Spy World Synopsis

Spy World is a documentary television series produced by the Travel Channel that premiered in December of 2014.

In each episode of Spy World a famous and sometimes forgotten spy stories are reconstructed. The basis for the series are formerly classified files belonging to FBI, CIA and a number of international intelligence agencies.

Spy World is currently in its first season.

• Watch Spy World on Fancast.com (US residents)
• Search for Spy World Episodes
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Episode List

Season 1

• 1 – Hunting Hezbollah’s Phantom (S01E01 – 101)
• 2 – America’s Super Spy (S01E02 – 102)
• 3 – Russian Seduction, Moscow Rules, Operation Goldenrod (S01E03 – 103)
• 4 – (S01E04 – 104)
• 5 – (S01E05 – 105)
• 6 – (S01E06 – 106)
• 7 – (S01E07 – 107)
• 8 – (S01E08 – 108)

Also See:

• Graboid – Free Movies and TV Shows
• Spy World Official Website
• Get 1000s of ONLINE TV Channels & Movies with the Roku Box – Just $59.99

From 4oD To All 4

Channel 4 in the U.K. is dumping 4oD and relaunching its online streaming television service as All 4. Channel 4 boss David Abraham unveiled the plans during a keynote speech at the IBC entertainment technology conference in Amsterdam.

All 4 is designed to keep up with the times, and especially stay ahead of the curve in terms of delivering content how, when, and where the younger demographics demand it. Channel 4 has always had a healthy youth audience, so it makes sense Channel 4 is the broadcaster to change the status quo.

All 4 One and One 4 All

All 4 will comprise of three main sections: On Demand, Now, and On Soon. The names make it very obvious which section does what.

On Demand will be home to the broadcaster’s catch-up service, and is the like-for-like replacement for 4oD. The line-up of programming available will include old shows and recent shows, as well as extras such as cast interviews.

Now will be the home for Channel 4’s live offerings, including feeds of E4 and More 4, plus news reports and original short-form video content.

On Soon will focus on trailing upcoming shows, with previews, teasers, and other promotional material. Some shows will even premiere on All 4 ahead of their scheduled television broadcast.

4oD will transition across to all platforms by the end of Q1 2015, with PC and iOS targeted first.

Conclusions

This seems to be a positive move on the part of Channel 4. The broadcaster is increasing its online output, clearly realizing it’s only going to grow in terms of popularity. The On Soon section is especially interesting, as it challenges the notion the Internet is only for catching up on missed content. Why not lead rather than follow?

[Via The Guardian]

Justin.tv Is No More

On August 5, Justin.tv shut down without its users being given any kind of notice such a big change was happening. The only explanation offered for killing Justin.tv was the popularity of Twitch, with the company stating in its farewell blog post, “Twitch is now the focus of the company’s resources. Unfortunately that means we need to shut down Justin.tv.” Short, and not at all sweet.

Justin.tv began in 2007 and has provided a place for people to live stream them and their lives ever since. Earlier this year Justin.tv renamed itself Twitch Interactive, showing just how much of an impact its video-gaming offshoot had become. And now it’s absolute focus of the entire company.

Users were given no notice of this change, with accounts being closed and all access to content and settings denied. Users who don’t stream themselves playing video games — and for whom Twitch would obviously be inappropriate — are advised to start using “YouTube, Ustream and Livestream” instead.

Twitch Makes Changes

Around the same time as the closure of Justin.tv was being planned, Twitch was changing its terms of service. Archived streams can no longer be saved forever, and there’s a continuing crackdown on the use of copyrighted music played over streams.

The way in which this was implemented, with no prior warning and an automatic process which has already mistakenly flagged content, has upset many users. But there is one obvious explanation for all of these sudden and sweeping changes…

Google Acquisition On The Cards?

There have been rumors of late that Google is interested in acquiring Twitch. Neither side has commented on the rumors so far, but there’s no better reason why Twitch would have made the changes it has made made over the last few weeks.

It’s surely only a matter of time before it’s announced Google is acquiring Twitch. But if the deal falls through then Twitch will have upset a sizable percentage of its users for no reason.

Content Is King

The old adage that content is king has never been truer than for YouTube at this very moment. What started out as a site where short, crappy clips ruled supreme, has evolved into a site packed full of interesting and original content.

The production values are through the roof, and certain individuals are gaining fame and fortune purely as a result of running popular YouTube channels. YouTube understands this need to foster the talent, hence its extra efforts to help make the lives of content creators easier than ever before.

New Features For Creators

YouTube is currently rolling out a host of new features aimed primarily at content creators. These include:-

• YouTube Creator Studio: An Android app (coming soon to iOS) which gives content creators a full toolkit for managing, and analyzing the performance of, their videos.
• Audio Library: Now with thousands of royalty-free sound effects designed to liven up even the dullest YouTube video.
• 60fps Video: An option to broadcast with high frame rates has been added especially for gamers, meaning gameplay footage looks as good on YouTube as when being played.
• Fan Funding: Channel owners will soon be able to seek funding from fans without resorting to Kickstarter or Indiegogo.
• Creator Credits: Collaboration between big-name YouTube celebrities is a massive deal now, so a dedicated space for creator credits is coming soon.
• Subtitles By Fans: People watching YouTube videos will soon be able to contribute their own subtitles, ensuring people from around the world can enjoy videos despite language barriers.

From Strength To Strength

YouTube seems set to go from strength-to-strength, and keeping the talent happy is a surefire way to do just that.

After all, competing platforms such as Twitch and Yahoo’s planned new video service will be looking to poach that same talent away from YouTube in order to increase their own chances of success.

[Via YouTube Creator Blog]

In doing so, it faces several new challenges in France, Germany, Austria, and others. Strong competition and localization issues being amongst the issues facing Netflix in these new countries.

Netflix Expansion

There have been strong hints of a Netflix invasion of mainland Europe for some time, but the company has now made it official by announcing its intention to launch streaming services in France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, and Luxembourg.

The expansion will, all being well, happen before the end of 2014, but no launch date has been specified. This new expansion follows on from the American company hitting the UK and Ireland in January 2012, followed by Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Finland in October 2012, and the Netherlands in 2013.

New Challenges

The new countries being targeted will present new challenges for Netflix to overcome.

For starters, there is already strong competition in Belgium and Germany, with the slow rate at which Netflix has moved across Europe allowing other companies the opportunity to gain a foothold. This means Netflix will have to be competitive on price while paying out to secure content.

There are also localization issues. Launching in the UK and Ireland was a fairly simple task given that English is the common language. But English-language movies and TV shows will need to be subtitled when offered to European viewers. Not a big deal, perhaps, but another challenge that needs to be overcome.

Conclusions

Netflix already has 48 million subscribers worldwide, but it needs to keep growing if it’s to become the de facto streaming video service of the future.

With little chance left to grow in the U.S., Europe is the logical next step towards world domination. That is if viewers in these countries take to Netflix as others have done.

Penny Dreadful Synopsis

Penny Dreadful is a horror drama television series produced by Showtime that premiered in April of 2014.

Created by John Logan Penny Dreadful combines some of the most horrifying characters from literature and places them in Victorian London. The series follows the story of Sir Malcolm Murray (played by Timothy Dalton), a world famous explorer and his wife Vanessa (played by Eva Green).  They arrive to London and hire a sharpshooter Ethan Chandler (played by Josh Hartnett) and Doctor Frankenstein (played by Harry Treadaway) to help them find someone who has been lost.

Penny Dreadful is currently in its first season.

• Watch Penny Dreadful on Showtime (US residents)
• Watch Penny Dreadful on Hulu.com (US residents)
• Watch Penny Dreadful on Fancast.com (US residents)
• Search for Penny Dreadful Episodes
• Find Penny Dreadful Torrents
• See if you can stream this on Netflix

Episode List

Season 1

• 1 – Night Work (S01E01 – 101)
• 2 – Seance (S01E02 – 102)
• 3 – Resurrection (S01E03 – 103)
• 4 – Demimonde (S01E04 – 104)
• 5 – Closer Than Sisters (S01E05 – 105)
• 6 – What Death Can Join Together (S01E06 – 106)
• 7 – Possession (S01E07 – 107)
• 8 – Grand Guignol (S01E08 – 108)

Also See:

• Graboid – Free Movies and TV Shows
• Penny Dreadful Official Website
• Penny Dreadful on Wikipedia
• Get 1000s of ONLINE TV Channels & Movies with the Roku Box – Just $59.99

Xbox Originals

Microsoft has announced the initial lineup for Xbox Originals, its first foray into original programming. Committed projects include a Halo TV show, Every Street United, an unscripted show featuring famous soccer players, and Humans, a show about robotic servants.

There are further projects in development that may or may not make it past the pilot stage. These include Deadlands, based on a pen-and-paper RPG, Gun Machine, a detective thriller based on the novel by Warren Ellis, and Winterworld, based on Chuck Dixon and Jorge Zaffino’s series of graphic novels.

It’s All In The Details

Beyond the announcement of 12 shows, the Xbox Originals strategy appears to be a little confused and confusing. Most shows will be behind the paywall that is Xbox Live Gold, while others may be available to all. Some shows will only be aired on the Xbox, while others will also appear on television.

The rollout of these Xbox Originals also appears to be taking a long time. The Halo television series being executive-produced by Steven Spielberg was announced 12 months ago, but there has been no update on progress.

Xbox Entertainment Studios chief Nancy Tellem told Re/code, “We believe that if we’re going to create a show that does justice to the Halo franchise, we had better do it right. We are on the right track, and putting together a talented team.” But there surely comes a point at which people stop caring.

Tellem also broached the subject of monetization, though even on this point none of the details seem to have been fully worked out.

She said, “We’ll be experimenting with a lot of different ways we monetize the content. That’s one of the challenges. The fun is figuring out what the business model and strategy will be. We’re doing it on a case by case basis, depending on the show.” Fun is one word for it, but not the word most (potential) viewers would use.

Conclusions

Microsoft is brave to embark on the Xbox Originals journey, but its strategy seems to be a little scattergun at present. The content will need to be brilliant if it’s to compete with Netflix Originals such as House Of Cards and Arrested Development, and that certainly isn’t guaranteed at this point in time.

YouTube Competition

YouTube is a giant amongst giants. It’s owned by Google, racks up 1 billion visitors every month who collectively watch 6 billion hours of video every month, and pushes out 100 hours of new content every minute.

That’s one hell of an achievement, and it makes YouTube a seemingly impossible scalp to take. It is for this reason that YouTube has hardly any competition.

There are lots of other video sites on the Web — Vimeo, Dailymotion, and Metacafe to name just three — but none that can compete in terms of content or eyeballs. Only a foolish company would even contemplate the idea of trying to beat YouTube at its own game…

It All Comes Down To Money

According to Re/code, Yahoo is planning to do just that, with CEO Marissa Mayer believing there is room for a serious competitor to YouTube.

Yahoo has reportedly already approached some of the biggest YouTube producers and the networks they’re affiliated with. And the bait being used to lure them to jump ship is cold, hard cash.

Yahoo believes it can afford to improve on the ad revenues YouTube offers, and it could even allow content creators to sell their own advertising alongside the dedicated Yahoo sales team.

The biggest differentiation between YouTube and the proposed Yahoo service would be the latter concentrating on professional content produced by popular channels, with YouTube’s “everybody is welcome” mentality being rejected.

Conclusions

Yahoo isn’t ready to announce anything, and is staying silent on the speculation. But these rumors are coming from somewhere, so it stands to reason Yahoo is at least exploring the possibility of launching such an effort.

Can it possibly compete with YouTube? I suspect not, as this is at least five years too late to catch up. But stranger things have happened. Let us know what you think in the comments section below.

The Beginning

In 2005, when YouTube was still a fledgling service with a Wild West mentality, people were uploading all sorts of content to the site with little regard for legality. Copyrighted clips belonging to Viacom made it onto YouTube, and so began the long and tortuous story of Google Vs. Viacom.

The Long & Winding Road

Google acquired YouTube in 2006 for $1.65 billion. Viacom pulled its content from YouTube, and in March 2007 sued Google for $1 billion over 63,000 counts of alleged copyright infringement.

It looked to have been settled in 2010 when the U.S. District Court ruled in Google’s favor. But Viacom appealed and the summary judgement was overturned.

The two companies were due to appear in court again next week, but it seems both sides lost their will to fight on any longer.

Settled, At Last!

And so it came to pass that on March 18, 2014, Google and Viacom jointly announced they had reached an out-of-court settlement to bring this monotonous tennis match to an end.

The companies issued a joint statement saying, “This settlement reflects the growing collaborative dialogue between our two companies on important opportunities, and we look forward to working more closely together.” The details of the settlement remain undisclosed.

The End

Is this ludicrous lawsuit finally over? Has common sense really prevailed? Did both sides realize they needed to stop paying out ridiculous amounts of money to lawyers? Did they then gather around a table and flesh out the details of a settlement which would see both sides walk away happy and contented?

I want to believe it’s all true, but after so many years of covering this ridiculous battle of wills that slowly but surely became an anachronism thanks to the rest of the world moving on, I can’t quite believe it’s all over. Pinch me, I must be dreaming.