After cutting ties with NBC Universal last week, Apple’s iTunes video store has some new policies in the works that are sure to anger the rest of the entertainment industry. According to Variety.com, Apple is seeking to cut download prices in half to just 99¢ for TV episodes in its iTunes store -- pricing the episodes the same as individual songs. Studios fear that such low prices would seriously undercut their DVD sales, but Apple feels that more than enough money would be made up through the digital sales.
See more at Variety.com.
According to Engadget, Microsoft plans to add a new Internet TV feature to its Windows Media Center by month’s end that will allow users to watch on-demand, ad-supported content free of charge. Content will include Sports, Entertainment, News, Top Picks, Music and Movies, and will reportedly be “better than SD quality, but not HD.”
See more at Engadget.com.
Viacom is getting smarter about its digital distribution strategy. The company’s MTV Networks will begin launching dozens of new standalone websites for shows like “The Daily Show,” “The Sarah Silverman Program” and Nickelodeon’s “iCarly” with exclusive content including previous episodes. TheDailyShow.com will include video archives of every episode broadcast, with new shows appearing online within hours of airing.
See more at Lost Remote.
Used car classifieds site Hotswap.com, which launches this week, is bringing video to classified listings in order to help sellers serve up their wares. Users, who include individual sellers as well as larger car dealers, can quickly upload video of a car and include it in their listings. According to Hotswap, sellers have been very happy with their video listings, reporting high sales rates.
See more at TechCrunch.com.
Throw another hat in the increasingly crowded IPTV ring. Hewlett Packard has announced a deal to begin shipping a P2P IPTV system with their notebook computers by the end of September. The system, called Next.tv, will also be available as a system update for existing HP Vista computers. The service currently features content from MGM, eye.tv, Lazy.tv and Reality.tv, with more content partnerships expected to be announced throughout September. The content seems somewhat lacking at the moment, especially when compared with IPTV heavyweights like Joost and Babelgum, but the market is still very young.
See more at TechCrunch.com.
A new service called Vzaar launched yesterday that lets eBay users add video to their classified ads for free. Users simply shoot footage of whatever they’re selling and add it to their ad by signing into Vzaar with their eBay info. It’s amazing that no one thought of this sort of eBay service previously, because it seems like a natural fit for people trying to sell their wares. What better way to sell than to give a video sales pitch?
See more at NewTeeVee.com.
Movie download service Vudu will begin selling a new set-top box today that allows users to stream or download up to 5,000 movies onto their TVs over a broadband Internet connection. The service, which transfers the movie files over a private P2P network of Vudu device users, provides good copyright protection and streams files nearly instantaneously, according to Vudu. The set-top box costs $399, rentals are available for between $1 and $4, and purchases run from $5 to $20.
See more at Video Business.
An interesting startup called Asterpix is offering users the ability to create “hyperlinks” within videos. The technology that makes this possible, called hypervideo, lets you link directly to an object within a video by creating a hotspot that tracks the object as it moves about the clip. The service works with a number of video sharing sites – including Metacafe – by adding an invisible layer on top of the video that adds the linking data. You can then embed the video as you would normally.
See more at NewTeeVee.com.
Days after ending its partnership with Apple’s iTunes, NBC Universal has announced that the studio’s new fall lineup of TV shows will be available for download on Amazon Unbox. NBC hit shows like The Office, 30 Rock and Heroes will be available both online and through TiVo, and pilot episodes of new shows like Bionic Woman, Chuck, Journeyman and Life will be offered for free beginning September 10.
See more at Video Business.
