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CES 09: Netflix on Vizio TVs, LG Gets YouTube
Netflix today announced that its streaming service will be coming to Vizio HD TV sets, allowing consumers to watch Netflix content without the need for an external set-top box. This latest partnership comes on the heels of a similar announcement Netflix made earlier this week with LG. Netflix streaming will be available on Vizio “Connected HDTVs,” which are expected to ship later this year.
At the rate these hardware partnerships are going, it’s becoming Netflix’s digital world, and we just live in it. Elsewhere on the CES show floor, LG announced that it has expanded its online video delivery options, enabling Netflix streaming on two new Blu-ray disc players and three Blu-ray home theater systems. These new LG “Netcast Entertainment Access” systems will also provide access to YouTube videos as well as premium content from CinemaNow.
Netgear Unveils Verismo-Based TV Set-Top Box
Netgear announced its new Internet TV Player, the ITV2000, set-top box at CES today. Based on Verismo’s VuNow, the compact box lets users watch live Internet television programming from around the world, check out web video and access premium content. From the press release:
“[F]or the Internet families who enjoy online video, and for those who are geographically displaced from their preferred television content, such as international sporting events and Bollywood productions. It streams content from popular sites such as BBC.com, CNN.com, ESPN.com, EuroSport.com, NBC.com, PGATour and TMZ.com, as well as video powerhouses YouTube, Google Videos, Yahoo Videos and MetaCafe. NETGEAR’s Internet TV Player supports streaming of live TV broadcasts from Internet sites around the world, and premium, paid movies on demand such as CinemaNow.com, in addition to downloaded videos from sites such as BitTorrent.”
The ITV2000 plugs into your TV and does not require a PC to work. To give you a sense of the functionality, here’s a video demo Liz did of the Verismo box in action last year.
Coming Soon: Wireless Video Uploads from Your Camera
Eye-Fi, the maker of SD cards with Wi-Fi, is demoing a pretty cool advance at CES this week: video uploads direct to YouTube.
The Mountain View, Calif.-based company isn’t making any promises about when the new product will be available, but it says it will support full-resolution HD videos.
The way Eye-Fi works might be a little too forward-thinking, but it’s nifty. You can use your digital camera to take pictures (or eventually videos) with the card in place, then access a Wi-Fi network through the card to upload them directly to participating sites. Without such a card, the best way to upload video files while you’re on the go — “movlogging,” as it were — is from your phone via MMS, Wi-Fi, or if you’re lucky 3G, but the problem there is the extra expense and the fact that the camera is often crappy. The Eye-Fi cards cost $80-130.
We’ll update if we can get some more info from our friends on the ground in Las Vegas.
One True Media Ties Up $9M Round for Video Ad Creation
SpotMixer, the new online ad-creation arm of One True Media, has closed a $9 million Series B round, with funding from DAG Ventures, NTT Finance and previous investor Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. The company had previously focused on personal video and slideshow creation tools, but it launched SpotMixer as a business-focused version of those tools in April.
We’d already written about this round, after reports of a regulatory filing saying the Redwood City, Calif.-based company had raised $8 million of a would-be $10 million round. One True Media had originally raised $5 million from Kleiner in 2006.
SpotMixer also announced today that Google has made it a Google AdWords reseller; businesses who create video ads on its platform will now be able to distribute them through Google’s massive network. The company clearly has friends at the Goog; SpotMixer is already included in Google’s TV ad creation toolset.
Competitors include Spot Runner and Jivox.
StatShot: Gossip Girl Tweets, Button Beats
After a holiday break, the StatShot is back, bringing you interesting numbers from around the NewTeeVee-verse.
Trendrr’s graph of the top Twittered TV shows for the week of Dec. 30 - Jan. 6 shows remained largely the same — but for the first time since we’ve been keeping track, Gossip Girl surpassed Heroes (by a long shot). It was just for one day, but a win is a win. Trendrr also expanded the list to the Top 6 shows since newcomer Superstars of Dance had a strong finish.
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Demo Video: Sling on the iPhone
The folks at Sling have done it again: dreamed up another cool product and told us about it before it’s available.
Now it’s bringing its streaming, place-shifted video to the iPhone — and also HD video to Macs, as they demonstrated at Macworld in San Francisco today. Read more of this story
SundaySky Raises $8 Million
SundaySky, an automated video services startup, announced this week that it has raised $8 million in a Series A round led by Carmel Ventures and Globespan Capital.
SundaySky’s video platform creates a customized template for a company such as an e-commerce site to create videos. Once the platform is plugged into the site, SundaySky can automatically and dynamically create a customized video for every page. For example, if site is selling laptops, SundaySky’s software scans the a particular product’s page and integrates an image of the laptop, the price, product info, review, etc. into a video clip. The result is professional-looking, clickable product sales video that will automatically update as elements to the page change, so if the camera goes on sale, the video immediately reflects the new price. Read more of this story
Adobe Continues March Onto Your TV
Adobe and Broadcom Corporation announced today that Flash will be integrated into Broadcom’s latest digital television and set-top box system-on-a-chip platforms. The partnership will make it easier to watch web video on your TV, and comes one day after Adobe announced a similar chip partnership with Intel.
Why the sudden push into chips? Stacey over at GigaOM does a god job of explaining:
Software companies have to port their programs to a variety of processors to keep up with the expansion of heterogeneous computing. Witness Adobe’s efforts to get Flash released on PCs (x 86 chips) and mobiles (ARM architecture) at the same time. And Adobe has to address embedded efforts too, especially since electronics makers want to turn the TV into a web-connected device.
Flash is the dominant video platform on the web, and Adobe wants to keep it that way as more televisions start receiving online video. ABI Research predicts that, thanks to more Net-connected TVs, the number of people watching online video will boom to 941 million in 2013, up from 563 million at the end of 2008. Getting in on the chip level with biggies like Intel and Broadcom is one tactic to ensure Flash’s dominance.
Broadcom’s Flash-supporting chips are expected to be available to manufacturers in the first half of this year.
Update: And the chips just keep comin’. Sigma Designs announced that it will be integrating Flash into Sigma’s system-on-a-chip products for digital televisions, set-top boxes and other devices.
Anime Co. Works with Fans to Make Money on YouTube
Japanese animation production company Kadokawa Group Holdings revealed that, by the end of 2008, it was earning $110,000 a month from its videos on YouTube, reports the Anime News Network. The twist to this animated tale? Kadokawa made most of that money by advertising on user-generated videos that incorporate Kadokawa’s popular intellectual property from such anime hits as The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya and Strike Witches.
Kadokawa launched its own YouTube channel, uploading full episodes of its shows, at the beginning of 2008. According to BusinessWeek, Kadokawa uses YouTube’s video ID tool to scan the site for infringers who upload remixes or mashups of its content. Kadokawa keeps a database of all the infringers and, while it does send out takedown notices, it also contacts uploaders it thinks are keeping in the spirit of its shows and asks to advertise alongside those clips and encourages them to join the official Kadokawa Anime YouTube channel.
The result is that between September and November of 2008, Kadokawa videos were seen 50 million times. In October, the company started placing in-video ads that reportedly boosted revenues it earned from the site dramatically, to the $110,000 mark. If the company can keep up this pace, it’ll recoup the $1 million it spent on the project within the year.
There is a lesson in all this: Unlike suing them, embracing fans who want to actively participate in your brand is a way to maintain loyalty, generate play counts and make some money in the process.
RipCode Transcodes Video into Cash: $12.5M
Video transcoding leader RipCode has raised $12.5 million in funding in a round led by Granite Ventures and including existing investors Hunt Ventures, El Dorado Ventures, Vesbridge Partners and ATA Ventures.
Dallas-based RipCode sells video transcoding appliances, as well as services around them, for both video on demand and streaming. Every video site needs transcoding, because raw videos arrive in all sorts of formats and need to be converted into all sorts of other formats to be viewed online and on different devices.
RipCode had previously raised a $10.5 million second round of funding in August 2007. It said in a release it would use the newest round of funding for sales, marketing and product development.
The company recently scored a deal to power MySpace’s mobile video. It faces new competition from the likes of Encoding.com, which offers on-demand pay-as-you-go encoding.
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