Just to follow up on a previous post, Studio Daily has an interview with the folks that worked on the My Name is Earl episode that featured stop-motion character animation. While there's not much new here, there is a video available of the interview which shows a few glimpses of the behind the scenes setup. So if you're into stop-animation or just curious, you might enjoy checking it out.

Xbox Live released their video download service last Wednesday and is off to a rip roaring start. Now you can get HD movie rentals over your fat Internet pipe for a mere 6 bucks (or 480 MS points). Standard definition movies go for $3 as well as HD TV shows and SD shows are $2. Keep in mind these are all rentals meaning they will evaporate after a certain time, but what a cool way to introduce users to IPTV. And there are a few small glitches with the launch since Microsoft apparently doesn't have enough bandwidth to back up the HD downloads, so expect things to be a little pokey. I don't have an Xbox 360 nor do I plan on getting one but this will be good competition for Apple once they drop their iTV product sometime early next year.

In one of those "I told you so" moments, CBS recently announced that their TV shows have received a major boost after they released some of their content on YouTube. David Letterman gained 5 percent (or 200,000 new viewers), while Craig Ferguson is up 7 percent (or 100,000 viewers). CBS has uploaded 300 clips so far, which have averaged 857,000 views per day in total - that's 29.2 million views on YouTube this month. A round of applause for CBS because instead of suing YouTube, they have been smart enough to use it to their advantage. Another good example of the YouTube effect was Borat, I saw a quarter of the movie on YouTube before seeing it in the theaters but that only whetted my appetite. And I am guessing it was the case for the millions of Borat viewers.

I have certainly been watching less television because I am spending more time online. And most of the time I do spend online, I am watching video. And though I spend much of the time finding videos for my video blog, I still imagine I would spend a lot of time watching online video more than television because it is simply more interesting. So the results of the ICM poll came as no surprise, BBC "found that some 43 percent of Britons who watch video from the Internet or on a mobile device at least once a week said they watched less traditional TV as a result." The number will surely rise as new video streaming devices come into the market, like Apple's ITV (due in January). However, the final frontier to online video will be in creating revenue for itself. I imagine Google and other online advertisers are already thinking of all this.

Machinima.com has a great interview with the South Park crew discussing the recent South Park-World of Warcraft episode. You get a little behind the scenes info on where the inspiration to use WOW came from, plus a few techie details on how the episode was created. For example, they treated the game capture sessions just like regular shoots using a Mac Pro with SnapzPro software for capturing. The captures were then imported into Avid systems and cut into the show which gave them immediate feedback if the captures worked in the scene, or if they needed to re-capture from the game. And just like a real location shoot, they did have some issues such as random players walking into the area they were capturing. But unlike a real shoot (hopefully), they were able to kill off anyone who wondered into the shot and continue on. Check it out, it's a fun read.

[via Create Digital Motion]

So what does the worlds first 24-hour English news channel based in the Middle East use to get their jobs done? Why Apple of course. Al Jazeera International, which is subsidiary of Al Jazeera, has purchased

• 41 MacBook Pros with Final Cut Studio for journalists
• a 70 TB Apple storage solution using 10 Apple Xserve 7 TB XRAID and 14 Apple Xsan Software Licenses
• 12 PowerMac G5 Quad
• 2 PowerMac G5 Dual Core and
• 19 Apple Cinema HD Display 23" for editing and design

The technology has really come down to earth where it doesn't take as much as it use to to start a television network. Now if only the commute wasn't so bad otherwise Al Jazeera Int. looks like a great place to work.

If you saw last weeks episode of My Name is Earl, you found out what can happen if you eat too much of a potent herbal medicine meant for your skin. Randy sure learned the hard way. But we've got a secret, it wasn't real. Nope, it was months of hard work with a Canon 20D digital camera, After Effects, Shake, Avid and other fun tools. Check out this article over at DV.com that goes into detail on how the 2 1/2 minutes of animation was created. If you missed the episode, you can check out some clips over on NBC's website.

Even if IPTV isn't all the rage just yet, you can't deny the fact that it's coming. As faster connections make it into the home, more and more video content will be available online. eventually the worlds of television, and Internet are bound to intersect, and Verizon wireless plans to help that happen.

The New York based Telecommunications company continues to push it's FiOS TV service across the east coast, and parts of California, and Texas. Short for Fiber Optic Service, FiOS TV is Verizon's foray into the television business, and it's a pretty obvious attempt to oust traditional cable companies.

Verizon offers 200 channels, including HDTV where available for just $39.95 a month, and offers discounts when you bundle Internet, and phone services. The system behaves much like traditional cable and satellite systems. Users have a set top box (does anyone actually keep it on top of their set?) and remote for accessing a digital channel guide. I haven't shopped for cable TV service lately, but that seems like a pretty fair deal.

Verizon claims a potential download speed of 30Mbps, but some Google sleuthing revealed it's more like 16. I'm not complaining, as it puts my 6Mbs connection to shame, but it does illustrate a point, and brings me to one of the potential problems of current IPTV. Network slowdown can have a direct effect on your service. Although I found no complaints about FiOS TV service in particular, many early IPTV adopters have complained about lag when switching channels, and occasional caching.

In reality, each method of television delivery is fraught with problems of it's own. Whether it's adjusting the rabbit ears, shaking snow off the dish, waiting a second between channels, or just paying high rates, people seem to adjust. Verizon sliding on in an putting it's thing down is good for all of us. By offering a slightly better service, at a slightly lower rate FiOS will inevitably drive down the overall price of TV.

Link to Tyngsborough, Mass. Press release
Link to Riverside, California Press release
Link to Positive user review of FiOS TV

Move over The New York Times, CNET, and Rocketboom because Tivo subscribers will soon be able to enjoy online content from CBS Interactive, Reuters Group, and Forbes among others right through their Tivo box. In a move announced today, Tivo plans to expand its web video service to include new partners and introduced a new Home Movies service. Now families can send home videos directly to the Tivo boxes of their friends and family through their own private channel. It's kind of like an RSS feed for Tivo. The service is being provided thanks to OneTrueMedia.com and it will be available early next year. Finally a way to send Aunt Judy those holiday clips sans the DVD burning and mailing.

"Broadband video is growing rapidly on the Web, but the television will continue to be the key way viewers want to watch video," said Tivo's CEO Tom Rogers.

If you were wondering why I haven't posted much lately, I want you to know I completely blame ratings. See, I work for a local TV network, and we are smack dab in the middle of November sweeps. It's one of four times a year the folks at Nielsen Media Research canvas the nation and see how many people are watching each show. That data directly impacts the amount of money we can charge for commercials, so it's a pretty big deal, and generally requires some overtime at work. So to wish everyone a happy November book, I decided to post a story about a really cool commercial advertising company.

Spot Runner is an ad agency that helps local business get targeted advertising space on national cable networks. They provide this service through an intuitive, and slick web interface. Advertisers choose from a wide variety of packages, and because the company targets unsold cable ad space, clients can get commercials for a song.

Spot Runner users begin by completing a profile of their local business. They fill out information about products or services, as well as their target audience and coverage area. After that, Clients submit budget information (how much they are willing to spend) and Spot Runner provides them with a list of packages detailing which networks best fit the demographic, and how many times an ad will run.

After advertisers have settled on the details, Spot Runner actually lets them build their own commercial through the site. Clients can choose from a huge library of stock footage and pre-cut commercial "blanks." Then, via a simple web form, they provide spot runner with voice over script, on screen text, and personalized logo images. Because of the prefab nature of the ads, Spot Runner can turn around a commercial in as little as two weeks. The agency also offers some regional exclusivity, so an identical ad doesn't pop up for businesses in same area.

As a video editor, I was initially skeptical of the overall quality of a Spot Runner commercial. After poking around their site for a bit, I have to admit it's a brilliant business model. If you're skeptical, tell me what local sporting goods store wouldn't be thrilled to have THIS on the Outdoor Channel? How about this floral shop Ad? Still not convinced?

click READ below for a link to more of Spot Runner's samples.

On November 22 Microsoft will launch Xbox Live Video, a service that will allow users to download standard and high definition movies and TV shows to the Xbox 360. Content will be available from CBS, MTV, Comedy Central (Southpark!), VH1 and others, plus movies from Paramount and Warner Brothers. The initial lineup will total over 1000 hours of content. This will make the Xbox 360 the first gaming console to bring standard and high-def programming over the internet into your living room. This will definitely bring some additional value to the Xbox 360, unless Sony has something up its sleeve for the PS3 launch, which won't really be a launch since very few people will even be able to get their hands on one. Engadget has uncovered a few more details so head on over there for more info.

It'll be fun to see what thousands of Xbox users downloading Mission Impossible 3 in HD will do to the tubes.

[via Engadget}

Admit it, when you saw R2D2 beam a 3D hologram of Princess Leia you thought "wouldn't that be cool?" Well sci-fi is about to meet reality thanks to Cheoptics360. Using a four-sided transparent pyramid, the Cheoptics360 displays images that appear to float in mid air. Will your next film be shown in 3D? Probably not, but it is still fun to marvel at the futures of video. Check this YouTube video to get a better idea.

Techcrunch UK scored an interview with Paul Cleghorn, co-founder of Tape It Off The Internet (TIOTI). TIOTI hopes to add a web 2.0 touch to television shows and become a "social media aggregator" helping people share and discover TV shows while providing different feeds of information for each show. No one has really developed a platform for niche communities to grow around their favorite TV shows and TIOTI hopes to fill this void. This goes far beyond merely time shifting TV shows on the Internet as there will be a growing community around each episode and a recommendation system built in to help people find shows they want to watch. Mr. Cleghorn certainly has a vision of what TV can become with the help of the Internet, and I share his giddiness in hoping it becomes a reality.

Perhaps the holy grail of web video would be for an experience that rivals current television. That would include no buffering, high-quality, and on-demand. But so far nobody has cracked the web-delivery code. GridNetworks is working on a method similar to Bittorrent, though they hate that comparison, for distributing high quality video securely and on the cheap. How cheap you ask? How does 25-50 cents for a 1.2 gigabyte film sound? Granted that wouldn't not be the price you and I pay, but you can imagine how such a cheap delivery vehicle could shake up the IPTV game.

A Technology and Engineering Emmy Award is given out for outstanding achievement in technical or engineering development in regards to the transmission, recording, or reception of television. So when did they start branching out to the Internet as Revver is nominated for Outstanding Innovation and Achievement in Advanced Media Technology for the Best Use of "On Demand" Technology Over the Public Internet or OIAAMTBUODTOPI for short. Other nominees include ABC.com's Full Episode Streaming Player, AOL Music's Top 11 Countdown Show, GameTap, Stim TV, and Vongo. You can find out who wins the big prize on January 8th, 2007, at the International Consumer Electronics Show. Now how come YouTube didn't make this list and why does the Emmy awards use sooo many big words?