streaming

As many of you know, Amazon offers a "Prime" membership option. For $79 a year, this membership would net you free two-day shipping and overnight shipping for only $4. Naturally, order enough from Amazon, and the cost of the membership will be less than the shipping costs saved in addition to the convenience of quick shipping. However, now Amazon has added another perk to being a Prime member: unlimited no-charge video streaming. ...read more

Alright, so YouTube being a popular portal for online videos is hardly news, but get this. According to the official YouTube blog, the Google-owned video site receives 35 hours of video uploads per minute. We dusted off our abacus and figured out that comes to 2.100 hours uploaded every hour, or 50,400 hours every day.

"Another way to think about it is: if three of the major US networks were broadcasting 24 horus a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year for the last 60 years, they still wouldn't have broadcast as much content as is uploaded to YouTube every 30 days," YouTube said.

Mind boggling, eh?

"World-famous record label Warner Music has announced today plans to stop providing content for free music streaming services such as Spotify and Last.fm. Speaking to BBC News, Warner chief executive Edgar Bronfman Jr said that "free streaming services are clearly not net positive for the industry and as far as Warner Music is concerned will not be licensed."

Instead, Warner has expressed interest in a subscription-based model. Similar to Spotify's premium service, the model would allow consumers to pay a monthly fee in order to get access to the streaming catalogue. Claiming that there are more potential subscribers than people buying music on iTunes, Bronfman believes that subscriptions could be taken up by "hundreds of millions, if not billions of people."

Spotify has rejected claims that Warner Music may stop providing content for its free music streaming service. According to a post on Spotify's official twitter account Warner Music is not pulling out of Spotify and the company claims it's the media "taking things out of context". " source

"When the SlingPlayer iPhone app launched last May, it was hamstrung by AT&T's insistence that it stream video only over Wi-Fi. It was an untenable position, given that MLB.com and others already stream over 3G. Today, finally, the carrier relented.

This has been in the works since mid-December, and both companies still need Apple's sign-off before the new 3G SlingPlayer app is available. And don't worry: if you'd previously purchased the $30 Wi-Fi only app, you'll get a free upgrade once the new version is available.

As for what it will do to AT&T's already clogged 3G network, only time and a few dozen dropped calls will tell." source

"Alright, before you jump on your sofa Tom Cruise-style, these rights don't relate to the NBA, NFL or anything else quite so exciting to the Western viewer. Google's master plan for getting into the cutthroat sports broadcasting world is to start with... Indian Premier League cricket. Oh sure, you don't know what that even is yet, but plenty of people in the Eastern hemisphere live and die by the stuff and YouTube's slated to start broadcasting live matches from March of this year. What should be tantalizing for all of us is that Google seems to be taking this as a pilot venture which, if successful, could be the harbinger of plenty more live streaming content to come. Cricket at the vanguard of modern content distribution -- who could've expected that?" source

"Today, Netflix and Nintendo have announced that the Wii is now going to be the third and final major console to get access to the on-demand streaming content library. Netflix again skirts the exclusive deal with Microsoft by offering a disc that has to be in the Wii at all times for the content to be accessible.

Users will need at least a $9 monthly subscription to Netflix to access the streaming catalog. The PS3 and Wii will be cheaper ways to access streaming Netflix content than the Xbox 360. Xbox users are required to have an Xbox Live gold membership to access Netflix content. " source