The growing popularity of Internet television isn’t good news for everyone, as businesses are finding to their cost, with falling productivity and rising bandwidth levels.

Sites such as YouTube are gaining users every day, while newly launched services such as Joost and Hulu are enabling people to watch television anywhere they want, including at their place of work.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Carriage Services Inc., a funeral-services company based in Houston, recently found out to their cost that 70% of its 125-person workforce watched videos on YouTube and MySpace for up to an hour a day.

Continue Reading…

Internet television is growing at a phenomenal rate, with services such as Joost, Hulu and Stage6 all providing more reasons than ever to turn to your PC or laptop rather than that square box sitting in your living room.

One of the biggest problems with watching television programmes, or movies online however, is the size of the screen you are being forced to watch it on. Unless you are rich, or an early adopter of future technologies, the chances are your PC or laptop screen just isn’t up to the job any more.

You do have an option though, and that is to hook your PC or laptop up to a projector, and have all your favourite video clips, and web episodes, in glorious full screen, home theater sized goodness. But, where’s the best place to begin?

Buying A Projector

First you’ll need a PC or laptop, and a home theater projector. There are plenty of places to find them, but I’d recommend reading through lots of projector reviews before you blindly purchase one which then doesn’t suit your needs.

Prices of projectors can vary wildly, but you’ll be looking to spend between $1,000 and $3,000 for reasonable quality and a good brand.

Be aware that there is a difference between a projector being HD Ready and actually outputting HD. HD Ready simply means it can accept a HD signal, but may output in standard definition so won’t look as crisp as you might expect.

If you want to make sure your new purchase is 100% HD then look at the output. An 800×600 output is not High Definition, whereas 1280×720 (720p) or 1920×1080 (1080i or 1080p) is.

Continue Reading…

Super Bowl XLII is about to start on traditional television all across America, with people having friends and family over to watch the big game, and make an event of the whole thing.

Unfortunately, the only piece of the pie that the online video sites are grabbing a piece of are the adverts.

Both Hulu and YouTube have announced that they will be featuring the commercials extensively immediately after the Super Bowl finishes.

Continue Reading…

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.

Continue Reading…

Hulu launched back in October, and although opinion was divided, there were a fair few people who criticised the service. 

It looks like the NBC and News Corp. site has now managed to change the opinion of many of those critics, who derided the features.

The negativity has given way to more positive comments, as the service offered outstanding features implemented in to a clean and easy-to-navigate interface.

Not only that, but the private beta testing phase that the service has been under since going live also appears to be receiving all of the attention and updates necessary to provide a successful public launch, whenever that may be planned for. 

Continue Reading…

When Hulu first launched in late October, it received praise from all quarters, and since then, everyone has either begged, borrowed or stolen for an invitation to use the service.

Hulu is a joint venture between NBC and News Corporation, currently in private beta, which offers network content from both of them, to anyone with an Internet connection.

Some of the shows featured on the site can be embedded elsewhere, which has prompted the aptly named OPENhulu, a new copycat site which offers some of the same content as Hulu, but without the need for an invite.

Continue Reading…

At last, the wait is over, and I have finally received my chance to test out Hulu.

Hulu is the video service that had me scratching my head when it was first announced and released just a few short months ago.

Early on in the development process of Hulu, there seemed to be no clear focus on what exactly the service would provide or even what name it would assume upon launch, which left more than a few journalists and bloggers wary of what NBC Universal and News Corp. might deliver after multiple delays.

Now, I must admit that although I didn’t see much chance for this service to survive after it was announced earlier this year, it appears to have been well worth the wait and fully capable of quieting the negative talk into watchful eyes.

Continue Reading…