Vudu turns on high-def movies

Vudu Takes High-Def Movies Higher

Startup Vudu this week will begin offering 65 feature movie titles in 1080p high-definition video format via its Internet-connected set-top, in a bid to peel home-theater aficionados from cable and satellite video-on-demand services.
The movies, priced for a la carte rental, include Chronicles of Riddick, The Spiderwick Chronicles, In Bruges, Speed Racer and classics such as Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Chinatown, and Saturday Night Fever.
Vudu calls the service “HDX,” with video encoded at variable bit-rate in MPEG-4 H.264 in 1080p at 24 frames per second—the highest HD format currently defined.


SlingMedia Prepares To Launch Their Video Portal At Sling.com
Sling.com is a new online video portal that will give users access to a premier library of content from top TV networks, movie studios, sports leagues and websites. Combining professional programming, editorial expertise and social networking features alongside easy and logical navigation. In addition to premium on-demand video content from 60 partners (and counting), Sling.com includes a preview of the web-based Slingplayer software for PC, allowing Slingbox owners to watch live TV directly within our website. The Clip+Sling feature that lets users grab clips up to five minutes in length and post them was not present in the SlingPlayer 2.0 in August, due to legal hold ups. But paidContent spoke with a Sling spokesperson who confirmed that the feature is coming.


YouTube Rolls Out Post-Roll Video Ads
YouTube, which has never had trouble growing an audience but hasn’t yet figured out the trick for monetizing them thar eyeballs, is adding a trick from the old playbook: post-roll advertisements. As we understand it (and this has been confirmed with the company), if you don’t click on an overlay ad when it shows up in a clip you’re watching, the video ad it would have played rolls automatically at the end of your video. Previously a post-roll video wouldn’t play without being initiated by the user. This type of ad started rolling out over the last few weeks

What's Next for Online Video?
The big mystery of Internet video is how people are  consuming video like mad, yet nobody seems to be able to make big money from it. How will it become a viable business? That's something we intend to explore next week at Contentonomics. But first, let me preview some of the core issues.
Hundreds of millions in dollars of venture capital have been pumped into online video aggregation space based on 1999's "build it and they will come" model. Well, the people came -- that's not the problem. The problem is the cash. YouTube Inc. , the biggest online video success story so far, admits it is struggling with monetization of the video streams.
if you look at what prompted Internet advertising to take off, it wasn't critical mass or eyeballs or mass consumption that became the key to success -- it was having the right metrics. Online publishers figured out that they could match the right audience with the right message, prove it, and charge for it accordingly.
It's going to be the same case in online video: The business needs to come up with a way in which it delivers new values of measurement to advertisers.  We shouldn't be questioning the viability of the medium because its success speaks for itself. We should be finding a better way to allow the money to flow along with the eyeballs.


$6,250 per Home Passed
You know you've been covering the cable industry too long when you start employing a "cost per home passed" metric to economic issues far outside the broadband domain. In this case, it's the $700 billion financial bailout plan that just crashed and burned in Congress. If passed, that plan would cost $6,250 per home passed. It's a number that makes any cable or telecom industry watcher's head spin. The figure is enough to cover the cost of installing fiber to every single home in the U.S. with enough left over to outfit half of all homes for solar electricity. (The assumptions for these zany scenarios are a cost-reduced $600 per home passed for fiber-to-the-home and $11,000 per home for solar as part of a massive national deployment.)


Comcast's Rate Caps Get a Pass from Video Sites
Comcast officially launched its bandwidth caps for residential customers Monday, but while some video Web sites expressed concern about Internet restriction in general, none were particularly concerned that Comcast's 250 GB limit would greatly hamper Web users' access to their sites. "The bottom line on the Comcast issue is, we believe the important thing for all cable companies to do is be transparent with their customers," said Steve Swasey, a spokesman for Netflix. "As far as this 250 GB cap, it would take you eight hours of watching content on the Internet, not just from Netflix but YouTube or Amazon or Apple or anybody else, eight hours a day, seven days a week to reach that cap, so it is pretty high."


Broadband-video watchers doubled in past year
The percentage of U.S. broadband customers who streamed videos through an Internet browser has doubled in the past year, as TV networks, movie studios and other distributors have provided more content over the Web. Almost two-thirds of U.S. online households watch videos online, up from 32% a year ago, according to ABI Research, citing its survey of almost 1,000 online households during the second quarter. The growth in social networking and faster Internet connections also contributed to the jump, ABI said.


Backed By Sequoia Capital, New CDN Cotendo Launching Early 2009
Earlier this year, Sequoia Capital invested less than $5 million into a new CDN startup called Cotendo. After spending the past year on development, the company expects to launch their content delivery offering in "early 2009"

HBO changes name to reflect broader distribution
HBO Video has morphed into HBO Home Entertainment, a new moniker designed to better reflect the label’s varied content releases. Distributed by Warner Home Video, HBO bows titles on DVD as well as through such new media platforms as iTunes. HBO also has begun widening the distribution of its documentaries by using an unspecified manufacturing-on-demand service.