Wow. Netflix’s Watch Instantly service will the only place to see a new 26-episode version of House of Cards, based on the British show. It stars Kevin Spacey and is executive-produced by David Fincher, and generally sounds like something that you’d expect to show up on HBO or some other cable channel.

If this works–and even if it doesn’t–it could be one of the most important things that ever happened in the TV business. It could turn Netflix Watch Instantly from a place you go to watch somewhat stale old stuff into the only destination for a hot new program–and it could set off massive changes in how television content is distributed.

Isn’t the biggest single advantage that cable has over the Internet that it has the big shows first? What if that wasn’t a given? What if Netflix does more of these deals and starts to look more like an on-demand, all-you-can-eat HBO? Wouldn’t iTunes and Amazon and other well-heeled purveyors of Internet video be interested in doing similar exclusive deals? What if a sizable chunk of the most popular shows are Internet-only by, say, 2015?

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As I’ve proclaimed several times these last few months, smaller media consumption devices are poised to become our kitchen or den “televisions.” Of course, the tablet with the richest third party ecosystem is Apple’s iPad. And I don’t see that changing any time soon, despite possibly stifling some development via their recent subscription commission policy change. Comcast recently launched 3,000 hours of on demand iPad video content and announced their intentions to broadcast live video to tablets. I’m hopeful my provider Verizon follows suit. But beyond the broad aggregation by the larger players, there’s a huge amount of specialized or niche content – currently active… and those coming down the pike.

For 2011, CBS is offering a March Madness On Demand iPad app for free. In fact, I’m willing to bet their online streaming NCAA baskbetball properties are amongst the most lucrative when it comes to advertising. So why not give the app away? It’s expected to launch March 10th with games getting underway on the 15th. Unfortunately, my poor Maryland Terrapins aren’t even on the bubbleat this point.

Next up, 2011 looks to be the year that the BBC brings their online content to an international audience. It’s expected to launch later this year and will run “a small number of dollars per month, definitely fewer than 10.” Unlike a Netflix, the BBC iPlayer, in its current form. is referred to as a “catch up” service and only streams recent episodes versus entire seasons. But I’m hopeful the UK powers that be realize we have a lot of catching up to do here in the US… and will consider providing a more comprehensive library.

(This post republished from Zatz Not Funny.)

CBS said Tuesday that it had penned a two-year agreement to bring some of CBS’ most popular programming to the service. According to a press release issued by the network, the deal is non-exclusive. This likely means CBS is actively searching other methods of supplying its programming to viewers, a welcome sign considering many of the networks have been reticent to offer their content outside of their own walled gardens.

The content will begin appearing in April and include current content such as Medium and Flashpoint, as well as content from CBS’ classic library including Family Ties, Cheers, and Star Trek. CBS programming would be provided at no extra cost to Netflix users.

With the CBS deal Netflix becomes the only online entertainment service to offer content from all four major broadcast networks. Hulu comes close with Fox, NBC, and ABC on the service, but CBS still is holding out.

The TV industry created Hulu. It was good, and it was a hit. Now its inventors are worried that it’s too popular for its own good–and according to the Wall Street Journal, they’re talking about turning it into something quite different.

Wednesday is Press Day here at CES, a day when major consumer electronics players like LG, Netgear and Intel traditionally make big announcements in advance of the full show that starts tomorrow. If there’s an underlying message here in Las Vegas so far, it’s that companies are getting the word that consumers want to view more content–whether Hollywood- or user-generated–from and over the Internet, on devices ranging from TVs to PCs and smartphones.

In delivering a roadmap of LG’s TV plans for 2011 today, Tim Alessi, LG’s director of new product development for home electronics, listed “more content to watch”  – together with connectivity to home networks and easier-to-use 3D TV – as the three key linchpins for the year ahead.

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Venerable storage company Iomega has made its CES announcements. They include a unique new iPhone/iPod Touch dock, two TV boxes that are the first ones to run the Boxee software since D-Link’s original Boxee Box, and Web-enabled updates to its network storage products.

Waitaminnit–what is a storage company like Iomega doing making an iPhone dock? Well, its new SuperHero is a storage device: The $69.99 gizmo packs a 4GB SD card. And when you use it with Iomega’s iPhone app, it’ll back up your contacts and photos as you charge your phone. (If you’ve got more than 4GB of stuff, you can swap out the included SD card and insert one of your own.) If you lose your data–or lose your phone, period, and get a new one–you can use the Iomega app to restore the data.

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Does Microsoft have a competitor to Google TV and Apple TV? Sure: It’s called the Xbox 360, and I’ve always thought it was pretty smart of Microsoft to focus on making its gaming console into a well-rounded entertainment device rather than going head-to-head with purely TV-focused products. But the Seattle Times is reporting that among Microsoft’s CES announcements will be a Windows-based platform for $200 Internet TV boxes.

Could Hulu–or at least Hulu as we know it–cease to exist?

Ashlee Vance and Claire Cain Miller are reporting that Google is asking hardware companies to delay announcing Google TV products until it can refine the software, which has received iffy reviews. Sounds liked a good idea to me.

Google is rolling out the first major update to its ambitious, interesting, flawed Google TV platform. Among the improvements: the ability to search in Netflix, the power to move the Dual View picture-in-picture window around so it doesn’t block things, and an Android app that serves as a Google TV remote control.

Last Gadget Standing Nominee: Jade Live Broadcaster

Price: $219

As the world turns to video it’s easy to be left behind, especially if you’re on a limited budget. MCN Technologies’ Jade Live Broadcaster levels the video playing field by offering a network camera for live video broadcasting over the Internet. It’s an HD camera with H264/AAC compression and an 802.11b/g wireless interface.  The live content is distributed as a set of streams with different resolutions simultaneously (1280-by-720, 640-by-480, 320-by-240 and 160-by-120) with bit rates ranging from  2Mbps to 80Kbps, so viewers with smartphones connected to mobile broadband can view low bit rate streams while ones with HD players connected to high speed networks at home can watch high-quality video. Who knows, maybe we’ll test it out and start our own Last Gadget Broadcast station.

The Live Broadcaster is due to go on sale on January 16th, 2011.

Cord cutting–getting rid of cable or satellite TV–is the buzzword du jour in the TV and electronics industries. Pundits have proclaimed TV dead, or at least dying00going the way of the recording industry, which went from pricey CDs to cheaper downloads and now to mostly-free streaming.

That was the juiciest topic last Friday at New York University during the Future of Television Conference, a gathering of TV brass such as the CEO’s of Showtime and Univision, senior executives from MTV Networks, Discovery, and Yahoo, and founders of Internet video startups. The subject also permeated Pepcom’s Wine, Dine & Demo  tech show the night before, where about a half-dozen Internet-to-TV products were being shown.

The conclusion, at least to this reporter, is that cord cutting is about as real now as growing new organs in vats. Consumers will do it–but they won’t do it in droves just yet.

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At last week’s Web 2.0 Summit, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said that the company would soon let subscribers opt for a plan that included only Watch Instantly video streaming, without the ability to get DVDs by mail. He spoke the truth: Netflix is introducing a $7.99 plan that provides exactly that. (It’s been testing it for a while–I saw it as an option weeks ago.)

Any current Netflix subscriber can switch to the new plan right now, saving at least a dollar over the former pricing plans. Isn’t that going to hurt the company’s bottom line? Well, it has a strategy for making up the difference: Starting today, it’s also raising the price of all the plans that do include DVDs by at least $1. The new prices range from $9.99 for a one-DVD plan (formerly $8.99) to $55.99 for an eight-DVD one (formerly $47.99).

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The Wall Street Journal‘s Walt Mossberg and The New York Times‘ David Pogue are often among the first tech writers to review major new products. In the case of Google TV, however, they took a bit more time. Both wrote about the platform for their columns this week (here’s Walt’s story and here’s David’s), a few weeks after the first reviews. (such as mine) appeared. Neither of them is impressed–they have overlapping-but-not-identical lists of usability gripes, and come to the conclusion, as I did, that it’s just not ready for prime time.

At this point, I think it’s fair to say that Google TV, as represented by the first products that incorporate it–Logitech’s Revue and Sony’s TV and Blu-Ray player–is a critical dud. (I got a advertising e-mail from Logitech that optimistically referred to happy critics writing positive reviews, but it linked only to Oliver Starr’s review at TechCrunch, which is the most favorable one I’ve seen.)

I’m curious how well the Logitech and Sony products will sell this Christmas, especially since they compete with much cheaper options, such as the Roku players which start at $59.99. Also unknown: Is Google going to stick with Google TV for the long haul, or will it turn out to be a Wave-like fling? I hope that the company sticks with the idea and improves it–for one thing, I think the people who buy Google TV devices this year are getting an alpha product and deserve to get a more polished update. For another, I still think the idea has plenty of potential–a Google TV with fewer bugs and kludgy design decisions and a more harmonious relationship with Hollywood could be a winner.

Comcast launched the Xfinity TV app to much fanfare this week, and though we knew it was coming, we didn’t know all the nitty gritty details until we got our own hands on. After a test run on the iPad, here’s my take on the good, the bad, and the future of the Xfinity app.

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“Watching TV is supposed to be fun, right?” asked AT&T’s Michael Johnston. In a press event at the AT&T Labs in New York City, Johnston and other researchers showed off  iRemote, Talkalytics, and dozens of other projects now under way for using AT&T’s long-time Watson speech recognition together with search, gestures, and Twitter analysis.

With all the hundreds of TV channels available today, it can be harder than ever to figure out what to watch, Johnston observed. But through a new iRemote app currently in development, you can speak voice commands into a smartphone to get an immediate list of “all reality shows on Thursday night”–and other categories of TV programs small enough to easily digest — on your TV screen.

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