Miramax is following in the footsteps of Warner Bros., Paramount and Universal by making its films available on Facebook.
The Miramax eXperience will initially offer 20 titles in the U.S. and 10 each in Great Britain and Turkey (available films include “Good Will Hunting,” “Spy Kids,” “Chicago” and “Cold Mountain”).
Movies will be made available for 30 Facebook credits (equivalent to $3) and can be viewed on Facebook, the iPad and Google TV.
Miramax hopes to build its reach to 150 million+ Facebook friends in the next 18 months.
“The iTunes-like nature of Miramax’s Facebook movie rentals (i.e. per-movie charge, rather than a subscription fee) could prove very effective,” reports Social Times. “A lot of online movie watchers aren’t ready to commit to a subscription service like Netflix or Hulu Plus. Renting a single movie from Facebook may be more their style, and a $3 movie rental sounds like a pretty good deal, if you ask me.”
Verizon Wireless launches Verizon Video this week — a new version of its video-on-demand application for mobile phones, providing Android users with more than 250 current full-episode TV shows from ABC, NBC, CBS, MTV, Comedy Central, Disney Channel, ESPN, Cartoon Network and others.
Premium content is also available including live sports coverage from NFL Mobile, NFL RedZone, NBC’s Sunday Night Football and NFL network.
The 4G LTE and select 3G service will cost $10/month or $3 for 24 hours.
According to the press release: “Verizon Video updates V CAST Video on select devices and current V CAST Video subscribers will be prompted to update the app the next time it launches. After the upgrade, it will then appear under the name Verizon Video.”
ESPN has selected Mountain View-based Ooyala to power the sports broadcaster’s streaming video content. The platform will replace a proprietary model administered by ESPN.
Ooyala’s platform will reportedly increase the quality of playback, reduce load times and streamline back-end management.
“It’s a serious feather in the cap and vote of confidence for the four-year-old video startup, as ESPN is one of the biggest producers of online video content, with 400 unique visitors hitting play on ESPN videos every second (and serving over 1 billion streams per month),” reports TechCrunch.
The media technology site sees the move as positive: “All in all, it’s great to see ESPN finally offering a quality player with fast load times and a more linear on demand experience in which video queues and layouts feel more akin to a television viewing experience — and can compete in ease of video use with YouTube.”
ETCentric has featured a number of compelling reports regarding how mobile- and location-based technologies are making their way into the music world. Some very creative uses for location data are currently being implemented by musicians. For example…
Arcade Fire’s “The Wilderness Downtown” website asks viewers for an address and then incorporates Google Maps footage of that location into their music video. The band worked with video director Chris Milk, Google and@radical.media to create a fascinating HTML5 multi-browser experience.
OK Go (a big fan of technology with a reputation for media experimentation) asked fans to create GPS journeys that the band then edited into one of their music videos.
Panic at the Disco asked fans to send their videos of a recent 23-city tour that they will cut into their video. The band teamed up with the Viddy app launched in May (the “Instagram for video” allows users to create stylized videos and share them on social networks).
Bluebrain’s “National Mall” album adapts to your GPS location when using their app while walking around the Mall in downtown Washington, DC. Selections from three hours of recordings are designed to correspond to your physical location in the Mall. The band is working on a similar album/app that will be tied to Central Park in New York City.
Is this part of an emerging trend? Check out the music videos posted on the Mashable write-up and draw your own conclusions.
Fox’s “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” has implemented a two-prong viral campaign designed by creative firm Mekanism to raise the film’s profile.
To accomplish this, Mekanism released a series of real ape videos online (with the intent of going viral) and targeted a group of 50 social media ‘influencers’ to help build buzz.
The efforts have so far been successful, but impressing the influencers is more challenging than a traditional media buy. “You have to really convince these guys to want to carry out your message,” explains Jason Harris, president and executive producer at Mekanism.
Tommy Means, Mekanism’s founder and director, adds that current audiences don’t recommend films to their friends because they like a certain brand. “It’s because they like their friends,” explains Means. Online communities tend to look to influencers because they consider them their ‘friends.’ “Our job then becomes to impress and wow the influencers,” he says.
Is this part of a larger trend? Will studios need to turn to YouTube stars and movie bloggers to promote new projects?
Verizon FiOS customers could potentially lose service due to ongoing litigation between Verizon and ActiveVideo Networks, a company that builds interactive TV applications.
A U.S. District Court in Virginia awarded ActiveVideo Networks $115 million based on patent infringement involving interactive applications and VOD elements. Now ActiveVideo is also seeking to shut down the entire FiOS network.
Based on the nature of the specific patents, Verizon could possibly shut down a portion of its services while finding a practical workaround. Verizon also plans to appeal the verdict.
“The ActiveVideo CloudTV platform is currently being utilized by one of Verizon’s competitors, Cablevision,” reports Digital Trends. “ActiveVideo was an early developer of video-on-demand technology over the last two decades and has turned to developing platforms for interactive applications as of late.”
Vision Research has unveiled its Phantom V1610 video camera that the company claims can shoot at one million fps.
Gizmodo points out that in order to shoot at the maximum frame rate, the resolution may suffer too much to be effective.
However, the in-between settings show promise: “You can shoot 1280×720 HD at 18,100, which is still extremely fast, and if you are willing to settle for a standard-def shot at 640×480 you can crank it all the way up to 43,400 fps, which I’m betting would look pretty amazing.”
According to the Vision Research site, the camera can acquire and save up to 16 gigapixels-per-second of data with its proprietary widescreen CMOS sensor. “That means at its full megapixel resolution of 1280×800, you can achieve 16,000 frames-per-second. At reduced resolutions, the v1610 offers frame rates of 650,000 fps.”
Be sure to watch the video demo included in the Gizmodo post.
GLMPS (pronounced “glimpse”), a new iPhone app, hopes to stand out from the growing collection of available image-sharing apps by creating a new type of media that combines stills and video.
Digital Trends describes the basic premise: “When you take a picture with your smartphone through the app, GLMPS captures a photo as well as a short, 5-second video clip of what took place just before the picture was taken. When viewing the GLMPS file, the video plays first, and is then shrunken down and superimposed as a thumbnail over the photo. The video then plays on repeat, much like a GIF file.”
All images are automatically stored to the iPhone’s camera roll. Users can then share the images through the free app, or post GLMPS files to social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr.
An increasing number of viewers are turning to rental programs for movies and TV shows, according to a report from Digital Entertainment Group.
DEG also reports that consumer spending on home entertainment has stabilized with an unexpected recovery to the disc-based business in the second quarter.
The report concludes that consumers spent $4.2 billion on transactional video services — disc rental, streaming and VOD — during the first half of 2011. These figures mark an 11 percent increase over the same period last year.
The report also mentions a 16 percent drop in disc purchases, with combined Blu-ray and DVD sales falling to $1.8 billion in the second quarter. However, rental — including streaming and VOD — was up 11.16 percent. (Blu-ray sales increased 10 percent, while demand for DVD declined.)
Netflix rose 45.7 percent in the first six months of this year, while kiosk rental (mostly Redbox) rose 39.8 percent.
The Hollywood Reporter adds: “Spending on Blu-ray Discs was up a solid 10 percent in the first half. DEG estimates that the number of U.S. households with at least one Blu-ray Disc playback device rose 16 percent in the first six months of 2011 to bring total household penetration to more than 31.6 million, making the format one of the fastest-growing new technologies in the home entertainment industry.”
American Airlines announced it will roll out Gogo’s in-flight streaming video service to its entire fleet of 767 aircrafts.
The service wirelessly streams movies and TV shows from an in-flight library to Wi-Fi-enabled laptops (at $0.99 per TV show and $3.99 per movie).
The current slate of 100 movies and TV shows will remain accessible for viewing after the flight has concluded. Customers will have access to the movies for 24 hours and TV shows for 72 hours.
The TechCrunch post includes a video demo explaining the service.
Online ad metrics are typically confusing to most advertisers, including those who pursue Facebook and other online ad platforms.
Nielsen is attempting to provide a solution to this problem by combining traditional TV data and anonymous online data.
According to Nielsen: “The new system will use an innovative, patent-pending process combining traditional Nielsen TV and online panel data with aggregated, anonymous demographic information from participating online data contributors. Using its unique approach, Nielsen will be able to provide reach, frequency and Gross Rating Point (GRP) measures for online advertising campaigns of nearly any size.”
The Nielsen Online Campaign Ratings service is currently in its testing phase with 80 brands. A public launch is expected by August 15.
Early partner Facebook is also working with comScore on a tool based on GRPs designed to assist advertisers. Facebook hopes both efforts will help make its ad platform more “approachable” to media buyers.
Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes announced the availability of Flixster Collections, a social movie portal that went into public beta this week.
The service, a revamped version of the Flixster product acquired earlier this year, encourages users to share what they’ve watched with friends.
If there’s something you want to see, for example, Flixster directs you back to Amazon, iTunes, Hulu and Netflix (as well as your hard drive, if you let it). There are also links for theatrical films, including reviews, trailers and ticketing services.
“You can also imagine how this will tie in to Ultraviolet, the cloud/locker system for video that Warner and a big coalition of movie studios and tech companies (except for Apple and Amazon) are pushing,” writes Peter Kafka in All Things D.
So far, Flixster Collections is available for PCs and Macs, but no mobile app yet.
The British Parliament signaled today that it intends to legalize the copying of CDs and DVDs onto digital devices for personal use. The new law will not allow people to share content over the Internet without permission of the copyright holder.
The move will update Britain’s 300-year-old copyright laws, making them comparable to laws adopted in other European nations.
The change was recommended by a government-requested report, carried out by a professor of digital economy at he Cardiff School of Journalism.
The report also recommended the creation of a central digital copyright exchange where rights could be bought and sold, but the government has not signaled its intention to act on that recommendation.
Hulu will unveil an original documentary series on August 17. “A Day in the Life” is produced by documentary filmmaker Morgan Spurlock, and will be available exclusively on Hulu.
The half-hour show will follow the daily lives of celebrities, including business mogul Richard Branson and musician will.i.am.
Hulu is not the only online video site to venture into original programming. In March, Netflix announced an original series of its own: “House of Cards,” starring Kevin Spacey.
The series is Hulu’s largest and most ambitious original production, and will premiere as the service continues to court prospective buyers. Yahoo, Google, and Amazon are rumored to be potential bidders.
Apple is rumored to be securing the rights to allow downloading of TV shows and movies in addition to previously announced music in a new service called iTunes Replay.
The service will allow users to access movies they purchased since January 1, 2009. Some content will only be available for download five times.
Streaming will be to Apple TV and most likely iOS mobile devices.
AppAdvice reports: “The name, iTunes Replay is currently being used internally, and is planned to be kept when Apple makes this public. You should expect this to go public in the coming weeks, as the necessary changes are being pushed to Apple’s servers at the moment.”
