The Blog for Video 2.0

Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced at the Wall Street Journal's D: All Things Digital conference that the Apple TV will soon be upgraded with a 160GB version and with support for downloading clips from YouTube.

The more open support of a-non iTunes video source is great news for Apple TV owners. It is also interesting to note that third party developers have already hacked Apple TV with a YouTube plugin.

This could lead to future deals with other providers of movie downloads such as HungryFlix.com.

Labels: apple tv, hungryflix, iTunes, youtube

The Steven Spielberg/Mark Burnett Reality/Talent show "On The Lot" premiered this week on Fox. "On The Lot" is Project Greenlight meets American Idol…thousands of filmmakers from across the globe submitted short films into the online portion of the contents. Those entries were voted on by web site visitors and the top 50 filmmakers were invited to LA to take part in the show. After weeks of competitions one final winner will be awarded a $1 million development deal.

The show followed the typical reality competition format. Contestant interviews were mixed between challenges and a review session by a panel of three judges. Sound familiar? The first challenge was to create a deliver a pitch from one of five randomly assigned log lines. With fifty contestants in the mix, we were only shown some of the best highlights and lowlights. Fourteen people were eliminated after their pitch just didn't sell with the judges.

The next challenge is to write/produce/direct/edit a 2.5 minute short film. Again, the filmmakers were given a log line. This time they will work in teams of three and have 24 hours to complete the film. Of course, this is where the real drama starts as strong minded people are forced to work together in a pressure situation.

Overall, "On The Lot" seems to have potential to be an interesting look at the filmmaking process. Here's to hoping that it can move past the basic reality competition format already beaten into the ground by American Idol and The Apprentice.

Labels: filmmaking, fox, indie film, on the lot

Amazon yesterday unveiled a plan to take on Apple's dominance in digital music, promising to offer downloads of millions of tracks from thousands of labels after signing a deal with EMI.

The online retailer's virtual store, to be launched this year, was announced in the wake of EMI offering its entire digital catalogue in a format free of digital rights management (DRM) software.

Amazon said all tracks from its download service would be in plain MP3 format, allowing them to be transferred between and played on almost any device, including Apple's market-leading iPod, and burned to CD without restriction.

This is more good news for consumers and music fans. It finally seems that the rest of the world is now agreeing with us here at HungryFlix that DRM only serves to annoy and frustrate true customers while doing nothing to stop true pirates.

HungryFlix.com has been selling movie downloads with no DRM since our inception.

Labels: amazon, digital download, DRM

Forrester Research has just published an article stating that paid downloads of video content is doomed to failure and that only ad supported models will work.

While we have many issues with the findings, the number one issue seems to be the lack of explaination on why ad supported models are viewed as preferred by consumers? With the popularity of Tivo and iTunes downloads it seems clear to us here at HungryFlix that consumers do in fact prefer to have long form content free of ads.

The research is in direct opposition to an Adams Media note from Feb. Here is a link:
http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=technologyNews&storyid=2007-02-21T143723Z_01_N21273243_RTRUKOC_0_US-INTERNET-VIDEO.xml&src=rss

HungryFlix.com has been providing paid movie downloads of premium indie films since 2005. We continue to see growth in the market.

Labels: iTunes, online distribution, online video, video download

Roxio on Tuesday introduced Crunch, a new $39.99 application designed especially for users of the Apple TV, video iPod or the forthcoming iPhone who want to convert video optimized for those devices but don’t want to burn that content to disc.

Roxio's site mentions the following features:

* Convert DV, AVI, MOV, MPEG-4, MPEG-2, DivX, DVD-Video, Video_TS folders, and more
* Automatically add converted video to your iTunes library for easy syncing with your Apple TV, iPod, or iPhone
* Powerful award-winning video conversion technology from the makers of Toast®.

For those of us "open" to Open Source software, another option is the widely popular HandBrake. HandBrake is available for Mac, Windows and Linux. The latest beta version adds support for Apple TV and the Sony PSP.

Labels: apple tv, crunch, h.264, handbrake, ipod, mpeg4, psp, roxio, video encoding

NewTeeVee's Om Malik is reporting that YouTube is going to pay their top users. While the plans are not crystal clear, it seems that YouTube will be sharing some portion of AdSense revenue with their current top producers.

The company will launch a program that puts the creators of some of the more popular YouTube channels — including Lonelygirl15, LisaNova, HappySlip, renetto, Smosh, and valsartdiary — on the same playing field as large media partners like CBS.

Time will tell in how effective this program is...it is interesting that YouTube has limited the inital rollout to just "star" users. HungryFlix.com has run with a revenue sharing model from Day One of launch in 2005.

Labels: hungryflix, revenue sharing, video, youtube

HungryFlix.com has announced that its online distribution platform is now open to film festivals looking to add digital downloading to their offerings.

HungryFlix.com will provide all hosting, bandwidth and payment processing for the film festival. The site’s standard profit sharing model in which profits will be split between the content provider and the online distributor will apply.

Andrews added, “By using our platform for online distribution, any film festival—even a small local festival—can now be international. This can be a great additional marketing source for the festival and more importantly, the filmmakers. It truly is a win-win scenario.”

Film festival organizers can contact HungryFlix.com for more information at info@hungryflix.com

http://www.hungryflix.com

Labels: digital download, film festival, hungryflix, indie film, online distribution