Search Results for: youtube

Let's face it: RealPlayer hasn't been a viable media player for almost ten years. As Technologizer's David Worthington wrote for Betanews in 2000, "A once useful media player's standard installation was transformed into a bloated menagerie of components and add-ons with the release of RealPlayer 7. These needlessly suck away system resources and add useless functionality..."

Today, RealNetworks finds itself competing not so much against Windows Media Player as with the likes of DownloadHelper. Real is now working to generate interest among free media consuming types with the launch of RealPlayer SP, which lets users download unprotected Flash videos to keep.

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The streaming-enhanced device market may still be dominated by Netflix, but video on demand service Vudu continues to fight its way into the picture. Today, the company announced its partnership with South Korean company LG will put Vudu directly on connected HDTVs.

Vudu debuted its own streaming set top box nearly two years ago, and managed to be one of the first companies to pump out HD streams. Though it had partnerships with such companies as Sharp and Best Buy, the streaming service was only available on Vudu's own hardware. Netflix, Amazon on Demand, and CinemaNow meanwhile all moved to put their services on hardware from a number of different manufacturers.

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Microsoft's scaling back of its social media initiatives continues, with the news today first reported by paidContent.org, learned during an interview with Corporate Vice President Erik Jorgensen, that MSN Video's Soapbox service will be shutting down completely. Soapbox has been its portal for user-submitted videos, but Jorgensen indicated to Fried that sponsorship for those videos -- which constituted about 5% of MSN Video's content portfolio -- was too low for the service to be sustained in the present economy.

In an interview with CNET's Ina Fried last month, Jorgensen stated then his team's intentions to scale back Soapbox, though he was careful at that time not to reveal the extent. The paidContent.org interview indicates that user-generated content may still be feasible on a revised MSN Video service, or whatever it should be called, although Microsoft is unlikely to give that content its own portal.

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In February, the US Senate cut nearly $250 million in aid to the motion picture industry from the economic stimulus bill. Legislators determined that Hollywood studios didn't need the "bailout" after enjoying several months of record-breaking sales.

Yesterday, however, the Motion Picture Association of America attempted to show lawmakers how important the entertainment industry is to the global economy, releasing a study (PDF available here) which suggests, "The production and distribution of motion pictures and television programs is one of the nation's most valuable cultural and economic resources," and therefore worthy of hefty tax breaks.

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The YouTube Symphony Orchestra gathered last night at Carnegie Hall to play an original Tan Dun piece composed specifically for the global competition that brought the group together. It's lovely. But I'm willing to bet that instead you were listening to a heretofore obscure singer absolutely flatten a roomful of doubters with a show tune.

Like a lot of us, I've been watching the Susan Boyle video repeatedly this week, trying to get at what it means for the Internet to have taken to heart, as the Britain's Got Talent audience took to heart, a middle-aged Scotswoman with ungroomed eyebrows and a frumpy Best Dress and a voice that seems to have broken something that needed breaking in hearts around the world.

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In the midst of a Draconian new South Korean law passed April 1 that could force some ISPs to enable lawmakers to suspend their customers' Internet accounts or face fines, Google's YouTube division has turned off some features that could, if misused under the new law, land its customers in prison.

The South Korean National Assembly narrowly passed a sweeping new law whose purpose was to create a system of accountability for the nation's Internet users. While ostensibly the new law is designed to discourage piracy, Korean journalists such as Korea Times' Kim Tong-hyung provide evidence that the law's true purpose may be to enable government authorities to keep tabs on all kinds of online behavior, including political and social networking.

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Another day, another arbitrarily-named video service.

Though Vevo is a name that could very easily be lost among the likes of Veoh and TiVo, the soon-to-be launched music video site has backers that are far from forgettable: Google and Vivendi, or, more specifically, YouTube and Universal Music Group.

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In a move which may have forestalled a deal that may have accelerated arch-rival Hulu's "evil plot" to assimilate consumers' brains, YouTube has made an extended deal with Disney Media Networks -- parent company of the American ABC and ESPN channels -- that not only gives ABC its own branded YouTube channel, but enables Disney to manage its own in-stream advertising.

This afternoon, a hastily-produced preview video was posted to ABC's new channel in a format that could not be embedded elsewhere, contrary to the usual YouTube methodology. And a two-and-a-half minute clip from a recent SportsCenter serves as a placeholder for future content on ESPN's new YouTube channel. ESPN already has a full-featured sports news and video highlight service on Disney's own Go Network, its homebase since 2004 after Disney and Microsoft's MSN terminated their deal.

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In YouTube's
blog yesterday, Patrick Walker, Director of Video Partnerships (Europe, Middle East, and Africa), announced that premium music video content would be blocked from view in the UK.

Citing a failure in negotiations with the publishing, composing, and songwriting organization PRS for Music (Performing Rights Society), Walker said, "The costs are simply prohibitive for us -- under PRS's proposed terms we would lose significant amounts of money with every playback. In addition, PRS is unwilling to tell us what songs are included in the license they can provide so that we can identify those works on YouTube -- that's like asking a consumer to buy an unmarked CD without knowing what musicians are on it."

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So begins a new day for the venerable YouTube, the popular video streaming site is testing downloadable videos which include both a free and a for-pay model.

Thai Tran, Product Manager at YouTube announced today in the site's official blog that YouTube is "going offline." That is to say, it is giving video owners the option to make their videos downloadable under the Creative Commons License. Also, the option to make the videos available through a Google Checkout purchase is being tested.

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Today, Google and YouTube announced the launch of www.youtube.com/vatican, the YouTube channel dedicated to the activities of the Pope and events in the smallest state in the world, Vatican City.

Footage on the channel comes from Centro Televisio Vaticano (CTV) and Vatican Radio (RV), so the primary language is Italian, but there will be information in Spanish, English, and German as well.

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Bringing YouTube to the living room television has been a mostly incomplete mission thus far. Series 3 and HD TiVo DVRs can browse YouTube, and Apple TV has been able to play clips from the site since 2007. Yesterday, YouTube announced youtube.com/tv, a new sub-site dedicated to bringing its content to connected devices, namely the PS3 and Wii.

"Very few...devices today contain a Web browser or provide access to YouTube," reads a YouTube Team blog post yesterday, "Our hope is that this site may help to accelerate an industry evolution towards open television access to Web video. Over time, we plan to add support for additional TV devices that provide Web browsers."

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This morning, Mashable's Stan Schroeder discovered some examples of independently submitted videos to YouTube where the music track has been muted, and a notice given to that effect. Apparently, the system Google has long promised for identifying music tracks by their signatures, is working.

But is it working everywhere? Schroeder's examples include a track of mainly music, with just an accompanying slide, by blues great Albert King, apparently "ripped" off of one of those big, spinning, vinyl things folks used to use for music. People do like to post music to YouTube for some reason, even if it's only accompanying a slide telling you what the music is. We went looking for other examples of copyrighted tracks to test the depth of its detection ability.

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After a two-year relationship, major label Warner Music Group has moved to temporarily terminate its partnership with video sharing site YouTube.

A statement from the record company said, "We simply cannot accept terms that fail to appropriately and fairly compensate recording artists, songwriters, labels and publishers for the value they provide."

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Google's popular video site YouTube yesterday unveiled a dedicated HD section for US users to watch videos in 720p high definition.

When a video's source upload supports higher resolution, YouTube will have a "watch it in HD" button below the player's lower right hand corner in the space where some videos had the "watch it in high quality" button. Clicking this button expands the standard viewing window to 16 x 9 with a 1280 x 720 resolution.

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