After our news exclusive that Youtube were rumoured to be showing full length movies online, we can now reveal that the worlds biggest online video website will be showing TV shows and movies from the Metro Goldwyn Mayer (MGM) archives.

In a bid to boost its online advertising revenue, the Google owned site is now set to start competing with its biggest online rival Hulu.

To begin with MGM will post TV episodes of ‘American Gladiators’ on its Youtube channel. Another channel will show full length movies such as Bulletproof Monk, The Magnificent Seven amongst others. The content will be free to view with advertising playing before or during the show.

In a similar deal with CBS, Youtube shows television shows such as Star Trek and Beverly Hills 90210.This service is only available at present in America.

This represents a major shift in Youtubes content which presently mainly consists of around ten minute long videos. Although recent experiments with longer content and shows from Time Warner, HBO and the CBS Showtime network stations.

Hulu, youtubes biggest online threat show modern full length TV shows from the major networks such as Fox, NBC and CBS. Traffic for Hulu is minute compared to Youtube but is gaining in popularity faster and currently matches Youtubes advertising income.

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As if we didnt already know it, Internet TV will increase in popularity during the next four years according to new research.

Paying subscribers to online tv websites is over 8.5 million in 2009, increasing the market share of Pay TV viewers to 9.5% according to Screen Digest.

In Europe the countries leading the way are in France and Italy. In the UK the services have taken longer to catch on, due to competition from satellite and cable TV providers.

The report looked into internet protocol TV (IPTV) and on demand programming thats supplied from telephone lines straight to your TV.

Ther leading broadcasters in Europe are investing in IPTV to support the declining income from traditional business as the online tv route is being seen by many as the future.

Competitively priced triple-play offers that includes true video-on-demand will prove a winning formula
David Schmitt, Screen Digest

Screen Digest’s research has suggested that IPTV will present stiff competition to already established cable and satellite providers who themselves are starting to invest big in this market.

IPTV also known as Internet Protocol Television delivers TV content to viewers by way of broadband connection using Internet protocols. Requiring a subscription and a set top box. The advantages over existing TV cable and satellite technologies is that IPTV is usually bundled with other services such as Video on Demand (VOD), voice over IP (VOIP) generally known as Triple Play.

Due to IPTV arriving over the telephone lines, telephone companies are in a good position to offer IPTV to existing customers.

IPTV is and will continue to be strong in France, Italy and Spain. Here the suppliers have approx 16% and 20% share of the pay TV market.

Homechoice is currently the leading UK based supplier of IPTV services but will be joined next year by British Telecom and other broadband suppliers.

Around 7.5% of UK pay TV users will be viewing IPTV within four years, the Screen Digest revealed.

Report compiler David Schmitt said:- ‘Although some technical and content issues have yet to be resolved, the combination of compelling, competitively priced triple-play offers that include true video-on-demand will prove a winning formula. Many traditional pay television providers are finding that they too must adopt IPTV technologies in order to remain competitive.’

Whatever else this report tells us, is that internet tv is the present and will increasingly be the future.

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YouTube the master of short copyright free user videos is to soon start offering full length movies.

According to the news section of cnet, as early as next month this move will happen. Google is discussing a deal with an unknown major movie studio to enable them to show ad supported movies to the internets biggest video sharing website.

YouTube has been skating on thin ice with movie companies up until now, as its initial success was due to users posting TV shows and movies that were then viewed illegally. Viacom recently sued Youtube $1 billion in damages due to this same problem.

However Google’s financial might and massive traffic are warming relations between itself and the studios.

It is thought that the studios will not supply new content, rather older stuff that no one wants to see!

Still more choice is always a good sign for online tv viewing.

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IMDb, one of our favorite movie review websites and a great source of informational site covering TV shows and celebrities has lsunched a German version of its famous site.

IMDb has developed the IMDb.de website to cater for its German speaking movie and TV show fans. It has the same features as the original website IMDb.com, so has the same details and facts for over 1.3 million movie and tv show titles but now includes 35,000 German titles and 2.7 million celebrities. Features that are exclusive to the German site include searching for movies in any language and view the results in German. Users can also instantly access the English version of IMDb.com

Vice president Colin Bryar said:- ‘Our customers have asked us to make IMDb Websites available in their local language. Today, we’re happy to start fulfilling this wish with a Website created for German speakers. The website will offer our most popular features, and we plan on adding even more content in the future.”

The website name meaning Internet Movie Database is easily one of the top movie and entertainment sites on the web. Boasting over 57 million unique visitors every month. Its massive database has over 1.3 million movies and TV show facts, figures and reviews. IMDB also recently added thousands of full length TV episodes and movie streams free of charge.

More popular language versions of the IMDb website are planned to follow.

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Netflix the worlds biggest online movie rental provider has announced that it will begin to use Microsoft’s Silverlight to provide instant viewing of movies and TV shows on PC and Macintosh computers.

Beginning as a trial for a small number of subscribers, the plan is to then roll out of the new platform to all Netflix subscribers by the end of the year.

The Silverlight media player provides an eye catching and professional experience for viewers and supplies streaming content across a number of platforms and web browsers. Viewers will see a faster and easier connection including a new timeline navigation feature that massively improves fast forwarding and rewinding on movies and tv shows.

The new Netflix player takes advantage of PlayReady DRM, which is built
into Silverlight, for the playback of protected content on both
Windows-based PCs and on Macs. That had not been possible with previous generation technologies.

Netflix Chief Product Officer Neil Hunt commented:- ‘Silverlight with PlayReady offers a powerful and secure toolkit for delivery of dynamic streaming, which offers faster start-up, and higher quality video, adapted in real time to users’ connection speeds. Members who enjoy watching moviesand TV episodes from the growing library of choices that can be instantly streamed at Netflix will be thrilled with this next generation improvement of access and quality, on a broader range of platforms, including Intel Macs and Firefox systems.”

Scott Guthrie the corporate vice president Microsoft said:- ‘Instantly streaming from Netflix directly addresses the needs and wants of today’s Web users by providing on-demand, high quality online video. By using Silverlight, Netflix can deliver to its subscribers a higher quality video experience on the Web, on more platforms.”

Streaming online videois usually associated with the Flash player which has certain constraints such as low quality and unsatisfactory full screen viewing. With Silverlight media can be shown at high definition quality of 720p and in correct full-screen rather than a maximized web browser. We now have a web based streaming system that can compete with DVD and offline tv quality.

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Internet TV or traditional TV?

Whilst the worlds broadcasting companies and media internet tv sites have been fighting over gaining the market share of TV viewers, some newly released market research shows what we all probably already know. Television viewers are also watching online TV.

The research by The Nielsen Company TV & Internet Convergence Panel revealed that ‘the top fifth of Internet users spend over 250 minutes per day watching TV compared to only 220 minutes of TV viewing by non internet users’. Low internet useage users spent a similar small amount of time in front of the gogglebox.

This shows that there is a market for both methods of watching, online tv and traditional tv at the same time. I must admit i do struggle to watch heroes online and who wants to be a millionaire on TV at the same time though. Maybe im doing it wrong.

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UK - The chiefs of the Football Association are up in arms over an American website that shows live football streams for FREE.

As well as the usual culprits of p2p streams from China, the new culprit is San Francisco based video website Justin.tv

Viewers can avoid paying high monthly payments to UK TV companies Sky and Setanta who hold exclusive rights to show the live games. As well as watching what paying customers can see, viewers can even watch matches that arent being broadcast by these companies.

A recent Manchester United game had over 167,000 hits, while others received 148,000 viewers.

Premier League spokesman Dan Johnson said:- ‘We are in contact with this site and their lawyers and are seeking to prevent any further abuse of our rights. The streaming of live Premier League matches without permission is not only illegal, but also unfair on fans who have paid to go to matches or subscribed to Sky and Setanta.

International matches including England World Cup qualifying games are also shown live on Justin.tv. This despite the fact that Setanta Sports have exclusive rights.

FA chiefs have said that their lawyers will be commencing legal action against Justin.tv. A spokesman said: ‘We are aware that websites around the world are seeking to exploit the popularity of English football. We take any infringements of our broadcasting rights very seriously and we will be looking at this particular website very carefully. We always take action to protect our rights and will do so again in this case.’

The huge popularity of Justin.tv started when founder Justin Kan started a web stream of his everyday life and broadcast over the internet.The website which was launched March 2007, has grown quickly and has thousands of user channels showing everything from dog breeding to growing tomatoe streams.

However the live football streams are amongst the most popular areas of the website, especially amongst UK and European users. The concept of the site is a simple one. Anyone with a cam can point it at something from their living room or at a tv set showing sports and movies. The feed is then played on their channel on Justin.tv

And because of this a popular football game can be seen on many channels on the site making policing of them difficult.

So whilst the companies concerned grapple with who can stream what and when, take advantage of all the free football streams available

After (what seems like) the longest showdown in history, we come to the climax tonight.

The presidential Campaign for 2008 has been great TV viewing with drama, strange characters, twists and turns, some humor even. But who will the voters choose? Youth or experience?

Even though some say its a foregone conclusion and that Obama will win, that has not eased the drama of this event. With forecast record viewing figures you just know that you will be watching. So where to watch it? Well online TV of course. With all the networks streaming content you wouldnt want to be anywhere else.

MSNBC, Fox News, CNN, NBC, CBS News, ABC News

If your outside the USA, you can view from your area using one of the websites in our news streams pages.

Happy viewing and make sure the fridge is nearby. Its going to be a long night.

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After the enormous popularity of our free tv list giving you amazing content to watch, we thought we might give something for your listening pleasure. We have added a new category of Radio.

Radio streams are not exactly watchable but are a great addition to the site as you can now listen to thousands of worldwide radio stations.

Internet radio, also known as web radio, net radio, streaming radio and e-radio is radio stations broadcasting via the Internet. This is also called webcasting. Internet radio provides a continuous ’stream’ of audio and amongst traditional radio stations available there are also Internet only radio stations.

The beauty of radio streams is that they can be accessed from anywhere in the world. So for example, you can listen to an English station from America or anywhere else in the world.

Heres a selection of some of the best.

A great selection of local radio stations arranged by category including
Blues, Classic Rock, Classical, Country, Dance, Hip Hop, Rap, Indie, Jazz,
Latino, New Age, Oldies, Public Radio, Rock, Soul, R&B, Talk, News, Sports.

Listen to radio stations, create your own playlists and even put a widget on your blog. You you will need to sign up for some of its features.

Not quite radio but great for all TV theme tune lovers. This site has a selection of songs originating from tv episodes. a library of over 7,500 TV theme music and songs from yesterday and today.

Yeehay, a massive foot tapping selection of country music online radio stations and streams.

A very large range of radio stations categorized in every genre you can imagine.

And if that’s not enough Radio streams then check out the new radio streams category for loads more sites, reviews and new updates. Dont forget to let us know of any great radio sites we can add.

This is the first of many new categories to be added to the database including internet tv sites animals. But we rely on your feedback for improvements to the site so any ideas. Shoot us a mail.

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Following on from its deal with netflix to supply streaming movies on TiVo players, TiVo has now will be launching home shopping services from your TV soon.

This move comes as TiVo seeks to position its product as more than just a tv recorder. Other new services include interactive games and information services along with online TV shows and movie content.

TiVo users will soon be able to access a catalogue of movies at any time. Some of these will be available for free and sponsored by advertising, whilst others will be on a pay per view basis.

Boss of TiVo Robbee Minicola said that TiVo users will be able to use a wide range of internet services which will include grocery and food shopping. Even the ability to order pizzas by March of 2009.

Interestingly and catering to public demand, most of the new services will be free to users and paid for with advertising. So only the TiVo and internet connection are needed.

Whilst the free movie downloads may be enticing viewers, one possible concern is consumers incurring large download fees from their internet service providers.

Of course worldtvpc is always totally free.