Here at NewTeeVee, Liz and Chris — and the rest of the contributing writers — do their best to provide you with a daily glimpse into the big news and trends in the world of broadband video. But we know it can sometimes be hard to see the forest for the trees: TV Everywhere was clearly big news, but from the dozens of product launches and funding announcements, what’s worth revisiting?  Over at GigaOM Pro, we’ve reviewed and compiled the important news and emerging trends of the last three months in our just published Q2 Connected Consumer Wrapup, our quarterly analysis for those who want to keep up on the latest in the world of online video.

On the whole, things are looking up for newteevee:

• Online video continues to find its way onto more and more devices. An increasing number of products are coming to market with an Internet connection built in. Connected-device sales (including TVs, set-top box, gaming consoles, etc.) are projected to approach 57 million units in 2009.  This is an indication of the continuing march of online video into the living room, a concept that just a few short years ago was no more than a distant concept.
• Premium online video content provider Hulu expanded its ownership circle by one, as Hulu and Disney entered into a much-rumored partnership. Disney will be the third equity partner for Hulu, joining NBC Universal, News Corp. and Providence Equity Partners. Content from ABC, ABC Family, the Disney Channel and others will now be available on Hulu.
• Cable operators — sensing a threat — stepped up their game in second quarter to capitalize on the online video market. While most cable providers’ online video efforts have historically focused on availability, they are now shifting to authentication; specifically, the emphasis is beginning to shift from how to get premium content online to how the user will pay for it. Comcast and Time Warner are leading this charge in pursuing authentication programs called On-Demand Online and TV Everywhere, respectively.

• Despite the continuing difficult economic environment, the second quarter has been fairly positive for online video revenues and investment. There have been a host of funding initiatives, with the highest raise being awarded to Sugar, the online media network for women, which received $16 million in Series C funding from existing investor Sequoia Capital to expand its video offerings. Some — particularly Blockbuster which indicated that it might not be able to meet the lender conditions needed to complete financing deals — have had disappointing results that call into question their long-term viability. But, despite some casualties, the market appears to be embracing this new frontier in entertainment and the remainder of 2009 promises to offer further advancements in the availability, delivery and legal context of online video.

The full report is available to subscribers of GigaOM Pro here, along with Quarterly Wrap-ups in our other focus areas: Mobile, Green IT, and Infrastructure. GigaOM Pro subscribers get access these four Wrap-ups each quarter alongside dozens of detailed research briefings on specific topics, including online video, virtual worlds and the future of PayTV.

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Univision Wins Case Against Televisa; court ruling prohibits Televisa from webcasting shows that have already been licensed to Univision. (paidContent)

The American Film Institute Launches Video Portal; site includes material collected over the last 42 years by the AFI. (ZatzNotFunny!)

Anthony E. Zuiker on His New Digi-Novel; while reading Level 26, you’ll be able to stop and log on to a web site to unlock a “cyber-bridge” that will connect you to the next chapter. (TheWrap)

Web Provides Broadcast News a Cable TV-Like Outlet; now all they need is an audience and advertisers. (Broadcasting & Cable)

Universal Studios to Release Blu-Ray Remote iPhone App; the device will be able to control interactive content on the the Blu-ray release of Fast & Furious. (Home Media Magazine)

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Every once in a while, a girl deserves an Arrested Development renaissance, and I am deep into mine right now. Which means that I have been reminded of how solid the show’s cast was, especially overlooked players like Tony Hale, whose work as youngest sibling Buster Bluth was staggeringly funny. (”Unlimited juice? This party’s gonna be OFF THE HOOK!”) But while since the end of Arrested, he’s had yet to score a high-profile role in film or TV, recently Hale’s become a bit of a patron saint to the web series cause, rocking two different shows with his deadpan genius.

I mean, he’s not the only high-profile actor in the L.A.-based dating series MERRIme, which premiered this month, with new episodes running on TheFrisky.com starting July 21st. Tom Arnold (no stranger to the web series format himself) and Tia and Tamara Mowry also appear. But Hale’s guest appearance as the first date of Merri (Kaily Smith), a trust fund baby desperate to find a boyfriend to escape the gruesome fate of getting a job, is so funny that it spills over into a second episode.

Not that he’s the best thing about it. The show is well-written, with fantastic production values and a charming cast. And as a side note: One of my pet causes is encouraging creators to showcase their series on their web sites, and the team at MERRIme have done a great job of this. Their site is packed with info about the show, its cast and crew, and its characters (a highlight being the dating profiles provided for everyone Merri dates over the course of the first 15 episodes), and the layout is clean and appealing, the content easy to find. Except for the part where you can’t link to individual episodes and there’s no video content of any sort on the front page, it’s possibly the best I’ve ever seen.

Hale moves from supporting character to web series lead in Ctrl, a 10-episode web series, produced by NBC, that premiered this Monday. A comedy-fantasy hybrid, Hale stars as Stuart, a hapless office employee whose keyboard gets doused in product-placed Nestea, which causes functions like Ctrl-Z to actually undo life’s little mistakes. (Kids, don’t try this at home, it’ll just make a mess.)

Empowered for possibly the first time in his life, Stuart immediately starts using his powers to win the heart of his office crush and fight back against his evil boss. If this sounds like the sort of quirky short film that tends to play at a lot of film festivals, there’s a reason — the series is based on the film-fest-winning short film written and directed by Robert Kirbyson, who’s also behind the adaptation. But despite feeling awfully familiar, the series is sweet, entertaining and well-made, not to mention a fantastic showcase for Hale’s talents.

We talk a lot about how web video gives a voice to the ordinary man, but it’s nice to see that the slightly-more-than-ordinary man, the overlooked character actor who deserves more recognition than he ever got, might find a place here as well.

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A YouTube developer is working on a stereoscopic player as a side project, Barry Schwartz discovered this weekend. If you’ve got a pair of 3D glasses or a 3D video camera of your own, you can join in the fun.

Here’s a clip from an Idaho farmer’s market from a YouTube user who’s been experimenting with the feature. Users are able to choose from one of ten 3D viewing styles, e.g. “Red/Cyan Glasses: Full Color.” Uploaders can enable the view mode by using the tag “yt3d:enable=true.”

“YouTube Pete” writes in a help forum,

“I’m the developer working on the stereoscopic player as a 20% project. It’s currently very early, hence the silly bugs like swapping the eyes for the anaglyph modes. A fix for this is in the works…

“Ideally you shouldn’t use left and right. For the best quality make the sources as large as possible within the frame and set yt3d:aspect correctly.

“Your feedback and suggestions are welcome, but as this isn’t my primary project I can’t promise a speedy turnaround with improvements.”

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New stats from Nielsen show that the average U.S. home has more TVs in it than people. According to the research firm, in 2009 the average U.S. household had just 2.5 people but had 2.86 televisions.

This represents a 43 percent increase since 1990, when the average American home had only 2.0 TV sets (how did we even get by back then?!). Other key stats from Nielsen’s Television Audience Report:

• 38% of U.S. TV homes have digital cable.
• 88% have a DVD player, while VCR fell to 72%.
• 82% of homes have more than 1 television set.
• 11% of U.S. TV homes only have the capability to receive TV reception “over the air”. These homes have neither cable nor ADS.

As we keep adding TV sets to our homes, there’s a good chance they will have wireless connectivity. A new study from ABI Research forecasts that by 2011, roughly 20 million wireless networked TVs will be shipped worldwide.

The wirelessly networked TV is a hot space right now with many different standards vying to be the top dog. Amimon, which just raised an additional $10 million, is pushing its WHDI solution; SiBEAM uses the WirelessHD standard; the WiGig Alliance plans to use the 60 GHz spectrum; and Quantenna wants to use Wi-Fi.

ABI highlights Wi-Fi as a winner. From the study’s press release:

Ethernet will handle the wired type of connection in most cases, but will wireless technology prevail? If it does, the most likely candidate is Wi-Fi, although it’s true that 802.11b and 802.11g may suffer some latency and interference problems. 802.11n Wi-Fi, though, should provide a fully capable connection, and its growing adoption will improve support for networked TVs.

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You might call it a loophole, an imaginative reading of the law, or perhaps just a freak situation. In 2007, the country of Antigua was awarded $21 million a year in trade sanctions on U.S. intellectual property by the World Trade Organization. It was intended as a sort of reparation for the loss of business that ensued after the U.S. banned online gambling, much of which was being hosted on the island nation. An Antiguan company called Carib Media is now interpreting the decision to mean it can disregard U.S. copyright laws and make available a cheap and compelling subscription digital media service.

What do we mean by compelling? Well, Carib’s new site, ZookZ.com, launched July 15, offers unlimited downloads of movies or music for $9.95 per month, or $17.95 for both types of media. All content is DRM-free.

ZookZ has a library of some 50,000 MP3s and 1,500 movies, and plans to add 10,000 songs and 300 movies per week. It says it will do its best to get any content requested by members available on its site within 14 days of the request.

ZookZ’s site design is pretty terrible at this point, without even a simple index of available content. Most sections are unavailable to new users until they input their personal information and sign up. A company representative said improved search and discovery functions are due in the coming weeks. But once I was signed into a test account, it was easy to search for and download a copy of Slumdog Millionaire. The transfer wasn’t especially quick, but ZookZ delivers all its files from its own servers in Antigua, and this was a 702 MB movie. The company says its standard movie resolution is 640×480 DPI, and that it utilizes a 100 Mbps pipe that can burst up to 1 Gbps.

Carib is the first company I’ve ever heard from as a reporter that offered up its legal counsel for interview as part of its initial pitch. So I took them up on it. “This business is open because there’s an unusual legal foundation for the conduct of the business,” said ZookZ legal adviser William Pepper. Our phone interview came a day after the site launched, at which point it had signed up 100 members.

Pepper and other ZookZ representatives said repeatedly that they obtain the site’s content through “legal means.” The company also makes efforts to ensure that all the content it’s distributing is from the U.S. Also on the call was Marlie Hall, head of corporate communications, who said that for some content ZookZ will actually buy a physical DVD and rip it into a DRM-free format to distribute. That can’t be legal, I said.

“It’s an Antiguan company based in Antigua conducting business in Antigua — it’s different,” replied Pepper. Until ZookZ and any competitors bring $21 million in revenue combined within a year, the company thinks it’s just realizing what’s been set aside for Antigua by the WTO.

Yet the site is actively seeking international business; Hall and the company’s PR firm are both based in the U.S. I am, too, so I have to pray the powers that be — if and when they clamp down — understand that I was only trying out the service in the interest of my readers.

This article also appeared on BusinessWeek.com.

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Much has been written in recent weeks about the future of The Pirate Bay, as well as about BitTorrent piracy in general. The sale of the site spooked some, while others are hoping to transform the new Pirate Bay into a legitimate, multimillion-dollar business. One aspect that has been largely overlooked is that the current Pirate Bay, due to the nature of P2P, is actually a relatively small and cost-efficient operation. The site’s trackers facilitate countless downloads of Hollywood blockbusters and music albums, but according to an insider, running these trackers could cost as little as $3,000 per month.

The implications of a number like that are huge. Not only does it mean that anyone with a medium-sized checkbook could replicate The Pirate Bay’s infrastructure in a heartbeat, but it also casts shadows over the hopes of anyone thinking about selling digital content online. Music fans were not longer willing to pay $20 for audio CDs once they noticed that blank CDs only cost a dime. How are they going to feel about download stores knowing that running the world’s biggest download service is that dirt cheap?

Earlier this week, when I was researching my story about federated tracker networks I had the chance to talk to some insiders close to The Pirate Bay as well as some folks working on newer projects aimed at picking up where it is leaving off. During one of these conversations, a person with inside knowledge of The Pirate Bay’s infrastructure estimated the total monthly costs of running the site’s trackers to be around $3,000. Compare that with recent reports that put YouTube’s bandwidth costs anywhere between $130,000 and a million dollar per day, and you’ll understand why I haven’t been able to get that number out of my head. : $3,000. What a steal. Literally.

Of course, that number doesn’t actually reflect all the costs associated with running The Pirate Bay in its current form. The site itself clocks more than a billion page views per month, according to statements from the prospective new owners, which should amount to a whole lot of additional bandwidth. The complete Pirate Bay set-up consists of a little more than 30 servers, of which less than a third are dedicated to tracking torrents.

Still, the impact of The Pirate Bay’s trackers are enormous. It tracks up to 2 million torrents and connects around 20 millions peers at any given time. Researchers estimate that 50 percent of the world’s publicly available torrents are tracked through The Pirate Bay. So how can just a massive system be so cheap?

The answer lies in the way the BitTorrent protocol work. Tracker servers never actually touch the files that are exchanged between users, and don’t compile huge lists of file names to query, either. Instead, these machines just collect the hash value of each torrent tracked. Users’ clients then query a tracker with these hash values, asking them for the IP addresses of others sharing the file associated with a particular hash value. So the whole message flow between client and server consists of just a few bytes, even if the files exchanged are massive Blu-ray videos.

I finished Chris Anderson’s new book “Free” this week, and I couldn’t help but think about The Pirate Bay’s $3,000 tracker while I was reading his theory of how the ever-decreasing costs of processing power, bandwidth and storage inevitably bring down the prices of digital goods as well. In the book, Anderson writes:

“In a competitive market, price falls to the marginal cost. The Internet is the most competitive market the world has ever seen, and the marginal costs of the technologies on which it runs – processing, bandwidth and storage – get closer and closer to zero every year. Free becomes not just an option but an inevitability.”

Of course, content owners would rightfully argue that the cost of producing a Hollywood movie or a TV show is not zero. But that’s beside the point. If all it takes to distribute Hollywood’s entire creative output online is $3,000 a month, then there’s always gonna be someone who will offer this stuff for free — and you’d better find a really good way to compete with that.

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Blu-ray may be a bit of a bummer, but in its first year, the Sony PlayStation Network has delivered more than 500 million pieces of digital content to PlayStation 3 and PSP devices, reports Variety. This figure covers purchases and rentals of movies, TV shows and original programming.

Unfortunately, we don’t know how that 500 million breaks down to see exactly what types of programming the PlayStation sets are paying for, but at least the half-a-billion mark is a start.

Digital downloads have been a bit of a conundrum for the Hollywood studios. They know distribution is moving in that direction, but revenues from downloads have been tiny and studios have to manage any cannibalization of lucrative DVD sales. Though it looks like we may be turning a corner. The Digital Entertainment Group reported that digital distribution was up 21 percent in the first half of this year, generating $968 million, compared with $407 million in Blu-ray sales.

Game consoles are the most popular device for digital delivery of web-based video to TV sets, according to recent research from In-Stat, a trend that will continue through 2013. By that time, In-Stat predicts that the revenues generated by web-to-TV video services will hit $2.9 billion.

Of course, Sony isn’t alone in its quest to dominate digital video delivery in the living room. Microsoft is set to roll out a bunch of new video features to its Xbox LIVE service this fall, some of which will be available in preview (for the lucky ducks with access) starting this Monday. We’ll be tuning in next week to report on some of the new video goodies that will be unveiled, including:

• Movie parties, which allow friends to sit in a virtual theater to watch video together.
• Queue management, so users can manage their Netflix queue from their couch.
• Enhanced playback, to smooth out some of the streaming bumps when bandwidth fluctuates.

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Don’t want to wade through the sweltering heat and hipster music snobs in person at the Pitchfork Music Festival going on right now in Chicago’s Union Park? Then catch the whole show courtesy of the magic of live streaming video! Rock out without any shame or snide looks for not knowing who Yeasayer, Pharoahe Monch, or The Mae Shi are (though you really should know The Flaming Lips, Built to Spill and Blitzen Trapper). Watch the whole thing here.

We’d like to thank this week’s NewTeeVee sponsors:

• thePlatform: Download a free white paper on video syndication
• Akamai: HD online video increases revenue

You get mixed messages from movies and TV sometimes. So many dramas and comedies are framed around the pursuit of romance, only to fade out once the relationship is consummated. Meanwhile, the stories about those already in relationships are mostly about how much that sucks. This is because stories about happy people in relationships without any problems are terribly dull. But there has to be some sort of middle ground, where reality can be combined with genuinely funny comedy. There is, in Real Life with Married People.

Launched two weeks ago, the independently produced Real Life focuses on an unnamed husband and wife, played by real-life spouses Celia Finkelstein and Destin Berthelot, as devoted partners who just seem to get on each other’s nerves. You know, the way it happens when you spend just a little too much time with someone else. Like most proud Americans, the pair spend their time on their couch watching TV and hanging out, and the series finds its voice in exaggerating the back-and-forth that occurs in modern marriage.

Real Life isn’t ambitious as web series go, but it’s got a lot of charm, as well as quality production values and solid direction by Deanna Russo (who’s got an impressive resume as an actress, most recently appearing as the female lead on NBC’s Knight Rider remake). The tight pacing never lets a joke play too long, and the simple set-up and framework allow the interplay between Finkelstein and Berthelot to unfold naturally, however bitter it might get.

The one danger Real Life faces is losing the audience’s sympathy. While both people are clearly dysfunctional in their own ways, three episodes in it’s a little easier to side with Berthelot’s character. I may be biased, however, as I agree strongly with his views on peanut butter Easter eggs, as elaborated upon in Episode 3, but Berthelot so far seems like the more reasonable of the pair, while Finkelstein falls into shrew territory just a little too often. The show’s primary challenge going forward will be maintaining the delicate balance between the two characters, so we understand exactly why they stay together. The alternative would see the show become like one of those bickering-family sitcoms, where you just wish somebody would get a divorce or a shotgun and end the characters’ misery. And no one wants that.

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DISH to Pay $5.9M to 46 States; satellite co. dinged with the fee after bad sales practices and numerous consumer complaints. (Consumerist)

NBC Universal had a Bummer of a Second Quarter; revenue was down 8 percent, and profit down 41 percent. (MediaMemo)

Beam Aboard (in an ARG Kinda Way) the Starship Enterprise; special edition DVD and Blu-ray release of Star Trek will use webcams to give users a tour of sections of the ship. (Variety)

Xbox 360 Sales Up Amid Overall Game Depression; bodes well for Microsoft as it transitions the console to more of an entertainment hub via new video features this fall. (Silicon Alley Insider)

Blockbuster: 10 Years, Zero Digital Stategy; Dan Rayburn writes that the movie rental company has been all over the map with different plans, but none have really taken hold. (The Business of Online Video)

Broadcast Interactive Media Gives Cancer Fighters a Platform; those afflicted by the disease can upload content to a number of station sites through the YouNews platform. (Broadcasting & Cable)

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Multiplatform video company Current Media said today that Mark Rosenthal, the former president and COO of MTV Networks and CEO of Interpublic Media, will replace co-founder Joel Hyatt as CEO.

Rosenthal had been a Current board member since the inception of the company. Hyatt will now serve as vice chairman.

Rosenthal had most recently been vice chairman and president of media platforms at the troubled ad startup Spot Runner, which he joined a little over a year ago from Interpublic.

Current says its cable channel is available in more than 60 million households and its web site has more than 7 million unique visitors per month. Chairmain Al Gore said in a recent speech that the site now receives more than 10 million video views per month.

The most notable news out of Current in recent months is something it hasn’t actually covered — the imprisonment of two of its journalists. Laura Ling and Euna Lee are being held in North Korea after being convicted for trespassing there while they were on assignment from the network.

With no disrespect to that terrible situation, Current still has some really fantastic talent — we love the folks at InfoMania (recent coverage) — and some great opportunities to make the web and TV work together. But it hasn’t always been smooth sailing, and the network scrapped IPO plans earlier this year, citing the bad economy. In the run-up to the IPO we had also challenged the company’s claims that it was profitable.

Current’s most recent management hire was Paul Levine, president of new media, who had previously been with AdBrite.

Sorry about the poor quality pic; Current hasn’t updated its management files yet.

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Content owners are looking beyond straight-up advertisements and product placements. One opportunity lies in the ability to immediately sell products seen in video content. To that end, startup Clikthrough has just raised $1 million for its interactive clickable video efforts.

Clikthrough is an interactive video platform that allows content owners to associate video with specific products and places and then push that content out. Clikthrough is not a destination site, does not have its own player, and says it can work with any third-party video publisher.

The company is starting off with music videos because they are short-form and drive a lot of traffic. Clikthrough has 39 music videos up on its site to showcase, for example, how it highlights the shirt Kelly Clarkson wears (or the hotel she’s in) so the viewer can learn more about it or purchase it.

Clikthrough can do this because when the record labels provide a music video, they also hand over a list of every item featured in that video. Clikthrough then pulls pictures and information from those product sites and associates them with the objects in the video on the back end before the videos are pushed out for distribution.

The company earns money by charging a set-up fee as well as a rev split for clicks generated for products featured, as well an affiliate fee for any purchases made. Additionally, because it knows what’s in a video down to the exact frame, Clikthrough will be able to serve up better targeted ads.

Music videos are a starting point for Clikthrough, which has relationships with Phonogenic/Sony Music, Universal Music and Slip N Slide Records. The company has some nice musical backers as well with this latest round of funding coming from investors like Swedish music producer/hit maker Max Martin and Nick Byrne, who was a member of the Irish band Westlife. Clikthrough does not have an official partnership with Vevo, the forthcoming video site from UMG and YouTube, yet. The company is looking to expand its technology to TV shows and movies.

Clikthrough is certainly getting into a crowded space. Other companies doing interactive, clickable video include Overlay.tv and PLY Media, Zunavision and Innovid.

Based in San Francisco, the 2-year old Clikthrough has four employees and has raised $2.1 million in funding to date.

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If this was the sequel to the North Carolina sewer creature we chatted about recently, it would probably be called Slimey II: Deadly Northern Exposure. This summer’s monster jam moved northward to Alaska where a 15 mile-long band of black biological goo has been spotted creeping through the Chukchi Sea.

Is it the blob? A sea monster? The black oil from The X-Files?

Sadly(?), the answer is much more mundane. From the Anchorage Daily News:

Miles of the thick, dark gunk had been spotted floating between Barrow and Wainwright, prompting North Slope Borough officials and the Coast Guard to investigate last week. A sample was sent to a DEC lab in Palmer, where workers looked at it under a microscope and declared it some kind of simple plant — an algae, Meggert said.

Though it’s just algae, the appearance of this goo is still a mystery. Officials and even Alaska natives said they had never seen such a thing.

The big question is — where will the next monster strike? It could be in your town…perhaps in your very home! Dunh-dunh-dunh!

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YouTube will be “very profitable” in the “not too distant future,” Google CFO Patrick Pichette said on the company’s quarterly earnings call today. The site’s monetized views have “more than tripled in the past year,” according to Jonathan Rosenberg, SVP of product management. “We’re now monetizing billions of views of partner videos every month.”

Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who’d previously given YouTube a few public spankings about pulling its weight in revenue, said today he was “very pleased” with the site’s money-making trajectory.

Brand display advertising is doing well on YouTube, noted Schmidt and Nikesh Arora, who is president of global sales operations and business development. And the majority of YouTube views are not professional content, Schmidt added. Google execs called out featured videos on search, the YouTube home page masthead, pre-rolls and long-form content as areas for revenue growth.

YouTube’s bottom line gets a lot of ink, considering there is virtually no confirmed information about the site’s expenses and revenue. Credit Suisse had made a splash in April by estimating that YouTube could lose $470 million this year, however an infrastructure research firm disputed that report, saying the bank had underestimated Google’s ability to minimize costs.

As for the percentage of video views that YouTube monetizes, Rosenberg gave Google’s first real comment on the matter — if only on a relative basis. A YouTube exec had previously said that the assertion that YouTube only monetizes 3-4 percent of views is “grossly inaccurate.” The company gave the slimmest of indications that the portion was at least 9 percent of views, and perhaps higher. In those single digits, tripling might not be as huge of a jump as it seems.

As for pre-rolls, embracing them shows a change on YouTube’s part to reflect the reality of serving video. The site had scorned the format early on for being unfriendly to users. In August 2007, a YouTube product manager told us, “Pre-rolls and post-rolls did not perform well on our platform. [In our testing,] 75 percent of our users were unhappy with them.” Today, Arora said on the call that YouTube users now accept that pre-rolls are a necessary corollary to premium content. Rosenberg noted the site sees “very little drop-off” when it shows pre-rolls.

Correction: The initial version of this story misattributed Patrick Pichette’s quote from the earning call about YouTube profitability to Nikesh Arora.

With reporting by Jordan Golson.

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