Movie studios about to give up on DVDs

After years of fighting, movie studios have finally worked out that punters are no longer interested in DVDs and are planning to kill off the format, reports TechEYE.net.

According to the LA Times, studio executives think that the only way of turning around a 40 percent fall in home entertainment revenue is to speed the delivery of movies over the Internet.

Read more @Dr. Michael Zelman.

Warner Bros puts your face in Facebook Web series

Reuters reports that Warner Bros. is lauching a social series on the Web starting October 11 called Aim High that seeks to create a new genre by taking pictures, music and information from a viewer's Facebook page and putting it in the video.

"Aim High," which will play at www.facebook.com/aimhighseries uses computer programs to access a user's profile from which to draw material.

Read more.

YouTube Launches Google AdWords For Video

YouTube will launch Google AdWords for video in beta on Wednesday. The tool aims to simplify online video ad campaigns and allow advertisers to use a dynamic, auction-based platform to place and manage ads on YouTube and the Google Display Network.

[via Mediapost]

Amazon Whispersync coming to movies and TV

Amazon's Kindle Fire tablet is taking all the headlines today and with it comes Whispersync for movies and TVs, writes Techradar.

It's such a neat feature on the Kindle – the software syncs your progress as you read a book on the Kindle device so that when you access it from your computer, your iPhone, or whatever device you're on next, you're always in the right place.

And now that functionality is coming to movies and television shows that you watch on your Kindle Fire, too.

Nifty indeed.

Health advice made available on TV

A new digital TV channel has been launched in the UK for patients access health information and advice from the comfort of their own home. [via Orange News]

NHS 24 is also using the system to pilot a scheme where patients can book appointments with their GP.

The channel, available through Freesat, Sky and Virgin, gives people who do not have the internet at home the opportunity to access health advice and information on local services.

It will feature information from NHS 24, NHS inform and Care Information Scotland web services.

Read more.

A Social Television Network called Youtoo TV

Unlike standard social networking, where you interact with your friends and followers, Youtoo TV puts you in front of a national audience of 15 million through major cable providers including Time Warner Cable, Comcast, Cox, and Brighthouse.

Youtoo will start by putting 500 people on TV each day - providing more Americans than ever before with a real shot at their "15 minutes of fame." The videos, aptly called "Fame Spots,"™ can be recorded easily from an Apple or Android smart phone, tablet, or computer. In just a few clicks, anyone can upload their "Fame Spot" and be on TV for free.

Read full press release.

Disney Appmates toys will let kids use their Disney character toys with the iPad, like a board game

Disney Appmates toys will let kids use their favorite Disney character toys with the iPad the way a game piece is used on a board game. But in this case it is more interactive. The first Disney brand to get the Appmates treatment is Pixar's Cars which will go on sale in October, according to The Guardian.

How it works is pretty simple. Each toy has a unique footprint, so the iPad can tell which toy is being used. The app then delivers an interactive experience that goes with that toy.

[via Technabob]

Time Warner Cable trademarks 'Social One,' may offer access to social networks through TV

According to FierceCable, Time Warner Cable may be developing a way for subscribers to access Facebook, Twitter and other social networks through the TV, based on a trademark it obtained for the brand "Social One."

The nation's second largest cable MSO wants to be able to use the brand to offer subscribers a "single interface" for accessing social media accounts through the TV and the Web, according an application Time Warner Cable filed at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

Read full article.

Netflix signs pay TV deal for Dreamworks animation

Online video rental company Netflix Inc said it won pay TV rights to Dreamworks Animation movies starting in 2013, the first time a major Hollywood studio has chosen an Internet streaming player over a traditional cable channel.

[via Reuters]

When Your Therapist Is Only a Click Away

Video conferencing has become a popular way for therapists to reach patients, but opportunities for exploitation, especially by those with sketchy credentials, are rife.

[via The New York Times]

Sean Parker and Sean Fanning partner again to launch Airtime

Facebook Founding President Sean Parker and Napster co-founder Sean Fanning are partnering up once again to launch a new startup called Airtime. The Next Web reports.

Details are scarce but according to a fascinating 6 page interview with Forbes, Airtime is a live video site that will meet the need for real-time sharing and communication by allowing users to post videos and react to them live. Parker hopes this will, and we quote, “eliminate loneliness.

Read more.

Al Jazeera launches "Activate" telling stories of activists around the world

Activate is brand new series on Al Jazeera telling the stories of activists around the world as they challenge authority, take direct action and stand up for what they believe in. This is true grass roots activism. Use the map to follow the activists, interact with them, watch the films and tell them about a campaign that you think should be on the Activate Map.

Watch the preview of iProtest, the first show on Activate. One woman's battle against Apple and the alleged abuse of working conditions.

Smart meters reveal TV viewing habits

Researchers at the Münster University of Applied Sciences have discovered that it is possible to use electricity usage data from smart electricity meters to determine which programmes consumers are watching on a standard TV set. The HSecurity reports.

The experiments were carried out as part of the state-funded DaPriM (data privacy management) project. By analysing electricity consumption patterns, it is, in principle, also possible to identify films played from a DVD or other source.

Read more.

Google+ Hangouts Go Mobile & Get More Collaborative

Google Plus Google+ is making its public debut Tuesday with a bevy of life-inspired updates to Hangouts, the social network’s group-video-chat-with-a-twist feature.

Google+ users can now join Hangouts from their Android devices. (Google says iOS support is coming soon.) Select users can turn video chats into public broadcasts. Plus, users can also share their screens, use a sketchpad to doodle with participants, collaborate on or present a Google Doc, and join or create Named Hangouts.

[via Mashable]

Largest survey among file-sharers in history shows girls not interested in The Pirate Bay

The Cybernorms research group at Sweden’s Lund University partnered with The Pirate Bay earlier this year to carry out the largest survey among file-sharers in history. 75,000 people from all over the world participated in the study, and today the researchers revealed some of the initial results. Girls don’t fancy The Pirate Bay, most pirates download movies, and they are increasingly worried about their anonymity. Also:

-- The majority of the respondents are young men between the ages of 18 and 24.

-- More than 80 percent of all respondents say they’ve downloaded movies.

In the coming weeks the researchers will delve deeper into the data and the full results are expected to be released in November. Aside from the lack of girls, some interesting patterns should emerge from the file-sharers’ brains.

[Read full post in TorrentFreak]

Hangout Academy Will Turn Google+ Hangouts into Education Platform

Hangout Academy will connect people in search of knowledge with experienced professionals and hobbyists willing to share it. Details about the product are currently under wraps, but Hangout Academy is expected to launch Oct. 9.

[via Launch]

$675,00 fine for illegally downloading 30 songs

A US appeals court reinstated a $US675,00 verdict against a Boston University student Joel Tenenbaum who illegally downloaded 30 songs and shared them on the internet, but left the door open for the trial judge to reduce the award again.

[via The Sydney Morning Herald]

The Assads versus YouTube

The Assad regime is using YouTube to track protestors, but going through large amounts of data is proving difficult. AlJazeera reports in an depth opinion piece.

... Aware that the government´s attention increasingly focuses on citizen communications through video and mobile technology, activists are investing time and energy in concealing their identities on videos and pictures. Syrian citizens have had time to learn from the work of Tunisians, Egyptians and other activists on the region and they have developed quite efficient ways to protect their identities, which can be seen in the increasing number of videos that are recorded from behind the crowd to avoid showing people´s faces. According to Syrian activist Alexander Page, “If a face is clear it must be blurred. We have a video center, which is basically a team outside the country we send the video to, who clean up any possible threats, upload it to Youtube and then send us the link for us to share.”

Read full article.

Netflix spins DVD rentals into new business dubbed ‘Qwikster’

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings in a letter to subscribers on Monday stated that Netflix will no longer operate the DVD rental-by-mail service that carried it to the top of the home entertainment industry. Instead, Netflix will be a streaming-only service while the DVD rental business is spun off and rebranded Qwikster. BGR reports.

I messed up. I owe you an explanation,” Hastings’ letter to Netflix customers begins. “It is clear from the feedback over the past two months that many members felt we lacked respect and humility in the way we announced the separation of DVD and streaming and the price changes. That was certainly not our intent, and I offer my sincere apology.

Read full article.

YouTube adds a built-in video editor

In an effort to make it easier for YouTube users to make changes to their videos after uploading them, YouTube is rolling out a brand new video editor. Cnet reports.

No, this isn't the standalone video editor meant for splicing together clips from multiple videos that's been available in the service's TestTube labs since last year. Instead, it's a new one designed to give users a way to do quick fixes without having to re-upload the video. It's like a retouching tool for photos, but for non-commercial video.

Read more.

Google and co must take on pirate sites

UK Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt will tell a television industry gathering that he wants internet service providers and search engines - by which of course he means Google - to play a far bigger role in combating piracy. The BBC reports.

He'll float a number of ideas including:

-- A body modelled on the Internet Watch Foundation, charged with identifying copyright infringing sites against which action could be taken.

-- Asking ISPs and search engines to make it harder to access such sites once a court has decided they contain unlawful content.

-- Making advertisers responsible for removing adverts from these sites.

-- Asking banks and credit card services to stop offering their services to the sites.

In other words, the government wants to make piracy sites harder to find and harder to make pay - and it believes internet giants, from Google to BT, have a responsibility to play their part.

Read full article.

CBS Embraces Social Media For Fall TV Launch

The Fall TV season officially kicks off this week — and CBS.com is celebrating with two weeks of social media events for fans.

Starting Monday night, CBS.com will be running an online introduction to CBS’s fall schedule, called the Fall Premiere Show.

After watching a set of 15-minute online previews, fans of CBS series — such as Hawaii Five-0, NCIS and CSI — can join live online chats with the shows producers. Each night this week, fans can login using Facebook or Twitter, ask the producers questions and discuss the show in real-time.

The chats, with the exception of CSI, are scheduled to coincide with the East Coast re-runs of each show’s season finale from last spring.

Read more.

Student facing extradition to US over TV website can resume studies

A British student who faces prosecution in the United States for criminal copyright infringement has been allowed to resume his studies while he battles extradition. The Telegraph reports.

Richard O’Dwyer, 23, from Chesterfield, was bailed today at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on new conditions that allow him to live in his student digs in Sheffield and begin his third year of a computer science degree next week.

The case concerns TVShack, a popular website Mr O’Dwyer ran until November last year. It offered links to other websites that carried unlicensed streams of televisions shows and films that visitors could watch for free.

The first round of legal arguments will be held at New Marylebone Magistrates’ Court on 3 November.

It is understood that the case may hinge on the potential precedent set when British authorities attempted to prosecute the operator of a similar website, TV-Links, for criminal copyright infringement.

Read full article.

NBC Adds Free TV Shows to Its iPad App

NBC's iPad app just got a lot more useful with full episodes of popular shows like Community and Parks and Recreation. Both the app and the TV episodes are now free. [via TIME Techland]

The update makes NBC the second broadcast TV network to embrace free, streaming TV shows on the iPad. ABC's iPad app, which also includes free shows, has been available since the iPad launched in April 2010. CBS's TV.com app also has full episodes, but is only formatted for the iPhone.

Read more.

Streaming On-Demand TV Watching Continues to Grow

A new study shows that over a third of respondents are now regulalry watching online content, alongside standard TV broadcasting. WorldTVPC reports.

The study by Ericsson ConsumerLab called ‘TV & Video Consumer Trend Report 2011′ was taken from over 13,000 viewers in Countries around the world including the US, UK, Australia, Austria, Brazil, China, Germany, the Netherlands, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan and South Korea.

The study confirmed online TV is growing as now 33% of TV viewers are watching TV on-demand at least every week, up from the figure of 30% last year. And the figure is now higher than the number of people watching DVD says the report. Watching DVD and Blu-ray is falling though, down from 30% last year to 29% now.

Read full article.

Miso knows what you’re watching, no check-in required

Social TV app Miso just got a lot smarter. The application, which lets users check in and share what they’re watching on various social networks, will now be able to detect what they’re watching — provided that they are subscribers of DirecTV. GigaOM reports.

The latest version of the Miso app will now automatically recognize the programming that viewers are watching in DirecTV households. Once open, the Miso app will seek out set-top boxes connected to the user’s WiFi network and sync with them, eliminating the need for users to search for the show they’re watching.

Read more.

The attorney-general of Syria announces resignation on YouTube

The attorney-general of the Syrian city of Hama used online video-positing site YouTube to announce his resignation in protest of the government's violent crackdown on protests. [via IGN]

I, Judge Adnan Mohammad al-Bakkour, Hama province Attorney-General, declare that I have resigned in protest of the savage regime's practices against peaceful demonstrators," Bakkour said.

The expulsion of independent foreign media from Syria makes it difficult to confirm news or events, but if confirmed Bakkour's resignation would be the first high-profile resignation from president Bashar al-Assad government since protests broke out in March.

Read full article.