HBO, the premium cable channel in the US, which is best known for Sex and the City, The Sopranos, and Six Feet Under, is taking its first tentative steps on to the Internet.

The Time Warner subsidiary are going to start offering their programming online to all subscribers via Broadband. The online service will start this week in Green Bay and Milwaukee, before being rolled out across the rest of the United States.

Available To Subscribers

Although the service will be free, it’ll only be available to people already subscribing to HBO on cable, at least for the time being. There will initially be 400 hours of movies and television shows made accessible over the web.

The service will be marketed and distributed through cable operators, and the company plans to begin distributing CDs containing the application to HBO subscribers in the Wisconsin area soon.

(more…)

Kevin Rose is the man with a seemingly golden touch on any web start-up he is involved with. 

Already well known for being the brains behind Digg, and now Pownce, he also has an Internet video start-up on the go in the form of Revision3.

Revision3.com has recently undergone some design revisions, and the new look gives usability, rather than aesthetics, the upper hand.

A Simplified Homepage

The homepage has been simplified providing an immediate focus with a large feature box that rotates through different site promotions. Each show now has it’s own section which is easily accessible from the “Shows” drop down menu along the top of every page. 

Streaming video flash players on each episode page have been bumped up to 555×337 which really draws viewers in. Each show has a plethora of different subscription formats which are only a tab away from the recent episode list. 

(more…)

For my hour long commute in to work every day, I couldn’t imagine being without a media player to watch videos on, and listen to songs and podcasts on, to keep me entertained on the journey.

Unfortunately, at the end of October my beloved Creative Zen Vision:M suddenly died on me in the middle of my commute. 

It was no great surprise that the media player finally gave up the ghost, as it has been with me every workday for 2 or more hours a day since I got it for Christmas 2006. 

It was a fine media player and I would have gotten another one except Creative wasn’t making them any more. Besides, the new Microsoft Zune was out with better features at a much cheaper price. 

So naturally I decided to “join the social.”

(more…)

Copyright law is one of the most contentious issues around right now, and in no area is this seen greater than online video, and YouTube in particular.

The thing is, each country has their own way of dealing with copyright statutes, and upholding the laws involved.

Uri Geller, the famous spoon bender, if you believe that is possible purely with mind power, has now raised question about that territorial approach.

Here, Jef Pearlman of Public Knowledge details the bizarre case, and looks at the right and wrongs, as well as the possible fallout.

Uri Geller Attempts to Bend Territoriality Using Only His Lawyers

Today, Public Knowledge signs onto an amicus brief with Google, the American Library Association, and several other like-minded organizations, in the slightly bizarre case of Explorologist Ltd. v. Brian Sapient. In that case, Uri Geller (most famous for his apparent ability to bend spoons) attempts to use foreign copyright law to silence U.S. critics. 

The crux of the issue is that Explorologist, which is Geller’s company, claims to have a United Kingdom copyright on eight seconds of footage at the beginning of the 13-minute clip that Sapient uploaded to YouTube.

(more…)

Joost was due to be the next big thing, and created such a buzz in its infancy, was talked about positively all around the blogosphere and beyond.

Now, that seems to have all but ended, with the latest talk around the Internet being all negative, and even discussing the possibility of the company and service not being able to last until the end of the year.

The Trend For Knocking Joost

Mathew Ingram seems to have started the trend for knocking Joost, with an interesting post in the wake of the firing of the company’s chief technology officer Dirk-Willem van Gulik.

Gulik has now been hired by the BBC to directly work on their iPlayer, which recently racked up its millionth viewer despite reservations over the remaining inequality in the service. Joost’s loss is the BBC’s gain.

But whereas he was only asking questions of the direction the company is heading, and warning of its possible early demise, a number of other technology blogs and bloggers have been much more critical.

(more…)

To make it easier to watch movies on the AppleTV, Apple today announced a new software update for the devices which will add support for the new iTunes Movie Rental store.

In addition, pricing on the AppleTV has been lowered, with systems set to be released in two weeks with the new software available for $229 (40GB) and $329 (160GB).

The Apple TV set-top box was originally intended to make it easier for anyone to transfer media files from their PC to their television.

This is an idea that seems to have been wholly accepted by consumers, although some users still experience problems due to the interface.

Current owners of an Apple TV need not worry about purchasing new hardware, as the company has mentioned that it will provide the new software free of charge to existing owners. 

(more…)

It’s 2008, and time to take a look in to the old crystal ball.

Hopefully we’ll be able to see in to the future, and predict the outlook for IPTV over the next year.

NewTeeVee has already came out with their list of online video predictions for 2008 and GigaOm has their list of the top five trends for the forthcoming year. 

And of course there is all of the product news around mobile and IPTV as well as content deals coming out of the CES show in Las Vegas, leaving us to ponder and wonder what’s in store for 2008?

(more…)