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Way back in February, web retail giant Amazon entered the video download marketplace through a partnership with Tivo.  Under the initial terms of that partnership, customers could go to Amazon.com, buy a feature video on the website and designate some combination of devices to download and watch the movie on.  Downloads took about an hour (over average broadband connections).  

Tuesday morning, Amazon and Tivo announced an improvement to the initial offering with a new version branded “Buy on TV.”   This second generation Unbox video offering will bypass the computer.  Now, subscribers will be able to buy movies with their TiVo remote controls – no computer needed.

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The gaming industry is valued at $37.5b by some measurements and growing.  The Asian Pacific market is expected to be nearly $19b by 2011. 81% of American youth play video games at least a month. Despite such staggering numbers, if you read the words of Electronic Arts CEO, all is not rosy.  Games are becoming too complex, too involved and alienating the mass-market. Their producers are also failing to innovate. So said John Riccitiello in Yesterdays Wallstreet Journal where he was quoted commenting that the industry is "making games that are harder and harder to play" and that "for the most part, the industry has been rinse and repeat."  And he’s right. 

Statistics show the competition for leisure time and entertainment is incredibly fierce and even with convergence in hardware (which now include DVD players and Internet connections) helping expand the gaming marketplace in some ways, the same competition is requiring game publishers and developers to tread carefully; mistakes are costly. A missed opportunity to get a game to market (e.g. a gamble on the wrong platform) or a weak showing from a game with expensive development costs could be a heavy drag on revenues for months.

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Look out ESPN, forget baseball tonight….I’m making my own highlight reel.

Marketers are increasingly embracing new internet technologies and experimenting with new ways to build brands.  Today, to coincide with the All Star Game in San Francisco, Major League Baseball is set to expand on marketers use of Internet video with the launch of a new interactive marketing campaign.  The Internet home for the multimedia campaign will be a website called  Actober.com, which is tagged with the slogan “You’re a fan, Act like one.” On the site, fans will be able use easy embedded tools to create their own highlight films.

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In the wake of a week where Microsoft has been direct about manufacturing issues, Sony has been inconsistent about pricing.  A rumor was reported as unconfirmed last week and denied. It’s now being widely reported again and being confirmed. 

Sony, which has struggled to gain market-share for its high powered (and the industry’s highest priced) gaming console, will cut prices on its flagship PS3 platform.  Effective Thursday, the price for the console will drop by $100 to $499. (It will be the same price as a previously discontinued 20gb model which was phased out in April as a result of poor sales)

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Peer to peer television over the Internet, a niche of so called IPTV, is an industry in its infancy.  That hasn’t stopped investors from making huge bets on its future.   So far, combined investments have climbed into the hundred million dollar range (Veoh has received more than $40m and Joost has received $45m).  With such high stakes, the three early leaders, Babelgum, Joost and Veoh, are finding themselves in a heated race to capture marketshare as early, and as fast, as possible. Amongst this competition, exclusive content, the kind of “find it only here” video that might lure audiences from a competitor, and help separate the otherwise similar services, is revealing itself to be major part of strategy.

Today,  The Hollywood Reporter reports Joost will announce a major exclusive content deal with Viacom’s VH1 sometime this week.   According to the initial report, Joost’s 500k member audience will be able to watch the entire premier season of VH1’s new comedy series ten days ahead of the series Television broadcast premier. 
The episodes will run with advertising to support them.

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A search on Google for “collected quotations” turns up almost two million results.  The word “quotations” alone on Yahoo yields more than fifty four million.

Collected quotations can be a guilty pleasure. Sometimes they’re funny, sometimes insightful, and whether they take the form of witty maxim, or biting aphorism, somehow, thoughts condensed and cropped to a few sentences or a quick phrase somehow seem more articulate and more informative.  

The following recent turns of phrase from executives and founders may not make their speakers look like geniuses but in short sound-byte format they make for interesting capsules of information and a fascinating barometer of current events in media, entertainment and technology:

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Friday, the first of obstacles to Microsoft’s planned $6b purchase of Internet advertising firm, aQuantive was passed without incident.  

It was disclosed in an SEC filing that the Federal Trade Commission “waiting period,” a time window set aside for regulators to formally request more information, expired without any further requests. 

Under the terms of the Hart Scott Rodino Antitrust Act (HSR), companies are required to give regulators a 30 day window to request further information.  The expiration of the waiting period absent further inquiry means there will be no further anti-trust review.   Legally the transaction is deemed to have satisfied the requirements of the Act.

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