Hasta La Gadget!

When sitting down to watch a lovely film on your Wii, you can now take advantage of Lovefilm’s updated streaming app for the console. Users will notice improved search functionality, a more Wii-friendly user interface and, for the first time, watch lists. You’ll also be able to pick up where you left off on other devices thanks to the new homepage which shows previously watched titles. Yup, this is what you’re getting instead of game rentals.

Filed under: Gaming, Home Entertainment, Software, HD, Amazon, Nintendo

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As the company stands now, Apple may not seem too invested in the television space. All they have is the Apple TV to show for it, compared to a slew of mobile products like the iPhone, iPad, and iPod. Obviously, this seems to be changing, as CEO Tim Cook has said himself that Apple is interested in television, but seeing as how they only have the Apple TV, the company owns 56% of the streaming box market.

That’s a pretty impressive number considering that the Apple TV isn’t the company’s main focus. As for other streaming boxes that have taken a piece of the pie, Roku comes in as the second most-popular streaming box at 21.5% and the “Other” category (which Google TV is most likely a part of) owns 15.9%. TiVo comes in at a measly 6.5%.

While the Apple TV isn’t the company’s main focus, they’ve been consistently adding new content and updating the device with new features in order to keep it up to date and relevant when competing against other streaming set-top boxes.

Of course, it certainly helps that the Apple TV comes with AirPlay, which allows Apple users to stream content from their iOS device or Mac directly to a television wirelessly through the Apple TV. This is one of the most popular features on the Apple TV. If you’re not using Netflix or Hulu Plus on the device, then you’re most likely using AirPlay, and this is a huge selling point.

Back in December, Tim Cook noted that the television space is “an area of intense interest” for the company. It’s been several months since that statement, and an Apple event has passed without any mention of television from Apple, but we’re guessing it’ll be a little while longer until we see something from them that lives up to Cook’s “intense interest” quote.

VIA: GigaOM

Apple TV taking over the living room, claims over half of streaming box market is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2013, SlashGear. All right reserved.

In an act of rebellion, Radiohead’s Thom Yorke and producer Nigel Godrich have pulled all their side project albums from Spotify and Rdio because "new artists get paid fuck all with this model… It’s an equation that just doesn’t work". That’ll show ’em, eh?

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Hulu may have put the kibosh on auctioning itself off wholesale, but it looks like some money may still be changing hands. Citing three people familiar with the situation, Bloomberg reports that Time Warner Cable is still participating in talks to purchase a stake in the streaming firm. According to the same trio of sources, TWC was previously interested in nabbing a 25 percent claim in the outfit, and an agreement could be reached within two weeks. Hulu could soon have extra cash in its coffers from the cable giant, in addition to the $750 million its owners just vowed to pour into it, but it’s entirely possible this deal could fizzle out too.

Filed under: Internet, HD

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Source: Bloomberg

After a long-winded period of being up for sale with a few nibbles from big companies, Hulu has decided to exit the market and have its current share of owners maintain ownership once again. Instead, Disney, 21st Century Fox, and NBC Universal will invest $750 million in Hulu to keep it growing into the future.

For the past couple of months, it’s been rumored that several big companies were interested in buying Hulu, including Yahoo, DirecTV, and even private equity firms like KKR and Silver Lake. However, it seems these companies couldn’t come to a successful negotiation, and after what we can only suspect to be numerous failed negotiations, Hulu’s been taken off the market.

21st Century Fox President and COO Chase Carey said that Hulu’s owners had “meaningful conversations with a number of potential partners and buyers,” and he called He called the offers that Hulu received “impressive,” but it seems that ultimately there wasn’t a consensus as far as agreeing to a final price for the streaming video service.

However, Disney, Fox and NBC most likely found a future value with Hulu, and they might have realized that selling the service wouldn’t be the best option. Hulu certainly has a lot of potential, and we reckon that if another company did acquire Hulu, it might have spelled bad news for consumers as the new owners would clean house and completely change around the service.

As for what the extra $750 million will serve for Hulu, it’s just said that the money will help “to propel future growth.” So it’s a good bet that we’ll see even more content from Hulu in the future, and we’ll see the owners continue to work at growing Hulu’s user base. Now, if they could just get rid of ads for paying subscribers, then we have a deal.

Hulu no longer for sale as Disney, Fox, NBC maintain ownership is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2013, SlashGear. All right reserved.