Warner Brothers announced in April that it would be bringing back formerly dead The WB Network TV brand. The ad supported video on demand venture would include two sites, TheWB.com and KidsWB.com.

From Beta To Public

TheWB.com then launched in private beta at the beginning of June. At the time, the site was said to be half-finished and containing only a few episodes of a few shows.

Now, two months later and a date has been set for a full public launch. Warner Bros. has until August 27th to iron out all of the original problems as that’s when we’ll all be able to visit the site and make our own minds up.

Old And New TV

The online TV portal is playing host to a number of shows, with a mixture of old classics and new shows from the likes of McG (Sorority Fever) and Gossip Girl producer Josh Schwartz.

Classic shows to be given the repeat treatment include All Of Us, Blue Water High, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Dangerous, Gilmore Girls, One Tree Hill, Smallville, and The OC.

Not Televised?

The site is being billed as “the next great network that won’t be televised.” This is despite the fact that Comcast will be making 1,000 episodes from the Warner Bros. TV library available through its cable video-on-demand service. So it kind of will be televised.

Other deals will see content from TheWB.com appearing on Facebook, Filmcast.com, and AOL. WBTVG issued a statement regarding the launch, which read:

“TheWB.com affirms our new media business strategy to build new brands and programming destinations, create compelling original online content and to distribute that content on all platforms in ways that best serve consumers and advertisers.”

Conclusions

AdWeek reports that Warner Bros. may be using the site as a trial to see if TheWB brand can draw enough of the 18-34 female audience in to warrant a WB cable TV network.

I hope it is a success as it will be another feather in the cap for the worth of networks putting their content on the Web. Unfortunately, as I’m resident in the UK, I won’t be able to enjoy the site – damn those territory licensing agreements.

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The BBC iPlayer is already a fantastic service available to everyone in the UK, allowing viewers to stream or download any BBC programmes from the last seven days.

The improved version of the iPlayer is already a big step up, integrating radio and television in to the one service, a larger playback window, and an automatic bookmarking feature.

Pre-Booking Function On Way

One of the other features, allowing you to view programmes coming up in the next three days forms the basis for the first of the new improvements. In my article about the iPlayer 2.0, I suggested this would lead to bigger things, and that is now happening.

According to Digital Spy, the BBC has now formally proposed to add a download pre-ordering function to the iPlayer. The proposal first be consulted in public, before hopefully being approved by the BBC Trust.

Taking Over From Traditional TV

If this does get approved, it would allow users would be able to book either single programmes or full series up to seven days before they air on normal television. The iPlayer would then download the programme at an optimum time for all parties.

The chances are that this would happen before the show was broadcast on television, but thanks to the DRM employed by the BBC, the programme would be unviewable until after it has aired. The BBC said:

“Pre-booking is a relatively simple addition to the iPlayer that will bring benefits for users and, in terms of reduced costs, for ISPs, and that would have limited potential for negative market impact.”

BBC1 To Go Live Online

The second big piece of news, which I somehow missed last month, is the rumour that the BBC want to broadcast BBC1 live online. If this turns out to be true, then the implications are quite far-reaching.

As Pocket Lint has suggested, this would raise question marks over the licence fee, as while computers are already included in the range of devices subject to a licence fee charge, a strict system would need to be in place to ensure no-one in any other country was able to view it.

Television is certainly evolving and digital content online is at the forefront of that revolution. The BBC are doing a brilliant job of staying one step ahead of the competition and raising the stakes for other broadcasters to try and beat.

It will be bringing back the WB network TV brand, which existed as a female targeted television channel before being merged with Fox’s UPN Network, as an online destination at TheWB.com.

Ad Supported Video On Demand

This will be an ad supported video on demand venture which is hoped to become a viable location for new shows, which will be tested on the Web before possibly being given a network television slot.

A Web destination just for kids will also be created at KidsWB.com, again ad supported, but this time built around interactive entertainment programmes.

Bruce Rosenblum, President, Warner Bros. Television Group said:

“These destinations are perfect examples of our digital strategy to create targeted, niche destinations that present a fresh and compelling point of view to audiences,”

“In much the same way TMZ has, these initiatives enable us to create new brands and re imagine existing ones for a multi platform playing field. They are complementary to our thriving traditional business and share the same vision of original episodic storytelling.”

Launching Soon

Both channels are expected to launch in beta during May, with a full launch occurring at the end of August if all goes well.

Warner Bros. seem intent on being at the forefront of Web television, and are clearly willing to experiment with different strategies to reach audiences on the Web.

Amongst the features that Mogulus offered straight away were the ability to stream 24/7, and adding TV like special effects, and all this for free.

However, one thing which was missing was the ability to replay live broadcasts as and when you wanted, meaning if you weren’t online at the time of the streaming, then too bad.

Video On Demand Arrives

Until today that is, when on the company blog, Mogulus announced the introduction of the long awaited and eagerly asked for on demand feature.

This gives content producers the chance to offer a “fully customizable, real-time, on-demand library of videos and recordings.”

This just adds another layer of goodness to what is already a very impressive service, and keeps Mogulus in the running for success in what is an increasingly crowded market.

In their press release, they cite the fact that while high-profile mainstream artists have seen their coverage expanded exponentially, the same cannot be said of independent artists.

Enough Of A Fan Base?

While they have a point, there’s a reason for this lack of exposure, which is that indie artists don’t necessarily have the fan base out there to warrant the same kind of time on traditional or web based television as more established artists.

Which, if you’re about to launch a music station purely dedicated to these same independent artists, may prove to be a bit of a worry.

Pitchfork.tv is being described as “a visual extension” of the text based main Pitchfork site. So you can expect a snobbish, almost cliquey feel to the station then. You’re either part of the scene, or you’re not, there’s no in-between.

Brilliant Content Being Promised

While I’m unsure that the demand is out there for this station, the content actually looks quite interesting, with Pitchfork promising original mini-documentaries, secret live sessions, full concerts, exclusive interviews, and of course, a hand-picked selection of music videos.

Even more encouraging is the promise of full-length feature films, music DVDs and re-showings of vintage concerts. Pitchfork.tv is guaranteeing to highlight a different film each week in its entirety.

High Resolution Full Screen

This will all come completely on-demand, and be available in full screen, high resolution loveliness. Which all sounds great.

But the big problem is creating an audience out of nowhere, as if it doesn’t exist in the first place, then no matter how brilliant a service you provide is, you won’t get enough viewers to warrant its existence, and the cost of that video bandwidth.

Worth A Look?

We’ve already taken a look at VIRV here on WebTVWire, an indie music station dedicated to music videos. I have no idea how well its doing in terms of viewer numbers, but the fact its still up and running 6 months after starting has got to count for something right?

Pitchfork.tv is set to launch on April 7th, and should be worth checking out. Whether it has enough free content and viewers to prove a success is another matter entirely. I’ll be sure to post a follow up article on its progress later in the year.

There are millions of them out there, swayed by the design sensibilities, and maybe an anti-Microsoft bias.

You may be one of these people, or you may not be. But, just for kicks, let’s pretend there’s a bit of a love affair going on between you and Cupertino.

How then do you satiate your craving for Apple news? Presumably with a steady diet of blog posts, the produce of rumor mills, maybe even a subscription to a magazine or two. Yes? 

What About Video?

Okay, well, that’s good and fine, but what about the video angle? How do you get your fix of Mactastic product reviews, speculative talk, and general cultist junk in moving-picture form? Podcasts? YouTube clips?

What if you were to be given the option to watch an IPTV channel, active 24/7, that purported to provide nothing but Apple-centric foodstuffs? 

You might be eager to sign on to such an experiment, no? (Remember, we’re still pretending to harbor fanatical zeal for Steve Jobs & Co.) Lucky you, then, because someone’s gone and launched that very item.

Before we divulge the details, let’s do this right and coat this story with a bit of butta, shall we?

A Brief History Of Apple

Some ten years ago, the company now known as Apple, Inc was but a struggling corporation. 

Still in a relatively bad place (financially speaking) after having trudged through the late eighties and first half of the nineties in a lazy, disoriented stupor (even looking for a short moment into the dark, fearsome abyss of bankruptcy), it was just getting its bearings again, and saw hope in the return of its founding CEO extraordinaire, Steve Jobs. 

It was also a point at which the aesthetically gifted Jonathan Ive was named Senior Vice President of Industrial Design, paving the way for designs like the iMac, the iBook, and the now ubiquitous iPod to be put into production. The rest, as they say, is history.

The Cult Has Grown Exponentially

Now, the cult of Mac is as strong and as far-reaching as ever. There still exists the devoted core, of course, gravitating ever so willingly to Cupertino and all its various inventions. 

Only, the outer circle of more casually committed folk has grown exponentially with time, a global trend the result of Apple’s logical abandonment of restrictive, Mac OS-only development for a lucrative and more expansive life on the Windows front. (At least as far as iPod-iTunes progression is concerned, anyhow.)

So here we have a great big Apple fan club, with numbers reaching well into the tens of millions. (An impressive following for a profit-seeking business, for sure.) 

How to satisfy them all? How to provide technological fodder for the converted and the devout when the company’s conferences aren’t in play? 

Sure, there are the blogs and rumor sites and month-to-month glossies to quench the need for that continuous buzz. 

But how about something a bit more visual, something that’s built to feed and please at all hours of the day, a la CNN? A geek-friendly 24-hour all-things-Apple television channel, perhaps? Yes, perhaps.

The Digital Lifestyle

Enter TDL, or The Digital Lifestyle. Founded by a Mr Ryan Ritchey, The Digital Lifestyle is the first of its kind. It’s kind being an Apple-specific news, rumor, and lifestyle IPTV outlet that operates all hours of the day. And night.

The idea is to aggregate many bits of professional and amateur content for broadcast over the Web in one unending visual stream. 

Be it an episodic podcast, a user review of a hardware or software product, a breaking story, a discussion on an official or impending release. TDL looks to put it all together into one ongoing flow.

But Does It Work?

So, you’re likely wondering now just how well the concept translates into realistic practice. And my honest opinion is, well, not too good. Not terrible. But suffice it to say that you’ve gotta be a pretty staunch Apple fanatic to see it as something worth “tuning in” to with any regularity.

Of course, like most broadcast television channels, TDL does repeat particular blocks of content. It has to. 

Yes, there is technically quite a bit of Apple-related content in video form floating about the Internet, and if it were a perfect world, TDL would be able to mate its service with all those nifty clips and things and fill up a good portion of the day with fresh material. 

But it’s not a perfect world, and its partners in crime are few indeed. So it’s no surprise, then, that TDL’s broadcast cycle is a fairly diminutive one.

It gets mighty redundant mighty fast.

The technical quality of the stream isn’t anything to speak of, either. It’s terrible, really. Compared to the source material, it’s quite sub par, and that’s putting it lightly.

Conclusions

All in all, the project is an honorable one – ideally. For the fanboy (and fangirl) crowd, it’d be a bookmark likely frequented on a daily basis – if not hourly. 

Unfortunately, the execution of it is poor. Poorer than poor. It’s abysmal. And for that, it’s getting no vote of confidence from moi.

What do you think of The Digital Lifestyle? Thumbs up? Thumbs down? Let us know in the comments below.

Paul Glazowski is a contributing author discussing the social networking world, his work can be found on Profy.com

It has now finally been unveiled to the world, and mightily impressive it is too.

Mogulus used last week’s NewTeeVee Live conference as the place to launch, and used the platform to broadcast the whole conference as well, just to show off its capabilities.

A Micro TV Studio

We first took a look at Mogulus back in May, where we were amazed by the incredible options at your fingertips. Michael Pick even described it at the time as “a micro-TV studio packed into a web browser”.

In July we also ran an interview between Robin Good and Max Haot, the CEO of Mogulus, where we found out a bit about Haot himself, as well as some insights in to the company set up and aims.

So what has happened to the company and platform since then?

Well, firstly Mogulus has become an incredible success, with Haot claiming:

“It has become one of the most popular live streaming applications in Internet history. More than 17,000 producers with beta access created more than 18,000 live 24/7 channels and streamed more than 12 million unique viewer minutes a month.”

That’s certainly impressive figures, and now the company is out of beta and open to anyone with a webcam and access to the internet, they’re sure to grow even more.

Huge Range Of Options

So what can you do using Mogulus? Well, the options open to you are huge, including the ability to:-

• Create live online channels with streaming footage 24/7
• Collaborate with other producers anywhere in the world, on camera and behind the scenes
• Add motion graphics, station idents, and other great looking TV-like effects
• Create auto-pilot playlists that will continue to serve up your content, even when you are offline
• Mix all of these elements live and on-the-fly from an intuitive studio interface

The Mogulus Grid

Mogulus also announced yet another new feature, called the Mogulus grid, which should help the start up compete ever more with companies offering similar services, such as Joost, and Brightcove.

The grid enables you to watch 26 live Mogulus channels and chat with every other viewer. Even if none of the 26 are to your liking, you can also browse or search for something that is, by using the programme guide.

Conclusions

Mogulus is already phenomenally successful, offering a range of options, and an ease of use to internet video producers that hasn’t been seen up to now.

With in-stream advertising on its way, and new channels launching all the time, Mogulus is set to become huge. It puts the ability to produce web tv in the hands of the masses, and that is no mean feat.

Some broadcasters are starting to experiment though, and adding an extra layer to the online TV experience:

The NOS (public broadcaster in the Netherlands) is going to be broadcasting a speed skating championship. Not only on television but also streaming it live on the web.

What is interesting about the website is that the NOS linked the time information to the website in addition to the video stream.

Extra Information On Video Stream

You’re watching the game and immediately you see extra information about the times and the context of these times compared to other ice skaters in the right column. This information stays visible until the game is over.

Watching something on the web is more fragmented. On a television we want a full screen experience, we don’t like it when so called screen-estate is traded for information (picture in picture). 

In web interfaces it’s the other way around. We don’t like a full screen experience. It takes away the feeling of control and interactivity.

We like separate windows with as much information as possible. The speed skating website is just doing this. It is starting to link real time data from a database to the web interface. 

And this is just the start of the things you can do with live data and streaming video.

Written by Wilbert Baan, a media and technology enthusiast. Catch his views on art, media, and technology on Hyper Narrative. This post is licensed under the Creative Commons.

Whether it be for a marketing or commercial purpose, or any other purpose, YouLicense was the place to go. Since its inception in June, it seems to have grown quite a bit, and its creators are now launching a new project called VIRV.

24 Hour Live Streaming

It’s roughly described by its makers as an indie music television channel. A joint venture between YouLicense and We Are Listening, an organizer of “songwriting contests,” VIRV was launched last weekend as a live-streaming, 24-hour-a-day outlet for solely independent music video creations. 

In the press release, VIRV’s promoters describe the non-stop concoction of moving pictures as one eclectic in supply, with a clips of artists and groups ranging from stalwarts of the indie scene, like Bright Eyes, to acts like “Fujiya & Miyagi, Architecture in Helsinki, Of Montreal, Dappled Cities, Aesop Rock, Cursive, Budos Band, and more.”

Music Video After Music Video

An IPTV venture, VIRV is attractive in the way that it serves one purpose only: display music video after music video. Remember when MTV would do that very thing? Yeah, it’s kind of like that, except instead of watching Simon and Garfunkel work their harmonies, you get to see Fujiya & Miyagi, and in purported DVD-quality video, to boot.

How, you ask, do they deliver such high-quality video over one’s broadband connection? Well, rather than push those bits through, say, a Flash player embedded within one’s browser, they ask that wannabe viewers download a proprietary player – in the form of a plug-in - through which one is able to access the channel for free.

Windows only, for now. However, according to the copy on the press release, “a Mac-compatible version of the VIRV player will be released shortly.”

Go ahead, try it out. Let us know if you like it. Or don’t like it. Whatever.

Paul Glazowski is a contributing author discussing the social networking world, his work can be found on Profy.com

Despite the mild and in some places sycophantic praise being bandied around, in my opinion the first episode royally sucked.

Why?

For me, Rocketboom has long been the Boing Boing of Internet TV/Web Video/call it what you will. And Rocketboom has perfected the format, fine tuning it to a veritable art form. 

In comparison, Boing Boing TV feels like a weak latecomer to the game. It’s a shame the partnership between the two never came off.

Soulless First Episode

Everything about the first episode felt utterly wrong. From the utterly wooden, soulless, pseudo-spunky delivery of Mark Frauenfelder and Xeni Jardin, down to the nauseating red swirling cloud background straight out of After Effects 101.

What works so well on the “pages” of Boing Boing felt for me like something being read off the pages in the video version. Boing Boing the blog manages to walk that trashy, irony-fueled perhaps somewhat nineties path with gusto, and pulls it off. 

On video it simply comes across as smug, heartless, cynically knocked together, predictable, and… Ok, I just didn’t enjoy it.

Great Blogger = Great Presenter?… No

We’ve seen this before. Watch, for example, Loren Feldman’s hilarious response to Om Malik’s web TV venture. What makes for a great blogger doesn’t always add up to a great presenter.

But as Boing Boing is totally personality driven, it never should have been like this.

Still, if you’ve ever seen a film directed by Stephen King, or witnessed Iggy Pop trying to act it becomes apparent that what utterly rocks in one medium doesn’t translate so well to another. At least not with the same person or people behind it.

It Could Improve

I haven’t written the show off yet – Cory Doctorow could well save the day, and once Xeni and Mark take the ventriloquist’s hand out of their asses, relax and get comfortable with being talking heads it might just work.

I wanted to like this, I really did. But it’s a competitive game this web trivia business, and if Boing Boing TV wants to compete with the hordes of video savvy websters they need to up their game. 

With that said, as they are Technorati’s number two blog they will doubtless get a huge following anyway, and I will be branded a heretic by the three people that read my blog. So there you go.

Go on, treat yourself:

Oh, and if you’d like to see some creative use of retro stock footage, rather than this sub-Mystery Science Theater 3000 drivel, check out the excellent mashup artistry that is Next To Heaven.It could have been so beautiful. *Sigh*

Originally written by Michael Pick, a professional screencaster, web video maker and blogger. Some Rights Reserved.