What if you could watch a movie before its theatrical release on Hulu? Subscribers of Hulu’s Japanese service will have the chance to do just that next week — but only if they’re quick. Read more »
Beats is getting ready to launch its own music subscription service, and former business partner Monster thought that this was a perfect time to tell its side of the story. Read more »
GetGlue’s new iPhone app takes conversations about TV shows to facebook. Next up for the company is to add online-exclusive content from Hulu and elsewhere. Read more »
Adding subtitles to YouTube videos just got easier: Amara now allows YouTube users to crowdsource captioning of their videos, which could help YouTube producers to grow their audience. Read more »
Sure, consumers still buy a whole lot of DVDs – but they’re also starting to spend money on movie rentals on their Xboxes and Windows 8 devices. Read more »
Netflix is about to launch the first season of its original drama House Of Cards. It’s like a premium cable drama – but available to cord cutters. Read more »
Germany’s music rights group GEMA asked YouTube to block videos containing some of its music – and is now upset about the way YouTube is handling those restrictions. Read more »
Beachfront Media just added the ability to build templated apps for Roku boxes, Google TVs and other connected devices. One of the first to take advantage of this seems to be College Humor. Read more »
Artist pages on Facebook just got a whole lot more interesting: Social music startup Soundrop launched collaborative listening rooms for Facebook pages Monday. Read more at GigaOM »
Silver Lake is doubling down on digital media by bringing on Dave Habiger as a Senior Advisor. Habiger most recently served as the CEO of NDS and before that led the digital movie download provider Sonic Solutions. Read more »
Global TV platform Viki banks on content arbitrage – and now syndicates some of its content to Amazon’s Prime Instant subscribers. Read more »
Personalized profiles are coming to Netflix this year, according to CEO Reed Hastings – but the company is still testing this kind of personalization to make it simple enough. Read more »
YouTube got a lot of play during this week’s Google earnings call, in part because the site is starting to move the needle for Google. Read more »
Netflix did better than many expected in its Q4, and the company is already gearing up for another big moment: The release of its scripted series House of Cards next month. Read more »
Watch out, AirPlay: Netflix and YouTube are working on an open second screen protocol, and they’ve already secured support from key CE makers and content platforms. Read more »
Ooyala now allows its customers to embed videos right within their tweets – and anticipates that some of the tweeted videos may be very Twitter-esque. Read more »
Jamie Oliver’s new Food Tube channel is live on YouTube – and it’s going to feature some familiar faces for people who scour the video site for unique food videos. Read more »
It’s inauguration weekend, and hundreds of thousands are flocking to Washington D.C. to take part in the festivities. Live streams if the event are going to be available on the web, on iPads, mobile phones and connected devices. Read more »
YouTube is about to take a stake in Vevo, according to multiple reports. That would be a smart move, because it would help YouTube to hold on to more than half a billion views a month. Read more »
Redbox Instant is letting its users play for prizes to get feedback on its beta test, and collect a lot of useful data in the process. Data that one day could be used to improve the service’s movie discovery. Read more »
Time Warner Cable wants Netflix’s 3-D movies – but not its Open Connect CDN. That’s why the cable provider is now alleging discrimination. Read more »
Technicolor CEO Frederic Rose is confident that his company’s video streaming service M-GO can compete with iTunes and other VOD vendors, in part because his company isn’t distracted by any related hardware products. Read more »
Rhapsody is taking the fight for music subscribers to Spotify’s home turf: The U.S.-based service is going to launch in 16 European countries this spring. Read more at GigaOM »
Don’t count out DVDs just yet: That was one of the key messages that Redbox Instant by Verizon CEO Shawn Strickland had for a select group of reporters Wednesday. Strickland said that Netflix’s decision to sideline DVDs was a mistake. Read more »
Turn on one of TCL’s new Ice Screen TV sets, and one of the first apps to pop up is Frequency, a video curation app that presents five million new videos every day, neatly organized in a variety of channels. Read more »
Netflix is currently testing personalized profiles for its subscribers, and we’ve got some first photos of how they look like. If successful, these profiles could finally rid your recommendations of your kid’s questionable movie choices. Read more »
Time Warner Cable is going to stream live television to Roku boxes through a new app that is going to be released some time this quarter. This makes Time Warner Cable the first operator to strike such a deal with Roku. Read more »
Dish entered the second-screen game this week at CES, offering its subscribers an iOS app that combines the traditional programming grid with social discovery and remote control capabilities. It’s what a lot of startups try to do – but maybe an operator can just do it better? Read more »
It’s been a long and turbulent history for CinemaNow, a pioneering digital movie platform – and now it’s time for another chapter: Current owner Rovi has decided to sell the white-label platform two years after it spent a whopping $720 million on it. Read more »
Al Jazeera English has long been a refuge for U.S.-based TV viewers who want to watch their news programming online, thanks to live streams on a number of different platforms. However, the yet-to-be-launched Al Jazeera America cable network won’t be available live online. Read more »
It’s time once again to watch the ball drop on Times Square. Don’t want to actually wait in person on Times Square? No worries, there are plenty of opportunities to watch all the action on the web, on your iPhone and on your Android handset. Read more »
Netflix is down for some customers this Christmas Eve, thanks to a outage of some of Amazon’s cloud infrastructure. However, there’s good news: You may be able to watch your holiday movie, after all. Read more »
NextGuide updated its iPad app with 18,000 clips of current TV shows from Hulu’s library of content. That’s good news for NextGuide users, but it also raises an interesting possibility for Hulu: The service could generate tons of additional views by spreading its clips more liberally. Read more »
Online video advertising is hot, and attracting some serious venture capital: Video ad platform Tubemogul just closed a $20 million Series C round of funding to pay for more hires and and expand internationally. The round comes after Tubemogul decided to focus exclusively on advertising. Read more »
San Francisco-based online video platform Mevio has shifted almost all of its production to Los Angeles, where it is currently building a new studio. Next year, the company plans to relaunch under the name Bitesize Entertainment, and capture one billion views a month. Read more »
Redbox Instant by Verizon officially launched its beta test Wednesday, offering consumers online streaming and four DVD rental credits for $8 a month. Many of these details had been reported before, but we were able to obtain a video demonstrating the service on PCs and Macs. Read more »
Hulu has been able to bring in more than $695 million in revenue this year, and the number of its paying subscribers grew 50 percent, to more than three million. The company also invested more than $500 million in content in 2012. Read more »
Media data specialist Gracenote wants to show you ads that matter to what you watch and who you are. To do so, the company is looking to embed video recognition and ad swapping technology right into the TV set. First trials are set to start 2013. Read more »
YouTube is going to have its first live telethon Thursday night, courtesy of What’s Trending, and with appearances of a bunch of YouTube stars. It’s for a good cause, but also one more step towards turning YouTube into something that resembles TV. Read more »
