Hasta La Gadget!

The news spinning around Hulu hasn’t been positive lately, with increasing competition and rumors of a change in business model, but CEO Jason Kilar’s latest blog post tells a different side of the story. First, after popular choices like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report were unceremoniously yanked back in April it has a new deal with Viacom that’s bringing those shows back to Hulu and Hulu Plus starting today, with episodes of current shows like Jersey Shore and Tosh.0 showing up 21 days after they air. Strictly for the pay subscribers, library episodes of The Chappelle Show and others will show up on Hulu Plus.

As for the future of the business, he sees Hulu as able to serve trends giving customers more convenient video access with less ads and more social media presence — a goal we can get behind, but that may leave content providers wondering how they’ll get paid in this shiny new world. To that end he’s touting the growth of Hulu’s ad revenue as seen in the chart after the break and the rising number of Hulu Plus subscribers with a promise to hit 1 million this year. While that’s well behind Netflix’s most recent count, he’s taking a new shot at the throne by claiming Hulu can afford to pay more for content and that studios should start signing deals on per-user, per-month basis instead of the flat rates Netflix has negotiated so far. Give the full thing a read to get a better idea of where Jason’s head is at (when he’s not planning a GTL run, check the pr after the break for more details on that), we’ll be busy watching Jon Stewart’s interview with Michael Steele.

Update: Peter Kafka over All Things Digital has word that the deal cost Hulu somewhere between $40m and $50m — and that sum could increase depending upon the shows’ performance.

Continue reading Hulu CEO welcomes back The Daily Show & more from Viacom, lays out a battle plan for the future

Hulu CEO welcomes back The Daily Show & more from Viacom, lays out a battle plan for the future originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 02 Feb 2011 22:30:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Want yourself a “Prestige” portable media player to make even legit smartphones blush in envy? Then the D3 Plenue from Cowon might just be for you, what with its 1080p video playback, 32GB of storage, Android 2.1 OS, and 3.7-inch, 800 x 480 AMOLED display. It’s just that today we’re finding the Prestige label also extends to its price, which Amazon has set at a mighty $370. That’s not terrible when contrasted against unsubsidized pricing for comparable smartphones, but then this isn’t a smartphone. Availability of the D3 Plenue is limited to an undated pre-order for the moment, giving you at least a little more time to deliberate on the value this souped-up PMP represents.

Cowon D3 Plenue priced at $370, or $100 per inch of AMOLED originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 01 Feb 2011 05:28:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Amazon’s allegedly got an security flaw where hackers can find your password much easier than they would otherwise, and there’s already a fix in place. But get this — you’ll probably need to change your password for the fix to take effect, if you haven’t already done so in the last couple of years. According to Reddit users, the Amazon.com login system will actually accept any phrase so long as it begins with your password, such as “password123” when the magic word is simply “password” by itself. That apparently makes it that much easier for a computer to guess your password via brute force methods, no matter how counter-intuitive that seems, so if you simply change it immediately — and to something other than “password,” please — you’ll have much sounder dreams.

PSA: Change your old Amazon.com password for better security originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 30 Jan 2011 15:39:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Rumors of Amazon either purchasing Netflix or launching a competing option have been circling and now one of our readers says he’s seeing an unlimited video streaming section to complement the current Amazon VOD options. That’s a nice bonus for the $79/year package that currently adds a few free shipping bonuses and it would be cheaper on a yearly basis than Netflix’s Watch Instantly ($95.88.) As seen above and in the gallery, it consists of “unlimited, commercial-free, instant streaming of 5,000 movies and TV shows” with selections that mirror the Watch Instantly catalog closely. Resolution is apparently limited to a “pretty solid” 480p SD, but there’s no word on audio or subtitle options. We’ll wait to hear if anyone else is seeing a similar page before assuming a wide rollout, but it certainly appears that there could finally be a viable competitor to the Netflix juggernaut.

[Thanks, Pavel]

Amazon rolling out Netflix-like video streaming for Prime subscribers? originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 29 Jan 2011 15:41:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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In a sign that digital books may just be taking over those made of paper, Amazon has announced that for the first time the company has sold more Kindle books than traditional paperbacks.

During an earning’s call Amazon said that for every 100 paperback books it sold on its website, 115 eBooks were sold to Kindle users. How many books that actually amounts to wasn’t revealed. But it’s likely quite a few, as Amazon also announced that the newest Kindle has become its best selling product of all time. The previous best seller was, oddly enough, a book: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

Via Gizmodo