It’s been expected for some time, but yesterday finally saw the new YouTube service come alive on TiVo. The service will roll out on all TiVo Series 3 and HD boxes over the next few weeks.

The service comes as part of the 9.4 software update, and means that all YouTube videos will now be viewable on TiVo in H.264. This is the first time TiVo has rendered content in anything other than MPEG-2.

Streaming YouTube On TiVo

TiVo owners can now stream all YouTube videos, watch them in full-screen, and fast forward, pause and rewind them in the same way as any other video on your TiVo.

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The video-on-demand sector has just got a little more crowded, and this time, it’s due to a big player entering the fray: Amazon is launching an online store of TV shows and movies called Amazon Video on Demand.

The service, which has been launched today to a number of selected customers, but will be fully launched later in the summer, with all US Amazon.com customers able to use the service.

Masses Of Content

40,000 movies, and episodes of television shows will be instantly accessible, with most movie studios, and television networks making their content available, with the exception of Disney, and ABC, who are close to Apple, the company behind market leader iTunes.

Easy Streaming

However, Amazon Video On Demand will be different from Apple iTunes, as well as other competitors, as well as the original incarnation of Amazon’s video store, Amazon Unbox, by allowing customers to stream content, rather than download to their hard drive.

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The challenge for YouTube to make some money from the millions of viewers it gets each month continues, but a new deal with independent film studio Lionsgate could help at least a little bit.

It was revealed just yesterday that YouTube nabbed about 35% of the total videos viewed online in the US during May, so there’s certainly the viewers there to make revenue possible.

Lionsgate Branded YouTube Channel

The latest deal, announced by Google CEO Eric Schmidt at a industry conference, sees clips from Lionsgate movies appearing on a branded video channel on the site.

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The last two years have seen online video reach the masses, and grow massively as a result. That trend has continued apace during the first half of 2008, with comScore revealing 12 billion videos were watched in the US during the month of May.

That 12 billion videos suggest a 45% increase on the same period last year, and shows a very healthy growth in online video. This is both from user-generated sites such as YouTube, and those providing streaming television, such as Hulu.

142 Million Uniques

Ars Technica reports that 142 million unique users watched video online in May, which counts for 74% of the total Internet users in the US, meaning 3 out of 4 people have watched some kind of video online.

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The first official video download service for the Sony PSP console was announced back in April, with a vague summer release date. Today, it finally launched, with Sony and Sky bringing mobile video to European gamers.

The video-on-demand service is now available in the UK and the Republic of Ireland. Whether the timing of the launch was planned to coincide with E3 or not isn’t clear, but it wouldn’t surprise me.

TV and Movie Content

The service works by allowing subscribers to download programmes to their PC, before transferring them to their PSP consoles. Most of the content is currently from TV, though there are also some movies available.

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There’s a small event going on right now in Los Angeles called the E3 Media and Business Summit, which is the place where Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo, as well as a host of games developers unveil plans for the next year.

Today was the first day, and Microsoft was the first of the big three to show its hand. And one of the announcements means that Xbox 360 owners will soon be getting more access to online movie downloads.

This will be coming from Netflix, the online movie rental company, which is teaming up with Microsoft to allow Netflix subscribers, who also own an Xbox 360, to have access to its extensive catalogue through their consoles.

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Now that YouTube is owned by search expert Google, you’d think it would be easier than it is to find the video you are looking for in amongst its glut of content. But it’s currently quite a hard task.

It could be about to get easier however, at least if you want to find a video from, or about, a certain location. YouTube is now experimenting with geosearch - the ability to find videos tagged with a location name.

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