This could be good. It would be nice to have more mainstream titles added to the Watch Instantly catalog. I doubt however, that this will boost the sale of Warner Brothers DVDs at the time of release. People are turning to Netflix because they don’t want to have to buy DVDs either because they don’t want to own the DVD, don’t want to venture out to rental stores, or because they are trying to cut costs. There are a number of other methods that people can turn to in order to see the new releases, the biggest being the iTunes Store, RedBox, Blockbuster, XBox Live/Playstation Network, Amazon On Demand, video rental stores, and as Gizmodo suggests, peer-to-peer sharing via torrents. I’m guessing the latter of the list will gain some momentum, especially as other companies join in.

Elsewhere:

• Netflix, Warner Brothers End Dispute, Reach Deal on DVDs – Bloomberg on BusinessWeek
• Netflix Is Losing New Release Rentals – Gizmodo
• 28 Days Later: Say Goodbuy to the Netflix New Release Rental – Mashable
• Netflix, Hollywood Politics and the War for Streaming Movies – Gizmodo
• Netflix bends over, agrees to delay renting Warner DVDs – Engadget

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www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8IozVfph7I

I just recently read a post on Mashable entitled Film Released on YouTube, Theaters, DVD and TV for World Environment Day. The film was directed by Yann Arthus-Bertrand and produced by Luc Besson. Glenn Close narrates the 1.5 hour long video featuring high definition, aerial photography of over 60 countries to tell the story of our ecosystem and how humans have affected it.

I’m going to to watch the full video on YouTube the first chance I get. I looks incredibly interesting and the trailer itself is a work of art. For anyone interested, you can watch the trailer and full feature on YouTube for free.

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Pay-For Services:

• Amazon Video On Demand
• iTunes
• Netflix Now

From Lifehacker:

• Find Full Episodes Online with Find Internet TV
• Download TV Torrents and Watch Online with TIOTI
• Use BitTorrent to keep up with your shows
• Automatically download new TV shows over BitTorrent with ted
• FeedMyTorrents Offers TV Torrent Feeds Without Duplicates

From Gizmodo:

• How To: Max Out Apple TV’s Potential With Boxee

Various Online TV Streaming Sites & Services:

• Project- FreeTV
• TVersity
• Joost
• FanCast

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Part III – Boxee – Right now, Boxee is a good app for those who have a Mac, or perhaps AppleTV, but I’m not sure it’s quite there yet for Windows/Linux users. It’s getting a lot of coverage lately so I’m going to cover it in this series.

Boxee, unlike the options in the previous post, is freeware based off of the opensource XBMC media center. Unless you’re simply going to run Boxee off of your Mac, it take a little bit of installation procedures to get it working on another system. Here’s a few links to those installations here:

1. MacOSX Installation
2. AppleTV Installation
3. Linux Installation
4. Windows Installation (USB Patch – Windows still in development)

Boxee is simply huge. It will pick media from your computer or give you various options of where you want to look for media including the web. Built-in, Boxee streams from services such as Joost, Last.fm, ABC, CNET, CNN, CBS, Hulu, Comedy Central, YouTube, MTV, Flickr…and sooooo many more. From music to photos to television and movies. If it’s accessible to your computer/internet connection, you can watch it through boxee.

Recently there has been talk about Boxee offering a set-top box in the future.

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I’ve had this software for quite awhile, as a beta tester. The most convenient thing about PlayOn, in my opinion, is that it allows you to stream your instant queue from Netflix. You can also browse through Hulu, CBS, YouTube, CNN, and ESPN content. I’m sure they’ll probably add more down the road. There were quite a few bugs during beta testing, but that’s to be expected. Seems that everything is relatively stable at this point. Very convenient for the PS3 owner who wants to stream Netflix and other content.

One thing about PlayOn is that it needs Windows to stream off your computer to your system. Just fine and dandy if you have a PC running Windows by default. If not, just simply run Windows through Parallels or VMWare on your Mac. It works great.

The other app I mentioned is NullRiver’s MediaLink. It’s $20, but again, pretty useful. Especially if you have a Mac and a PS3 (they also have an Xbox 360 version). MediaLink allows you to stream media from your Mac to your PS3. It acts as a server and shows up right in the XMB menu. You’ll instantly have access to iPhoto, iTunes, Aperture, etc. I find this very useful because sure, I can set up my hard drive and stream my music off of it, but have you ever tried to set up a playlist on the PS3? It’s a pain. With MediaLink, I can view my iPhoto albums and iTunes playlists instantly, just as I have them set up on my Mac. Want a different playlist? Just set one up and refresh and there it is. Check it out if you have a Mac and have been looking to integrate it with your PS3.

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Part I – Hulu – You probably saw their commercial during the Super Bowl coverage. (Awesome commercial by the way if you haven’t, check it out.) Hulu is by far my favorite online source of television shows and movies. It was announced in March 2007, but only made its public US access debut in March 2008. Since then it’s really started to pick up speed. For more history, you can check out the Wikipedia article.

Hulu is powered by Flash which is very convenient since almost everyone has Flash installed on their computer. Not only can you view Hulu on your computer, but with fairly recent PS3 firmware updates, you can view Flash media at full screen on your TV through your PS3′s built in web browser. In the past few days there’s also been a lot of talk about Flash coming to the iPhone/iPod Touch which could mean that a Hulu app is right around the corner.

Besides being so easily accessible, Hulu has a great selection of clips and episodes. Miss an episode of a show you love that aired last night? More likely than not, it’s already posted on Hulu, ready for you when you have the time to watch it. Nice, huh? Hulu not only has full episodes from various seasons, but it also has clips of shows (for that bit you missed that everyone is now talking about), commercials (such as the ones that appeared for the Super Bowl), or feature-length films.

Once you start to play a movie there will be a timeline on the bottom for easy navigation, as well as a menu on either side with various options such as ‘full screen,’ ‘pop-out,’ or ‘lights out.’ You can play media at Hulu with out an account, but if you’d like to set up a queue (or view any mature-rated shows/movies), an account is as simple as giving your name and email address.

If anyone’s interested, Hulu has put together a nice video walkthrough.

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Over the past few years, I’ve found it increasingly convenient to watch streams on my laptop or on my TV through my PS3. Of course there’s the pay services such as iTunes and Amazon On Demand, I can’t really justify spending money on shows I could more often than not, just get through free services.

I have quite a few friends who, given the state of the economy, are looking more closely into their bills and how much they really need that expensive cable bill. Once they start hearing all of the options out there, they really start to reexamine their attachment to the 100+ or 200+ channel packages.

There’s so many options out there, that I don’t think I’d ever be able to cover them all, but I’ll post a few I usually recommend in a series of posts, followed by a few articles that might be useful to check out if you find yourself second guessing your cable packages.

Enjoy.

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