Hulu Plus, the premium version of online video hub Hulu, has now opened its doors to all interested users, according to a post this morning on the company's corporate blog.
Says Rob Wong, Director of Product for Hulu, users no longer need an invitation to sign up for Hulu Plus. Also, the service will roll out next week to Sony PS3 owners with a PlayStation network account.
As we have mentioned before, Turkey has some problems with censorship. Between its governmental and religious authorities, it has shut down, and kept down, everything from YouTube to Blogger and a lot of what came in between.
In the past year, Turks have taken to the street to protest this censorship. And now, the YouTube ban has been lifted.
YouTube crossed the 1 billion subscriptions mark today and if some of those aren't yours - you're missing out. Subscription to YouTube channels is a great way to make use of the service, especially on mobile devices.
Have you got some favorite YouTube subscriptions? I do, and I thought I'd share them here. If you've got some good ones to recommend to ReadWriteWeb readers let us know in comments so we can subscribe and watch them while exercising and folding laundry.
When it comes to streaming media, it looks like Boxee has the best of both worlds. That is, its hardware solution - the Boxee Box - makes it easy to bring streams like YouTube, Netflix or Pandora to your disconnected television. Now, its software solution will perform a similar feat with the addition of VUDU, a previously hardware-only provider of HD movie rentals.
In reality, both the hardware and software version will be bringing VUDU to your screen, whether TV or computer monitor. This morning, the two companies announced that VUDU would be coming to the Boxee platform in November.
The percentage of online video available in HTML5 format has grown 5X since January and more than 2X in the past 5 months, according to a report by web video cataloging service MeFeedia today. An estimated 54% of online video is now available in HTML5, generally in addition to availability in Adobe Flash.
What does that mean? It means iOS devices can play a whole lot of video without concern for Flash, it means that Flash's (alleged) memory problems can be minimized by deferring to HTML5 players and it may mean less industry dependence on Adobe's Flash publishing technologies.
VLC has made its way fully onto iOS with this week's release for the iPhone and iPod Touch. The open-source, multi-platform video player will allow Apple's mobile device users to play a number of different video formats, from DiVX to AVI and more.
Ustream, the live-streaming video service, announced this morning that it will begin allowing broadcasters to charge viewers to watch content on a pay-per-view model. In addition to pay-per-view, the site will begin offering ad-free broadcasting.
The move can mean great things for both broadcasters and viewers, as it offers a way to monetize streaming video while also bringing content to the site that might not otherwise be available.
Netflix, the streaming-video and DVD subscription service, may soon offer an instant-streaming only option in the U.S. The feature is one that the company already began offering in Canada last month.
This week, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said that the success of its streaming-only service in Canada has got the company considering testing the option in the U.S., as soon as later this quarter.
Mobile video optimization firm Bytemobile has just released its most recent "Mobile Minute Metrics" report, a look at wireless users' video consumption trends and behavior based on metrics from a cross-section of nearly 2 billion Bytemobile customers in 58 countries around the world.
According to the new report, which focuses on Q3 2010 mobile traffic, mobile operators are seeing "unprecedented" levels of mobile data traffic, an increase heavily impacted by increased demand for video. Some interesting stats were revealed, too - like whether it's Android or iPhone users who watch more video, what sites get the most views and more.
YellowBird, a Netherlands-based video technology startup, just had its interactive, 360-degree video player approved by YouTube for integration into YouTube's channels. With the new player, you can now not only watch immersive, 360-degree YouTube videos, you can also navigate the video by dragging your mouse. As TechCrunch rightly described it last year - it's like Google Street View for video.
The first YouTube video with this technology is live now, in a campaign designed for Doritos.
