Internet Video Distribution: Various Updates

Delivering Olympics video coverage online may not have been quite as lucrative for NBC as originally hoped, but it’d be silly to conclude that Internet-based content distribution is a passing fad. Consider, for example, that traditional television viewing is an increasingly geriatric activity, or that an estimated 12 billion videos were served up online in May alone. As such, here’s the latest-and-greatest in the video streaming-and-download industry, from a variety of distribution sources (and in no particular order):

• Amazon has begun beta-testing a video-on-demand streaming service that (depending on whose opinion you believe) will either complement or replace the company’s existing Unbox rental-and-purchase download portal.
• Back in April, I told you about Joost’s experiment with live streaming the NCAA basketball playoffs. Now the NFL is getting into the game; live streams of Sunday night (American) football will be coming to NFL.com this fall.
• PlayOn is now offering beta software that’ll stream Hulu and other online-sourced content from a LAN-connected Windows PC to your PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360. Nintendo Wii support is planned by year end, and Netflix support is "just down the road". Then again, on that latter point and if you’re the impatient sort, you could pick up a Roku box now, or wait just a few months for the Xbox 360 Fall Update.
• Blockbuster has finally, it seems, decided to begin earning a return on its Movielink investment; downloads are at the beta-test stage (begging the question of just what there is to beta-test, as Movielink’s been offering such services for several years now). (When) does this mean buh-bye, brick-and-mortar?
• Hulu, by the way, has just stuck its second toe into the high-def pond. Full immersion soon, please!
• Blockbuster’s primary competitor, Netflix, now has a second partner’s online distribution hardware platform to tout (in addition to the earlier-mentioned ‘Roku box’) in the form of a LG Blu-ray player. High-def optical disc playback plus standard-def Internet-streamed playback…can you wrap your head around that seeming strategy contradiction (particularly ironic given that Netflix is poised to begin tacking a surcharge onto memberships for Blu-ray rentals)? Given its recent physical media distribution stumbles, Netflix and its movie studio partners might want to pick up the ‘Watch Now’ (aka ‘Watch Instantly’) content-embrace pace, and sooner versus later.
• And finally, who can forget VUDU? Plenty of people, apparently. To the dismay of many of the company’s investors, judging from both public feedback comments and private emails I’ve received, I’ve admittedly been a harsh critic of many aspects of the service; the tendency to indiscriminately gobble up LAN and WAN bandwidth, for example, or the lack of built-in Wi-Fi, or (speaking of built-in Wi-Fi) the likelihood that it’ll long survive the Apple TV Take 2 competitive onslaught. Since I’ve previously shared various ‘tricks of the journalism trade’ with you, I’ll pass along another one today: when a company embraces porn, it does so out of short-term fiscal desperation (i.e. it doesn’t have the luxury of worrying about its long-term reputation), and it’ll soon pass away. VUDU added porn to its catalog at the beginning of this month (and no, I haven’t done…err…a ‘hands-on’ analysis). Draw your own conclusions. In other VUDU news, the company recently dropped the prices on 99 movies to 99 cents, on top of its late-May extended-rental 99 cent embrace. Oh…and VUDU just laid off nearly 20% of its staff, and the company’s new CFO is repositioning the set-top box as an ecommerce platform (?). Draw your own conclusions…wait, didn’t I already say that?