Adobe in Push to Spread Web Video to TV Sets

The denizens of Hollywood and Silicon Valley have, by and large, vastly different value systems, role models, even tastes in cars, food and clothing.

But they increasingly agree on one thing: a standard for online video called Adobe Flash.

Flash was once known primarily as the technology behind those niggling Web ads in the 1990s that gyrated and flickered on the screen. Today, it is a ubiquitous but behind-the-scenes Web format used to display Facebook applications, interactive ads and, most notably, the video on sites like YouTube and Hulu.com.

Now Adobe Systems, which owns the technology and sells the tools to create and distribute it, wants to extend Flash’s reach even further. On Monday, Adobe’s chief executive, Shantanu Narayen, will announce at the annual National Association of Broadcasters convention in Las Vegas that Adobe is extending Flash to the television screen. He expects TVs and set-top boxes that support the Flash format to start selling later this year.

For consumers, what sounds like a bit of inconsequential Internet plumbing actually means that a long overhyped notion is a step closer to reality: viewing a video clip or Internet application on a TV or mobile phone.

For Hollywood studios and other content creators, a single format for Web video is even more enticing. It means they can create their entertainment once in Flash — as the animated documentary “Waltz With Bashir,” from Sony Pictures Classics, was made — and distribute it cheaply throughout the expanding ecosystem of digital devices.

“Coming generations of consumers clearly expect to get their content wherever they want on it, on any device, when they want it,” said Bud Albers, the chief technology officer of the Disney Interactive Media Group, who will join Adobe executives at the convention to voice Disney’s support for the Flash format. “This gets us where we want to go.”

See the full article at the NY Times.

Blockbuster Dangerously Close To Going Under

Blockbuster, the $500 million video rental chain, has been in a long battle to remain relevant in the Internet-enabled age–lately by attempting to strike a deal for online content distribution. But the company’s Internet leap may be too late: An FCC filing has revealed that the company is in deep trouble.

The filing, made to the Securities and Exchange Commission late yesterday, shows that the company is unsure whether it can continue doing business. Specifically, Blockbuster may not survive the months between a planned $250 million loan deal arranged last week and when the agreement goes into effect on May 11. Blockbuster management say there’s "no assurance" the company can meet the requirements of the deal.

In effect, the company is saying it’s within days or weeks of having to close up shop–postal, online and brick-and-mortar. 

The latter of those categories is mostly to blame, of course. In an age when music and movies are easily downloaded at a few moments notice, companies stream content over your phone lines to TV set-top boxes on demand, and even waiting for the postman to deliver a NetFlix envelope with your next DVD is beginning to seem slow, driving to a real store to rent a movie or game just isn’t convenient. Managing and funding the company’s physical assets must have become a real burden as its business eroded. Compare that to NetFlix, which doesn’t have to worry about storefronts with its warehouse-centric distribution model, and online streaming systems like Hulu, which have barely any overhead at all.

Blockbuster’s recent announcements that it would be partnering with TiVo, and get its content onto Apple devices, now just rings hollow. It was the right move, but taken far too late to have the needed impact on the company’s fortunes.

See the full article at Fast Company.

Boxee Continues To Innovate With API And New Alpha Version

Free entertainment hub Boxee keeps on getting better and better. A couple of hours ago, the venture-backed startup released a full API that allows developers to build applications for the open-source platform using a set of API calls in Python and writing the GUI using XML. At the same time, the company is laying the groundwork for a richer App Box, which it refers to as an open application store where they are not the gatekeeper (like Apple for its iPhone App Store) but rather a facilitator.

Heck, they’re even prepared to act as middleman for connecting freelance web developers with companies looking to leverage their API. Hard not to love that type of company.

Boxee is today also introducing a new test version of the Boxee alpha version for Mac and Apple TV (get it here for Intel Mac OS X 10.4+), adding two applications that were built using the brand new API. The new Boxee alpha comes with a lot of music goodness as it includes both Pandora, the popular music streaming service, and RadioTime, which enables their users to access over 100,000 traditional radio stations from across the globe.

This comes right off the heels of the introduction of a (basic) iPhone application.

See the full article at TechCrunch.

Report: Disney in talks to join Hulu

The Walt Disney Company is discussing a deal to take an equity stake in Hulu in exchange for providing the video portal with ABC programming, according to a published report.

Citing unnamed sources, news blog PaidContent says that it’s not clear how much of ABC’s content would be involved, but a final deal could include ESPN, the sports cable behemoth that has been a goldmine for Disney.

Representatives from Disney and Hulu were not immediately available.

The talks between the two companies reportedly are "serious," but a final deal has not been reached, according to two of PaidContent’s sources.

In the year since launching, Hulu has quickly risen to the top ranks of online video. The site is currently backed by News Corp., parent company of Fox and NBC Universal.

Source: CNET News

Detailing Netflix’s Streaming Costs: Average Movie Costs Five Cents To Deliver

While Netflix is not yet giving out a lot of details on their costs associated with their streaming video service, they have given out enough data for us to have a pretty good idea of their costs when it comes to their streaming delivery costs for the XBOX 360 and other devices. Here’s what we do and don’t know and how it all breaks down.

We know that the average encoding rate for video streamed to the XBOX 360 is about 2000Kbps. That means one person watching a two hour movie would transfer roughly 1.8GB of data. For high definition movies, the average encoding bitrate is around 3200Kbps and one user would transfer about 3GB of data. Based on the high volume of movies Netlfix is doing each month, they are getting a very good rate in the market. I estimate they are paying on average about $0.03 per GB delivered across Limelight and Level 3 and potentially have even a slightly lower rate.

Based on the three cents per GB assumption, that means it would cost Netflix about $0.06 to deliver one SD movie and $0.09 to deliver one HD movie. Those numbers would be about 25% lower if the length of the movie were ninety minutes instead of two hours. It would also be a little lower or higher depending on the exact bitrate since some movies are streamed higher and some lower and Netflix only has about 400 movies available in HD. Taking all that into consideration the average cost to Netflix to stream to the XBOX 360 is about five cents per movie. Streaming to the PC is a lot cheaper, about half that cost, as the bitrates are much lower.

Based on those numbers, their streaming offering looks like it would save them tons of money and make them a lot more profitable since Netflix spends about 78 cents out and back for standard pre-sort first class mailing of their DVDs. But the one problem is that these streaming costs do not yet include the licensing costs from the content owners. It’s the costs associated with licensing the content that really makes or breaks their streaming service, not the cost of bandwidth.

See the full article at StreamingMedia.com.

The Presidents of the United States of America Unleash Multiple-Album iPhone App

Dave Dederer, former frontman of nineties hitmakers The Presidents of the United States of America, has fashioned quite a second career for himself as the vice president of business development for Melodeo, which makes nuTsie, a software application that can stream your iTunes playlists to any web-connected PC, your Blackberry and your Facebook profile.

Dederer has neatly dovetailed his past and present with Melodeo’s release of a $3 app for iPhone and iPod Touch (iTunes link), which contains the four Presidents of the United States of America albums whose rights are owned by the band. The app includes rare, exclusive material that can be updated from the server side.

"IPhone apps are exploding, including for musical artists, but nobody’s done anything like this," stated Dederer. For a mere three bucks, fans and interested parties new to the band will get four albums, "lost" recordings, live tracks, demos, and whatever else the band can think of to put in there.

Read the full article at Wired.