The gloves are off between Netflix and HBO – in Northern Europe, anyway: HBO revealed plans for an HBO Nordic offering that can be accessed on the Internet without a TV subscription two weeks after Netflix announced its expansion to Northern Europe. Read more »
Cricket is going to couple a music subscription with every Android phone it sells starting next month. The company hopes that this will lead to millions of new subscribers for its Muve Music service, which could make the offering more popular than Spotify. Read more at GigaOM »
Here’s a novel idea for Hollywood: Instead of forcing other countries to adopt ever tougher copyright laws, help services like Netflix and Hulu to launch operations overseas. And forcing U.S. consumers to authenticate before they can watch TV online might not be the smartest idea either. Read more »
What do you do when the world of TV is changing, but you represent a brand that stands for continuity? TVGuide.com’s new iOS app tries to bridge that divide by sticking with the good old grid guide, and augmenting it with a personalized watchlist. Read more »
Redbox Instant by Verizon doesn’t want to beat Netflix with a bigger catalog, but rather focus on fewer titles that matter. You know, like that Redbox kiosk in your supermarket. Coinstar CEO Paul Davis revealed some details about the service during an interview. Read more »
What’s Trending originally set out to be a weekly highlight of Internet memes and pop culture for CBS News, but a single tweeted shattered those dreams. Now, it’s trying to reinvent itself as a kind of trend barometer for YouTube videos. Read more »
A leaked memo hints at an uncertain future for Hulu after a buyout of co-owner Providence Equity Partners. Not only could CEO Jason Kilar leave the company, but Hulu’s co-owners News Corp. and Disney don’t seem to see eye-to-eye on key issues. Read more »
Apple wants to give users of its planned cable set-top-box the ability to start any program at any given time, according to a new report by The Wall Street Journal. That sounds good on paper, but existing cloud DVRs show that it’s easier said than done. Read more »
On how many different devices did you watch the Olympic games? If you’re anything like the average Xfinity customer, the answer is between two and three – and that’s not even counting your living room TV. Welcome to the first multi-screen Olympics. Read more »
Apple set out to reinvent TV, but now it looks like all it is going to end up with is a set-top box with apps that deliver your regular cable bundle. To blame are the broadcasters, whose business model is fundamentally anti innovation. Read more »
China’s state broadcaster CNTV clocked huge online audience numbers during the 2012 London Olympics, and a big chunk of it came from mobile devices: 610 million streams were served to phones, tablets and connected devices alone, according to numbers shared exclusively with GigaOM. Read more »
How about this for an unlikely winner of the 2012 London Olympics: VPN providers have been signing up lots of new users looking to access streams of the games in real time. Which makes one wonder: Wouldn’t it be better if those customers paid broadcasters instead? Read more »
Xbox users can now browse kids titles on Netflix without stumbling across old B-movies that happen to have the same title, thanks to Netflix’s Just for Kids interface that just arrived on the game console. No kids? No worries. Your personal profile could be next. Read more »
