What does a company that’s built a thriving business off renting DVDs do in a post-DVD, streaming online video world? At this stage, according to Gary Cohen, the SVP of Marketing and Customer Experience at Redbox, a company that rents DVDs through kiosks at convenient locations, you do a whole lotta testing. Cohen told NewTeeVee co-editor Chris Albrecht at the NewTeeVee Live conference tonight that his company is doing a brand-new digital video test with partners.

While Cohen wouldn’t expand on the test of the partners, he said that the company is doing a variety of tests with technology in addition to digital, like Blu-ray, as well as different types of pricing testing. “We’re trying to find out how to leverage this big digital footprint we have,” said Cohen. “We have a lot of data and a lot of customers and we’re listening to our customers.” Read more of this story

Michael Gregory, the creator of the YouTube remixing phenom Auto-Tune the News, (if you haven’t seen it, drop what you’re doing and go watch this clip) expects that remixed online videos will eventually lose their current extreme buzzy status and settle down to just another art form (like ventriloquism and yodeling, he joked). But as long as vocoder and Auto-Tune the News is still at the height of hipness, the team and Gregory are going to take advantage of it. At our NewTeeVee Live conference, Gregory said that Auto-Tune the News would be launching a viral video campaign with Sony “very soon.”

While Gregory wouldn’t give too many details about the Sony partnership and the content, he said that it would still include the “absurd irreverent take,” that Auto-Tune the News fans have come to know and love. Sony approached the Auto-Tune crew and asked them to provide their take for Sony content, said Gregory, which he added is a positive contrast to companies that want to work with you but end up “putting you in a box.” The content will also be “interactive,” said Gregory, which he’s particularly excited about. Read more of this story

In the same way that the iPhone helped sell more Macs for Apple, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings told the audience at the NewTeeVee Live conference today that Netflix can help sell more broadband and broadband services. We’re a killer app for broadband data, said Reed. GigaOM founder and interviewer Om Malik explained it in more Twitter-friendly terms: “Netflix is the iPod of broadband.”

Here’s Reed’s logic: Customers don’t upgrade to faster broadband for email or web surfing, they do it for high-bandwidth online video services like Netflix’s streaming video. Over the next 5-10 years, Internet video technology will expand cable’s broadband relevance to customers, said Reed.

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After all the online video celebs, top-ranked YouTube shows and innovative startups we’ve seen today, this panel is the one that brings everyone back to reality — where’s the money? How can online video makers and startups actually make and raise money? It’s a bad time to raise money right now, but if you can explain to us why you’re an actual business and not a neat feature, then maybe we can help you out, said the panel of investors that included Dan Beldy, Managing Partner, Steamboat Ventures; Daniel Cohen, General Partner, Gemini Israel Funds; Warren Lee, Principal, Canaan Partners; Aydin Senkut, Founder and President, Felicis Ventures; James Slavet, Partner, Greylock; and Richard Wolpert, Managing Director, Mail Room Fund. Constance Loizos, Senior Editor, Thomson Reuters, asked the hard questions. Here’s our notes:

Mail Room Fund’s Wolpert: It’s more than traffic and eyeballs. How is content is not only going to drive traffic, but — what is monetization?

Canaan Partner’s Lee: Your chances of getting funded is a lot harder now with the financial turmoil. Online video is sexy but show us metrics for why you have a good standalone significant company on its own.

Gemini’s Cohen: I still think traction is the most important thing. Read more of this story

Tania Yuki, Senior Product Manager at comScore, sure isn’t kidding when she says online video metrics aren’t usually thought of as interesting. Whew, my head is spinning after looking at metrics data. So good thing Yuki herself made such a compelling argument: The new online video measurement is your friend, she says, and can help you understand the hearts and minds of the people that watch videos.

ComScore hopes to lead the new frontier of better online video metrics in a hybrid approach using three steps:

1) Panel measurement: Panels offer the critical media planning elements, including demos, reach, duration and unique visitors, and give a 360-degree view of hundreds of millions of Internet users.

2) Beacons: Beacons are about server-based numbers and show total coverage of population and browsers.

3) Tags: Tags are about the details of the content, standardization, and is it premium or UGC? Location tags can give insight about each distribution point; content producer tags rank producers across the web; show level tags give info on each individual show.

Yuki finished up by joking that online video metrics are a good conversation starter — put a few drinks in her at the cocktail reception and then ask her what she really thinks.

It’s been a long, hard year at Boing Boing TV (the Xeni Jardin-hosted online video show version of the blog Boing Boing) as the show creators figured out how to translate a blog into video. Jardin tells Liz that her most proud moments have been interviewing Buzz Aldrin, David Byrne and John Hodgman — and the fact that Boing Boing TV has been “in the black” or profitable since day one. The worst advice Jardin got on how to shape the show was that Boing Boing TV should pander to the success of other viral video hits, like sexy or dogs-on-skateboards stuff. So, what’s next for Boing Boing TV? Jardin says that in a week or so, the show will kick off a series of changes and enter 2009 with a lot of fun stuff…Yeah, an entirely vague explanation — Come on Jardin stop teasing us!

How can we achieve video nirvana? The answer, according to Reed Hastings, CEO of Netflix, is to simply put the web on the TV, and the tipping points will come from the proliferation of broadband, high-def screens, and “the pointer” interface for a remote for the TV. He’s well aware that the online video industry has been saying this for a decade, but just wait ’til January’s Consumer Electronics Show, he says, where he predicts we’ll see some promising web-on-TV products.

Here’s some notes from his speech:

We want to watch what we want, when we want, where we want, and discover the content how we want. The debate has been between the TV and the web in the race to deliver the on-demand personalized video future. Standard TV is getting better — now they have over-the-air, cable, satellite, telco, and program guide. We have the DVR and VOD, which are “bolted-on” experiences and in most cases are discrete subsystems. TV’s problem has been: How do you create integrated and personalized experience before the web catches up? TV has the advantage of having a huge installed based, but on the other hand it doesn’t have crazy, innovative, inventive, web culture. Read more of this story

We can safely say that 15-year-old Lucas Cruikshank, creator of the wildly popular Fred character on YouTube, is the youngest innovator that Giga Omni Media has had on its stage. Cruikshank, who has a Mac laptop and a blackberry, says one secret is to launch videos on Thursday around the time that kids get out of school. The buzz will pick up on Friday during school hours and on Saturday the show will often get the most views.

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Cruikshank says the hyperactive, weird Fred character is an exaggerated version of his younger brothers and a good perk of being a 15-year-old online video star is that seniors at his high school will talk to him despite the fact that he’s a freshman. Want to know what kind of a CPM he charges? Well, he’s not going to tell you.

It’s all about “transmedia” — the convergence of media and the spread of content across platforms — says the panel of experts made up by Jesse Alexander, Writer and Producer, Heroes; Bill Gannon, Director of Online Operations, Lucasfilm; Jeff Gomez, CEO Starlight Runner Entertainment; and Greg Goodfried, Co-Founder, President and COO, EQAL. The metrics are experimental right now, though if companies are buying ads it’s a good sign, says the panel. But be careful — it can all go horribly wrong! And remember the geeks that consume your digital transmedia bits are powerful and will be the torch bearers of your brands.

How Important Is Transmedia?: Lucasfilm’s Gannon says the key to managing transmedia well is to have everyone on staff think the same way. Lucasfilm has a phenomenal licensing division that explores the transmedia universe, he says. Heroes’ Alexander warns that care needs to be taken in order to avoid missteps. EQAL’s Goodfried’s agrees and says you need to establish trust with the user, by using open dialogue and communication. Starlight Runner’s Gomez says the trend of converging media brought the new president into the White House and it will do the same with online video. Our own Chris calls it the equivalent of unicorns and puppy dogs! Read more of this story

Jason Kilar, the CEO of Hulu — everyone’s favorite way to watch studio shows online — discusses the three forces that are driving Hulu: the big wave of the online video trend, obsession (give ‘em what they want and be neurotic) and the positive results of the service so far.

A big wave: 12.6 billion was the number of video streams in the U.S. in September according to ComScore. It’s a big deal. It was a fraction of that 6 months ago. Think of it like what Starbucks did for premium coffee, is like what we’re doing for the premium content business — if you can make it easier to consume, people will consume more. Media is an impulse business. A lot of this is from infrastructure that is far beyond Hulu. Read more of this story