Video

Joss Whedon Answers My Prayer!

One year ago I wrote about MGM’s trial release of the movie A Dog’s Breakfast on iTunes and put in a prayer that Joss Whedon would follow the straight-to-download distribution model. Apparently someone heard me over in Whedonverse. If you’re a fan (Buffy, Angel, Firefly…), you’ve likely already heard about Dr. Horrible‘s Sing-Along Blog, the … Read more

Library Trumps Swaptree

We’ve been seriously low on good television in my household, so yesterday I thought I’d come up with a brilliant idea when I remembered my Swaptree account. I’ve been holding on to box sets of the first seasons of Lost and The Office, and I figure I’ll be able to do a nice trade on … Read more

Screens Everywhere, Ads Too

I’m beginning to think that soon I won’t be able to turn my head without seeing a TV screen. My local Wi-Fi cafe haunt has added a display above the registers with local advertising, and I just heard via Shiny Shiny that London is getting movie trailers piped in on screens at select Underground stops. … Read more

Olympics Web Video & The Long Tail

Rafat’s (paidContent) disappointed with the upcoming Olympics web video, labeling NBC “totalitarian” and heavy handed – his major beefs seem to be that televised content will only be available online post TV broadcast and only viewable at NBCOlympics.com. As I commented Sunday, I’m pleased with any/all online viewing options – especially being able to catch … Read more

TV for the ADD Generation

Being a glutton for punishment, I recorded a few of the demos and screenshots shown during Paul Kagan’s “Getting Personal” conference last week in conjunction with the SCTE Cable-Tec Expo. (I’ve gotten in trouble for posting “confidential” video demos shown at conferences before.) This one comes from Ensequence, showing off some interactive TV apps used … Read more

DivX To Support The MKV Video Format

Good news web video fans. Hot off the presses Doom9’s forums, we learn that the upcoming release of DivX 7 is going to support the Matroska video format! Now I know that many of you are probably asking yourself Matroskwho?, but believe me when I tell you that this is a big deal for both DivX and Matroska fans.

A DivX / Matroska hook up will not only give web video creators even more options over how they want to present their content, but it will also ensure that consumers are able to take advantage of these advanced features with their favorite consumer electronic products. In the past, Matroska fans have had to go through a painful and complicated process in order to get their MKV files to play nice with their DivX hardware devices, but with the 7.0 release, it should be as easy as hitting play on DivX 7.0 gadgets.

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Google Quietly Intros Media Server Gadget

Google’s quietly introduced a (Windows-only) media server gadget: Google Media server is about exposing content from your local compute(s) via UPnP protocol for devices on your home network. Google desktop is looking for content on you computer and network (if it is configured to do so). Google Media server uses Google desktop index. Of course, … Read more

Comcast is Going All-Digital

Todd Spangler at Multichannel broke the news this morning. Comcast is buying up to six million digital terminal adapters (DTAs) this year in an effort to migrate to all-digital broadcasts throughout 20% of its footprint in 2008. The DTAs are coming from Motorola (my employer), Pace and Thomson. DTAs work by converting QAM channels broadcast … Read more