Eirik Solheim alerted me that Norwegian Broadcasting is embracing BitTorrent:

As one of many ways to reach people with our content we have decided to do an experiment and make one of our most popular television series available through BitTorrent. The files are MPEG4 H.264, 1024×576 25fps, 3 Mbit/s. No DRM.

Spreading brand awareness online without investing in hosting and bandwidth. What more could a network ask for? Oh yeah, ad revenue.

A periodic roundup of relevant news… from our other blogs:

• Networking HDTV at Home: Connected Home 2 Go
• Snapstream Shuttering Couchville TV Listings: Brent Evans Geek Tonic
• Broadband by the Byte: Connected Home 2 Go
• Hauppauge Unveils Real-Time USB HD Recording: Brent Evans Geek Tonic
• WiMAX at CES: Connected Home 2 Go

At CES, Logitech introduced their first updated Squeezebox since acquiring Slim Devices. The Squeezebox Duet ($399) does a nice job mashing-up Logitech’s discontinued Wireless DJ product and the prior Squeezebox by uncoupling the music display and controls from the audio playback hardware. As with all Squeezebox products, the device streams audio from a computer or the Internet (including Pandora and Slacker). While the base station is somewhat homely, it’s small and will most likely reside out of sight near the home theater gear and attached speakers. The only question I have is, will Mari want to upgrade her current Squeezebox?

Two questions I have following Macworld’s live keynote coverage:

• Will Time Capsule functionality be made available to existing Airport Extreme base stations with USB-connected hard drives? (As mine is configured.)
• Will the MacBook Air’s new multi-touch interface (that I requested) be made available on existing MacBook models?

You can probably guess which answer I’m hoping for…

As rumored and speculated, Apple has pulled the trigger on iTunes movie rentals for Macs/PCs, iPods, iPhones, and Apple TV (see second paragraph). 20th Century Fox, Warner Bros, Disney, Paramount, Universal, and Sony are the larger studios in their stable. Typical digital rental terms: Begin watching within 30 days of download, 24 hours to complete once started. (I think most of us would prefer 30-36 hours to cover consecutive evenings.) Streaming playback begins within 30 seconds, meaning these won’t be high definition. New movies run $3.99 a pop, while “library” titles will be $2.99/ea.

Apple TV will now support direct ordering and movie rentals with TWO download options. DVD quality OR HD with 5.1 audio - for $1 more per rental. Additionally, Apple TV will sport a refreshed interface and has dropped in price to just $229.

(via Engadget’s Macworld live blogging)

Vudu made a couple of CES announcements…

Since their $399 movie download STB isn’t quite expensive enough, Vudu has introduced a higher priced model at $999 - offering only increased storage. From a business perspective, I get it - hard drives are cheap and “Vudu XL” margins will be much higher than the base Vudu model. However, from a marketing standpoint, I’m not sure this sends the right message. Especially with Netflix announcing unlimited movie downloads today, Apple expected to introduce movie rentals tomorrow (including Apple TV playback), and Comcast’s Project Infinity which should quadruple their VOD offerings this year. The need for a larger hard drive also emphasizes a limitation in Vudu’s licensing terms… Purchased (as opposed to rented) movies cannot be deleted and re-downloaded at a later date (as Amazon Unbox allows).

Having said that, the Vudu interface and selection are still better than most. As is the physical design. Vudu also announced they’d be offering more HD content - 70 titles by the end of the month. With a 4Mbps connection, playback will be instantaneous. I haven’t always been pleased with Comcast TV service and technicians, but my Internet connectivity has been outstanding - so I’ll report back later this month on Vudu’s HD offerings.

I didn’t realize quite how buried I’ve been in work until I looked up this afternoon and realized the Iowa caucuses are tonight. Fortunately, it’s extremely easy to get caught up on the Iowa happenings, not just by turning on the news networks, but by turning on the live online coverage. Check out the Brave New Films site for the best coverage format I’ve seen. (Warning: site contains blue-state commentary.) It has video, live-blogging and interactive polls running. The live-blogging has both the host’s narrative and comments from the online audience. Unfortunately, I can’t get the video to load, but from people’s comments it sounds like other folks are able to view the feed. Maybe I’ll have better luck during the New Hampshire primary. This is the way election coverage should be done. (Spoilers: Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee are the projected winners.)

Netflix revealed their television set-top box ambitions yesterday. Hacking Netflix spoke directly with CEO Reed Hastings:

Our model is that we don’t want one Netflix-branded box, we want to see 100 Netflix-capable boxes. We want to be embedded in high-def DVD players, Internet games, dedicated set-top boxes, a wide range of options

Given much of the speculation leading up to this point, I’m somewhat surprised they’ve decided to create a Netflix service rather than their box. However, the strategy makes a lot of sense in limiting risk and maximizing exposure. After all, which companies (other than Apple) wouldn’t want Netflix on their Internet-connected television devices?

LG is up first, and has targeted Q2 2008 for delivery of a Netflix-enabled STB. No other details regarding functionality or pricing were made available at this time. No specific details on video streaming pricing were announced either, though the assumptions (Reuters, AP, NY Times) seem to be that the Netflix streaming service would inherit the current web-based model - either a specific number of viewing hours based on dollars spent monthly, or unlimited content. (more…)