Streaming Video Blog

As expected, Comcast announced its buyout of NBC this morning, and we have a few details of interest to Engadget readers and fans of rom-coms alike. Essentially, Comcast now owns 51 percent of NBC-Universal to GE’s 49 percent and will manage the entity — leveraging the newly acquired content with their infrastructure. On an investor call (reported by All Things Digital) a short time ago, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts emphasized that the company bought “a bunch of profitable cable channels” and “some theme parks, too” (we think that last part was a joke). Not so funny, of course, is the film studio that’s seen better years and the broadcast network that’s been described elsewhere as “faltering.” When asked about TV Everywhere andHulu, Comcast COO Steve Burke notes that “NBC has been careful not to put too much cable content on the Internet. We think that’s a smart strategy… We think that going forward, you’re going to continue to have free broadcast stuff on Hulu, and cable stuff on TV Everywhere.” As for rumors of Hulu Premium? “That’s certainly not in the cards.” Web-based TV fanatics will be pleased to note that Roberts appears to be in your court: “We love Hulu and have no intent to crush it like a bug.” That’s all well and good, but as we know nothing’s final until the government has its say: the FCC, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Justice Department are all sure to have strongly held opinions on the matter.

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nivision’s agreement with Google to bring television content toYouTube may not seem all that important on the surface, but in reality, this is actually a pretty big deal for everyone who watches TV online.

Univision will host current, full-length programming on YouTube — something mainstream networks such as CBS and NBC don’t do. That means you’ll get shows like “El Gordo Y La Flaca” and “Despierta America.” In a statement, YouTube called the deal one of the site’s “most comprehensive partnerships for full-length content to date.”

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Akamai Technologies is extending its content delivery network to the Apple iPhone as it introduces the Akamai HD Network, a system for streaming high-definition live and on-demand video to a variety of devices.

The HD Network will let content and service providers offer online video that matches the traditional TV and DVR (digital video recorder) experience through buffering, adapting to network and processing speeds and features for navigating the content, Akamai said on a video announcement on Tuesday. The company is pitching the technology, an upgrade to its existing network, to streaming video providers now.

Consumers will be able to watch HD Network content on PCs in the Adobe Flash and Microsoft Silverlight formats, but also on the iPhone, said Akamai President and CEO Paul Sagan. He gave few details about the iPhone offering, including which mobile operators or third-party content providers might use it. But if Akamai’s infrastructure can deliver high-quality live video to the popular handsets and AT&T’s 3G network can handle the strain, it could be a boon to iPhone users.

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Four tools for finding video content:

• jinni
• Clerkdogs
• Toobla
• Nanocrowd

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Now on every video player on Hulu’s site, you’ll see a new Continuous Play bar under the video player. On the far right is a dropdown that shows what playlist of videos Continuous Play is working from. For now, there are three primary types of playlists.

• One is Your Queue, mentioned earlier.
• The next class is Collections, which have always been part of our site, but which now play continuously.
• The last type of playlist is more of whichever title you’re watching.

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It Looks like Kyte has added HD Livie Streming. Allowing high definition, professional-grade live streaming. It uses Adobe’s FLash Media Live Encoder and is an add-on component to Kyte’s publishing platform. pecial events such as live concerts, press conferences, sporting event and more are perfect for this professional broadcast solution.

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AT&T launched a Web site Friday that offers users free access to full-length movies and television shows.

The site, called AT&T Entertainment, has a similar design to Hulu, and it features content from the likes of NBC, CBS, CNBC, ABC, SyFy, Oxygen, The CW, USA Network, and other networks. The site shares some of the same content as Hulu due to a licensing agreement, and it uses the Hulu embedded player for some shows and films.

Users can freely access the site to view videos, but AT&T U-Verse users will also be able to use the site to remotely manage their digital video recorders. AT&T is trying to tap a growing market, as a recent report from Ipsos MediaCT said 67% of Internet users have streamed or downloaded digital video.

“We know our customers want to be able to access their favorite content anytime, anywhere,” said Dan York, executive VP at AT&T, in a statement. “AT&T Entertainment provides the one-stop destination to watch your favorite TV shows and movies on your PC, wherever you have a broadband connection. The site will grow and evolve to make more content available to consumers in new and better ways.”

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Thanks to a partnership with streaming video firm Livestream, customers using Brightcove Inc. ’s online video platform will now be able to easily record and publish their live videos.

Using newly released Livestream APIs, the companies have developed a way for customers to feed their pre-recorded live video streams into the Brightcove video management system. Customers can also use any custom video players or templates that have been built through Brightcove for new live streams, ensuring the same user experience, whether a stream is live or on-demand.

Not only will customers be able to manage videos from Livestream like any other video asset, but the relationship will also allow them to use the same reporting, analytics, and monetization tools for those videos as for those that are directly uploaded into the Brightcove platform.

While most customers use Brightcove’s platform to manage and distribute on-demand video content, the partnership gives the company an easy way to attack the live video market. Previously any customers that wanted to feed live video into the Brightcove system needed to bring their own live encoding system to do so. Now they can simply feed into Livestream’s live video platform.

“Many of our customers are becoming more and more intrigued by the possibility of doing live streaming,” says Chris Johnston, Brightcove’s director of technology partnerships.

While the companies worked together on technical integration through Livestream’s APIs, there is not a sales or marketing aspect to this partnership — so customers that want to feed live channels into their Brightcove libraries will need to sign up for accounts with both companies.

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Online video streaming remains a tiny part of TV viewers’ media consumption, but Dave Poltrack, CBS’ research head, has noticed trends that could make premium broadband ads more valuable than broadcast spots. Taking a panoramic overview of viewing data from Nielsen, MRI and CBS’ own internal research, Poltrack see more older viewers starting to watch online video in greater numbers, suggesting that the form is becoming mainstream and that ad dollars should follow suit. He used the research to back up a presentation to the Television Critics Association in Pasadena this week (B&C has that story). We’ve got the full deck and have mined it for you to find the latest on valuing digital ads, viewer behavior online and more (View select slides here or download the full presentation):

—Valuing digital ads: At the center of the study was an attempt to figure out how to wring dollars from digital video. Right now, broadcast is by far still the most profitable, followed by DVRs and then online. Keep in mind that an average hour-long prime-time show has about 10 minutes of ads—or roughly twenty spots. About 95 percent of a program’s audience sees the ads live, so the average live viewer is exposed to 19.5 ads. DVR viewers tend to skip a little over one-half of the ad. A DVR video gets a significant amount of playback during a three-day window covered by Nielsen’s C3 DVR ratings. That means the network only gets revenue from 44 percent of the ads—the equivalent of just 8.8 ads. But streaming videos tend to include about two minutes of ads, and even though those have an exposure of practically 100 percent, online videos have ad value of just 4.0.

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Major League Baseball took another step in proving its technical superiority over the other three major sports leagues Wednesday, by connecting its wired MLB.TV subscription package with its At Bat iPhone application.

Beginning Wednesday, MLB will stream every single regular and postseason baseball game to fans via the $9.99 iPhone and iPod Touch application it initially released last year. Customers who already subscribe to MLB.TV and MLB.TV Premium packages–its online baseball viewing service–can now watch any game live from their phone or computer. The games will be streamed over the iPhone or iPod’s Wi-Fi connection or 3G network. Games can be paused and rewound while playing.

Just after the iPhone OS 3.0 update was released in June, MLB added the feature that any purchasers of the At Bat app would get one free streamed game per week chosen by MLB, no MLB.TV subscription required. It took a little over a month to add the MLB.TV package, which streams 15 live games at a time.

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