While everyone raves about Hulu and Youtube etc. The usual suspects are being caught up by a surprise challenger, Facebook!

The social networking scene has exploded recently with every Tom, Dick and Harry Twittering and posting onto Facebook, however a Nielsen report shows Facebook is the third biggest streaming website.

Of course YouTube was top streaming website for October with a monumental 6.6 billion streams delivered, which put their closest competitor to shame. New boy Hulu only managed a paltry 632 million streams. Surprisingly, however, the number three spot went to Facebook, who served 217 million videos. Further, Nielsen found that the amount of time actually spent on Facebook for the purpose of viewing videos increased a massive 1,840% over the past year. That surpassed the growth in online video viewing as a whole, which roughly doubled.

The speculation is that Facebook has evolved beyond social networking, and is instead morphing into a media hub. Nielsen may be right, and with hundreds of millions of subscribers already, Facebook has the userbase to try nearly any service they want.

Lets be honest though, if Facebook decided to run for president right now they would probably walk it. The fact is though, a social networking site is never going to be top dtreaming site.. Is it?

After years of promises and dissapointments, online tv is only now becoming part of popular culture. You dont need to be a geek to watch online tv anymore, so what has changed and why has it finally taken off?

The popular broadcasters and providers have all given their opinion, and it seems to be a culmination of things that have tipped internet tv onto the front page.

According to Rahul Chakkara of the BBC its the adoption of fast speed broadband connections. No longer do we need to watch jerky, fuzzy, low quality images. With the high speed available, we can watch broadcast quality online

Claire Tavernier of Fremantle FMX thinks that it has been due to the two standout online tv providers. The BBC iPlayer for UK and Hulu in the US have made the masses finally accept watching online video. These quality sites provide a good source of quality, relevant content and promote its accessibility on major TV channels.

Richard Davidson-Houston of Channel 4 says that it all comes down to reccomendations and the fact that laptops are taking the place of second TVs are driving the trend. He also thinks that watching catch up tv has been a major factor. Watching last nights missed tv shows online is a big draw.

Peter Bale from Microsoft puts it down to great quality streams and the fact that skateboarding dogs on YouTube are no longer the height of entertainment online.

All of these reasons are great in themselves, but add them all together and you get a compellling reason why online tv is booming.

Read full article – http://www.californiachronicle.com/articles/yb/137995013

Whether you use a few tv remotes or one of those do everything ones, we all live in constant fear of the batteries running out.All that energy wasted walking to the tv to change channels is chillingly close to reality with every button push.

Those fears may soon be in the past, NEC Electronics and Japanese company Soundpower have created Nirvana for TV users. A remote control that requires no batteries.

This ingenious beast creates its own power whenever a viewer presses a button. Every time you hop channels or change the volume. electricity is created through the power of vibration, the energy is then used to power the remote and get away from those annoying ad breaks.

NEC say that the electricity that is generated by the vibrations is enough to turn the TV on and off, as well as change the channel of increase or decrease the volume.

The Battery Free TV Remote Control is just in the early prototype stages at the moment, but both companies intend to start marketing the technology to TV makers next year, so who knows we could see our new TVs in the next few years arriving with battery free remote controls.

Looking at the prototype, lets just hope they can employ a designer, the existing one looks like he was around in the 60’s

Music giant, EMI Music have revealed that they hyave struck a deal with Hulu, allowing free music concerts and videos to be streamed on the free tv website.

The deal makes EMI the first major music company offering concerts and music videos from its catalogue to Hulu viewers. The deal includes music content from artists on EMI’s labels including Virgin, Capitol and Blue Note, starts with exclusive content from Norah Jones, who releases new album The Fall this week.

“We think Hulu is an excellent, high-quality environment and a great place to connect with fans,” said EMI Music North America executive Ronn Werre. “We look forward to making more content available from other artists as well.

“We’re delighted to add Hulu to the growing number of platforms EMI is working with to give fans more of what they’re looking for,” Werre said.

Album, The Fall has Jones partnering up with a new set of collaborators, including Jacquire King, a noted producer and engineer who has worked with Kings of Leon, Tom Waits, and Modest Mouse among others. Jones enlisted several songwriting collaborators, including Ryan Adams and Okkervil River’s Will Sheff, as well as her frequent partner Jesse Harris. King also helped Jones put together a new group of musicians to perform on the album, including drummers Joey Waronker (Beck, R.E.M.) and James Gadson (Bill Withers), keyboardist James Poyser (Erykah Badu, Al Green), and guitarists Marc Ribot (Tom Waits, Elvis Costello) and Smokey Hormel (Johnny Cash, Joe Strummer).

EMI have for some time had an official channel on Youtube, this deal marks its first foray into new video websites.

Hulu, a joint venture between News Corp., NBC Universal and The Walt Disney Co., is a fast-growing video site featuring full-length television shows and movies.

EMI Music have several labels in their repertoire including Angel, Astralwerks, Blue Note, Capitol, Capitol Latin, Capitol Nashville, EMI Classics, EMI CMG, EMI Records, Manhattan, Mute, Parlophone and Virgin.

Although Hulu is currently available to US viewers only, it has plans to stream content across the world.

In a bid to dominate the console tv market, Microsoft is in discussions with a bevy of content providers which include Channel 4, Myspace and the good old BBC to launch their services on the top selling console.

Sky TV already have their catch up tv service available for xbox 360. Other major networks are following because of the popularity of the next gen consoles.

Microsoft have been busy chatting with smaller content providers, such as VBS.tv, regarding the launch of an Xbox Live service, while brands like MySpace are also looking at using the console.

This week Xbox rolled out Facebook, Twitter, Last.fm and Zune services following a six-week trial, strengthening the console’s social networking and media services. Xbox Live has 17m subscribers worldwide.

Paul Whitehead, Channel 4’s head of business development for interactive, said the broadcaster was in talks with all console makers over future distribution deals.

“We want to put our content where our customers are. You can make some reasonable assumptions if you look at the demographics of Xbox users and 4oD users,” he said.

The acclaimed iPlayer from BBC can be viewed on PlayStation 3 and the Nintendo Wii. A BBC spokesman said, “People clearly want the iPlayer on their games consoles and we don’t think Xbox users are any different. So we’ve had initial discussions with Microsoft about adding the service onto its platform.”

Neil Thompson, Microsoft’s director for Europe in its entertainment & devices division, did not comment on any deals not already announced, but said, “Whatever we announce must bring elements of uniqueness to the Xbox Live service. We don’t want just to replicate existing services.”

He also said that Xbox would welcome third party ads on any new platforms, as the first commercial campaigns launched on Sky Player and Last.fm’s new services.

At present the ads runs in parallel with the Sky Player service online, but the two platforms will be split early next year as Sky introduces its targeted AdSmart technology to deliver more relevant ads to viewers.

Mobile phone operato Vodafone has been signed up as the launch advertiser to support Last.fm’s free Xbox service. The ad-funded music streaming service has agreed a four-week deal to promote the launch of the operator’s 360 social media service.

The campaign, planned by media agency Carat, will run as a pre-roll when any Last.fm radio station is accessed. Bespoke 15-second video ads are being developed for the Xbox platform by digital agency Dare and are set to go live next week.

Miles Lewis, senior VP of international ad sales for Last.fm, said, “Advertisers can buy the Last.fm audience and reach them through PC, widget and Xbox. We’re now reaching living rooms which offers an engaged, lean-forward experience.”

Hannah Taylor associate director for Carat, welcomed the use of the Xbox platform as a way to reach a young, engaged audience.

“I’d expect them to look to add more interactive opportunities in time,” she said. “Another issue is that the tracking isn’t as thorough as is available online.”

Its clear that all content providers want to be hitting the viewers eyes from every and any conceivable angle and device. That way they will have a presence on the device that takes off.

After years of trying, can the invasion of Televisions with built in widgets bring Internet TV to the mainstream. Widgets which are software applications, could be the thing that marries the Internet with the television set.

It has been over ten that companies have tried to introduce the internet onto the families big screen tv. Time Warner offered the now defunct WebTV, which died pretty quickly and since then nothing has captured the general publics imagination.

However, widgets are cool and will bring the Internet to TV screens by use of the remote control rather than a keyboard and mouse. See our post on TV widgets the big thing in 2009. Pretty soon widgets will be everywhere, in all TVs being sold,” says Kurt Scherf, vice president and principal analyst at Parks Associates, a market research firm in Dallas that specializes in emerging consumer technologies.

So why will it now succeed? Now, most households have a broadband Internet connection, so viewers can stream and process a lot of high quality pictures and data, including video to their screens. In a lot of instances broadband connections are supplied by the same company that delivers the cable television.

And now more consumers are much more comfortable using the internet and downloading applications or ‘apps’ and widgets, on their mobile devices and phones or laptops. The biggest manufacturer and item that has encouraged this is of course the Apple iPhone.

What are Widgets?

TV widgets are small icons that appear along the bottom or side of a television screen. Each performs a different function. One may give you more information about the show your watching, you can find information on the news or weather. You can also use social sites such as Twitter, Facebook or MySpace.

The manufacturers are keen, Sony, Samsung, and LG already offer TV sets capable of displaying widgets and accessing the web. Vizio are offering a keyboard inside its remote. Vizio will also build in Wi-Fi capability, meaning wireless connection.

It is estimated that 400,000 TVs sold in the US this year will be Web-enabled. But by 2013, about 13.8 million TV sets in US households will be Web-enabled, says a study from Parks Associates.

“We think it’s exciting. We think it’s real,” says Howard Bass, a partner at Ernst & Young’s Global Media & Entertainment Center. Last month, Ernst & Young released a report on TV widgets predicting that they “could be the catalyst to widespread adoption of Web-enabled TV.”

Widgets won’t try to duplicate a computer screen on TVs. That’s not what TV viewers are looking for, analysts say. Instead, widgets offer a simple point-and-click experience using the existing TV remote control.

“All they need to know is left, right, up, down, and OK,” says Russ Schafer, senior director for Connected TV at Yahoo. The company announced earlier this year that it had teamed with chipmaker Intel to promote development of widgets for TVs.

Yahoo has tested TV widgets with people from 18-year-olds to those in their 60s and universally found them easy to use, Mr. Schafer says.

The coming months should be “the big blowout year for connected TVs,” Schafer predicts about 2010.

Among the widget connections Yahoo is offering now, or will be shortly, are USA Today’s sports news; YouTube; and casual games, such as Sudoku. Yahoo provides about 20 widgets now but has potentially thousands more in the pipeline, Schafer says, some of which will show up by early 2010.

Another major player in TV widgets, Verizon FiOS, continues to expand its network of digital television and broadband Internet services over its US fiber-optic lines.

Verizon FiOS and Internet customers in the New York City area now can get video of local traffic conditions via a TV widget called “NYC 311.” Live cameras, operated by the City of New York, show conditions on roads in all five boroughs of the city. Viewers can zoom in for a closer look at a particular road and set “favorites” to go immediately to the routes they use to commute each day.

The ESPN Fantasy Football Widget, available to viewers who’ve signed up for ESPN’s fantasy football leagues, displays personalized football statistics, such as box scores, league rankings, and information on players.

In the Yahoo-Intel Widget Gallery, the eBay widget permits users to receive real-time updates on their accounts, place bids, and monitor favorite items. Users can view photos or search for and compare prices of items. A New York Times widget lets viewers see headlines, photos, and stories, and forward them to their mobile phone.

TV watchers are changing, says Maitreyi Krishnaswami, director of interactive video services for Verizon. Many are no longer passive viewers. “Now it’s really about interactive TV and social networking” she says. People are already checking on their fantasy sports teams or commenting on the reality TV show they’re watching using a mobile phone or laptop.

One of the most popular uses of Facebook on Verizon is to access people’s online photo albums and display them on the TV. “What you see are really high-quality images on the television that you can share with your family,” Krishnaswami says.

If these new widgets have advertising then will they clash with advertising being shown on the TV program itself. Then there is the wireless problem, if internet enabled TVs dont have WiFi, viewers will have to link their TV to the Internet through a wired Ethernet connection. Getting that wire to the TV could be a home-networking hassle if the computer and TV are in different rooms.

What will really be interesting in the future, Mr. Scherf says, is if a content provider such as ESPN designs its own widgets to customize and enhance its TV programs. Viewers might be able to decide which sports scores or other information they want displayed in the widget, for example.

While Scherf doesn’t envision people reading e-mail on a TV, the kind of “snackable sharing” represented by Facebook or Twitter “seems to be a fit,” he says.

Today’s early widgets mostly offer a distraction from TV content, such as news or weather. Eventually, “smart widgets” may automatically enhance TV viewing, says James McQuivey, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester Research in Cambridge, Mass., in a paper from earlier this year. Smart widgets could “listen” to the audio track of the show being watched and offer more information about it – or even suggest a new widget you might like to download based on your interests. TV programs already carry hidden digital information identifying them.

“When all the dust settles, the entire landscape of how we watch TV will be altered,” Mr. McQuivey writes, referring to widgets. “Advertisers will have more active ways to engage TV viewers and consumers will have more ways to watch the shows they love most.”

I think that when widgets are commonplace, we will all wonder how we managed without them. Even now as i watch tv i am usually surfing the net or catching up on my emails, and this is the convenience that widgets will bring.

With booming sales, Blu-ray players next step is internet tv integration. Sales of the hd dvd players were up 13% during the first 9 months of 2009, so says industry trade group Digital Entertainment group.

Videon Central who are one of the biggest manufacturers of Blu-ray players have revealed that they are looking to make some improvments to the players including turning them into set-top boxes that can be used to watch internet tv.

Videon are partnering with Related Content Database (RCDb), an open Blu-ray software shop, to include interactive TV client software for every player. Another partnership with ActiveVideo Networks will improve the ability to access cloud-based video services delivered over the Web that support both linear and broadband programming.

“The Blu-ray platform is not a movie platform; it is a software platform that can play movies,” RCDb President Herve Utheza said. “It supports the same underlying technology as tru2way….This will allow content providers and service operators to leverage the same content and applications.”

The RCDb client enables a Blu-ray player to load and unload applications and connect with a flexible, updateable set of third-party services and content offerings controlled by the player manufacturers and their retail partners.

These developments could see Blu-ray emerge as a universal client for Internet TV, allowing users to view movies and TV shows from their player without the need to purchase extra hardware.

Utheza even went as far as to say they could replace existing Internet TV set-top like Apple TV, VUDU and Roku players.

“More devices are getting connected to the Internet, but the standards for interactive content are still immature,” he said. “A lot of these have their own way of presenting data and information.”

Currently nearly all content providers like Netflix and Amazon have to develop service integration using code written in C which is complicated to use. Utheza believes that the use of the standards built into Blu-ray and Java could help accelerate the creation of new services that can work across equipment from different providers.

In early November, RCDb provided a concrete example. It announced that it had entered a licensing agreement with Netflix to develop a Blu-Ray disc enabling Netflix members to watch movies and TV episodes on their PS3 consoles. (A partnership launched in July 2008 between Netflix and Microsoft Xbox has generated 1 million users.)

The Videon Central deal will mean that thousands of Blu-ray players can show on demand services either in competition or collaboration with cable operators.

“It is hard to see a Blu-ray player and the set-top box coming together right now,” Park Associates Research Analyst Jayant Dasari said. “Blu-ray is more of a mainstream CE device, while the set-top box is an extension of the service provider into the home.”

Costs are playing a part in the reluctance shown. “Including Blu-ray is only going to raise the cost of the set-top box and indirectly increase the cost for each home,” he said. Then there are potential operational expenses.

“Cable players are reticent to support third-party devices because of the additional service calls it could generate,” Dasari said. As an object lesson, he pointed to TiVo, another popular CE device with a cable-ready version that nonetheless posed obstacles for subscribers.

Of course what we all want is a single box that offers HD, Blu-ray content, streaming, digital tv and internet browsing built in. We are just waiting to see which technology comes out on top.

Unless you have been hiding in a cave, you cannot have failed to notice that mega disaster movie 2012 is all the rage. The movie explores the theory that the end of the earth will occur in the year 2012, as foretold by ancient civilisations and religions.

So far the movie has raked in a tidy $225 million from worldwide box office tickets. So much in fact that director of 2012 Roland Emmerich is planning a follow on TV series. If you havent already seen the movie then read on at your peril because it contains spoilers.

At the end of the movie, civilisation is wiped out, apart from a select few who are living on some high-tech floating arks whilst the earth is getting erased by a series of earthquakes and tsunamis. As the extreme conditions subside the arks set sail for the only remaining land mass still in existence, the Cape of Good Hope in Africa. The TV show is planning to look at what happens next.

Roland Emmerich is planning to answer these questions in the 2012 TV spin-off that takes place logically in 2013, after the last few survivors have landed.

“It’s a little bit like ‘Lost,’ ” he explained in a recent interview with MTV News. “I kind of said, ‘This would make an interesting TV show.’ At the end of the movie — I don’t want to give it away — but they find one continent that’s left and they go there. I’m so interested in what will happen, because naturally on this continent there are survivors. What will they say when these arks show up?”

The original stars of the movie – Cusack, Amanda Peet, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Thandie Newton etc. will not be starring in the tv show. Stars of the small screen 2012, Emmerich said, will be a “whole new set of people,” some plucked from the arks and those who survived in Africa (who never appeared in the movie). Entertainment Weekly recently reported that the show is being shopped to “Lost” home ABC, they however have made no comment on the possibility.

In hit show Lost, the survivors and the original inhabitants dont exactly get on. As Emmerich put it, “It’s this concept of, everybody thinks the future will be all pride- and conflict-free, and it isn’t.”

Lets just hope they get the show made before the real 2012, or there may be nobody around to watch it.