Getting fed up with MegaVideo’s 72 minute limit? YouTube, Limewire or MetaCafe not cutting it for quality, speed or selection? Then maybe it’s time to look else where –perhaps Blinkbox?
Blinkbox is a new start-up that streams movies and TV programs straight to your computer for your enjoyment. I was sceptical at first. It seems like every site you click on these days you’re offered great streamed films when what you get is actually a load of junk with Japanese subtitles streamed to you from a server in South Korea at an appalling speed – so much so you could probably fly to Korea, buy the thing on DVD and fly home again before the streaming video is finished ‘buffering’.
Blinkbox streams you high quality video that only takes a few seconds to load. For example, I watched Bronson which was only released on DVD a week or so ago. However, it’s all above board and as such you’ll be expected to pay. Bronson set me back £9.99 which is cheaper than the DVD. Other films can cost you al little as £3.
The selection could be better in terms of films from before 2007 but for recent releases you’ll be spoiled for choice.
Because Blinkbox was so easy and of such good quality, I didn’t really mind paying the charges to avoid the bad quality you get with free versions. However, if you’re tight on the old purse strings maybe Blinkbox isn’t for you.
There have been a lot of people reporting about the Pirate Bay’s new video site, Techcrunch UK, Mashable and Boy Genius, but the story was broken by the leading site in the Torrent space, TorrentFreak.
The basics of the story are as follows, the Pirate Bay team has continued developing its video streaming site – which will open up to the public within 5 years. On The Video Bay users can share video clips without having to worry about getting them taken offline due to copyright violations, true Pirate Bay-style.
The Pirate Bay team themselves announced about 2 years ago that they were working on a video streaming site, but we had no idea when we would actually see something. Pirate Bay Spokesman Peter Sunde agreed that it might take a while before the site goes live and told us that “it will be done when it’s done, in the future, in like a year or five.”
It has been reported this morning that Tivo and Quantcast have partnered. This is a very interesting partnership that is aimed to help Tivo sell more advertising on their service. Tivo will combine real time stats on TV viewing along with the users activity on the web which provides advertisers with a much rounded and needed statistics package. This will also prove or rather help publishers get an idea what amount of the audience sticks to the traditional TV viewership and how much of it has been taken away by the online streaming video.
This is a great step forward for Quantcast who seem to be receiving a lot more praise and partners of late. I’m seeing Quantcast gaining a lot more quantified publishers on the net and it is great to see more sites actually being open about their stats and audience.
Netflix, an extremely popular online movie renting site, has done what other sites have been unable to do so successfully, bring the end of brick and mortar video renting locations. Not only have physical video rental locations dwindled, but other online competitors simply could not get the following that Netflix was able to acquire with its extensive selection and quick mailing turnaround.
But even with all of its successes, Netflix was still marred by one fact, their streaming option was not supported by Apple computers. Earlier this year Netflix announced that members of their site would be able to directly stream content from their site, making it easier on the user to view as opposed to having to wait for the mail out. This easily accessible option drove streaming use through the roof, but only for Window’s users. Mac owners were left out in this major announcement until now.
Last week it was announced by Netflix, Inc. that testing was being done to ensure that Mac users would be able to stream content by the end of this year. The announcement which many members thought would never come, came with a catch. The streaming technology would only be available for Intel based Macs, and not be supported by older models.
Thanks to Microsoft’s Silverlight technology, Netflix is able to bring it’s streaming library of over 12,000 movies and TV shows to non-windows users. I personally find it ironic that the only way streaming media could have been brought to the Mac was via a windows bridge, ala Silverlight. Nevertheless, those holding onto older Macs have a reason to ditch it for the Intel based models.
Currently there is a Mac media player that is available for beta testing. The product, now available for public beta testing can be downloaded by anyone. The beta as admittedly experienced several bugs that may interfere with the quality of the movie played, but plans from Netflix are to have most if not all of these bugs worked out by the end of the year.
Personally I love Netflix’s “Watch Instantly” choice, and have longed for support on the Mac. Interestingly though, the DRM only allows a certain number of machines that you can watch your streaming media on. This limitation is similar to what iTunes has with its account set up. I’m not necessarily sure this will be much of a problem for most of us, but the limitation seems silly to begin with.
Thus far the player has worked fine on my machine, but even with my limited use I may not come across all of the bugs that are expected to pop up. If you are using the public beta software to stream movies on a mac, I’d like to year about your experiences and whether this was a good move for Netflix, Inc. Make sure to leave your comments and be heard!
