July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

If you’ve ever sat up at 3 am with a pint of Ben & Jerry’s, whining that there is “nothing good on TV,” soon you will have no grounds for complaint.

Amazon is giving you the power to decide what TV shows are made. The company has posted pilots for six kids shows and eight sitcoms, prompting the audience to choose which should become full-fledged original series on Amazon Instant Prime Video.

The kids selection includes shows about a kid scientist, magical adventures in Oz, and the journeys of Fix the fox. For adults, there is Zombieland (which is based on the hit movie), an animated sci-fi option called Dark Minions. Alpha House was written by Academy Award nominee and Pulitzer-Prize winner Garry Trudeau about four senators, and Betas follows four startup kids searching for success in Silicon Valley.

TV, as we know it, is changing. TV shows are traditionally produced by an elite cabal of Hollywood executives and distrbuted through networks and cable providers. However, as people consume more and more of their content online, power is shifting and Internet companies are playing a bigger role in how we satisfy our cravings for entertainment, as well as what we watch.

Amazon Instant Prime Video has more than 33,000 movies and TV episodes that you can instantly stream across multiple devices. Over the past couple years, Amazon has kept busy signing licensing agreements with networks like A&E and NBC in an effort to catch up to competitors Netflix and Hulu. However, Netflix and Hulu both produce original content, which has proven a necessity for grabbing and holding onto a large subscriber base. Not wanting to be left in the dust, Amazon announced in May 2012 that it would develop its own lineup of original children’s shows and sitcoms.

Now the audience gets to decide. This approach is a reversal from how TV shows are usually made. In the past, it is more of a guessing game based on intuition, experience, and ratings. Shows get made and you hope people watch them. In this case, people are expressing their interest ahead of time.

However, for Amazon, this play is about more than staying competitive with Netflix and Hulu. Amazon has a range of other services, beyond entertainment. The video streaming service is one of the perks offered to people who sign up for Amazon Prime, a $79 per year premium membership, and original programming is part of the company’s strategy to boost prime memberships, which drive more business to its online retail store.

Photo Credit: Shutterstock

Streaming videos can be expensive, particularly if there is a lot of goo plugging the tubes of the internet. Uplynk’s business is making sure that your video streams properly and gets around that goo.

That’s not exactly how they describe it, but that’s my interpretation. The Los Angeles company is emerging from stealth mode today with the release of its HD Adaptive Streaming Platform. One of its major customers is Disney and its ABC Television Group. The Uplynk platform delivers video to multiple platforms with flexibility and low costs. This is important to video web sites as the number of platforms multiplies. Companies such as Netflix have to encode a single movie as many as 120 times to reach the audience it wants to hit.

It does so by encoding video in the cloud using a single, non-proprietary adaptive format. That enables video to play on all major platforms and devices, including  iOS, Android, Windows 8, Roku and all PC/Mac/Linux browser combinations. In turn, that gets rid of the need to encode a video multiple times or repackage it on the fly. Uplynk has applied for patents on this adaptive playback technology. By reducing the amount of video, it cuts costs for encoding, storage, encryption and distribution. It can turnaround video faster, as it uploads, encrypts and encodes video simultaneously.

Disney/ABC Television Group chose Uplynk to deliver its content across platforms. Uplynk manages video encoding for web, mobile and tablet streaming apps for the ABC Player, ABC Family and Watch Disney apps, including Watch Disney Channel, Watch Disney Junior, and Watch Disney XD. Uplynk is a managed software as a service solution.

“Uplynk is changing the way broadcasters stream video by collapsing the traditional video workflow,” said Ken Brueck, Chief Marketing Officer of upLynk.

Uplynk was founded in 2010 and it has 10 employees. It competes against home-grown solutions at major media companies. Uplynk is self-funded. Its founder includes David Brueck, who was part of the team that holds the patent for adaptive bitrate streaming. David Brueck has a decade of streaming experience.

“It’s not so much about managing complexity with the cloud, but removing complexity using the cloud,” said Skarpi Hedinsson, senior vice president of technology and platform at Disney Interactive Media Group. “The upLynk platform offers significant operational efficiency and simplifies the process of reaching audiences on any device or platform while maintaining a high quality viewing experience.”

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

How do you stand out in the increasingly crowded live video-streaming market? In the case of Livestream, it’s by killing the ads.

Today the company announced that it’s offering free live video broadcasting access via Livestream.com and a new iPhone app, Livestream for Producers, without any ads cluttering the experience. That means no banner ads, no preroll ads, and no mid-roll ads (which always feel particularly egregious in live broadcasts).

“We’ve been in the business with ad-supported free streaming, but early last year we realized the user experience [with ads] was starting to get really disruptive,” Livestream cofounder and CEO Max Haot told VentureBeat in an interview yesterday.

At that point, he was unsure of just how productive ads were for a free streaming service, and he also noticed that competitors began using mid-roll ads. All of that led the company to consider an entirely new way of monetizing, similar to how Twitter avoided just plugging ads into your stream of tweets.

“We just believe that the winning platform … is one without ads,” Haot said.

Here’s how the new ad-free Livestream service works: Anyone can start broadcasting video via the company’s website, or the new iPhone app. You’ll no longer be able to embed free video streams, but you can easily share your link to the stream on Livestream.com. And once you have a stream saved, you’ll have access to it for 30 days. To watch your free stream, viewers will have to log in to Livestream, either with an account from the site or through Facebook.

If you need to archive videos longer than a month, or want to unlock the log in restriction for viewing your streams, you can upgrade to a producer account for $45 a month. It may seem like Livestream is trying to coax free users into the premium plan, but Haot tells me the company will welcome the influx of new free users as well.

“Ultimately, we really want to build the biggest live event community on Livestream.com,” he said. The company expects around 90 percent of users to stick with the free plan, while the rest will opt for the Producer Account or the original $269 a month Livestream premium account.

The new Livestream for Producers iPhone app marks the first time the company has offered live broadcasting on a mobile device, something that competitor Ustream has offered for some time. Livestream has mostly been focused on event broadcasting up until now, Haot tells me. The company spent a lot of time making sure the new iPhone app works particularly well on 3G networks, which often have limited badwidth available for video streaming.

Livestream still hasn’t revealed how it will unlock embedding videos under its new platform, but Haot says the company will announce more details in the next few weeks.

Livestream is based in New York City and has raised around $13 million in funding so far.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Ustream has promoted co-founder and president Brad Hunstable to CEO of the popular live-streaming video service, the company announced Wednesday morning.

Hunstable has been serving as interim CEO since November 2011, when former CEO John Ham stepped down to return to “his entrepreneurial roots.” Since that time, Ustream’s board has been on the lookout for a new CEO. In a not-so-surprising move, it decided that Hunstable would be the right person for the job.

To illustrate why Hunstable got the promotion, check out these numbers. In the first half of 2012 vs. the first half of 2011, Ustream has seen a 170 percent bump in subscribers to its Pro Broadcasting service, 290 percent in subscriber revenue growth, and 300 percent growth in Pay-Per-View revenue.

It also doesn’t hurt that Ustream has a partnership in place with NASA, which has led to hugely popular live streams of the Mars rover landing and the SpaceX Dragon capsule capture by the International Space Station.

“We’ve had incredible growth in the first half of this year,” Hunstable told VentureBeat. “Not only did we bring in new high-level talent, but we also launched new products.”

Ustream’s numbers look good for two reasons: social engagement and mobile usage. On the social front, Ustream embraced Facebook’s Timeline and “open graph” to attract many new users. Additionally, the company has seen mobile usage from iPhone, Android, and other apps sharply increase.

“Open graph has driven more viewers to us while mobile has been driving more broadcasters,” Hunstable said. “One out of eight streams are broadcasting from mobile and one out of five viewers are watching from mobile.”

Before co-founding Ustream with Ham, Hunstable served in the United States Army as an Operations Officer and a development manager for Hillwood Development.

Brad Hunstable photo: About.com/BradHunstable

Want to know who’s smiling right now? Netflix CEO Reed Hastings.

Hastings’s previously beleaguered Netflix is in the midst of a stock resurgence: Its shares have spiked nearly 20 percent in the past two days to $81.72.

The stock boost comes two days after Hastings made the mind-boggling announcement that Netflix subscribers watched over one billion hours of content in June. That’s 33 million hours every day.

Hastings was also bullish on the very real chance that these numbers would only increase as Netflix introduces its next round of original content — the Keven Spacey adaptation of British political drama House of Cards and the Netflix-produced revival of cult comedy series Arrested Development.

The turnaround is a significant one because it comes less than a year after Netflix took a major kick to the teeth due to the so-called Qwikster disaster. Hastings tried to split Netflix’s DVD and streaming businesses, but investors weren’t having it. The ill-advised move decimated the company’s stock value, causing it to lose 72 percent of its value in a matter of months. Things weren’t looking great.

Fortunately, things seem to be turning around for the company as of late. The company’s Q2 earnings are due July 24, and it will be interesting to see the final numbers for the quarter.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Video platform Ooyala has raised a $35 million fifth round of funding from Telstra Applications and Ventures Group. Its platform powers videos on sites such as ESPN, Rolling Stone, and Victoria’s Secret.

Unlike user-generated content powerhouse YouTube, Ooyala hosts promotional and brand-focused videos. The company also works with television providers to put broadcast shows online through digital TV solutions.

Founded by former Googlers, the company is based in Mountain View, Calif., and has raised a disclosed $79 million in funding to date. The full press release follows:

OOYALA RAISES $35 MILLION TO DRIVE STANDARDIZATION OF ITS PLATFORM FOR ONLINE VIDEO STREAMING, MONETIZATION AND DISCOVERY

Telstra, Australia’s largest telecommunications company, leads Series E round; Ooyala to use funds to scale international operations; meet increased demand from multi-service operators and TV programmers

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. (June 18, 2012) – Ooyala today announced it has raised $35 million in new capital to aggressively standardize video experiences provided by multi-service operators (MSO’s) and TV programmers worldwide on the Ooyala video streaming, monetization and discovery platform. Telstra Applications and Ventures Group, a subsidiary of Australia’s largest telecommunications and information services company Telstra, led the Series E round, with prior investors Sierra Ventures, Rembrandt Venture Partners and CID Group participating in addition to other strategic investors.

In addition to leading the investment round, Telstra and Ooyala are working on a commercial agreement that, once finalized, will mean Telstra will also become a major Ooyala customer and reseller, deploying Ooyala software, analytics and service offerings throughout Australia, where they will work with content owners to transition from traditional video delivery to IP-based distribution.

Telstra will join Ooyala’s network of major reseller partners that include Telefonica and Yahoo! Japan. Telstra is Australia’s leading telecommunications and information services company with presence in 15 countries including China. It operates Australia’s largest fully integrated IP network and its largest and fastest wireless broadband network, and is one of the country’s 20 largest companies by market capitalization. Its cable and media assets include multi-device IPTV offerings, Big Pond Broadband, Big Pond Movies, a 50% ownership in Foxtel and other assets.

Telstra’s current multi-device IPTV offerings will be enhanced through the integration of Ooyala’s online video technology and analytics. Combining Telstra and Ooyala provides the opportunity to take advantage of the strengths of both organizations to better service the Australian market. Telstra will work closely with Ooyala to allow for the smooth transition of services and allow customers to reap the benefits of the new model.

Ooyala will use the new capital to fuel its market momentum with MSO’s and TV programmers. The company will add scale particularly to its operations outside of the U.S., building on its existing footprint in Europe, Asia Australia and Latin America. Over half of Ooyala’s business is outside the U.S. where large international customer wins have helped make it the fastest-growing company in online video, quadrupling revenues since its last funding round in September 2010.

“Online video is becoming synonymous with TV.  Service Operators everywhere are redefining their offerings for digital, multi-screen consumption, and Ooyala is the innovation leader helping them transition their business models to not only maintain but improve the economics of traditional television,” said Jay Fulcher, chief executive officer of Ooyala.

Gary Traver, director of Telstra Media, said, “The industry is now standardizing around technology stacks that enable the future of IP-based distribution. With Ooyala’s robustness and focus on personalization and profitability, it is becoming the platform on which the next generation of large-scale deployments are built.”

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

One feature that’s been noticeably absent from Google TV, Google’s connected-TV platform, is something akin to Apple’s AirPlay,  which allows iPad and iPhone the ability to stream content directly to Apple TV. But the little-known Taiwanese manufacturer Honeywld is working to change that.

Its upcoming Google TV set-top box will be able to receive streaming content directly from Android tablets and smartphones, the company told IDGNews. This will allow users to very easily move content from smaller screens to their televisions.

Alongside video, the device will also be able to synchronize other media content like music and pictures. To do this, users will have to install a special app onto their smartphones and tablets that will allow the streaming. Honeywld says the app is still in development.

On the hardware side, the device comes equipped with 1GB RAM, 4GB flash storage, a MicroSD card slot, and HDMI and Ethernet ports.

There are some complications, however. First, Honeywld is a tiny, tiny company, and its staff of 40 people won’t be able to bring the box’s production up to a global scale. To solve this, the company told IDG that it hopes to get a larger company to buy it from them and resell it globally.

There’s also the very real chance that Google will include the streaming functionality in the next version of the Google TV OS, which will make whatever Honeywld rolls out pretty superfluous.

Google’s response to this notion was, predictably, pretty vague. ”We see lots of potential in having all of your living room devices work together, whether that’s from us or from our growing developer community,” a Google TV spokesperson told VentureBeat. What this means for the future is anyone’s guess, but it still seems pretty likely that Google would introduce the streaming feature in the future.

There’s also the matter of price. Honeywld plans to sell the device for somewhere around $100, which seems like a lot to ask for a device that only has 4GB of flash storage.

But what’s good news here is that manufacturers, even the tiniest of ones, haven’t yet given up hope on Google’s television ambitions. With some high-profile failures, it’s been a tough road for Google TV, but if the recent resurgence on support is any indication, the platform could be on its way back up.

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Google’s Hangouts group video-chat on Google+ continues to be the social network’s most compelling feature. Today, Google is opening up the Hangouts On Air feature to all users, allowing them to broadcast their video chat sessions for the world to see.

Google first debuted the live-streaming feature last year, but it was only available to select performers and celebrities. President Obama and the Dalai Lama both used the feature to stream live video chats, which proved that Google+ Hangouts feature was robust enough to take on live-streaming mainstays like Ustream and Livestream.

You can make any Google+ Hangout live by clicking the “Enable Hangouts On Air” button, and it will then be accessible from your Google+ stream, your YouTube page, or your website (if you’ve embedded the stream). You’ll be able to see how many people are tuning into your live broadcast, and Google will also place a copy of your live Hangout session in your YouTube account for posterity.

Google says the feature will be rolled out over the next few weeks (I currently don’t see it in my Hangouts options). The company recently introduced a slew of new Hangouts apps and games, including Google Effects, which lets you add wacky accessories to your video like fake glasses and facial hair.

The streaming video company, which specializes in providing online access to network television content, brought in $420 million in revenue in 2011, Kilar said in a blog post on the company’s 2011 performance.

The revenue figure is up 60 percent from 2010, though it is less than the $500 million revenue estimate projected back in September. Hulu also grew Hulu Plus, its all-you-can-eat $8 per month offering, to a subscriber base of 1.5 million paying customers.

“Hulu Plus has reached 1.5 million paid subscribers faster than any video subscription service launch (online or offline) in U.S. history,” Kilar claimed. “We expect our subscription services to account for more than half of Hulu’s overall business later this year.”

Kilar is so confident in Hulu’s business, and its ability to turn a profit with a dual ad-subscription revenue stream, that he said the company will spend roughly $500 million — $80 million more than it made in 2011 — on acquiring new content for the service in 2012.

How much does $500 million buy exactly? In the realm of digital content rights, not so much. Competitor Netflix is said to be paying $30 million for each DreamWorks picture it gets. Sure, that’s likely a much higher premium than Hulu is paying for say something like the rights to Community or CW content, but you get the idea.

And without getting a look at Hulu’s books, it’s difficult to know just how well Hulu is really doing. Yes, the business is growing, subscribers are signing up to pay monthly fees and its content library is expanding at a healthy rate — content grew by 40 percent versus 2010, Kilar said — but Hulu is in a risky business, and the company knows it. Lest we forget, it wasn’t that long ago when Hulu was ready to throw the baby out with the bath water.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Popular video sharing site Vimeo has launched slick new mobile apps for Android and Windows Phone 7 devices. The company is also showing off its upcoming revamped iPhone app and brand-new iPad app at the Consumer Electronics Show this week in Las Vegas.

Vimeo’s launch of the apps at CES 2012 shows the company is getting much more serious about mobile. Joe Schmitt, Vimeo’s head of mobile, told us that the percentage of mobile-based site traffic has doubled in the last year. He said Vimeo’s total traffic coming from mobile was at 7 percent in Jan. 2010 and that now sits at 15 percent.

The company previously just had an iPhone app and a mobile site for other smartphones, and while that’s a good start, it’s not enough. Native apps almost always provide the best possible experience on a smartphone or tablet versus HTML5-based mobile sites. Thankfully that’s not a problem any longer with the new Android app (which is optimized for smartphones and tablets) and a new Windows Phone 7 app. Both of those apps are available to download now from the Android Market and Windows Phone Marketplace, respectively.

Vimeo also designed its Android tablet app so it will be available through Amazon’s Android Appstore, which means it will work for the seemingly popular Kindle Fire. The Fire may already be the number 2 tablet after the iPad in the U.S. and likely cut into iPad sales this past holiday season, so it’s a smart move for Vimeo to target that device as well.

On the iOS front, an updated iPhone app and brand-new iPad app are on the way. The iPad app is especially important because that device is tailor-made for media consumption. Schmitt expects they will be ready for release by the end of January.

Vimeo has been owned by IAC, which also owns companies like Match.com and The Daily Beast, since August 2006. The company doesn’t reveal subscriber numbers, but it has more than 8 million registered users. It attracts 58 million unique users per month, and that doesn’t include embedded views across the web.

A gallery of the new and updated apps can be viewed below:

TwitchTV

The San Francisco company also said that it has more than 1,000 premium partners and that its iPhone app has been downloaded more than 80,000 times in a month.

All of that adds up to fast growth, according to the company. Back in July, it had just 8 million unique viewers.

“The tremendous growth we have experienced over the last six months is indicative of several burgeoning trends,” said Emmett Shear, chief executive of TwitchTV. “Not only are gamers elevating their interest in watching others play in a community-driven fashion, but our partners providing the content have taken streaming to new heights.”

TwitchTV wants to be the destination for top players, teams, leagues and events when it comes to game video streaming, where users watch tournaments and other programming over the web. TwitchTV launched in June and unveiled a revenue-sharing plan for top content producers. Partners now include Electronic Sports League (ESL), Day[9]TV, IGN Pro League (IPL), Major League Gaming (MLG), and North American Star League (NASL).

Sven Hoffman, managing director of ESL TV, said that TwitchTV exploded over the past year along with the popularity of eSports, where spectators watch the best pro gamers in action. The TwitchTV site has grown 11 percent a month since launching in June.

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July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Hulu and Netflix are embroiled in a melee over digital content rights to the most popular TV shows. Friday, Hulu landed a blow by announcing that it is now the exclusive digital syndication partner for the Emmy award-winning television comedy series Community.

Hulu already carried Community, and Netflix didn’t. The exclusivity deal means that Netflix and other streaming-video rivals are now frozen out of this show.

Community is a B-list get for Hulu, and it’s certainly not going to bump up the site’s Hulu Plus subscription numbers. The subtext of the announcement, however, is important.

Essentially, Hulu is telling the industry that it can still obtain critical content deals and differentiate itself from the competition — which is, of course, Netflix. On the gradeschool playground, today’s news blurb would be akin to Hulu sticking out its tongue at Netflix and saying “neener-neener-neener.”

But a get is a get, especially when you consider Hulu’s new deal with the CW and the service’s new availability on Nintendo Wii and 3DS.

Hulu, which recently abandoned a quest for a buyer, is giving Hulu Plus subscribers next-day access to current season episodes, along with the entire back library of Community spanning all three seasons. Non-paying Hulu watchers can stream the five most recent episodes, as usual.

[Image via IMDb]

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Roku announced today it will be selling its Roku 2 XS and XD video streaming set-top devices at major retail chain Target.

The Roku 2 XS will sell for $100 and the XD for $80. Both are online prices.

“We think it’s great that our customers can now find us at Target,” said Roku vice president of marketing Charles Seiber in an e-mail. “Target is the preferred shopping destination for many and like Roku, they strive to deliver exceptional value to their customers.”

Streaming seems to be the instant access choice for many people who ask, “Why would I order this video or game when I can find it on the Internet?” Netflix, the company Roku spun out of three years ago, recently split its physical DVD rental business off into its own brand, Qwickster, and decided to focus on its streaming business.

Roku, which sells Roku devices from its website and on Amazon.com, is expanding further into the real world with this Target partnership — or as the guys at Roku called it in the announcing blog post today, Tar-zhay. Currently, Rokus can also be purchased at Best Buy, Fry’s and Wal-Mart.

In July, the company launched its gaming device with the flagship gaming title Angry Birds. Soon thereafter, it raised an $8 million round of funding. Roku also recently signed a deal with Disney.

We have called Roku for comment and will update upon hearing back.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

ABC News will begin distributing its news content through Yahoo, it announced today.

The partnership with ABC News would be a return to form of sorts for Yahoo, which was originally born as a portal site that would direct viewers and readers to content on other sites. Yahoo has tried its hand at several distribution and online content channels. It acquired Flickr, an online image hosting site, in 2005 and also acquired social bookmarking site Delicious — which it announced it would “sunset” last year and eventually decided to sell.

ABC News will be a “premier” news content provider for Yahoo’s news channels. Both companies will coordinate their teams to generate original content that they will cross-post to both Yahoo’s news site and ABC’s site. Together, Yahoo and ABC have roughly 100 million regular monthly viewers, the companies said today.

Yahoo recently fired Carol Bartz (pictured above) as the company’s chief executive. She was appointed CEO in 2009, inheriting a company that had slid, over the years, from a web search pioneer to a massive slow-moving media company that watched its dominance slowly ebb away. Since then, the company has been under pressure to find a way to remain relevant as Facebook and Google have rapidly ripped away the company’s share of online advertising.

Yahoo’s share of overall U.S. online ad revenues will decline to 11 percent this year, down from 13.3 percent a year ago, according to online market research firm eMarketer. Google’s share is expected to grow to 40.8 percent this year, up from 38.5 percent in 2010 and 34.9 percent in 2009, while Facebook’s share should reach 7 percent this year, up from 4.6 percent last year, according to the firm.

Both Yahoo and ABC’s news teams will also have live coverage of events based in New York, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles — which will be streamed through Yahoo’s online sites. Yahoo gets a number of exclusive online video streams from ABC News through the deal, such as a video interview with President Barack Obama with ABC News. ABC News content will be integrated throughout the Yahoo’s news sites and Yahoo’s front page.

Yahoo experienced some rare support from the market after the announcement today. Its shares rose nearly 4 percent in trading before the bell — a jump the company hasn’t experienced since it ousted Bartz, a move that investors gleefully accepted. Interest in Yahoo has slipped in recent weeks as a number of potential buyers, including Alibaba, began circling the company.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

YouNow, an online video streaming application where you vote on broadcasters to keep them on the air or boot them off, launched today at the TechCrunch Disrupt 2011 conference in San Francisco.

If you vote up the stream, the broadcaster will stay on the air. If you don’t like what you see, you can click the thumbs down button and vote them off the broadcast. After they are voted off, the site moves on to the next broadcaster in queue. If you continue to cheer users on, they get access to additional minutes of air time.

As you perform better, you get points that give you access to more features and you get faster access to air time as a broadcaster. You can broadcast video from any mobile device, like an iPhone or an Android phone. You have to connect with a real identity, which should discourage users from broadcasting poor content like pornography, the company’s founder Adi Sideman said

“YouNow is live broadcast meets social gaming,” Sideman said. “Anyone can broadcast from anywhere using any mobile device.”

YouNow makes money by selling virtual goods like “green screens” for broadcasters, which give them different backgrounds. Viewers can buy virtual goods like roses to throw to the screen as they cheer on broadcasters.The company also partners with other sites like MP3.com, which can use the site to find aspiring musicians. Those sites don’t have live broadcasting components and look to sites like YouNow to fill that niche, Sideman said.

YouNow was founded in May earlier this year and has raised $1 million. The company is based in New York, N.Y. The company is launching a “music” channel for potential musicians and a “talk” channel for other kinds of broadcasts.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Roku, a device that streams web content to televisions, has collected $8 million in funding, according to a form D filed with the SEC today. Roku confirmed the round and its lead investors Globespan Capital Partners and Menlo Ventures.

Also listed on the form was Robert Kyncl, vice president of TV and film entertainment at Google.

The company, which spun off from Netflix three years ago, released the second version of its streaming device in July. The Roku 2 XS player has taken the company out of its streaming-video comfort zone by adding games and motion controllers. VentureBeat lead writer, Matt Lynley demo-ed the Roku 2 XS in the video below. Angry Birds launched as Roku’s flagship game title.

The $100 Roku 2 XS is the priciest in the Roku line, but is competitive with Apple TV, which retails for the same amount. Though the company is branching out into new forms of entertainment, such as gaming, at the device’s core is Netflix’s app. Hulu, another video streaming company, also has an app on the Roku.

Listed on the form D is Roku chief executive Anthony Wood, chief financial officer Oliver Hutaff, vice president of business development Jim Funk, Shawn Carolan of Menlo Ventures, Google’s Robert Kyncl, and Daniel Leff of Globespan Capital Partners, Jeff Hastings, chief executive of BrightSign.

Roku introduced BrightSign in 2006, founded by Anthony Wood, who currently acts as the company’s chairman of the board. BrightSign creates solid state digital sign and kiosk controller products. That is to say, the product controls digital or interactive signs, such as retail display screens.

Whether Roku and BrightSign will integrate technologies remains to be seen. Prior to Roku and BrightSign, Anthony invented the DVR, or digital video recorder.

The company has sold $8 million for it’s funding, but is still looking to add $750,000 to the pot.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

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Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said in a conference call to discuss second-quarter earnings that the online-video giant plans to focus on a “streaming only” future after separating its mail-order DVD service into a separate subscription. But that future, Hastings said, will also bring Netflix into many more countries.

“We gained some confidence when we launched in Canada. That blew away our expectations,” he said. “With the strength of streaming only internationally, we got convinced that we can thrive on streaming only.”

Netflix’s DVD business is largely a U.S.-based business. The promise of international revenue prompted the company to split its monthly streaming and DVD subscriptions, charging $7.99 for monthly access to the site’s streaming content and an additional $7.99 a month to rent one DVD at a time. The site used to charge $9.99 each month for access to both.

Hastings said the company’s DVD-by-mail business was a strong market in the United States, but would not be a strong international product. That’s why the company has tried to shift over to a streaming-only model, he said. But most Netflix subscribers were going for a hybrid subscription that has both mail-order DVD and streaming subscriptions.

“The DVD can last a long time as a successful service if we give it a platform to succeed on,” Hastings said. “Having it as a division in Netflix, we can measure the profit and loss, and we think it’ll be a smart investment.”

Netflix only expects to add 700,000 new domestic subscribers — at the most — in the third quarter this year, which is down from the 1.8 million new domestic subscribers added in the third quarter last year, according to the most recent Netflix earnings report. That means its new guidance is 61 percent lower than the number of new subscribers the company would have brought in if it held steady.

Netflix reported Monday net income of $68 million in the second quarter of 2011, or $1.26 a share, on $789 million in revenue. Net income rose 57% from $44 million in the same quarter a year ago, while revenue rose 52% from $520 million. The consensus of Wall Street analysts surveyed had forecast a profit of $1.11 per share and $791.5 million in revenue.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

[Update: Added additional information from the company's quarterly conference call.]

Video streaming site Netflix’s recent rate hike has slowed the site’s growth substantially.

The site expects to add 700,000 new domestic subscribers — at the most — in the third quarter this year, which is down from the 1.8 million new domestic subscribers added in the third quarter last year, according to the most recent Netflix earnings report.

The company said it expects subscriptions to slow thanks to a price change that caused subscription fees for users with both DVD and streaming subscriptions to rise nearly 60 percent. The company recently split its monthly streaming and DVD subscriptions and charges $7.99 for monthly access to the site’s streaming content and an additional $7.99 for its monthly DVD rental. The site used to charge $9.99 each month for access to both.

“So far from what we’ve seen, we’ve been very pleased at the effects and we’re feeling great about the decision, as tough as it is,” Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said. “It’s gonna allow us to have fantastic streaming content moving forward.”

The change in subscription will result in lower revenue growth and higher churn in the third quarter this year, which means more subscribers will be leaving, Hastings said. That means its new guidance is 61 percent lower than the number of new subscribers the company would have brought in if it held steady.

The company expects to have between 14.6 million and 15.7 million domestic DVD subscribers and between 21.6 million and 23.3 million domestic streaming subscribers by the end of the third quarter this year. The company ended the second quarter this year with around 24.6 million domestic subscribers and 25.6 million global subscribers.

Netflix made $68 million in the second quarter this year off $789 million in revenue. That’s up 57 percent from $44 million in income in the second quarter of 2010, and up 52 percent from $520 million in revenue in the second quarter of 2010.

Netflix added new subscribers at a blistering pace in 2010 when compared to 2009, but has since slowed slightly. Netflix added 1.8 million new domestic subscribers in the second quarter this year, up 75 percent from the 1.03 million subscribers in the second quarter of 2010, according to its most recent quarterly earnings report. The 1.03 million domestic subscribers added in the second quarter of 2010 was 255 percent higher than the 300,000 subscribers added in the second quarter of 2009.

The company’s guidance for the third quarter this year is pretty tame. It expects to make between $95 million and $120 million in income off between $780 million and $805 million in revenue from its domestic operations. It expects to end the third quarter with between 24.6 and 25.3 million new domestic subscribers, which is not far off from its most recent operating quarter.

Netflix expects to lose between $27.5 million and $22.5 million in the third quarter this year on its international operations, which have grown slowly in the past several quarters. The company expects to have between 1.2 million and 1.5 million subscribers internationally, compared to the roughly 1 million subscribers it had at the end of the second quarter this year.

The company’s flagship title at launch is Angry Birds, a game that has already collected tens of millions of users. The controller is similar to the Wii MotionPlus controller from Nintendo. Instead of using infrared light to track a motion controller, it uses an internal set of components that track the controller’s orientation. That means the box will register a move to the left or right when you flick the controller.

The device is designed to power 3D graphics. I got to try out Angry Birds on the device (in the video below — I’m not that great at it) and the graphics felt a little sluggish. But given that it’s streaming 1080p video from a tiny box to a huge television, that might be par for the course. The device is powered by a system-on-a-chip architecture, so it doesn’t carry the same oomph that a PlayStation 3 or a Xbox 360 does.

The controller felt very responsive — on par with the Wii MotionPlus controller. It felt like what was happening on-screen was more or less one-to-one with whatever I was doing with the controller.

The company plans to aggressively add game content to the Roku 2 box. That includes the likes of Pac-Man: Championship Edition and other games from Namco, and more versions of Angry Birds. The company is mostly focusing on casual games that people can just “pick up and play.”

It’s a new step for a company that has traditionally focused on streaming videos and movies to the TV. Roku was spun out of Netflix three years ago and given the directive to create a box that could stream Netflix content directly to a television. But the company still intends to focus on Netflix as the device’s flagship app.

The devices are powered by traditional AA or AAA batteries, depending on the model you choose, or a power cable. They are about 3 inches across by 3 inches long, and about an inch deep. Each model has a bold embossing of its model name — the “XD,” “HD” or “XS.” The devices are connected to the Internet wirelessly, though the top-level device features a traditional broadband port.

The base-line model costs $60, but doesn’t include a game remote and only supports 720p HD video quality. The next step up, the Roku XD, costs $80 and includes Netflix title streaming and supports 1080p HD video quality streaming. Only when you buy the $100 model, though, do you get a game remote (and a “free” full version of Angry Birds).

Each box consumes around 5 watts of power. That’s compared to DVR devices — which are known to be electricity vampires — that consume around 30 watts and a PlayStation 3 that consumes around 130 watts at full speed. All three devices feature 256 megabytes of storage with a micro-SD card expansion slot for additional memory.

The company has sold around 1 million Roku boxes to date. You can check out a video of a hands-on experience with the device after the break.

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Despite being the most popular online video service in the world, YouTube’s current website design is not very appealing compared to other streaming video sites. The current site is cluttered with hyperlinks and video thumbnails. The white background is the brightest portion of the page, which distracts users from the video-watching experience. Also, navigation tool bars and menus are more complex than necessary.

The Cosmic Panda experimental redesign fixes many of the current site’s design problems. (See screenshots of the new design embedded below).

The new design is darker than the current version and borrows many visual elements from streaming video sites like Hulu and Vimeo.

Cosmic Panda puts a greater emphasis on the video player, which has a dark gray background — making the video the brightest element on the page. Viewers also have the option of changing the size of the player by clicking one of four buttons located below the progress (loading) bar. Videos that are part of a playlist display a horizontal row of thumbnail images below the player, rather than along the bottom of the page.

Also, fewer thumbnail images of related videos appear in the new design. The thumbnails that do appear on the site are larger and have subtle design elements. such as off-white boxes surrounding the image, thin borders and light gray text. The result is a much cleaner design that allows users to focus their attention on the content, rather than what they plan on watching later.

YouTube launched Cosmic Panda to the public Thursday. Users can enable the new design via the TestTube dashboard — the company’s testing ground for engineers to incubate new feature ideas. Anyone who doesn’t like the site’s new look can toggle off the new design at any time, according to the company.

In a blog post announcing Cosmic Panda, the company stressed the importance of design changes:

With nearly 8 years of video uploaded and 3 billion views logged every day on YouTube, it’s clear you like to watch and share YouTube videos. While you’re watching your favorite or new videos, we at the ‘Tube are obsessing night and day over how those videos are presented. Our team is constantly experimenting, tweaking and playing with new ways to make your experience exactly what you’re looking for.

After using Cosmic Panda for a few hours, I’m convinced it offers a far better experience than the old YouTube design. Honestly, I doubt many people will switch back after testing it out.

Click the images embedded below to enlarge.

Yet, that’s exactly what happened when people tried to link their Hulu accounts with their Facebook profile via Facebook Connect. Connect is a service that lets Facebook users log into third-party services using their Facebook account information.

Hulu said shortly after launching its Facebook Connect feature Friday that it noticed a small number of users were seeing someone else’s account information upon logging in to the site. That means they saw someone else’s queue (playlist) of videos, subscriptions and friends. The company confirmed that 50 of its users were affected by this flaw, which could have exposed their profile data. Highly sensitive information such as account passwords or credit card numbers were not compromised as a result of the bug, the company said.

But the company’s statement conflicts with the experience documented by Audio Video Revolution’s Mike Flacy, who gained access to Hulu employee Thomas Moore’s account due to the privacy flaw.

After logging in to Moore’s account, Flacy writes:

…I was able to access his [Moore's] street address, financial information (last 4 digits of his CC with expiration date), device management, email address and password.  I know that Thomas has just finished watching episodes of Modern Family, Suits, Burn Notice and The Guild.  If I was a jerk, I could cancel his Hulu Plus account, turn off all his devices and change his email / password.  If I was a devious thief, I could slip my device onto his account and get some free Hulu Plus until he noticed. Thank goodness for Thomas, I’m not. 

As further proof of his experience, Flacy provided several screenshots of the privacy flaw in action within his post.

“We’re still drilling down on the precise nature of the issue, but we know that it was a coding and configuration error on Hulu’s side, and not the result of hacking, or other third-party actions, or a vulnerability in Facebook Connect,” wrote Hulu’s Vice President of Platform Technology Richard Tom on the company’s blog.

Tom said the company is being extra cautious going forward. All the integration of Facebook Connect on Hulu has been disabled, and all users are required to login directly to the site using their Hulu account information instead of a Facebook ID. Also, all privacy settings have been set to the maximum restrictive level by default for anyone who logged into a Hulu account using Facebook.

“Once we are certain that the issue has been fully addressed, we will re-launch our Facebook Connect program,” Tom said. “We apologize to any affected users, and we intend to do everything we can to make it right and avoid similar issues in the future.”

It’s a shame that Hulu ran into such a huge security compromising bug, because at least one of the new features enabled through Facebook Connect was exactly as the company described it: “first-of-its-kind…”

The feature allows Hulu users to comment on a specific moment within a video. Both the comment and the relevant portion of the video can be shared on your Facebook profile by clicking a button on the video player’s page. Other video services like Vimeo and YouTube have similar commenting features, but neither has done it quite like Hulu does with its social integration.

Hulu said it won’t roll out Facebook Connect integration to the site again until the company can ensure that breaches of privacy won’t occur in the future. But since that could take a while, I’ve embedded a screenshot of the new commenting feature below.

Via Gigaom

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

If for some reason you need further convincing that Netflix is taking over our lives, you only need to look at Sandvine’s latest report, which shows that the video streaming company is now the biggest source of North American web traffic, accounting for 24.71 percent of aggregate traffic.

Netflix also accounts for about a third (29.70 percent, up from 21 percent last fall) of all download traffic — not surprising, since high-definition streaming is a major bandwidth hog. Netflix ended up surpassing BitTorrent for both download (29.70 vs. 10.37 percent) and aggregate Internet traffic (24.71 vs. 17.23 percent).

The traffic numbers show us that Netflix is an even more dominant force on the web than some think, and it also shows us just how quickly new markets will jump on the Netflix bandwagon.

After launching in Canada last September, Netflix managed to snag over 800,000 registered users there by the end of March 2011. Sandvine points out that that number accounts for around 10 percent of Canada’s broadband households, and that Netflix traffic now consumes 13.5 percent of downstream traffic during evening peak hours in Canada.

A big reason for Netflix’s quick growth in Canada is the company’s focus on licensing content that would appeal to Canadian viewers, Sandvine says. Netflix generated $12 million in revenue in Canada last quarter, but still lost $11 million due to money spend on licensing.

Netflix is now gearing up to launch in another international market this year, although it hasn’t given any hints as to where.

Via TechCrunch

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Current subscribers of HBO will soon be getting more for their monthly fees tacked on to cable bills. The premium cable company’s programming will soon be available to stream on tablets and mobile devices beginning May 2.

The company teased versions of a streaming media app HBO Go on the iPad and android-based mobile devices in a Youtube video (below) released earlier today.

The service will enable subscribers the ability to view the entire library of HBO content, which is composed of 1,400 episodes, documentaries and movies. The downside to all of this is that you must be subscribed to a HBO package through a pre-existing cable or satellite provider, such as Comcast, AT&T, Verizon or DirecTV.

One thing worth pointing is that screens of the iOS application for HBO GO were more than visible in the video — but the shot of the smartphone only contained a video, with no Android user interface to speak of.

The iPad was also the only device specifically named in the teaser video, which could mean that iOS enabled devices will be available at launch, with an Android version to follow there after.

Offering HBO Go support on tablets and mobile devices is another natural step in the company’s strategy to keep its content exclusive, rather than licensing it out to other streaming services like Netflix.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Dish Network landed the winning bid, valued at around $320 million, for Blockbuster in its bankruptcy auction. The company actually expects to pay around $228 million in cash — after “certain adjustments” are made at the deal’s closing — for the rental chain, according to an announcement made this morning.

But don’t expect the deal to help Blockbuster’s remaining 1,700 beleaguered stores. Dish is likely aiming to take advantage of Blockbuster’s online video streaming service, disc-by-mail rentals and rental kiosks.

“Blockbuster will complement our existing video offerings while presenting cross-marketing and service extension opportunities for Dish Network,” Tom Cullen, executive vice president of sales, marketing and programing for Dish Network, told Reuters.

Perhaps the smartest thing for Dish to do is rid itself of even more Blockbuster retail locations and focus on a wider proliferation of its kiosks, which compete directly with DVD kiosk company Redbox, and focus more on its video streaming service, which is available on multiple mobile and TV set-top devices.

The purchase also opens the door for Dish to offer cross-promotion deals with its satellite TV and Blockbuster’s services. I wouldn’t be surprised if Dish ends up offering free Blockbuster streaming accounts and disc rentals to its subscribers as an added bonus. The combination of Dish and Blockbuster could attack Netflix — which doesn’t offer rental kiosks or traditional TV service — from multiple sides.

It’s also worth considering just how far Blockbuster has fallen. At its highest point, the company’s market cap sat at more than $5 billion in 2002. Now, Dish has managed to snag it for slightly more than two times what Netflix paid to stream Mad Men.

Dish’s bid still needs to be approved by federal bankruptcy court at a hearing on Thursday.

Under the deal, Netflix will run the “House of Cards” political drama being directed by Oscar-nominated director David Fincher as an exclusive on its streaming video service late next year. This kind of deal could turn Netflix into a premiere network much like Time Warner’s HBO or CBS’s Showtime, if Netflix continues to accumulate more programming. And that could shift the balance of power from Hollywood studios to Netflix, which was previously just one more digital distribution channel.

Netflix is gaining power because it has more than 20 million subscribers for its movie service, an audience that is closing in on the 28 million subscribers that HBO has on cable TV. Netflix is thus in a position to disrupt traditional movie and TV service providers as it consolidates power on the internet.

Ted Sarandos, chief content officer at Netflix, told the Wall Street Journal that Netflix will pay a portion of production costs for the series, with Media Rights Capital (the independent studio creating the project) financing the rest. Sarandos declined to say how much Netflix is paying for the exclusive online rights. But Netflix’s fee for production costs is capped if the show goes over budget.

House of Cards is based on a book and BBC miniseries of the same name. Sarandos said that Netflix will take advantage of the web by airing as many as four episodes at the same time so that users can immerse themselves in the content. He said, “There is no reason for us to be tied to traditional business models.”

The Wall Street Journal noted that Netflix’s move into original programs is similar to the dawn of cable TV in the 1980s, when most networks had little original content. They started creating more original programs to run exclusively on their networks to differentiate themselves. That’s how HBO, Starz, Showtime and others were born. But the model brings risks for Netflix, which doesn’t have experience producing high-quality content or picking the right shows.

Netflix’s move comes after the pay-TV networks brushed it off. HBO decided not to sell Netflix any streaming rights, and Showtime waits a couple of seasons before licensing episodes. Such strategies would have doomed Netflix to distributing old content. In response to the growing power of Netflix, I suspect that the studios and pay-TV networks will try to find digital distribution alternatives to Netflix. That could be good for emerging alternatives such as OnLive, which plans to offer movie streaming services as well.

Netflix is committed to 26 episodes.

In other news, Netflix has been hit with five lawsuits in the past two months accusing it of violating user privacy rights. The lawsuit alleges that Netflix held on to customer data such as rental habits and credit card numbers long after people had canceled their memberships.

[picture credit: hawtmag]

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

The hype around Apple’s $99 revamped Apple TV seems to have died down, but it looks like sales haven’t, as it’s set to cross one million units sold later this week, according to Apple.

But that’s not slowing down the success of rival set-top box maker Roku, which saw its sales double when the new Apple TV was launched in September, the company’s CEO Anthony Wood revealed in an interview with Business Insider. It expects to sell its millionth device by the end of year.

That both companies are seeing strong sales this season points to consumer demand for streaming video content in their living rooms.

We knew that Apple had a hit on its hands with the Apple TV’s vastly cheaper price point, and its support for Netflix streaming and 99-cent TV rentals. Apple says that over 400,000 TV episodes and over 150,000 movies are being rented and purchased each day by iTunes users around the world, but that doesn’t tell us anything about specific Apple TV numbers. The device isn’t perfect — Apple only has access to broadcast network shows from ABC and Fox (leaving out NBC and CBS), and many were disappointed that the Apple TV lacks apps, considering it’s based on the same iOS software as the iPhone and iPad.

It looks like Roku is able to mop up sales with consumers who are interested in an Apple TV-like experience, but don’t want to deal with the ATV’s limitations. Roku’s streaming set-top boxes start at $60, and the highest end model is available for the same $99 price as Apple’s box. The company’s devices also offer Netflix streaming support, but unlike the Apple TV, they have access to Amazon’s on-demand movie and TV library, Hulu Plus, and sports content from the likes of MLB.tv and UFC.

The company launched its second generation of devices, which bring HD support to the cheapest model, as well as a slew of new features, only a few weeks after the new Apple TV was announced.

Roku has been in the streaming video business since 2008, when its first-generation device launched together with lots of marketing muscle from Netflix. Wood says that its revenues will surpass $50 million in 2010, and it expects surpass $100 million in sales come next year.

Unless Apple improves the Apple TV’s content offerings and finally delivers on apps, it risks losing out on even more sales to the cheaper and more capable Roku box. Roku says that it’s going to focus on broader retail distribution, more licensed products (like the Netgear Roku box) and more content channels. I also expect that Google TV will see some major improvements next year, which could also compete against Apple.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Out with the old, in with the new.

Netflix, a subscription service for mail-order and streaming movies, has joined some of the largest and most prominent companies in the world on the Standard & Poor’s 500 stock market index, kicking out the New York Times in the process.

It’s a pretty big milestone for the company, which has been considered a mid-cap stock (meaning it isn’t all that big) since it went public back in 2002. The company is now worth $10.2 billion, compared to the New York Times’ paltry $1.4 billion.

Netflix has seen some pretty explosive growth in recent years as it shifted toward streaming content online. Like its competitor Hulu, Netflix streams movies and TV shows for a monthly fee on its site. But the company is paying out enormous sums of cash to get access to the best content as quickly as possible. Netflix paid out $115 million this quarter, which was more than 10 times greater than the $10 million it paid in the same quarter last year.

The results are pretty stellar. The company’s quarterly profit jumped by about 27 percent year-over-year last quarter. Netflix’s net income jumped to about $38 million this quarter, compared to $30 million in the same quarter last year, after adding another million subscribers in the last quarter. That brings Netflix’s total subscribers to somewhere between 19 million and 19.7 million, according to its most recent earnings report.

It’s also a pretty telling sign of the direction of media, as well. The New York Times is still seen as a champion of old media, with one of the largest newspaper subscription circulations in the country. But advertising revenue has dried up for old media companies since advertisers have flocked to cheaper and more pervasive online media sources. The New York Times’ stock price has been on a steady decline for the past three years as well, falling from around $26 to $9.39 today. Office Depot and Kodak were also booted to mid-cap status as part of the announcement.

But oftentimes companies are promoted to large-cap status due to run-ups in stock value rather than personal success. It makes sense, seeing as Netflix’s shares are up a mind-blowing 241 percent from a year ago (they were up 1.3 percent today) when they were worth $56.74. It means there’s either a tremendous vote of confidence for the company, or the stock is highly overvalued. Given the state of the stock market today, it wouldn’t be surprising to see the company’s shares take a nose dive as traders cut a nice profit from the recent run-up.

On Nov. 23, PlayStation 3 owners will be able to access the Vudu library of more than 4,000 high-definition movies via their game consoles. The movies will feature 1080p HD and Dolby Digital Plus 5.1 surround sound.

Vudu’s movies include a lot of recent Hollywood hits, indie films, and other new releases. You can pretty much use this to deliver a movie theater experience in your home. For two-night rentals, you pay $2.

Last month, Vudu announced that its movie service would be available on the new Boxee set-top boxes and the Boxee software on the PC. The point is to help the company spread its movie content to as many platforms as possible, said Edward Lichty, general manager of Vudu.

Susan Panico, senior director of the PlayStation Network, said that Sony’s goal is to make its network into a leading entertainment hub for digital content. Players who have a free PSN account can download the Vudu app from the “media” category of the PlayStation Store and then access it under the video icon on the PS 3′s cross media bar (XMB). New customers get a $5.99 credit.

Rivals include Apple TV, Amazon, Cinema Now, and Xbox Live. Santa Clara, Calif.-based Vudu has 55 employees and is owned by Wal-mart.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

LiveU, which develops ways to transmit live video streams over wireless networks, announced today that it has raised $11 million in its third round of funding led by Pitango Venture Capital.

It’s basically a television streaming station in a backpack. LiveU uses multiple cellular networks and other wireless services to create a wireless bridge between someone recording video in the field and a broadcasting station. The video is streamed in high-definition to that broadcasting station or some other device.

The Israel-based company has raised $23 million to date. It has several large “media giants” as clients, but didn’t specify which. The company says its technology was specifically used at the World Cup in South Africa, the Grammy Awards in the US and the Beijing Olympics.

LiveU recently introduced new radio frequency technology to help buffer weak cellular and wireless signals in limited coverage areas and worldwide.

Live streaming video usage has become pretty popular, jumping 650 percent in 2010 compared to a year ago, according to data from ComScore. That’s in no small part due to major streaming sites like Justin.tv and UStream, which champion the media form’s growth. Justin.tv also recently made a significant push into mobile with its iPhone and Android apps that let users stream video directly to the website.

Existing investors Carmel Ventures and Canaan Partners also participated in the most recent round of funding. Isaac Hillel, Managing General Partner at Pitango Venture Capital, will join LiveU’s board of directors as part of the funding agreement.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Tudou, the number two streaming video site in China, is planning to file an initial public offering to raise up to $150 million on the tech-heavy NASDAQ Composite stock market.

The Chinese streaming site is the latest in a slew of sites that stream premium content — though it also has user-contributed video like YouTube as well — to either go public or be the subject of rumors of going public. Hulu, another premium content streaming site, is also the subject of a few rumors of going public. The most recent batch of reports indicated that Hulu was preparing for a $300 million IPO.

Streaming premium content is on a hot streak, with Netflix being the clear dominant player. Netflix recently blew away expectations by adding 1 million new subscribers and seeing 27 percent year-over-year growth in revenue last quarter. The video rental site, traditionally focused on mail-order video rentals, also spent $115 million acquiring new content to stream online. Hulu is also introducing a premium subscription model, Hulu Plus, that will have more access to broadcast TV content.

Meanwhile, sites like YouTube and Vimeo that have focused on being a community for video sharing have had to follow strict copyright laws and aren’t able to stream content from broadcast networks like ABC and Fox. YouTube, one of the most popular sites on the Internet, has yet to become profitable (though Google swears it will be soon.)

Tudou plans to go public in the first quarter of next year, according to a report by Reuters. Tudou hired banks Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank to guide the IPO process. It hopes to raise between $100 million and $150 million, according to the report.

Tudou’s traffic is slightly behind another Chinese video streaming site, Youku. Tudou has a 16 percent market share of Chinese video streaming, compared to Youku’s 20 percent, according to the Reuters report. Its investors include IDG China, GGV Capital and General Catalyst Partners, as well as recent addition Singapore’s Temasek Holdings‘.