Hasta La Gadget!

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.

Verizon‘s CEO attended the National Association of Broadcasters conference, stating yesterday that half of Verizon Wireless’s traffic is from videos, a number that is expected to continually increase over the next several years, eventually accounting for about 2/3rds of it. He then went on to discuss a conversation he had with the late Steve Jobs over the iPhone and LTE.

CEO Lowell McAdam attended the NAB conference yesterday, taking part in a scheduled discussion with Gordon Smith, the National Association of Broadcasters’ President and CEO. According to Fierce Wireless, not many individuals attended the one-on-one talk event, but those who did were graced with McAdam’s discussion of its LTE network, and in particular, that videos account for a large amount of its traffic.

He also addressed concerns that broadcasters have expressed about the company’s LTE broadcasting technology, following comments he made earlier this year on using that tech to provide its subscribers with certain live broadcasts. The 2014 Super Bowl was used as one example of the type of events Verizon’s CEO would like to see broadcasted, but underscored the reality that the wireless company isn’t interested in replacing standard broadcasting.

Another interesting thing McAdam had to say was in regards to a conversation he had with the late Steve Jobs, with whom he discussed LTE and the iPhone. McAdam went to task to convince Jobs to add LTE support to the iPhone 5, with the CEO saying during the conference: “I was really trying to sell him and he sat there without any reaction. Finally, he said, ‘Enough. You had me at 10 Mbps. I know you can stream video at 10 Mbps.’ And Apple’s next phone was LTE.”

[via Fierce Wireless]

Verizon’s CEO says video accounts for half of its traffic is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

After the announcement that Google would be shutting down YouTube after eight years (not really), the service’s co-founder, Chris Hurley, has announced his new video website to fill the void. Hurley assures us this isn’t an April Fools’ joke either, but he pokes fun at Google’s attempt at April Fools humor on his new site called MixBit.

Hurley initially announced his plans to start a new video website earlier this month at SXSW, and at the time, he said he was about a month away from officially launching the new site to the public, so there’s still about a week and a half left before that happens, but Hurley officially announced MixBit today via Twitter, and created a landing page for the new service.

On the MixBit website, Hurley notes that “instead of sitting around, we thought you’d want a new site to not only watch cat videos, but create them…together!” This suggests that MixBit will not only be a consumption platform to watch videos, but a service that allows you to create videos with other users as well.

Hurley noted that MixBit won’t be a YouTube competitor, but rather a supplement. MixBit’s collaboration focus could create a whole new meaning to video-streaming sites, but we’ll have to wait and see what it’s all about first. Details are rather scarce at this point, and there’s no exact launch date specified, but we should hear more about it sometime in the near future.

YouTube co-founder announces MixBit video site is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

VEVO has just launched a new service that will bring back the good old days of MTV (before it became a network filled with terrible reality TV shows). The new service is called VEVO TV, and it’s a 24-hour live music video streaming service. The stream will be composed of new artists, new songs, popular hits, various genres, live concerts and more. VEVO is becoming the Pandora of music videos, bringing viewers their favorite music videos while also exposing them to new material.

The new service will not be using an algorithm. The service has a designated team to help run it 24 hours a day. According to the VEVO’s Senior Vice President of Product and Technology, there will be a lot of heavy lifting occuring behind the scenes. The team has to keep track of the live feed by attaching “metadata” related to the content. Meaning they have to change and adjust information according to the content currently played so that users will be able to, for example, share the correct content to their social feeds and save the right content to their playlists.

VEVO TV is just a start of things to come. In the future, the service can expand to become multiple channels dedicated to a certain category. There could be a channel dedicated to only live music, another for new up-and-coming artists, and several for the various music genres like Rap, Country, Reggae, Pop, and more.

VEVO TV will not be limited to just the PC. Viewers will be able to access the live streaming service from a variety of devices like their Android, iOS, or Windows phones and tablets. The content will also be available through internet TV boxes like Roku, as well as game consoles. VEVO TV brings back the retro MTV, which used to be THE network for watching non-stop music videos.

[via TechCrunch]

Old school MTV gets reincarnated as VEVO TV is written by Brian Sin & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Have you ever wondered how your Netflix experience stacks up compared to that of other users? Netflix mas made it easy to satisfy that curiosity by introducing its ISP Speed Index, which lists the fastest and slowest ISP for different countries based on information gleaned from its users, as well as the overall average speed for each country.

Of course, this isn’t the first time Netflix has revealed such information, having released a graph on the performance of top networks back in 2011. That information was harder to sort through, however, and far less appealing to the eye. With the ISP Speed Index, the information has been aggregated in a single location, with easily digestible information and the ability to pull up data for eight countries.

According to Netflix, 33 million customers stream in excess of a billion hours of video every month, providing ample data. Streaming data has been provided for the US, UK, Ireland, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Norway, and Mexico. The US rounds out the list with both the fastest and slowest ISP speeds, while Mexico comes in at the bottom of the list for highest speed, and second from bottom (after the US) in the lowest speed category.

Mexico has the lowest overall speed at 1.65Mbps, however, while Finland has the top overall speed at 2.57Mbps. For the United States, Google Fiber comes in as #1 with 3.35Mbps, while Clearwire comes in last at 1.25Mbps; the average speed is 2.3Mbps. The UK’s speeds are a tad less polarized, with Virgin beating out the rest of its competition at 2.37Mbps, and EVERYTHINGEVERYWHERE coming in last with 1.77Mbps; the average speed is 2.07Mbps.

[via Netflix]

Netflix introduces ISP Speed Index, shows the fastest and slowest ISPs is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.