HBO has purchased the North American TV rights to a Second Life-based machinima series called “My Second Life.” The seven-part “documentary,” produced by Douglas Gayeton, tells the story of a real world resident named Molotov Alva who disappears and ends up in Second Life. HBO, which according to Reuters paid “a six-figure sum” for the machinima, plans to submit it for an Oscar in the Animated Short Subject category and premiere it at Sundance next year.
See more at NewTeeVee.com.
Microsoft has officially launched its Adobe Flash rival Silverlight 1.0. The platform, which has been in beta for several months, is supported by multiple browsers and works in Windows, OS X and even Linux. It remains to be seen what sort of adoption rate Silverlight will have, but a number of content partners have already signed on. Entertainment Tonight, the Home Shopping Network and World Wrestling Entertainment will all use Silverlight to power upcoming projects.
See more at TechCrunch.com.
In an effort to get back into the consumer electronics game and take down Apple, Sony will reportedly be launching its own video download service shortly, according to the Wall Street Journal. Sony is expected to take a page out of Microsoft’s book by pushing the video service on its PlayStation 3, which has struggled to date, as well as its PlayStation Portable. Sony’s latest device, a video-enabled Walkman, will also figure into the video download mix.
See more at The Wall Street Journal (subscription needed).
Good Morning America, the uber-popular American morning show on ABC, will be expanding its show to three hours every weekday, with the third hour appearing online and on mobile devices. The third hour, called Good Morning America Now, will be anchored by Chris Cuomo and will be available on ABC News Now’s digital partners, which include Comcast, Sprint, Verizon, Charter, RCN and MobiTV. The show will feature a mix of standard broadcast content and original material.
See more at Lost Remote.
More P2P TV news today, as Joost has decided to acquire Hal Schechner’s OnTheToob, a Joost programming guide that aides beta testers in creating custom channels and RSS feeds out of Joost content. Schechner will now begin working for Joost.
See more at NewTeeVee.com.
In an update to yesterday’s news about Babelgum’s film festival, the P2P TV client has changed its stance on the exclusivity of accepted submissions. The new announcement states that Babelgum will hold non-exclusive online rights to all accepted films for 1 year (March 2008 to March 2009), with the one exception being other P2P TV services (i.e. Joost). Spike Lee, who is one of the festival’s judges, has also requested that film school students be allowed to participate “under equal conditions.”
See more at NewTeeVee.com.
If you have a large video file to send a fellow producer, but don’t want to send it all in one piece with services like Pando, you may want to give GSplit a try. The program splits up large files and creates an executable file that will put them back together once the recipient receives everything. GSplit comes with a number of useful options, like the ability to determine the number and/or size of file pieces, and batch file splitting (where you can split a few files at once).
See more at Download Squad.
P2P TV startup and Joost competitor Babelgum will host an online film festival starting September 15 to showcase international independent short films. While the festival is for short films, Babelgum’s definition of “short” is very lax (up to 45 minutes). It’s difficult to imagine most users watching 45 minutes of low-quality video on their computer, but then again Babelgum wants more content on its client. Unfortunately, Babelgum will retain exclusive web rights over accepted films for one year (March 2008 to March 2009), which is rather discouraging for filmmakers who want to get the word out about their work on as many sites as possible.
See more at NewTeeVee.com.
Popular CD/DVD burning software Nero has announced that its next version will be released on October 1. Nero 8 will offer a new interface for burning and ripping audio and video discs, including both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD. The software will also feature one-click uploading to several video sites. The latest version will cost $100 for a physical copy and $80 via download.
See more at Download Squad.
ProSiebenSat.1 Media, Germany’s largest commercial TV broadcaster, has purchased a 70 percent stake in German video sharing site MyVideo.de, a site it had already acquired 30 percent of last year. For those not particularly fond of basic arithmetic, that makes ProSieben the full owner of MyVideo.de.
See more at paidContent.org.
