The recent announcement from LG that they are partnering with Plex, has catapulted one small company into the big time.
So what is it? Just another step towards the "boxless living room".
Last week we published a list of the top ten (estimated) YouTube revenue-earners.
This week it's The Top 10 Webisodes, compiled by a company called Visible Measures.
The difference between the two lies in the definition of a webisode - the content on this list is produced eps, rather than the more free-form material featured last week. In fact one of them comes from Starz Media - a major US producer.
Still some amazing numbers of views - over 64mil for that Annoying Orange and interesting to see a couple of stayers in Red vs Blue and Happy Tree Friends still pulling big audiences.
iTunes rocked the ossified music industry. Now Apple's announcement that it will sell a range of TV shows for 99c suggests that it could do the same for the torpid screen distribution industry.
But a range of commentators feel that Apple as the destination for screen content is not a good thing. They see the mega-aggregator's ability to dictate terms of trade as unhealthy.
So it's good to see Amazon matching Apple's "TV shows for 99c" offer, even if Amazon is making a loss at this price and can't sustain it.
It's sending a signal to content creators - iTunes isn't the only game in town.
Amazon's gamble
Interesting to see how Amazon's pricing works out - at 99c per ep, you can download Glee cheaper than buying the whole season on DVD. Amazon will sell the DVDs for $35.49 from September 14, but you can download right now for around $21.78! How does that work?
Note - the Amazon download service is not available here. Do you ever feel left out in this country?
Just when you thought the Dogs had dozed off, out comes an iPhone app.
The Jetlag Travel Guides are originally a print series of Lonely Planet spoofs. They take you through the pleasures and pitfalls of roughing it in places like Gastronesia and Costa del Pom.
The iPhone app Jetlag Lite contains one free guide, unlocking the rest is $4.95.
You can browse content on Working Dog's website, which is typically quirky. It looks like it might have been designed by Russell Coight!
It contains online versions of some of the Jetlag titles, but no reference to the app.
The Jetlag.. app will be great in-tram entertainment for fans of Working Dog.
According to iiNet (the only ISP to get into bed with FetchTV so far) their trial of 100 households has resulted in 95 of them taking up a paid subscription to Fetch.
According to iiNet, movies were a major selling point.
They say that foreign-language programming is finding a market - perhaps as a cheaper alternative to giant satellite dishes that many non-English speakers use to get content from their home countries?
Kylo is eerily reminiscent of Joost.
Remember Joost? The early content aggregator backed by the people from Skype in 2007.
It didn't work out, but it was a glimpse of things to come.
So now we have Kylo causing a few ripples amongst the contentscenti.
Technicolor is re-inventing itself to meet the needs of the digital screen content industries.
Vince Pizzica is an Australian who works out of Paris, heading up Technicolor's Strategy, Technology and Research. He recently visited Melbourne.
He told me that after a period of uncertainty about the direction of the company, it's now focussed on the creation and delivery of premium content. Technicolor is a multi-faceted company, supplying hardware, software, doing research and providing services to the screen content industry.
Star Wars Uncut is a fan-sourced remake of Episode 4 - A New Hope.
Started last October by Casey Pugh, the film is a full-length recreation of the George Lucas classic.
Fifteen second segments were created by 430 directors, using everything from stop-motion with vegetables to quite sophisticated CGI.
Skeptical about independent content creators making money out of YouTube?
A study by TubeMogul, a video advertising and analytics company, made an estimate of income from banner ads only for the top 10 YouTube indie content stars.
There must be a quick way of saying
"short-film-that-was-generated-by-an-open-competition-and-is-now-being-used-as-incognito-viral-branded-content-for-a-corporation.."
Whatever it is, here's a really good one.
