Netflix has unveiled the first details of a long-term strategy to shift towards using HTML5 for its web-based video playback.

Netflix, which owns about one third of the market for prime-time Web streaming video, far ahead of competitors like Amazon Prime and Hulu, currently uses Microsoft’s Silverlight plugin for video playback. That’s in contrast to many other video services, which use Adobe Flash, Apple Quicktime, or other services to play video within their web pages. However, Microsoft has announced plans to wind down Silverlight by 2021. That means Netflix — and anyone else relying on Silverlight — has eight years to find an alternative.

HTML5 is a promising, if somewhat half-cooked, alternative. The open web standard, while widely hyped, proved disappointing to many developers in 2012, failing to live up to expectations for cross-platform support, performance, and other issues. But while mobile consumers spend far more time in apps than in their mobile browsers, HTML5 still has potential as the underlying rendering framework used within apps. Also, developers like HTML5, as does the guy who invented the Web.

And fortunately for Netflix, HTML5-based solutions that meet Netflix’s requirements are in the pipeline. Chief among those requirements are the need for content encryption and copy restriction (aka digital rights management, or DRM), “a requirement for any premium subscription video service,” the Netflix blog post drily notes. The W3C’s Encrypted Media Extensions specification provides just that support, Netflix says. In addition, the Web Cryptography API (also from the W3C) gives Netflix programming tools for encrypting and decrypting data, and for digitally signing content and verifying customers’ identities, which are also needed for the delivery of DRM-restricted video.

Finally, the W3C’s Media Source Extensions specification gives Netflix the ability to embed a video player in a web page, via the <video> tag, and also to control how to deliver audio and video to that player via its HTTP servers and content delivery network. It also gives Netflix the ability to switch to different servers in case one goes down, and to control the playback in various ways using JavaScript, which gives it flexibility to experiment.

“In addition, this allows us to implement our industry-leading adaptive streaming algorithms (real-time selection of audio/video bitrates based on available bandwidth and other factors) in our JavaScript code,” the blog post states.

These three key specifications aren’t completely baked yet, nor are they usable in most browsers, which is why Netflix isn’t quite ready to jump fully into the HTML5 pool. (Nor does it have to, given the long, eight-year sunset period for Silverlight.) Instead, it’s dipping its toes in the water, working with Google to implement support for its HTML5 player starting with the Chrome browser on Samsung’s ARM-based Chromebook.

Hat tip: Ars Technica

Photo: Netflix CEO Reed Hastings plans world domination, back in 2010. Credit: Ben Lucier/Flickr

Within five minutes of turning on the Boxee TV, I was ready to return it.

It’s Boxee’s second stab at building a set-top box for the living room, but it’s far more focused on mainstream consumers than its predecessor. The $99 Boxee TV includes the usual apps, like Netflix and Vudu, as well as the ability to receive free over-the-air TV channels. But its real claim to fame is the cloud DVR, which allows you to store unlimited television recordings on Boxee’s server.

[Update: Boxee rebranded Boxee TV to simply "Cloud DVR" on April 9th, 2013. This review's title and tags have been updated to reflect the change.]

It’s a device that promised to reshape the way we view TV, a device that Boxee is basically betting its future on — and I couldn’t even navigate its menus without some sort of frustrating glitch or crash.

In its quest to conquer the next big thing, Boxee made a product that failed to get the basics right. The cloud DVR lacks simple features, like scheduling a recording from the channel guide. The remote is a nightmare. And it crashes, a lot.

This review was among the hardest I’ve ever had to write. I’m a huge fan of Boxee, from its hacker roots as a media player for modified Xbox consoles, to its rise as one of the most interesting media startups in New York City. (Mayor Michael Bloomberg recently made a major announcement at Boxee’s office, which former Google CEO Eric Schmidt also attended.)

When Boxee first announced this product, we called its unlimited storage “insane” and dubbed the product “amazing,” because it seemed so promising.

But after living with the Boxee TV for almost two months now, it’s time to call this thing a dud.

The good: Cloud DVR is an intriguing concept

It’s not hard to see why the promise of Boxee TV’s cloud DVR was so exciting initially. Instead of dealing with storage limits on a hard drive, Boxee’s cloud DVR promises an unlimited amount of storage on Boxee’s servers for $10 a month (it’ll eventually go up to $15). The cloud DVR subscription is optional and month-to-month, but as you’ll see, there’s practically no reason to get the Boxee TV with out it.

While you’re probably used to just recording new episodes of your favorite shows with a typical DVR and losing the oldest recordings as it fills up, Boxee’s service lets you record every episode as it airs, for as long as you want, across multiple devices. For media addicts who can’t wait for new show episodes to hit Hulu Plus or Netflix, but who don’t have time to watch everything in their queue, it sounds like a dream come true.

Unfortunately, Boxee TV is limited to recording over-the-air and basic cable channels. That means you’ll only be able to watch and record shows from major networks like ABC, NBC, and Fox — but not shows on regular and premium channels like FX, HBO, and ESPN. You could receive around a dozen channels, or just a handful, depending on availability in your area. Boxee includes a simple antenna inside the box, but upgrading to a more powerful antenna could net you more broadcast channels.

The limitation of free over-the-air channels is something cord-cutting aficionados are used to, since it’s a free alternative to costly cable or satellite subscriptions. And since Boxee TV includes Netflix and Vudu apps, you can augment the limited television channels with those larger content libraries.

Tuning between TV channels is fairly quick on the Boxee TV, at least compared to the way my Samsung HDTV handles tuning.  The device includes two tuners, so you can watch one channel while recording another, or have two channels recording at the same time. In theory, Boxee TV feels like it’s getting close to unifying traditional television and web video, an ideal first sketched out by Google. Google TV still wins out though, since it supports cable and satellite subscriptions, and it has a much stronger selection of apps.

You can stream live television to your computer’s web browser or your iPad with Boxee TV (iPhone and Android support is on the way, even though the company still advertises that it supports “any screen”). I found that cloud DVR recordings looked almost as clear as when they originally aired, while the live TV streaming looked a tad worse. It takes about 10 to 15 seconds for cloud recordings to begin, while tuning into the live stream takes around a minute. (But hey, at least Boxee warns you it could take that long.)

Boxee TV builds upon the interface developed for the Live TV stick, a USB dongle that brought TV functionality to the company’s previous device, the Boxee Box. The interface shows you an attractive display of shows currently on-air, as well as shows scheduled to appear over the next few hours. On your computer or iPad, you can view a more traditional channel guide by logging onto Boxee.tv. The company assumes you’ll be using an iPad or computer as a secondary screen — and you’ll need to, since it’s the only way to schedule DVR recordings.

Boxee has clearly built up an impressive amount of features around its cloud connectivity, it’s just a shame that it gets so many simpler things wrong.

Filed under: Business, Gadgets, Media

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After relaunching as a social video network more than a year ago, Telly (formerly the Twitter video sharing service TwitVid) is now focusing even more on video discovery with the launch of My Telly.

The new product algorithmically generates videos that interest you on Telly’s website and mobile apps, based on what your friends have liked, posted, watched, and discussed. Additionally, the company announced that it has reached 7 million unique users, doubling its user base over the past seven months.

“We started Telly to fix video discovery across the web,” said Telly chief executive Mo Al Adham in an interview with VentureBeat. But the company learned it also needed to do more than just show you the videos your friends are posting on social networks. “We had to add more signal to the feed … we asked ourselves how do we pain a more complete picture of what your social graph is doing,” he added.

The answer for Telly was algorithms — instead of just fishing the videos your friends posted online, My Telly also looks at what your social network is engaged with, and it also keeps track of your viewing habits to figure out what you like. It also takes into account the device you’re using, so longer videos will be prioritized on the desktop, while your smartphone will get shorter clips.

The focus on algorithms is likely a smart move for Telly, as algorithms are increasingly becoming important for all media discovery services.  Consumers are increasingly expecting web services to know what they like, and to present meaningful content without much legwork.

Telly still allows you to upload your own videos, but that’s clearly not as big a feature as it was in the TwitVid days. At the same time, video uploads let Telly straddle a line the normally separates social video apps. ShowYou, for example, is entirely focused on video discovery, while Vine is finding success with its simple video sharing.

“We’ve rallied the entire team around having one unified mission … a mission to communicate to the end users and give them a great content experience on Telly,” Al Adham says. Engagement is surprisingly high on the service, with most users spending around 17 minutes on the site, and typically watching four videos, with every visit.

Looking ahead, Al Adham tells me the company is also looking closely at smart TV platforms, starting with open platforms like Google TV. Like most video services, he wants Telly to be available on every screen a user is watching.

San Francisco-based Telly raised around $6.5 million as TwitVid from Azure Capital, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, and Siemer Ventures.

Pulse, a customized news aggregation service for mobile devices, is adding support for video content, the company announced today.

Most video aggregation/curation services I’ve experienced are either really good at collecting content that can be viewed elsewhere, or they are awesome at playing videos from multiple services, but not at collecting it automatically. The Pulse team seems to understand the necessity to have both of these components, even if you can’t get every video source on the Internet immediately.

That said, Pulse is launching its new video functionality with 30 premium quality media partners, such as The Daily Beast, Motor Trend, Fox Sports, ESPN, Allrecipes, IGN Entertainment, The White House, FORA.tv. Pulse also features “channels” for TV programs, like Meet The Press, Nightly News, and The TODAY Show. Basically, its treating each video “channel” much like it would a regular news feed, that pulls in a headline and a photo as each video post gets published.

I’d love to have Pulse branch out to other TV shows, which I often enjoy watching about a third of but never bother with each clip. For instance, The Daily Show and The Colbert Report would make good candidates for a “video” page within my Pulse account.

Pulse competes with digital magazine-style services like Flipboard, Zite, Editions by AOL, and Google Currents. Pulse, which first launched in 2010, is available on a variety of platforms, including iPhone, iPad, Android devices, Kindle Fire, and Nook. The startup has over 13 million users who read upwards of 200 million stories each month, as VentureBeat previously reported. If it can translate this kind of activity to its new video channels, Pulse may end up redefining what it means to be a digital magazine.

Palo Alto-based Alphonso Labs, which produces Pulse, has 20 employees and has previously raised over of $10 million in funding to date.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

After months of hard labor, Remixation, creator of the popular video discovery app Showyou, has released a new version of the app that works just as well for social media abstainers as it does for Facebook and Twitter users.

Showyou 3.0, available now for free on the iTunes Store, doesn’t look much different from past versions of the app on the surface, but dig a little deeper and you’ll find a richer and more rewarding way to discover and share videos.

As the video above shows, the new Showyou is still centered around a gorgeous grid of videos, but now you can easily swipe left to unveil a tray that offers up new functionality like the ability to explore video categories. You can also now tap user icons in Showyou to see all of the videos that person shared, as well as follow them as you would in any other social network.

Remixation CEO Mark Hall told VentureBeat in an interview last week that the company had noticed some interesting usage patterns with previous versions of Showyou. Users who linked up Showyou to their Twitter account ended up seeing far more videos than those who just linked up their Facebook accounts. The changes in Showyou 3.0 should now make it easier for those only on Facebook to find new and interesting web videos.

Other improvements in the app include a revamped search, which lets you instantly sift through the 30 million videos in Showyou’s database, as well as the ability to follow grids based on trending hashtags (similar to the way Twitter shows off trending topics).

Remixation spent about 4 to 5 months developing Showyou 3.0, which was almost as long as the company took to create the first Showyou app, Hall said.

Showyou is also available on the iPhone, iPod Touch, and Kindle Fire (those platforms won’t get the new features yet), but Hall said that the company wasn’t very interested in doing a full-fledged Android app. Similarly, he wasn’t too interested in Google TV until that platform starts to pick up steam. Instead, Hall said that he was more interested in potentially incorporating Showyou into Microsoft’s Xbox — though the company’s haven’t yet discussed doing so.

San Francisco, Calif.-based Remixation has raised an undisclosed amount of funding in a first round from True Ventures and other investors.

Not to be outdone by Google, AOL on Monday announced it will launch 15 new original web video series produced by or starring celebrities including Jennifer Lopez and Heidi Klum.

We also found out Monday that Google has put up $100 million for original programming on YouTube, with the search giant in talks with the likes of Tony Hawk, Warner Bros. and the production company behind TV comedy The Office. Both Google and AOL likely see original video series as a major opportunity to reach a new generation of web video consumers who have embraced Netflix and Hulu and cut the cord on cable TV.

New original programming on AOL will come from big companies like Michael Eisner’s Vuguru and Warner Bros. One could-be-big show on the list is AIM High, an action series starring Twilight’s Jackson Rathbone, about a high schooler who is also a secret government agent. Another is Jennifer Lopez’s Nuyorican Productions and Believe Entertainment Group’s Tiger Beat Entertainment, which is based on the teen idol magazine and will target the same audience with news and lifestyle features.

“We are pleased to announce a slate of programming that shows our innovative approach to video,” said Ran Harnevo, Senior VP of AOL Video, in a statement. “It provides one of the best platforms on the Web to connect advertisers with premium content at scale. We’ve built a video ecosystem supported by our data and insights into what excites viewers, combined with a deep understanding of what they share and discuss online.”

AOL has been in trouble with its stock price as of late, but the company has had positive traction when it comes to its media properties, especially the Huffington Post. It likely hopes a slate of original video will give it another opportunity to attract strong pageviews and big advertising dollars.

A full listing of AOL’s new video series can be read below:

Women
• Little Women, Big Cars: From bake sales and soccer games to gossip and divorce, four moms navigate the comedy and drama of suburban life. Starring Ed Begley Jr., Antonio Sabato, Jr., Julie Warner and Kristy Swanson. Produced by Vuguru.
• A Supermodel Stole My Husband: A lighthearted makeover show in which a frustrated wife enlists an adored supermodel to help transform her husband. Produced by AOL Studios.
• Heidi Klum on AOL: A guide to fabulous living for everyday women, including fashion, beauty, parenting, lifestyle, fitness and nutrition. Produced by Full Picture.
• Jocks & Jills: Sports show meets The View in a fresh and funny sports talk show hosted by a rotating panel of diverse celebrity guests. Produced by Flavor Unit Productions.
• Lost in Translation: Reality series following a hip-hop DJ and famous ‘Nuyorican,’ as she attempts to learn Spanish, learn to cook, date and reclaim her Puerto Rican heritage. Produced by Flavor Unit Productions.
• Fearless Living: Based on her best-selling book On Becoming Fearless, Arianna Huffington looks at the many aspects of living a fearless life – from motherhood and parenting to beauty and health to navigating the workplace to friendship, relationships and aging gracefully. Produced by AOL Studios.

General
• The Tanning Effect: Steve Stoute, best-selling author of The Tanning of America, interviews entertainment icons and pop-culture thought leaders including Jay-Z and Pharrell Williams; the series is sponsored by State Farm. Produced by AOL Studios.
• Sessions: Original, exclusive performances with hitmakers such as Alicia Keys and Adele. Produced by AOL Studios.
• Unscripted: Celebrity co-stars interview each other with users’ burning questions. Past talent includes Justin Timberlake, Jennifer Aniston, Robert Pattinson and Adam Sandler. Produced by AOL Studios.
• You’ve Got: Everyday, everyone from Barack Obama to Kevin Bacon to Paula Abdul tells the world what ‘You’ve Got.’ Produced by AOL Studios.

Men
• AutoBlog – The List :Hosts who consider themselves true automotive aficionados must tackle crazy car challenges from ‘The List,’ created by Autoblog’s expert editors. Produced by AOL Studios.
• The Interface: Exclusive performances from breaking artists, such as Mumford and Sons, Rogue Wave, Manchester Orchestra and The National. Produced by AOL Studios.
• MMA Hour: Up close and personal with the celebrities of the MMA Fighting world. Produced by AOL Studios.
• The Engadget Show: Industry leaders and tech luminaries take the stage in front of an audience of tech enthusiasts. Produced by AOL Studios.

Teens & Young Adults
• CliffsNotes Films: Short, animated, irreverent versions of literary classics, produced by Mark Burnett, Coalition Films and AOL Studios and Executive produced by Josh Faure-Brac. Columbia Pictures’ film Anonymous (in theaters October 28th) is the exclusive sponsor of the first six episodes.
• AIM High: TV broadcast-quality action series following Nick Green as he juggles high school with being a secret government agent. Starring Jackson Rathbone from Twilight and Aimee Teegarden from Friday Night Lights. Produced by Warner Bros.

MediaMall, the company behind the popular PlayOn video streaming service, is today launching a new service, PlayLater, that lets you download streaming video from any website to view later. Yes, it’s effectively a DVR for online video.

PlayLater seems like the perfect solution for Web video addicts who travel with their computer and aren’t always on a reliable Internet connection. But as with PlayOn, the service is basically a hack, so there’s always a chance that particular channels of content could stop working without warning.

PlayLater includes access to online video from TV networks like CBS, TBS, and SyFy, and it also hooks into Hulu, Netflix and YouTube. The service is simple to use — so much so that it’s easier to navigate than most Web video sites. Simply choose a channel, locate a program and select a particular episode to download. PlayLater will download the episode in the background, and all you have to do afterwards is hit play. It appears to download video in in real-time, so don’t expect BitTorrent speeds. (If it downloaded video faster, you can be sure Web video sites would quickly ban the service.)

At the moment, PlayLater only works on Windows PCs. And don’t expect to easily share downloaded video, as PlayLater’s videos are only viewable on the computer they were downloaded on. You can also view downloaded videos on your iPhone and iPad by going through MediaMall’s PlayOn service, which streams the files from your computer. The service will cost $4.99 a month or $49.99 per year. Signing up for the beta will snag you a free month of service.

In my brief testing, PlayLater appears to be well designed and organized. I downloaded an episode of How I Met Your Mother (watch it, seriously) from CBS and it played without issue. Quality-wise, it looked about the same as it does online, with the occasional added blockiness.

The South San Francisco company specializes in video compression and internet protocol video networking technology. Its “TV without boundaries” technology enables service providers and content providers to offer high-quality video on the web. The company isn’t making money, so it seems like it’s trying to cash in on the frothy investment environment in Silicon Valley to raise some.

Among the parade filing for IPOs recently are Zillow, the real estate web site firm, and ZipCar, which went public last week.

Envivio’s rivals include Harmonic, RGB Networks and Cisco. The company has more than 220 customers in 50 countries. The company said that it generated revenue of $30 million, up from $16.3 million a year earlier. It reported a loss of $2.3 million, down from $9.2 million a year earlier. As of Jan. 31, 2011, the company had accumulated losses of $79 million.

Envivio said it plans to use the proceeds from the offering for working capital and general corporate purposes, including hiring more people. The company has raised more than $30 million from investors including PE firm HarbourVest and Crescendo Ventures. It has about $10 million in cash. The company was founded in 2000.

If, like me, you don’t spend that much time thinking about video formats, this may seem like an arcane point. But Google framed the move as a step forward for openness on the Web, so there have been articles endorsing Google’s viewpoint and others arguing that it’s actually a step backward (more on both arguments in a second).

In today’s post, Google says the organizations working on HTML5, the latest version of the basic language of the Web, had reached “an impasse” over the “video” tag, which should allow browsers to play video without installing a plugin like Flash. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Apple’s Safari support H.264 as the “baseline” video codec for HTML5, while Mozilla and Opera do not. Google says it ultimately decided to join Mozilla and Opera because “we genuinely believe that core web technologies need to be open and community developed”, so it’s throwing its weight behind the WebM format:

We acknowledge that H.264 has broader support in the publisher, developer, and hardware community today (though support across the ecosystem for WebM is growing rapidly). However, as stated above, there will not be agreement to make it the baseline in the HTML video standard due to its licensing requirements. To use and distribute H.264, browser and OS vendors, hardware manufacturers, and publishers who charge for content must pay significant royalties—with no guarantee the fees won’t increase in the future. To companies like Google, the license fees may not be material, but to the next great video startup and those in emerging markets these fees stifle innovation.

In other words, Google is saying: “Man, those royalties on H.264 are a drag. I mean, not for us. We’ve got boatloads of money. But for other people.”

Which may be true. As Google itself notes, as the owner of YouTube, the company is “among the largest publishers of video content in the world”, but YouTube’s other infrastructure costs may dwarf the licensing fees. In fact, ZDNet’s Jason Perlow argued earlier that the decision is related to YouTube, but not to the licensing fee. He says that in order to control YouTube’s expenses, Google needs to consolidate the videos into a single format. So why not make that single format one that it controls?

But will the move actually work? As TechCrunch’s MG Siegler notes, the ultimate result is a fragmented video landscape, and one whose demand for plugins seems to defeat one of the main advantages of HTML5. Want to watch an H.264-encoded video in Chrome? You’ll need Flash. Want to watch a WebM video in Internet Explorer? You’ll need some plug-in from WebM that’s been promised for the future.

Google’s blog post does tackle the fragmentation question, but the answer (that the landscape was fragmented already) isn’t very satisfying:

Our choice was to make a decision today and invest in open technology to move the platform forward, or to accept the status quo of a fragmented platform where the pace of innovation may be clouded by the interests of those collecting royalties. Seen in this light, we are choosing to bet on the open web and are confident this decision will spur innovation that benefits users and the industry.

[image via Flickr/Chris Ingrassia]

Instead, Wii owners can download the free Netflix application from the Wii Shop Channel, and install the service directly on to their Wii Menu home screens. Nintendo also announced that more than 3 million Wii owners have already connected to Netflix — a number that will surely rise quickly thanks to the disc-free option.

The news follows Sony’s announcement last week that the Playstation 3 will also no longer require a disc to play Netflix streaming content. The new PS3 Netflix app, which is the first to bring 1080p high-definition video and Dolby 5.1 surround sound to the service, is available starting today. Many think that both consoles were forced to use the discs initially for streaming access because of an exclusivity deal between Netflix and Microsoft, which offered the service built in to the Xbox 360 since late 2008.

While the Wii’s Netflix experience is now more convenient for users, it’s still lagging behind other Netflix streaming offerings in terms of features. The Wii doesn’t output high-definition, for example, so viewers won’t be able to watch HD Netflix videos.

Of course, those are outside estimates, so take them with a grain of salt. When reporting its earnings, Google doesn’t offer any specifics about YouTube. But given the constant chatter about how the site is a money-loser, we’re guessing Google will probably announce when the site is profitable. Google did reveal that revenue has doubled for the last three years and that there are “hundreds” of YouTube content partners making more than $100,000 per year.

Ads are served on more than 2 billion video views on YouTube every week, Google told The Times. One-third of those videos were uploaded without the content owner’s permission. Those content owners have chosen to make money from the ads served on those videos, rather than taking the videos down.

And it’s the word-perfect definition of an everybody-wins situation: The uploader gets to keep the video online, the content owner gets a chunk of the ad revenue, YouTube is saved from the hassle of having to delete its content and also profits from the revenue split. Oh, and viewers get to see more content than they would otherwise.

Chris Maxcy, YouTube’s director of content partnerships, describes a time when a meeting with YouTube executives and partners was filled with 90 percent lawyers and barely anyone in the marketing department. “Now, the partners we are working with get checks that get bigger every month. And now when you walk into a meeting there’s almost no lawyers, or there’s a couple of lawyers but they are deal lawyers there to help you get your contract done,” Maxcy said.

This is also a timely answer to critics who panned Google’s decision to buy the company for $1.65 billion four years ago, writing it off as a property that would never be able to see a profit despite drawing so many eyeballs.