Sued For Patent Infringement By Unknown Company
Some of the biggest cable companies in America are being sued by a nearly-unknown company that claims that they’re all infringing on patents by offering VoD service. Pragmatus VOD has filed suit against Comcast, Cox, Charter, Cablevision, Time Warner, Advance/Newhouse and Bright House, claiming that each company’s VoD services infringe …
Networks Plan To Freeze Out VoD Streaming
The television industry may have finally worked out a way to get around concerns about viewers “cord-cutting” and dropping their cable boxes in favor of Video on Demand: Stop releasing their show to VoD companies.
Turner Broadcasting CEO Phil Kent, talking at the Citigroup Global Entertainment, Media & Telecommunications Conference …