From the way people are already drooling over tonight’s tweetable, hyper-connected Super Bowl ads, you would be forgiven for thinking that the famed Lombardi Trophy will be awarded to an ad agency, instead of the usual football-playing recipient. More »
To promote online game Mafia Wars Las Vegas, game developer Zynga hired Snoop Dogg to blow up a 4-ton armoured truck in the Nevada desert, while it was live-streamed to Ustream. It pulled in more viewers than TV broadcasts attract. More »
That’s a resounding no from Comcast chief operating officer Steve Burke, who unfortunately isn’t able to make this call, at all. But he means well! More »
Google has entered into an agreement to acquire On2 and their video compression technology. With YouTube in it’s back pocket, it seems likely that Google could push this technology all over the web—giving them even broader control. [BusinessWire] More »
The poor kids at Joost—and their partners at Viacom—thought the future of TV on the computer would be a discrete app that blended a slick TV emulator with internet power. They were wrong, Hulu and Google were right: It’s all about the browser. So that’s where Joost is going. Its Flash-based player officially launches full-throttle tonight. The early word from paidContent is that it’s still no Hulu—the best place for CBS content, maybe, but it’s got a lot of catching up to do. Though really, it’s not clear that it ever can. There’s a reason our internet TV remote is heavy on the Hulu. [Joost via paidContent]
Vudu has just been bumped to version 1.5, and the headlining feature should make its way to every video rental setup: Extensions! If you only get halfway through No Country for Old Men (or any other flick) before the 24-hour window is up, you can extend the rental period for a discounted price, US$2 off HD movies and a buck off regular ones. The option is available for a week after the flick expires, and then you have another 30 days to start watching, and 24-48 hours after you hit play. Downside is you can only extend a movie once. Still, awesome and overdue feature. [Vudu]
At Netflix Investor Day, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings revealed their timeline for the end of the rental-by-mail biz, and why they’re digging so hard into digital distribution: It “will probably peak in the next five years.” Taken more broadly, it’s more or less predicting that the real end of physical media is in T minus five years—’cause presumably, as long there are discs, Netflix’s model assumes you’ll get ‘em from Netflix. While the end of physical media has been predicted lotsa times, it’s rare that a company puts a death sentence on its core business, so this isn’t the cheap willy-nilly futurism we’re used to gagging on. [Reuters via Alley Insider]
The polymorphous life of Akimbo came to an abrupt end this week, as the embattled video-on-demand turned white label video service was shut down for good. The surprising move went down just four months after Akimbo was given an additional US$4 million to fund its video services venture. Now the extra cash will go towards former employees’ severance packages. Let us reflect on the tumultuous past of Akimbo, after the jump.
Joost, the P2P-powered TV killer we reviewed back in the heady days of the writers’ strike that we found a bit wanting (and is on the skids), will work in your browser later this summer with a plug-in, rather than needing to install a whole separate app. As Valleywag points out, this might be a bit futile, since the next version of Adobe’s Flash will have built-in file-sharing. Anyone out there still using Joost? [Valleywag]
