YouTube and Google Video taking away BitTorrent marketshare?

Now here's a nice explanation for what is going on with "video sharing".

The excitement and focus on Yahoo Video, YouTube, and others sometimes obscures what these services do and don't do. One way to view the shift is to see what they have replaced, which is the use of BitTorrent for distributing short movies and clips.

Amazon.com launches CustomFlix

You know how you can purchase tapes of certain broadcasts on TV? Amazon has a better idea: Make every TV show available via a print on demand DVD service. Their announcement today indicates NBC, A&E and PBS will be the first ones to offer DVD versions of their programming through Amazon.

Funny, they take out another press release to target the sale of archived TV shows from years past. Opening their vaults are the same networks.

And, in a final announcement featuring a relationship with Mark Cuban's HDnet, CustomFlix will print in every high definition DVD format: WMV-HD, Blu-Ray, and HD-DVD.

Mashups and remixes to market movies?

The New York Times reports that a new movie is focusing its marketing budget on engaging the creativity of their audience... who can download their trailer and then edit it, create new music, and upload the results.

Internet and TV in 2006

There is no doubt about the shifts bringing major media through the internet. Here are three items that serve to document where we are today.

Mark Cuban analysis of TV on the internet

Live streaming TV from the BBC

Tom Coates (Yahoo) on TV distribution

And from Tom's brief followup to that post:

... "I'm not so much predicting that, "Internet TV will move from pay-per-episode to a pay-per-season, one-time subscription model" but that pay-per-season, one-time subscription is the best way to get down the programmes that you actually always want to watch, and that implementing the podcast-like functionality alongside individual downloads at a higher price is the best way to meet user needs and to make downloadable programming a real partner to traditional broadcast."

Podcasting tools improve

right-click here to download


The focus of this plugin from MightySeek allows password protected access to premium content, even for users subscribing through iTunes. Is this the mechanism publishers need for providing easy access to some materials while also restricting access to paying subscribers? Certainly it's a step in the right direction.