Technologizer » Streaming Media

Comcast Launching On Demand Online Shortly

Ed Oswald — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 17:17:14 +0000

After testing out its latest online offering with about 5,000 customers earlier this summer, Comcast is set to launch On Demand Online with all customers by the end of the year, the company is saying. As we reported earlier, the feature would work much like Hulu does although it would be available only to Comcast subscribers.

According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, Comcast has struck deals with about two dozen cable and movie channels to provide content. There is some bad news here though. You won’t gain access to the entire lineup of online content — only what is included in your package.

Either way, the move signals an effort by the entertainment industry to get a leg up on illicit distribution of programming. By offering the programming itself, and on-demand, the urge to run for BitTorrent and the like may be lessened for some.

Take the music industry for example. It decided to resist the digital movement, and ended up getting burnt badly. Only now is the industry beginning to gain some foothold in the digital world.

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The Pirate Bay’s Next Target: YouTube.

Ed Oswald — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 17:28:10 +0000

The creators of the popular BitTorrent search engine The Pirate Bay have turned their sights on a new market: streaming video. The Video Bay aims to take on sites like YouTube and Hulu by offering pirated TV shows and movies through a web browser.

Right now the site is in a pre-launch test phase, and the creators warn that the site may not function at all. Indeed in our own tests we were unable to play any videos. However, if these folks are successful in getting the site off the ground, it could turn the entire industry on its head.

As it stands now, the content providers control how and where you view their content, and technological barriers prevent many from using pirated content. Simply put, the maze of compression and conversion tools, players, and file types are often too complicated for the average consumer.

The Video Bay would make all that unnecessary. All the user would need is a web browser — obtaining pirated material would be as easy as viewing a video on YouTube. That has to scare the entertainment industry.

Of course, the entertainment industry has already been working hard to stop The Pirate Bay, winning a $3.8 million judgement against its creators in April of this year. It remains to be seen whether that may stop the group, but so far they remain defiant.

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SlingPlayer Mobile: Coming Soon to an iPhone Near You

Harry McCracken — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 09:43:59 +0000

Sling Media’s Slingbox TV place-shifting box was meant to hook up with the iPhone. (Which is a self-serving thing of me to say–I own a Slingbox and an iPhone, and one of the things I miss about my old AT&T Tilt phone is the ability to watch stuff stored on my TiVo back home on it.) So I’m tickled that Sling is demoing an iPhone edition of its SlingPlayer Mobile software this week at Macworld Expo. It says it’ll finish it up by the end of this quarter. I’m a little worried about just how quickly streaming live TV over the iPhone 3G’s Internet connection will drain my battery down to zero–but I’m still looking forward to getting my hands on it.

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