The problem with watching videos and tv using the internet on the vast range of mobile devices now available,  is lack of wireless space. The massive explosion in popularity of mini pc’s, smartphones and other wireless devices, is clogging up the airwaves that we use to make phone calls, browse the web and watch tv and video on.

If the wireless spectrum is not expanded, there will be a slower service and many dropped connections before long. Alreaddy there are reports of many unhappy customers due to the shortage of the wireless frequencies that deliver data and allow smartphones to perform all the tasks that modern day owners want and expect.

Is Wifi Running Out?

Unfortunately wireless devices are a victim of their own success. More and moreconsumers are bpurchasing the latest gadgets and smartphones, then using them for everything else other than phone calling. The new devices are great at streaming YouTube videos and watching tv streams.

The figures are alarming, at the end of 2008, 34 million mobile subscribers in the United States accessed the Internet using their cell phone, according to Forrester Research, a technology market research firm. That number is projected to grow to 106 million by 2014. And Web-enabled smartphones, which are expected to account for the majority of cell phone purchases within a few years, consume 30 times the data of regular cell phones, according to Cisco Systems of San Jose.

Currently, wireless companies have 534 megahertz of spectrum allotted to them, with an additional 50 megahertz in the pipeline. The industry says it needs at least 800 megahertz more within six years to accommodate demand.

“Spectrum for us is our highway,” said Christopher Guttman-McCabe, vice president of regulatory affairs for CTIA-The Wireless Association, a trade group. “But the volume of traffic is picking up. Without more lanes, we’ll have more traffic and more congestion,” which will result in slower service.

When the shortage will become acute varies from market to market and carrier to carrier, he said, but it’s generally in the range of two to five years.

Obviously improvments will be made, but as in the population of the world, will we reach a point where there is no space left?

Read More – http://www.mercurynews.com/valley/ci_14351361

The rise of internet streamed movies, videos and tv shows no signs of slowing according to the stats for December 09. Although we have already reported on the breakthrough by Netflix in joining the top 20, the overall figures show that online tv is booming.

The figures from ComScore show that for the month of December 178 million (87% of the market) internet users from within the US viewed online streaming and viewed more than 33 billion videos (around 187 per person). The time spent watching has risen as well with the average viewing time now 4.1 minutes (3.5 minutes Dec 08).

Online Streams Rising

No surprises that the dominant Google Sites continued to rank as the top US video property in December, showing over 13 billion videos, with YouTube.com accounting for around 99% of all videos viewed (does anyone watch Google videos?). Each of the 136 million viewers of YouTube watched on averaged 97 videos each.

Hulu came in second position showing over 1 billion videos watched which is a record high for the site. But still its market share is in the low figures with just 3%. Microsoft Sites ranked third with 561 million (1.7%), followed by Fox Interactive Media with 551 million (1.7%) and Yahoo properties with 539 million (1.6%).

With viewer numbers and loyalty like that it’s really no wonder Google is trying to shape YouTube into a site which can turn a profit, be it from movie rentals, a TV subscription service, or better advertising options.

With Hulu looking at introducing pay to view options this year, it could have an impact on the growing figures. Which may be taking into account when they decide whats going to be left for free viewers.

The monster figures from YouTube  shows why it wants in on the pay to watch market as well. If it could just convert a tiny percentage of its visitors they would make some serious money.

The figures show that watching streams via the internet is snowballing and all the new devices coming onto market built for online tv. It will soon be a part of everyones life, not just us computer geeks.

Hulu is to show alongside its movie and tv show collection, a branded news page from ABC showing all kinds of news content including short-form news items and the longer shows like Good Morning America.

Wake Up With Hulu

The announcment from ABC News reveals that they are streaming on the massively popular catch up tv website, the complete range of news programming from ‘Good Morning America’ to ‘World News with Diane Sawyer’ and also News specials and streams from its News Archives.

“We’re happy to be able to provide our audience with another way to watch ABC News,” said David Westin, the president of ABC News. “We look forward to sharing our reporting with users on one of the top video destinations on the Internet.”

Interestingly this means you can watch news from around the world anytime on Hulu, so long as your in America at the time.

A new website has popped up that lets viewers from around the world start watching Hulu. How cool is that? And how legal? Before now if you wanted to view Hulu streams but were outside the US then you had to fiddle around with IP addresses with random success. Now you can just go visit TVGorge, a newly launched Flash tv streaming site that is jam packed with top shows.

The big question is though. is this legal?

TV Gorge Lets You Watch Hulu Shows

The website says that it uses searching and indexing techniques to detect and gather content from third-party TV streaming websites around the world. The company says that its proprietary script is capable of detecting the best source for TV shows and automatically compile the information for its database. Each video is said to be manually screened to make sure it is of high quality and working ok.

TVGorge adds that it does not effectively store video files on its own servers and only links to or embeds existing videos from a ‘variety of sources’. Listed at the bottom of the homepage are partners such as CBS’ TV.com, Hulu, TVGuide.com and TVDuck.

Looking at the site content cannot fail to impress though with all eight seasons of 24 areas well as episodes of top shows like Californication, 30 Rock, Heroes, Lost, CSI, Mad Men, Grey’s Anatomy, The Simpsons and many more.

In its T&C’s the website says it fully respects the intellectual property rights of third parties, you cannot help but wonder if it does have any agreement with Hulu, CBS and the other networks, so watch the streams while you can. It may not be around too long.

Tonight millions of people will settle in front of their pc monitors to watch the latest hit tv show. However this is not because they prefer to watch the show online, instead its because they missed it when it was first aired.

Why Do People Watch Online TV?

A survey by Nielsen investigated why viewers watch their television online, and the biggest reason is not because they are embracing the new technology or prefer vegitating in front of a laptop, but rather 54% of people settle down to watch TV online because they forgot to watch the show when it was shown originally on tv.  Another big factor is to catch up on previous episodes, 47% of people putting the reason because they missed a large number of previous shows.

A smaller and irresponsible part of society (12%) watched online tv when they should have been working.

Rumors abound that the great Hulu is about to become a pay-to-view service and according to Disney Executive Vice President Kevin Mayer, its officially been confirmed and they will charge for viewing in the future.

Soon Hulu Is Gonna Cost Ya

He said that the currently free-to-view tv website will offer a pay service in the future of probably premium content, but gave no firm details. The good news though is that the current ad-supported format will continue, but the new service may come in the form of a monthly subscription, a pay-per-download costs or even a rent per stream option.

“I think we ultimately should and will have a hybrid approach,” said Mayer.

This follows hot on the heels of  YouTube recently introding a movie rental option on their video website.

When Netflix started back in 1999, it was a simple but brilliant idea of letting viewers rent DVD’s via the post and internet and became a massive hit thanks partly to its flat monthly rental fee. But even popping the DVD into a pre-paid envelope was more than a lot of users could stand so they moved into internet streaming movies on demand.

Netflix Love Streaming Movies

Now the movie rental company has proved a hit online by breaking into the top 20 video sites on the web for the first time in December, according to figures released by ComScore. They are placed at position 19, sandwiched between Break Media and Justin.TV with a respectable 127 million views for December.

This week, Netflix also announced the inclusion of a select number of new indie films to its streaming collection. And during their quarterly earnings report last week, they revealed that around half of their subscribers are now streaming some content.

Netflix see online streaming as the future after seeing massive growth during the last year as it continues to cut deals to get its content on different living room set-top devices. The service clearly believes that streaming is its future

Here are the top 20 video properties by number of videos streamed per months

comScore Video Metrix (U.S.) Videos (in 000’s)

The Youtube experiment in pay-to-view movie downloads managed to pull in just $10,709.16, a success rate that will not have its competitors worrying too much.

However, we could be getting just a bit too cynical, the movies to rent were by any standard ‘geek material’ from the five different Sundance Film Festival movies which were available on the website for 10 days. The rental cost per movie was $3.99,  meaning that 2,684 movies were paid for and hopefully watched.

Youtube Movie Rentals - A Success?

Although hardly setting the movie world alight, it was an interesting experiment that Youtube told the NYT it was very happy with. A Youtube spokesman told the NYT that the experiment “exceeded our expectations given all the barriers.” He also said that watching any kind of film online, let alone independent films, remains a relatively new and untested experience. Interesting Netflix have revealed that around 6 million of its customers like to stream movies via the net.

“The odds are always stacked against independent film makers. This allowed them to reach a bigger audience.” Some of the films at Sundance may have been seen by a few hundred people, and the YouTube test may have allowed them to double their audience, he added.

Of course they didnt tell anyone what their expectations were to begin with, but it has shown the video giant that given the right material and exposure there is a market for them. In fact they are planning to present more rentals from different partners. It is possible that a more popular lineup will be a roaring financial success