Hasta La Gadget!

Netflix has announced that it has landed a new multiyear licensing agreement to allow it to stream five popular children shows from Disney/ABC Television group. The shows are from the Disney Junior and Disney XD networks. The new content will be available for subscribers to watch later this month.

The five programs that are covered in the licensing agreement include Jake and the Never Land Pirates, Tron: Uprising, Handy Manny, Special Agent Oso, and JoJo’s Circus. All of those shows are very popular with kids, and even some adults. The programming is built around multiple areas of child development.

Disney says that the shows help multiple areas of child development including physical, emotional, social, and cognitive thinking and creative skills. The children’s programming is also intended to help the moral and ethical development of kids who watch.

The programming will be available on the kids section Netflix. Like all other Netflix content, all five of the new Disney programs will be commercial free and included in the Netflix monthly service charge. Netflix has been adding a lot of content over the last several months and more content will be added in the future.

[via Netflix]

Netflix lands new Disney/ABC Television children’s shows is written by Shane McGlaun & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Netflix has updated its iOS app today with a couple of new features that are mostly minor, but are said to improve the app’s experience overall. Just as with the web-based version of Netflix and other app versions, the new iOS app now automatically plays the next episode of a TV series after the previous episode ends. The update also includes recommendations that appear after a movie ends.

Both of these features could be a convenient addition to some users, as it encourages binge-watching while you’re away from home. Of course, watching anything more than an episode of a TV show on your iPhone is enough to make your eyes hurt, so we’re guessing that iPad users will most likely get more use of these new features.

The updated app also improves on its second screen options, as well as comes with the usual slew of bug fixes and performance enhancements. These updates were included in the Android app update that was released yesterday. It wasn’t a big update by any means, but iOS users are now getting the bug fixes from yesterday.

The Netflix app is available for free to download, and it’s compatible on pretty much any mobile device. However, you’ll need to pay $8 per month in order to take advantage of the unlimited streaming. The service’s movie options are bit limited, but you can get access to quite a bit of good TV shows and stream them while on the go.

Netflix for iOS update brings auto-play and more recommendations is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Video streaming group YouTube is said to be preparing a Subscriber Channel service this week with aims at taking on the cable business with month-to-month costs and an ala carte option for users. This service would be served up by Google, owners of the video network, and would likely take payment with the Google Wallet digital payment service. This service would be connected to users’ Google Accounts much in the same way Google Play takes payment for apps and multimedia.

Users working with Google’s Play Movies service are already able to watch movies they’ve purchased through Google’s online store through YouTube while this week’s announcement has them considering a subscription service. Once a user purchases or rents a movie through Google Play, they can play that movie through a web browser using Google’s Movies interface, using the Google Movies app on Android, or through YouTube.

Purchase or rent a movie or television show episode through Google Play and that title is available for watching – as long as you’re logged in – on YouTube. This feature has likely paved the way for Google’s ability to sell subscription services through YouTube in the near future. This week’s report comes from a Financial Times report in which they’ve got a comment direct from YouTube on the possibility of such a service.

“[We are] looking into creating a subscription platform that could bring even more great content to YouTube for our users to enjoy and provide our creators with another vehicle to generate revenue from their content, beyond the rental and ad-supported models we offer.” – YouTube

While this upcoming service could bring a model that would be on-par with the type of video offered with traditional cable subscriptions, services like Hulu Plus and Netflix would likely remain safe from impact. With a subscription to a library of titles rather than an always-broadcasting system like what’s suggested for YouTube here, these large-name systems could keep separate.

If on the other hand it happens to be that YouTube opens up subscriptions to channels that serve up collections of movies – that’d be a different story entirely. YouTube’s future service is suggested to be costing users $1.99 USD per channel per month. Thus far there’ve been no substantial confirmations or denials from YouTube or Google about the possibility of this service existing in the near future (other than what you see above).

YouTube monthly subscription costs to battle Cable, not Netflix is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Blockbuster On Demand has been available on a heap of devices for a while now, but the app just launched on iOS today, allowing users to stream Blockbuster content on their devices using a per-movie payment scheme. The app launched on Android back in January, and it looks like the company is wanting to spice things up again with an iOS release.

Frankly, the app is a bit overdue. Over the years, Blockbuster has been on the decline, due to the failure to adapt to a changing world, where streaming movies was becoming more popular than physically renting them. The company released mobile apps, but they didn’t include any streaming component, until now.

The iOS version of the app is similar to the Android version, and unlike Netflix, where you pay a monthly fee for unlimited streaming, Blockbuster On Demand has you paying on a per-movie basis. The benefit, though, is that you get access to a lot of movies that you don’t have access to on Netflix, which is a service that has been lacking a good movie selection for some time now.

Plus, the Blockbuster On Demand app streams movies in high definition with support for surround sound, which would seem a bit overkill if you were to watch films on your smartphone, but you could easily hook up your ipad to a stereo system to boost the sound level a bit, given that any speaker will provide better quality than the built-in speaker on the iPad or iPhone.

Blockbuster On Demand for iOS looks to take on Netflix is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Netflix will be removing approximately 1,800 titles from its streaming library today because licensing agreements with several studios like Universal, MGM, and Warner Bros are expiring. Content that is set to for removal includes 15 seasons of South Park, older films from the James Bond series, as well as a few classic horror movies.

While this may come as a shock, it’s common business for Netflix to constantly be evaluating its content and remove and add certain movies and TV shows when it feels that it should. The company says that they aim to be a good programmer rather than a broad distributor. As a result, Netflix will only be serving up the most popular pieces of content, rather than everything under the sun.

However, not all hope is lost, as Netflix will also be adding more content at the same time it will be removing content. New shows and movies that the company will be adding on include ParaNorman, The Hunger Games, Safe, Bachelorette, and Mission Impossible 2, as well as a handful of other titles being tacked on.

Netflix’s four-year contract with Starz ended last year, which saw the end of streaming for movies like Scarface, Young Frankenstein, Toy Story 3, and Gangs of New York. However, Netflix recently signed a contract with Disney, which will see a handful of classic childrens’ movies come to the streaming service shortly.

[via CNET]

Netflix removing 1,800 titles as studio deals expire is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.