NewTeeVee

Earlier this week Gefen announced a $700 replacement for an HDMI cord based on ultra-wideband chips from startup TZero. Yes, a $700 replacement for a $43 cable. Did I tell you it was wireless? That it will deliver uncompressed HD content to the TV over 20 meters? Maybe that will make you rush on over to Best Buy, but my guess is that the majority of consumers will hold back, hoping that the price will go down. And that means most of the multiple flavors of wireless HD video transfer are in trouble, as are the companies behind them.

The startups hoping to make their chips the star of the wireless HD revolution have two huge problems to overcome. The first is that there are too many different standards all trying to do the same thing, which could confuse consumers. The second is that the costs associated with buying wireless HD equipment are astronomical, which could alienate consumers. In addition to the pricing example with UWB chips above, televisions containing Amimon chips using the WHDI wireless HD standard so far cost about $875 more than their counterpart TVs without the chips.

There’s not much anyone can do about the multiple standards and hordes of chip firms attacking the market, but the pricing issue could be tackled by giving up on the marketing trope of pushing uncompressed wireless HD. The content arriving in your home via Blu-Ray, the web or your cable box is already compressed making it kind of silly to uncompress it before it reaches the display, where it is normally uncompressed. Transcoding and encoding the HD content just to send it in an uncompressed format adds a higher cost to the chips, as does the processing power needed to handle all those uncompressed bits quickly.

Push the prices down to a more reasonable level and then consumers will undoubtedly fork over a premium for wireless technology. As more do so, the chips become cheaper to produce, lowering costs further. Then all we have to do is figure out if we want UWB, Wi-Fi, WirelessHD or WHDI equipment to enable wireless video.

image of Amimon router and a new Mitsubishi WHDI TV courtesy of Amimon

I’ve made no secret of the fact that I don’t like Comcast. Using their service, my Internet connectivity is slow, my cable is constantly on the fritz, and the interactive program guide is the definition of clunky. But Comcast — I say this through very gritted teeth, indeed — has some very promising plans for Fancast, its broadband video portal.

Because now Comcast wants to turn Fancast into the link from the Internet back into its cable programming service. If Comcast is even remotely successful with this web-to-TV convergence, then Fancast could very well represent a model for linking together new and old distribution methods.

Fancast this week added an online store through which users can rent and/or own more than 3,000 television shows and movies, and that store is supposedly the start of the broad new Fancast strategy.

Keep in mind, I’m not suggesting that Fancast is a better online store than others. I am a huge iTunes advocate and think it provides the greatest ease of use among online stores. Rather, the Comcast strategy with Fancast is worth watching because the operator appears to be taking steps to become more than just a dumb pipe. After all, cable’s role as the middle man in delivering content is under siege as consumers turn to the web to watch video programming. A broader Fancast is more of a retention play than a revenue driver. Customers who contemplate jettisoning cable programming in favor of becoming Internet-only video viewers might think twice if Comcast can strengthen the ties between its web and TV services.

Later this year, Comcast will begin testing the capability of synching Fancast to your Comcast DVR, which means you could program your home DVR from the Fancast site using your work computer. As a Comcast spokesperson noted, “The end user should feel like they can find and manage and get all their entertainment that they want no matter where it is.”

The next step will be to loop in video-on-demand functionality into Fancast. That could mean programming a VOD playlist directly from Fancast.com. So I could set up a “Daisy’s Shows” category that includes AMC’s Mad Men, HBO Entourage and fitness videos. Then when I sink down into my cushy couch at night all I’d have to do — theoretically — is click on my playlist to find my pre-programmed VOD picks.

As with anything, we’ll have to wait and see if Comcast can pull this off.

Om reported today that Joost is getting ready to abandon its client and replace it with a web-based product that’s powered by a P2P plug-in. This step certainly makes sense for Joost. The service has been struggling to remain relevant ever since its launch, and the idea of web-based solution has been floating around for what seems like forever.

But Joost in a browser is also hardly revolutionary. In fact, there have been plenty of attempts to merge the world of Web 2.0 with distributed data delivery in recent months, and there are other promising efforts on the horizon. To this crowd, Joost is like the odd, new kid that shows up in school weeks after summer break. So please, be nice, give it a place at the table, and let’s start with a quick round of introductions.

Here are a few companies that have been trying browser-based P2P longer than Joost: 

Octoshape started with P2P audio streaming, but has been offering browser-based video streaming since 2006. It recently streamed the Olympic games live for a Korean broadcaster. Octoshape is using a hybrid approach that combines P2P with CDN solutions from CDNetworks. Unlike Joost, its browser plug-in is also available for PowerPC Macs and PCs running Linux.

PPLive, the Chinese P2P TV service that keeps impressing us with its huge user base, launched a browser plug-in just in time for the Beijing Olympics.

RedSwoosh , which was recently acquired by Akamai, not only has its own browser-based BitTorrent client in place, but also a streaming/progressive downloading solution for web-hosted videos.

Mediamelon is another plug-in based P2P video offering that actually launched at Newteevee Live last year.

UK-based Rawflow is not only offering its P2P plug-in to major broadcasters, it’s also running a Ustream-like site at Selfcast.com. Oddly enough, it looks like Rawflow stopped using its own P2P technology for Selfcast a while back. The site just streams Flash without requiring any plug-in installations. Rawflow’s P2P technology is now marketed by Velocix.

Neokast also offers a Ustream-like site with P2P-powered live streams. Neokast is Windows-only. The company recently started to offer a commercial stream server application for P2P-loving lifecasters.

BitTorrent Inc. is using its DNA plug-in to offer P2P streaming in the browser. The company is collaborating with Brightcove to make the technology available for broadcasters. DNA is only available for Windows so far, and it’s not yet compatible with the existing BitTorrent/uTorrent install base.

Om broke the news today that Joost is abandoning its full-on client for a browser plug-in, falling in line with the way of the web (aka Hulu). We’ve had a chance to poke around the password-protected site, and here’s some of what we saw.

The plug-in is a 18.6 MB download, and it installed fine on my Mac. The site seems especially driven by a social experience. One of my problems with Joost all along has been its lack of an organized, chronologically ordered, hierarchical program guide, and that’s still the case. But now content discovery is more socially oriented, with the home page including a Facebook/FriendFeed-like activity feed of what everyone is watching on the service at the time (users can opt out of being included in this if they wish). Users can friend each other and join groups, though there’s no internal messaging system. There are, though, a lot of RSS feeds — for anything and everyone.

The video-watching interface is pretty slick, with a 16×9 default player. Video looks good and starts extremely quickly, but the quality isn’t above and beyond the rest of the web.

And, of course, the other difference between Hulu and Joost is that Hulu still has more premium content.

Last night, during NBC’s NFL broadcast of the Giants vs. Redskins game, Jerry Seinfeld’s first Microsoft commercial premiered. Coming in at a whopping 1 minute and 30 seconds, Bill Gates is certainly determined to get every penny’s worth out of Seinfeld’s $10 million paycheck. I’m not quite sure what tasty new future Microsoft is selling, but I’m certainly buying into the idea of a Seinfeld-Gates Odd Couple revival.

And since Marie Digby’s embarrassing attempt at astroturfing, you don’t see many recording artists trying to trick YouTube audiences into buying them as rebels — but today Jill Weinberger takes a hard look at rising YouTube star Alicia Gatto, who claims to have been kidnapped by “The Man” and needs our help to escape his prison of bad music. Why isn’t Jill buying it? NewTeeVee Station has the answers.

No Decision in TiVo Contempt Case; a federal judge failed to make a decision in TiVo’s request to find Dish Network in contempt over not disabling its DVR functionality. (Multichannel News)

Online Video for a Good Cause; Dailymotion partners with One Laptop Per Child to create a site with videos in compatible formats for the device; Stand Up To Cancer organization guest edits the YouTube home page to raise awareness. (OLPC: Dailymotion Blog); Stand Up: YouTube Blog)

Christian the Lion Becoming a Movie; YouTube vid about a lion reuniting with its previous owners after spending a year in the wild optioned by Sony. (The Hollywood Reporter)

Comcast’s Coutroom Drama Begins; cable co. is appealing FCC enforcement order over the throttling of BitTorrent traffic. (GigaOM)

Component Inputs Coming to Zv Box; new feature will allow additional set-top boxes like DVRs to be hooked up to the device. (CE Pro)

Filmmaker Michael Moore’s new film, Slacker Uprising, is skipping theaters and will be released online as a free download. The film follows Moore during his 62-city tour during the 2004 election that was aimed at firing up the youth vote.

Though he cites Radiohead as inspiration for this free web release, Moore is no stranger when it comes to his movies showing up online. Last year, Moore cried foul when his movie Sicko leaked online before its release in theaters.

Slacker Uprising will be available starting Sept. 23 for three weeks as a free download on Blip.tv.

Exclusive: In what is likely to be a major shift in the company strategy, peer-to-peer start-up, Joost is going to stop making its desktop client. The decision to suspend the client is likely to be announced soon, I am told. The company is going to a browser-only strategy where much of its content is going to be available through a browser-based player. Read the full story on GigaOM.

Written by Liane Cassavoy.

Amazon’s Video on Demand is the latest service that will attempt to make you turn off your TV and turn on your PC when you want to be entertained. But Amazon is jumping into an increasingly crowded market, so how does its service fare compared to similar offerings from Hulu, iTunes and Netflix? I gave all four a spin under similar conditions to evaluate their strengths and weaknesses.

EASE OF USE (THE BASICS): All of these services are simple to use, and Amazon is no exception. All of them let you browse available titles, and — in most cases — begin watching a video with just a few clicks. Amazon and iTunes offer TV shows and movies for rental and download. If you rent a movie online, you have 24 hours to watch it; if you download it, you can watch it whenever you’d like. You are limited in what you can do with the file you’ve downloaded, though: You can only transfer it to a certain number of computers, set-top boxes or mobile devices.

Hulu doesn’t offer content for downloading; it aggregates streaming video, including movies, TV shows and video clips. Netflix Instant Watch is only available to Netflix subscribers, and lets them watch movies on their PC or on a Netflix set-top box.

SELECTION: Amazon’s selection is impressive: It offers more than 40,000 titles. In comparison, Netflix’s Instant Watch has about 12,000 (up from about 1,000 when it launched in early 2007); Apple says its iTunes store has more than 2,000 titles available (up from 150 titles in January 2008). Neither they — nor Hulu — can compete with Amazon in terms of sheer volume.

That volume extends to its collection of TV shows: Amazon offers all the episodes from the first four seasons of The Office. Hulu, meanwhile, has five complete episodes available. (iTunes doesn’t have any, because The Office is on NBC, and NBC and Apple still don’t get along.)

Both Amazon and iTunes have a very good selection of recent titles — both in TV shows and movies. iTunes recently announced that it would be offering some movie titles the same day as the DVDs are released, and Amazon seems to be doing the same thing. Amazon will let you, for example, register to watch Made of Honor (starring Patrick Dempsey) on Sept. 16 — that’s the same day it will be available on DVD.

Amazon is lacking a few key titles, though. The service seems to offer almost every show from Comedy Central — except The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. Hulu, meanwhile, offers full episodes of only two Comedy Central shows: The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. If those are your favorites, Amazon’s breadth won’t matter.

PRICE: Hulu wins hands-down in this category: It’s free, though ad-supported. Amazon does offer some content for free, but most of it is priced in line with what you’ll find on iTunes: Single TV episodes cost $1.99 (they’re available for purchase only) and movies cost $2.99 to $3.99 to rent, and $9.99 to $14.99 to purchase. The Netflix Instant Watch feature lets you watch an unlimited amount of video, and is included with most Netflix subscriptions, which start at $9 per month.

PERFORMANCE: Video quality across all four services was very good, and all loaded videos quickly and smoothly. I noticed the most freezing and buffering when watching video content from iTunes, and some of the clips on Hulu were not as high-resolution of the majority of content I found on Amazon and elsewhere. High-definition content viewed on Amazon looked great, though I did notice when watching some titles that the formatting seemed off. It seemed as though video that should have been seen in a 16×9 ratio was squished into a 4×3 window.

Both iTunes and Netflix require that you download software to play back video content: iTunes requires the iTunes client, and Netflix provides a proprietary player. Both Hulu and Amazon play videos right in your browser window, though they require Adobe Flash.

COMPATIBILITY: None of these services are restricted to your PC, but they vary in the devices they support. Amazon lets you send videos to a networked TiVo box or to a Sony BRAVIA TV with a Sony BRAVIA Video Internet link. Content that is rented from the iTunes store can be transferred to a compatible Apple device, but it cannot be stored in two places at once.

Netflix works with Windows PCs only, but Hulu, iTunes, and Amazon all support both PCs and Macs. Netflix also works with some set-top boxes, which allow you to view Instant Watch titles on your TV. The Roku Netflix player is available now; the LG BD300 Network Blu-ray Player is coming soon, and later this fall the Xbox 360 will be compatible with the Netflix service as well.

Amazon’s Video on Demand seemed a bit pricey to me — $2 for a 22-minute TV show is more than I want to spend. But its ease of use and excellent selection impressed me enough that I’ll be back again.

Liane Cassavoy has been writing about and reviewing technology for the past 10 years. She was a staff member of PC World magazine and has contributed to Entrepreneur, About.com, and other publications, and recently authored a book that will be published by Entrepreneur Press later this year.

Probably one of the most important benchmarks for online video, in my opinion, was the study conducted by TNS and the Conference Board last year that found 16 percent of American Internet households watch TV broadcasts online. That seemed pretty impressive at the time, especially given that it pre-dated the existence of Hulu along with widespread promotion of other network’s streaming offerings. It signaled that there was a real audience for premium entertainment on the PC screen.

Well, perhaps as expected, but certainly as an important milestone, that number is now larger: “Nearly one-fifth” of American Internet households watch TV broadcasts online, according to a release put out by the two firms today. So assuming the number is something on the order of 19 percent, it’s actually not that dramatic of an increase year-on-year. (We’ve asked if they can send over a more precise percentage. The firms do say this year’s figure is double what they measured two years ago.)

In its study of 10,000 households, TNS and the Conference Board found that of those who watch TV online, 43 percent tune into the news, the most popular category. Thirty-nine percent watch drama shows, 34 percent sitcom/comedy shows, 23 percent reality shows, 16 percent sports, and 15 percent user-generated content.

Almost nine out of ten online TV viewers watch online broadcasts at home, while 15 percent watch from their office. Some 68 percent of online TV watchers stream video, while 38 percent utilize free downloads (Meaning illegitimate downloads, I assume. Most places offering authorized downloads, like iTunes, do it for a fee.) The top streaming destinations are official TV sites, with 65 percent of viewers, and YouTube, with 41 percent.

Are you ready for some (online) football?! A web video party? Then head on over to NBCSports.com to check out the NFL’s first live-streaming game of the season, as the defending Super Bowl champs, the New York Giants, take on the Washington Redskins.

The game begins at 7 p.m. ET, and will feature four different camera angles to choose from, picture-in-picture functionality, and real-time commentary. Interestingly, the game requires Flash, not Silverlight, which NBC was used for the Olympics.

Last year, the NFL offered games online, but only to those who paid $269 for the NFL package on DirecTV plus an additional $99 fee. Perhaps seeing all the success Major League Baseball has had without such restrictions wizened those helmet heads up.

UPDATE: I’ve been watching for twenty minutes and here are some initial thoughts. The video quality is just alright, not as good as the Olympics. And while you can switch camera angles (cable cam, star cam, sideline cam, end zone cam), each time I did a commercial played (irritating). Overall, it’s nice if your a die-hard football fan stuck at work, but otherwise, not that impressive.

(Tip of the hat to Lost Remote.)

IKEA, the Swedish home furnishings company, is rolling out its new web series Easy to Assemble, which features a cavalcade of stars.

Valkommen To IKEA (www.easytoassemble.tv) - The best bloopers are here

The series is created by and stars Illeana Douglas (To Die For), and will feature appearances by Jeff Goldblum, Tom Arnold, Ed Begley Jr. and Justine Bateman (who must be killing time before her own web series kicks off production). Each episode will have a star learning about different aspects of the IKEA experience (think Allen wrenches and Swedish meatballs).

While there is a spoof teaser trailer up now, the series starts in earnest on Sept. 22nd. There will be 10 episodes in total, with a new, three-minute episode each week at easytoassemble.tv, as well as on Metacafe, YouTube, Revver and other distribution outlets.

Loads of companies are getting into the branded web video game (Johnson & Johnson, Holiday Inn Express), but if done well, the playful nature of IKEA could carry make Assemble entertaining while making you forget it’s a commercial.

We covered Legend of Neil after the release of episode 3, and three weeks later it’s delightful to be able to report that the series never lost its flair for NSFW gamer comedy. The final installment features Neil facing the end of the first level — and his greatest enemy yet.

And lots of people are shooting political satires right now — but why bother, when the raw footage has so much potential? Content remixers Wreck and Salvage have made an art out of re-editing America’s leaders — but what is the message behind pieces like Nancy Pelosi Chicken Dance? Find out at NewTeeVee Station!

CNBC Links Up With LinkedIn; the cable news channel will incorporate community-generated content such as survey results and on-air Q&As into its coverage. (LinkedIn)

Abu Dhabi Media Company to Shell Out $1 Billion for Films, Digital Content; Middle Eastern media conglomerate to produce content for global and Arabic-language markets. (Digital Media Wire)

Whrrl Creates Mobile Entourage Campaign; the GPS-based social networking service provides commentary on the real clubs and restaurants visited by the characters. (release)

Blank Slate Microseries Debuts Sept. 9; Dean Devlin (Independence Day)-produced show will integrate Acura cars and air in commercial pods on TNT and on broadband. (release)

Sony, Pioneer Introduce Pricey Blu-Ray Players; instead of cutting prices, consumer electronics companies up the ante: Sony’s will set you back $2,000, Pioneer’s comes in at $2,200. (VideoBusiness)

OverlayTV adds features; monetization, video-in-video and Twitter integration among the new features. (release)

LG and Netflix have been doling out more details on their joint hardware project day by day. Here’s what we know about the BD300, with thanks to Wired Gadget Lab, The New York Times Bits Blog, and of course, the official press release.

• It’ll be available the first week of October at Best Buy, Circuit City and specialty retailers.
• It will cost $399.95 (the Roku Netflix player is $99.99).
• It will be a Blu-ray disc player with BD Live (though accessing the Internet will require an additional memory dongle).
• You’ll have to have a Netflix subscription, but LG will offer two weeks free Netflix service for new members with the player.
• It will play 12,000 Netflix movies and TV episodes, but you’ll have to queue them up in advance from your PC.
• Netflix content will not stream in HD, but rather “near DVD-quality,” depending on the speed of your Internet connection. Netflix hopes to stream movies in HD by next year.

The appeal of this particular device is in getting Blu-ray and streaming movies in the same place, even if the difference in quality is that much more apparent. But the Xbox 360 is also getting Netflix streaming, as well as a hefty price drop. Meanwhile, Amazon doesn’t have its own box, but it does have 40,000 titles and multiple hardware partnerships.

Web video distribution and analytics firm TubeMogul has launched a “Marketplace” of web video shows or, as TubeMogul likes to call it, a “dating site” to connect advertisers with video producers.

The service lets advertisers search through TubeMogul’s catalog of video producers using such criteria as web show category (entertainment, technology, vlogs etc.), minimum views and demographic reach. Each web show has a profile page that includes a synopsis of the program, sample video, viewership statistics and contact information.

The program was in private beta until today and is opt-in for participants. The Marketplace currently features 230 of the most-viewed users, though both Sony Pictures and Ford Models backed out. According to a TubeMogul rep, the company is not making money on this program and is using Marketplace to drive traffic to the site.

While the show offerings are limited to TubeMogul users, this could be beneficial for advertisers that are just starting to dip their toes in the online video waters and looking for a place to begin.

NewTeeVee is returning for a second annual New York City edition of our Pier Screening series in just a few weeks. Last year was a blast and we hope you’ll come again and bring your friends.

NTV Screenings, for those unacquainted, are nighttime events where we show a bunch of videos originally intended for the web — meaning they usually get consumed by one person, alone in the glow of his or her laptop. As a bit of an experiment (and also an excuse to hang out and drink beer and eat popcorn) what we do is show those same videos up on a big screen for an audience of a hundred or more people.

This month’s edition will be on September 23 at NYU, and it’s free to attend so long as you register for a ticket here. The theme is viral ads, somewhat in honor of the coincidence with Advertising Week in New York.

We’re pleased to announce that we’re putting on the event with the help of two partners, the enormously popular NY Video 2.0 Meetup group as well as Visible Measures, an independent analytics firm that tracks viral ads as they spread, replicate, and inspire parody across the web. As a bit of an experiment, we will be choosing videos as a joint research project with Visible Measures, rather than taking submissions as we usually do. But if you know of something great, please do let us know (screenings at newteevee).

We should also give a shout out to our sponsors, On2, G-Technology, VoloMedia, Threadless, Move Networks, Digital Fountain, and Etchstar. If you’d like to sponsor the event please also let us know (screenings at newteevee).

TiVo today announced the availability of its HD XL DVR as the company targets high-end users and people who watch a lot of television. The TiVo HD XL sports a 1 terabyte hard drive capable of recording 150 hours of HD TV and comes with a hefty price tag to match — $599.99. While it’s got impressive specs, this top-shelf play probably won’t bring a full turnabout for TiVo, which is still losing subscribers.

With its augmented HD drive and THX certification, TiVo is trying to prove itself as a high-end device that complements even the most extravagant home theater. But that beefy hard drive isn’t just going after those with bling, it’s hoping to up-sell current family TiVo owners who are scared their current skimpy hard drives will fill up on them halfway through the new season of Grey’s Anatomy.

The bigger hard drive is a nice feature, but that sticker price is sure to induce shock, especially when a cable or satellite service will rent you a DVR for cheap. Sure, it eliminates the need to worry about how much space is available, and that has value (especially when the new fall season is upon us) — but six hundred bucks? Why can’t the powers that be just create a network DVR already?

Amazon has extended its paid video service to streaming, Macs, and compatible Sony BRAVIA devices and televisions. It previously only made movies and TV shows available for download to PCs or on TiVos. The moves were all expected and forecast, but they are no less important for Amazon to have a viable online entertainment portal.

Amazon bridges current offerings from iTunes, Hulu, and Netflix, though it’s important to note that, like iTunes, none of its content is ad-supported. It beats iTunes on TV because it has NBC, and it beats Hulu on movies because it has far more of them. Netflix’s movie service, meanwhile, only provides streaming for PCs.

The service is now called Amazon Video on Demand, with the previous brand name, Unbox, now just referring to the download helper application. Amazon has a large, but not exhaustive, library of 40,000 movies and TV shows. It also works on Windows Media Center extender devices such as the Xbox 360. It’s worth making special note that downloads still only work on Windows.

Movies cost on the order of $9.99 to $14.99 to own, and $2.99 to $3.99 to rent. Most TV episodes are $1.99; some older TV episodes are free, and there are some Internet TV originals in there too, like A Comicbook Orange.

In my early tests, streaming on a Mac works great, even over the EVDO connection I’m using right now. The video picks up nicely wherever you scan through the status bar. Amazon is also offering free 2-minute previews of each movie and episode.

See also: Comcast Fancast download store news from earlier today.

Sony Pictures is leaving South Korea because of sluggish sales and rampant piracy, The Korea Times is reporting this week. Sony isn’t the first studio to abandon the Korean market; according to the Times, Paramount, Universal, Buena Vista and 20th Century Fox have all ceased operations there, meaning there is no longer a major Hollywood studio operating in South Korea.

Korean DVD sales have been in a free fall in recent years. The newspaper quotes estimates for 2008 of some $285 million vs. $673 million in 2002. At the same time, blazing fast broadband is ubiquitous. The country’s average broadband penetration rate by household hit 90.1 percent last year; in Seoul, the rate was 107.8 percent. Korea’s broadband revolution is often touted as a sign of things to come for the rest of the world, but is the same true for the death of its DVD market?

There’s no question that film-swapping broadband users are behind at least some of the industry’s woes in Korea. In a recent survey, almost 50 percent of Korea’s Internet users have admitted to downloading movies from the Internet, and the typical user is downloading about a movie a week. Copyright isn’t even an issue with the folks that haven’t been getting their Hollywood blockbusters online. Instead, they simply deemed downloading as too complicated.

The slump of DVD sales numbers has also taken its toll on DVD rental stores. The Korea Times is reporting that there were 10,000 of these Blockbuster-type stores back in 2001, but the number was down to 3,500 at the end of last year. Finally, box office sales have been slightly down in 2007 as well, but some attribute this to the changing box office landscape rather than to piracy.

How much of this trend will translate to the U.S.? At this point, it’s hard to speculate, but there are some lessons to be learned in South Korea that should worry Hollywood, the most important one being that in the face of ubiquitous broadband, DVDs won’t be replaced by other physical formats or even VOD services, but by the cloud.

Interestingly enough, P2P networks aren’t at the center of the Korean downloading craze. Users are flocking to web-based storage solutions instead. The market for these so-called “webhard” services was originally popularized by LG, but now there are dozens of vendors, with some offering up to 1 Terabyte of storage space for free. The services are monetized through priority access points that guarantee higher speeds. There are supposed to be filters in place, but it’s obvious they don’t work.

Korean film studios now want their piece of the pie by becoming part of the cloud. According to KBS World Radio, they’re starting a webhard-based movie download service by the end of the year.