iPhone users have long been accused of being data hogs, gobbling up bandwidth and crushing AT&T’s 3G network. But it’s Android users who could be pushing their carrier’s limits by watching huge amounts of mobile video over 3G networks rather than Wi-Fi, according to new research from mobile ad network Rhythm NewMedia.

Nearly three-quarters (72 percent) of mobile video viewed on Android devices happens over mobile carrier networks, compared to 28 percent viewed over Wi-Fi networks. That’s significantly higher than iPhone users, who view 56 percent of mobile video over 3G networks, compared to 44 percent watched on Wi-Fi networks.

That will be bad news for network operators, which have seen video usage increase dramatically on mobile networks. And, as Stacey at GigaOM has long predicted, it’s bad news for consumers, who can expect more mobile carriers to begin rolling out metered billing for mobile data traffic.

AT&T, which has exclusive rights to the iPhone in the U.S., has already rolled out metered billing on its mobile data plans, killing the unlimited plan that iPhone and other smartphone users had taken advantage of over recent years. The new data plans may be one reason why iPhone users are less likely to use the 3G network over Wi-Fi, although it’s worth pointing out that AT&T has long sought to limit the amount of mobile video traveling over its network by ensuring that some video-heavy applications were limited to Wi-Fi use only.

With Android now outselling iPhone and BlackBerry mobile devices, you can probably expect Verizon, Sprint and other mobile carriers to follow suit and start their own metered plans, particularly if Android users continue to use the 3G network for video viewing.

It will also become more important as mobile phone users watch even more video. Viewing times for mobile video continued to increase, according to Rhythm NewMedia, with the amount of time viewers spent watching full episodes of TV content increasing 20 percent quarter-over-quarter. The ad network reports that after starting a full-length episode, 26.5 percent of users watched the entire thing on their mobile devices, and 41 percent watched at least half the episode.

Photo courtesy of Jim Champion.

Related content on GigaOM Pro: Hot Topic: Mobile Broadband Pricing (subscription required)

San Francisco, Calif.-based startup Bazaar Labs just released an Android application for its Miso social TV service. The release will bring all the same functionality that is already available to iPhone, iPad and web users in a native app available today on Android Market.

Miso is one of a group of services that use game mechanics to entice users to “check in” and share what they’re watching on TV and on the web. Like location-based services Foursquare and Gowalla, these services offer up badges and other virtual goods in exchange for those check-ins.

The release of the Miso Android app comes just a week after Bazaar Labs updated its iPad and iPhone mobile apps to give users more tools for social sharing. The Android app carries over all the same functionality, enabling users to check in, comment on and “like” check-ins from anyone else using the app, notify them when their check-ins have been commented on, and let users designate “favorite” shows which they can “quick check-in” to.

The social TV space is becoming increasingly crowded, with startups like Philo and GetGlue releasing apps that offer the same types of check-in functionality and virtual rewards. Large distributors and programmers are also getting into the game, with Comcast releasing a social app called Tunerfish. CBS is tying its efforts to its TV.com property with a social TV app of its own.

With so many choices, it will be difficult for Miso or any other social TV app to differentiate itself and take the lead in an incredibly fragmented market. So far, most apps have tried to boost their visibility through partnerships with TV programmers that tie rewards to user check-ins during TV broadcasts. Miso has taken this a step further by making videos and other multimedia goodies available to users as virtual rewards for checking in, but it’s unclear whether this approach will hold up against competition from players like CBS.

Related content on GigaOM Pro: Three Reasons Over-The-Top TV Apps Will Beat Big-Cable (subscription required)

Hulu, which has rapidly grown to be the top destination for broadcast shows online, is readying itself to go public in an offering that could value the company at $2 billion, according to a report in the New York Times. Hulu’s got the name brand necessary for a successful IPO, but to make it as an independent company, it’s going to need the support of its content partners.

Hulu so far appears to be a success; founded just three years ago as a joint venture between NBC and Fox, the company has grown its site to include hundreds of content partners and millions of viewers each month. Revenue has also increased dramatically, as Hulu reported it generated more than $100 million in sales in 2009, and said in April it was on pace to double that this year.

Sales could grow even faster, as Hulu is launching a paid version of its service that will enable viewers to get older library content, including full seasons of shows that are currently airing and series runs for popular shows, like Lost, that are no longer on TV. It also enables viewers to stream their favorite shows to a wide range of connected devices, such as select HDTVs, Blu-ray players, game consoles and mobile devices. The premium subscription service, which costs $9.99 a month, is in private beta now, but could launch to the general public soon.

Even so, Hulu faces some challenges if it goes public. For one, despite the estimated $200 million that it could bring in this year, a good portion of those revenues — anywhere from 50 to 70 percent — go to its content partners. Those content partners, including parent Fox, NBC and Disney, might not have as much incentive to ensure Hulu’s continued success once it becomes independent.

While Hulu’s done a good job of attracting viewer eyeballs as the go-to destination for broadcast video content, some of its traffic has come at the expense of broadcasters’ own online properties, which they can monetize better than Hulu currently does. Already, you can see some competition from ABC, which released a free, ad-supported iPad app long before Hulu rolled out its own app, which is tied to the Plus subscription service.

Viacom, which had been a big contributor to Hulu’s success with cable programming from MTV and Comedy Central, pulled episodes and clips from flagship properties The Daily Show and The Colbert Report from the site earlier this year because it was unhappy with the revenue that Hulu was generating.

Hulu’s aggressive revenue growth and expansion into the subscription business bodes well for its continued success in the near term. But if Hulu’s partners begin to see themselves as competitors, they could withhold content from the site that can be monetized more effectively on their own web properties. Or, they could compete more aggressively on connected devices and mobile platforms. Either way, competition from Hulu’s partners could limit its potential for future returns. We may find out sooner rather than later, as the New York Times reports that it has been talking to investment banks about a public offering that could happen as early as this fall.

Related content on GigaOM Pro: How Online Video Is Shaping the Next Round of Retrans Fights (subscription required)

This week’s news that Netflix has struck a licensing agreement with pay TV network Epix has gotten praise from Netflix customers who are now looking forward to streaming movies like Star Trek and Iron Man, but also worried some analysts who think that Netflix paid too much for Epix.

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings has been saying for a long time that he wants to spend more on online rights, and Epix was one of the three entities he singled out during a recent earnings call as a potential licensing partner. Who were the other two? I’m glad you asked: HBO and Showtime.

Of course, that brings up an interesting question: Who is gonna be next after Epix? Which company would be beneficial for Netflix to strike a deal with, and what do you personally want to see added to the Watch Instantly catalog? We decided to compile a little poll to find out. Feel free to elaborate in the comments.

View This Poll
Market Research

Related content on GigaOM Pro: Three Reasons Hulu Plus is No Threat to Netflix (subscription required)

In a world with millions of different mobile devices, televisions, screen sizes and video formats, something has to give. But instead of giving in, device proliferation combined with content producers’ desire to deliver clean video is giving rise to a new market for hosted video encoding, sometimes called transcoding. The goal is simple: provide the right format to the right screen at the right time without requiring content producers to invest in infrastructure. Done right, content producers should be able to dial up a video encoding service in the cloud.

The cloud provides an ideal infrastructure to handle this task. Transcoding is CPU-intensive, but CPUs can be provisioned and de-provisioned quickly with cloud providers, and end customers can be charged by the minute as opposed to investing in their own hardware. Of course, bandwidth can still be an issue at times. Large video files are not always easy to ship around on the Internet, but that also makes the case that they should be shipped once to a hosted encoding provider, with various formats created and downloaded from there.

Most of the video encoding sites operate using a simple model: you set an area for the service to source your video content, assign a site of rules and policies for how that video should be transcoded, and then assign some output rules for where the video files should be delivered.

It’s not hard to envision the next step in this sequence where hosted encoding is paired with content delivery networks (CDNs) to provide a one-stop shop delivering multiple video formats and sizes, all with the global reach a CDN can deliver.

It’s become clear with the rise of YouTube and the dollars spent by mobile carriers promoting video capabilities that the age of “video anytime, anywhere” is well upon us. As Robin Harris of StorageMojo writes in A Cloud App for the Masses, “Business units are discovering the power of short videos to inform, train, persuade and excite. All at a fraction of the cost of 4-color brochures.”

As conventional content moves to the web, and newer web-based content continues to grow, expect to see multiple winners in the race to transcode in the cloud. We might not be able to pick the winners yet, but there is no doubt that the cloud has found another perfect use case in hosted encoding.

For those who want to investigate further, here’s a list of leading hosted encoding providers:

• Encoding.com – The self-proclaimed “world’s largest encoding service” runs on both Amazon and Rackspace clouds.
• Zencoder – Runs on the Amazon cloud and recently expanded its presence in Asia and Europe to serve a global audience.
• FlixCloud – Uses software from Zencoder and On2 technologies. On2 was recently purchased by Google.
• Hey!Watch – Boasts several impressive customer references. There are few details about the company on their website.
• HD Cloud – Has all the standard transcoding capabilities on demand and recently announced a partnership with BitGravity, a video deliver network.
• Panvidea – Released a new version of its video processing engine in July and boasts a wide range of value added capabilities around transcoding.

Guys, we’ve been loving our Five Questions With… feature so much, we’re going to start putting them out on Saturdays so you can enjoy them all weekend long. Excited? Damn right you are, especially since today we have Nina Bargiel, a writer and transmedia producer who created the the expansive social media world surrounding MTV’s college vampire drama Valemont (and won an Streamy for it). Below, she warns the world to not call her a Social Media guru, talks about the lessons learned during Valemont and wins my heart forever by picking a cat video to share.

1. What’s the one big issue/law/attitude/restriction that you think is holding back the industry?

Please note that I’m coming at this from the transmedia perspective, and not a web-series perspective…but I’d have to say it’s measurability and defining that in terms of value (which means money). While we can track sign-ups and time spend on sites or numbers of users in a community, I feel like we’re still at the beginning of tracking how transmedia experiences translate into specific metrics. I think that’ll get us over the next hurdle, which is making people understand what we do. When I introduce myself as a transmedia producer, people have a ::BLINK:: ::BLINK:: moment, laugh politely and walk away. This is probably why I don’t get asked back to parties.

2. What industry buzzword do you never want to hear again?

I get only one? Webisode. Engagement. (Okay, that one kind of means something.) Social media guru. The last one makes me stabby (which is probably reason #2 I don’t get asked back to parties). Usually if you define yourself as a “guru” of something, you aren’t. Although I have noticed that some of these “gurus” do pretty well financially. But I’m still not going to define myself as transmedia guru. (Because I’m not.)

3. If someone gave you $50 million to invest in a company in this space, which one would it be? (Mentioning your own doesn’t count.)

I am company-less, so there’s no moral dilemma here! I’d give it to a transmedia company like No Mimes Media, Campfire, or GMD Studios to develop original IP. Hopefully it would be MY original IP. (See how I did that?)

1. What was the last video (that you weren’t personally involved with) that you liked enough to spread to others?

Have you seen Julie Klausner’s Cat Whisperer? She whispers sh*t to cats. (NSFW for language.)

TV & Movie Spoofs Tags: Atom.com,Atom Originals,Atom Blog,Upload Videos

5. WILD-CARD: MTV is currently developing Valemont as a possible television project following its successful run on the web. What was the one big lesson you learned from running the transmedia campaign for the show, and how key do you think that campaign was to Valemont’s potential transition?

Whoo boy, what lessons didn’t I learn? There were things I knew, like the Internet never sleeps, but when you’re singlehandledly playing nine characters on Twitter plus updating three blogs plus running an ARG plus allowing for audience interaction (which was awesome and the best part of the job!) it turns out that you never sleep, either.

Oh, you probably meant professional lessons. Details matter. Whether it’s story details or it’s technical details, if you let something slip people will notice (I was constantly saying throughout the Valemont experience “There are no takebacks on the Internet.”)

The reality is that things don’t always go as planned, though, so you need to figure a way to write yourself out of a situation, and quickly . This doesn’t even mean something’s been messed up, either. With Valemont we realized that the online audience was clamoring for more, so I had to figure out a way to create more content that 1) didn’t cost us any more money and 2) stayed within the context of our narrative.

I’d like to think that the transmedia campaign was a vital part in the transition to TV, but that’s due to Christian Taylor and Brent Friedman creating a “universe worthy of devotion” as Brent likes to say. (Christian wrote, and Christian & Brent co-created Valemont.) I got to take those characters and that universe online, which let people connect with the world in an extremely real and emotional way. That in turn made our audience connect to the project, which drove them to not only watch but promote and get others involved to watch. Which was pretty cool.

Related GigaOm Pro Content (subscription required): Monetizing the Social Web Isn’t One Size Fits All

The Second Life Community Convention Keynote: Philip Rosedale; SLCC is going down in Boston this weekend, and Linden Labs CEO Philip Rosedale (aka Philip Linden, as he is know in his virtual world) will deliver the first keynote speech. (Ustream, Saturday, 5am PT)

Rockstar Energy Mayhem Festival; the best in Metal come to tear it up including KORN, Rob Zombie, Lamb of God, Five Finger Death Punch, Hatebreed, Chimaira, Winds of Plague and others (Stickam, Saturday, 12pm to 11pm PT)

Monterrey Rayados vs. UNAM Pumas; Goooooooool! Missed futbol? Well, here’s your chance to watch a big Mexican soccer match live online. (Livestream, Saturday, 5pm PT / 8pm ET)

Kevin Pollak’s Chat Show feat. Neil Patrick Harris; Dr. Horrible himself stops by Kevin Pollack’s Chat Show. (Ustream, Sunday, 3pm PT)

MLB: Philadelphia Phillies vs. New York Mets; The Mets face off against the Phillies, and ESPN3 is streaming it live. (ESPN3, Sunday, 5pm PT)

Ratatat: Drugs; Carl Burgess compiled this music video entirely with stock footage from Getty Images. The result is creepy and mesmerizing at the same time. (Vimeo)

Given how successful last fall’s Demand It campaign for Paranormal Activity was in bringing audiences to a movie-star-free horror film, it seemed almost a certainty that another horror project would try and follow in its footsteps.

However, the film in this case is the MTV-produced Savage County, and while the Demand It campaign launched this week — and is already close to a third of the way complete — may lead to the project’s television broadcast, the film was originally born as a web series.

Savage County Official Trailer from Savage County on Vimeo.

David Harris, a producer in MTV’s new media department, originally pitched the project back in 2008 as a multi-episode web series that could also function as a feature film, drawing his inspiration for the film from classic horror flicks like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. “It was written to arc across 90 minutes, or 10 eight-to-nine-minute episodes. We had some flexibility in the editing,” Harris said via phone.

After receiving a green light in April 2009, Savage County was shot in Memphis, Tenn. with the help of Hustle and Flow director Craig Brewer’s production company BR2 (which was also behind the web series $5 Cover) with no stars and a budget of $250,000.

Originally intended for release around Halloween 2009, the series ended up not making it online due to several issues, including an inability to attach a brand to the film’s mature content. “Savage County is not for the weak of heart,” Harris said. “We’ve had some sponsor interest but it takes a certain kind of brand to commit wholeheartedly.”

Hence the decision to take an alternate approach to the project’s distribution, aided and abetted by Executive Vice President of MTV New Media David Gale meeting Eventful CEO Jordan Glazier this March at SXSW. MTV launched the Demand It campaign for Savage County three days ago, promising that after receiving 100,000 demands, Savage County would receive a television broadcast.

As of writing, the campaign is almost at 30,000 demands, which puts it far ahead of everyone’s expectations. “We do a lot of these campaigns of different shapes and sizes,” Glazier said, “And you can get a pretty good read of interest pretty early out of the gate. Sometimes it takes a little time for interest to mature, but this one came out strong right away.”

It probably helps that Savage County is relevant to Eventful users;  according to Glazier, well over 3 million of the site’s 15 million registered users have expressed an interest in horror films.

The Demand It campaign’s success will ultimately drive a lot of distribution decisions for Savage County, but one element that’s not in question is whether the project will receive an online release. According to Gale, the project will be posted in web installments prior to the television premiere (provided the campaign meets its 100,000 demands goal), though they might not debut the full series in its entirety beforehand.

The version that eventually airs on MTV won’t be quite as extreme as, say, Paranormal Activity. Harris guessed that Savage County, as it was shot, would receive an R rating from the MPAA, but some edits will have to be made for the MTV online and television audiences. “We have a standard for air, we have a standard for online content and then a standard for online content behind an age gate,” Harris said. “As the father of a 5-month-old, I’m fine with putting it behind an age gate — I’m not encouraging 12 year olds to watch it.”

He does however believe that if the project receives a home video release, it’ll be true to the original cut. “If we put out a long version on DVD or Blu-ray, it doesn’t make sense to bleep things or cut back on blood spurts.”

Related GigaOm Pro Content (subscription required): The Dos and Don’ts of Social Media Marketing

Net Neutrality Divides Media Companies; most media companies have stayed mute on the subject of net neutrality, but media mogul Barry Diller called the Google-Verizon proposal a sham. (NY Times)

MySpace Launches Romeo Music Video App; the app allows users to choose from 15 music genres such as pop or hip-hop, and 13 moods including “chill” and “studying.” (WebProNews)

Cable Firms Look to Tablet Computers; at least seven of the ten largest subscription-TV providers in the U.S. are building new tablet-computer apps that offer select TV shows and movies. (Wall Street Journal)

Hollywood: Open Net Can’t Be Pirate Haven; Hollywood studios told the FCC Thursday that reclassifiying broadband access is not necessary to achieve an open Internet, and is not a desirable method of achieving that public policy goal. (Multichannel News)

How Is 3D TV Doing? Some Data From Japan; in Japan, prices for 3D TVs offered by the two most aggressive manufacturers, Panasonic and Sony, have fallen 20% and more since they were introduced back in spring this year. (CrunchGear)

Verizon and AT&T Ban BitTorrent On Wireless Networks; BitTorrent and other types of evil traffic have already been banned for years by Verizon, AT&T and others. (TorrentFreak)

Facebook is expanding its video capabilities and creating a new live video channel to help connect with users. Beginning today, the social media startup plans to use the Facebook Live channel to keep users informed about new product features and events, giving them a deeper look into the inner workings of the social network.

The Facebook Live channel kicks off today with a live event at 6:00 p.m. EDT/3:00 p.m. PDT featuring actress and filmmaker America Ferrera, whose most recent film, The Dry Land, was marketed entirely through social media, mostly through Facebook. Ferrera isn’t the only celebrity that Facebook users can expect to see; others might appear on the channel as they visit Facebook’s Palo Alto headquarters, like when Kanye West showed up to the offices last week.

But for the most part, Facebook Live will be used to showcase Facebook products and how people are using those products, Facebook Marketing Manager Randi Zuckerberg said in a phone interview. In addition to product news, she said the channel would also allow users to interact with Facebook engineers and other employees to get a better sense of what’s happening within the company. According to Zuckerberg, the Facebook Live channel will probably have one or two chats a week at first, but it could adjust do more or less in the future, based on user feedback.

The Facebook Live app is embeddable and can be added as a tab to any Facebook page. It allows viewers to update their status, chat with each other or ask a question, which is then submitted to the moderator. Videos from past live events will also be archived, so users can refer back to them after they are over.

Facebook has used its social features to augment a number of live events in the past, including last year’s Presidential Inauguration and Michael Jackson’s Memorial Service. More recently, Facebook used live streaming, including its social chat and sharing capabilities during its F8 developers conference. Many of the features that were built out for F8, including support for chat in multiple languages, will be included in the Facebook Live app.

Related content on GigaOM Pro: Lessons From Google: How Facebook Can Reach One Billion Users (subscription required)

Over the last few months, there’ve been several articles written about the possibility of a future update to the Apple TV based on iOS, the operating system used in iPhone, iPod touch and iPad. These rumors have taken on a life of their own on the Internet, in large part because everyone desperately wants them to be true.

The iTunes Store is a Dead End for Video

Apple sits in an enviable position in the smartphone market, has pushed the tablet category into the mainstream consciousness, and its Mac lineup is selling like hotcakes. It’s the king of music retailing as well, but movies and TV have been somewhat anemic. The iTunes store does not have the dominant position with video content that it does with music. The slow buildup of the video category has led Steve Jobs to refer to the Apple TV as a hobby: something for Apple to continue to dabble in while the market matures.

So why has it been so slow? Because Apple was able to reach the top music retailer spot so quickly, media companies have been reluctant to concede control of electronic distribution to Apple. They feared the same fate as the record labels: their electronic plans dominated by a powerful distribution partner. NBC Universal even pulled its content from the iTunes store for a time during a public spat with Apple. NBC eventually returned, but the industry has still been slow to move on ideas like subscription services or lower pricing through iTunes. The pricing model for video content in the iTunes store has been static for years, and it’s not working.

The entire model for iTunes Store is based on owning the content you purchase. Unfortunately, the video content on the iTunes store is lower quality than what you can buy for the same price elsewhere. Why would anyone want to own mediocre quality content? The future is streaming for convenience and ownership for full HD.

How the iPhone Changes Everything

The explosive growth of the iOS platform (iPhone, iPod touch, and now iPad) has the potential to change Apple’s relationship to media partners. While there has been little change in the iTunes Store, there have been some innovative efforts in providing television shows and movies over the Internet.

iPhone apps provide a way to bring together these two worlds. Media companies can develop apps to bring their properties to consumers, while still retaining control over pricing and establishing a direct relationship with the consumer. The Hulu and Netflix apps are free in the App Store, but require a paid subscription to the respective service to access content. Of no small significance is the fact that Apple does not get one penny from these subscription services. And Hulu and Netflix know exactly who their customers are and how to reach them. App Store developers will be quick to tell you that one frustration is that they have no idea who is buying their apps, and no way to respond to people who complain in App Store reviews. Apple simply does not provide that information to developers.

You can see why media companies would be far more eager to pursue this path where they control pricing and have direct contact with their customers.

An End Run on the iTunes Store

In this scenario, Apple will miss out on a percentage of video content sales. It would be convenient to leap to the conclusion that this would upset Apple and it might take steps to prevent this from happening, but content sales isn’t what Apple is after.

I think the more likely scenario is that Apple continues to view the iTunes Store as the means to an end: selling more iOS devices. While the iTunes store contributed $1.2B to Apple’s revenue this past quarter, I suspect only a small portion of that number comes from video content. In comparison, Apple pulled in $2.17B on the iPad in the same quarter. I would bet that the margins are a lot better on the iPad than the iTunes Store as well, contributing far more to earnings than content sales. Apple will willingly give up growth in content sales in order to make sure that the App Store remains the preferred software distribution channel and iOS devices are the preferred hardware platform for media companies.

Great for Media Companies, Great for Consumers

The big media companies obviously win in this scenario. I think it also opens the stage for small media companies and startups to grow, because the App Store is a pretty level playing field.

Consumers also benefit. More choice, more pricing models, more innovation, more content. The opportunity provided by apps, multitasking in iOS 4, and remote control devices like the iPhone, iPod touch, and the new Magic Trackpad will create a great platform for developers and media companies to deliver existing content and innovative new features. Think Chopper 2 on the TV, controlled by an iPhone, and Scrabble on the big screen with iPod touch tile racks, and new apps that are designed to be controlled by a remote or Magic Trackpad. Maybe someone will finally figure out how to create compelling interactive content for movies that does not get in the way of actually watching the movie. Wouldn’t that be amazing!

Apple TV is Dead, Long Live Apple TV

The current Apple TV, a device where you buy and manage all your video content through the iTunes Store, is dead. But the next Apple TV, where media companies can produce apps to deliver their content to consumers, will be huge because it opens the marketplace back up to innovation again. I can’t predict if Hulu and Netflix will continue to ride the wave and hold their leading position, but I can guarantee that in an open market, someone will figure out a model that works for consumers. And Apple will be there waiting with the best devices for consumers to access that content.

Related GigaOM Pro Research: TV Apps Market to Hit $1.9 Billion by 2015

While credit for the genius of Dr. Horrible’s Sing-A-Long Blog tends to go to its director, Joss Whedon, it’s always important to remember the music powering the web’s first high-profile musical was written by Jed Whedon.

Whedon’s been busy since Dr. Horrible, writing on the Fox series Dollhouse and the Starz series Spartacus with wife and fellow Dr. Horrible collaborator wife Maurissa Tancharoen (with whom he also creates the occasional delightful YouTube video). And he hasn’t stalled out musically either: Not only did he collaborate with Felicia Day on Do You Wanna Date My Avatar, but this week, Jed Whedon, under the band name Jed Whedon and the Willing, has put out his first full album, available now on iTunes.

There’s no fan service to be found in the 12 tracks that make up History of Forgotten Things, unless you count Felicia Day playing violin and singing backup on a few tracks. Instead, the album represents a sincere effort on Whedon’s part to create compelling original music. And while me pretending to be a music critic does the world of music criticism a great disservice, I will say that the set demonstrates a range of influences and styles while also remaining cohesive, unique and catchy. (“Last Man” is especially toe-tapping.) The digital booklet alone is definitely worth the full album price; it’s beautifully designed and includes many fun footnotes.

This isn’t the first time Whedon has self-published music under the nervouscircus label (the same name as his YouTube account); the single “Remains,” for which he shares credit with Tancharoen, was released on Amazon and iTunes. Both “Remains” and the History of Forgotten Things track “Drones” were also featured on Dollhouse.

So anyone looking for a reprise of Dr. Horrible‘s more memorable songs will go away disappointed. But if you’re a Dr. Horrible fan who’s also interested in supporting independent musical talent, it’s hard to imagine History of Forgotten Things not finding its way into your iTunes.

Related GigaOm Pro Content (subscription required): Monetizing the Social Web Isn’t One Size Fits All

Every time I hear predictions that over-the-top video delivery will overtake traditional pay-TV, I think, “maybe, but it’s gonna take a while.” After all, most people I know are augmenting their TV subscription packages watching with OTT, but few have cut it out altogether.

But my thinking changes altogether when it comes to TV apps. As I write in my weekly analysis for GigaOM Pro, this is where where I think OTT will rule sooner rather than later.

Over-The-Top TV Apps?

With video, anything delivered over the Internet but not as a part of the carrier’s own video service (but on the public Internet) is defined as Over-The-Top. Netflix Watch Instantly and Hulu are good examples.

TV Apps can be thought of the same way. In the U.S., carriers have their own interactive services and applications framework called OCAP. OCAP is Java-based middleware for applications within Tru2Way, and it’s been gestating for over a decade with little to show for it. While there have been some small successes, and a watered-down version called EBIF is available on many lower-powered set-tops, efforts by the carriers to roll out and actually use OCAP have been half-hearted at best.

OTT app frameworks are, on the other hand, set to explode. With the announcement of Google TV and the imminent arrival of a revamped Apple living room box, the TV apps in the living room will mostly likely be dominated by the OTT variety, and here’s why:

• Carriers are lumbering dinosaurs. Sure, they’re extremely cash-rich and powerful dinosaurs, but they’ve not shown any sign in the past 15 years that they can figure out how to build the necessary underpinnings required for the rollout of a dynamic and thriving market for interactive applications.
• Mobile proved the use-case for OTT Apps for TV. If there’s another industry that appeared as locked down as — or more  than– pay-TV in the U.S., it’s the U.S. mobile industry. Apple,  and later Google, cracked that market open pretty quickly, and with pay-TV, the big non-carrier OTT players (again, Apple and Google) don’t even have to jump in bed with the carriers (unlike they had to with mobile).
• Innovative developers will gravitate to the faster-to-market platforms. Sure, there might be some companies developing TV apps for OCAP, but I guarantee there are exponentially more developers developing for iPhone, iPad, and Android, and by expanding to the TV screen, Apple and Google just gave them a whole new market.

The bottom line is: The cable industry’s approach to interactive applications and services is rooted in the late 90s and early 2000s when OCAP was born. The pace of innovation has been such that over the past decade – while the lumbering dinosaurs were nearly exclusively focused on the digital transition and HD upgrades – that the standards were outdated before they were completely rolled out. And now, Apple and Google (not to mention Boxee and other upstarts) are coming in “over-the-top.”

To read the detailed report, click here. (subscription required)

Many see HTML5 as the future for the delivery of web-based video, as well as a standards-based replacement for proprietary formats — like Adobe Flash — that dominate video delivery today. But Erik Huggers, director of Future Media & Technology at the BBC, cautions that HTML5 is not yet ready for primetime, and that certain companies could end up undermining the open nature of the standard by pushing their own agenda.

Huggers wrote in a blog post today that “there’s still a lot of work to be done on HTML5″ before the broadcaster can integrate the nascent web standard into its products. More importantly, Huggers warned that HTML5 standardization risks going off-course as proprietary implementations of the technology are developed.

While defending the BBC’s embrace of open standards for delivery of its media across multiple devices, he writes that Adobe Flash right now is the “most efficient way to deliver a high-quality experience to the broadest possible audience.” That’s due in part to Flash’s ubiquity, with some 98 percent of all Internet-connected PCs having the plugin installed. But when looking to the future, many see HTML5 as the obvious replacement for Flash, as it provides much of the same interactivity and tools for video delivery, while also remaining an open standard.

The problem is, HTML5 still lags Flash in the maturity of tools necessary for the delivery and monetization of video — including advertising, reporting and content security. This has caused many content providers to back off using the technology as a way to reach devices, like the Apple iPad, that don’t support Flash.

Huggers doesn’t name names, but it’s clear he’s referring to Apple’s efforts to codify certain aspects of its implementation of HTML5 as it pushes for wider adoption of the web standard for delivery of video and web applications to its iPad and iPhone mobile devices. “Not too long ago some browser vendors were showcasing proprietary HTML5 implementations; which in my view threaten to undermine the fundamental promise,” Huggers writes, which most likely refers to Apple’s showcase of HTML5 capabilities — which, not surprisingly, is only available through its Safari browser.

When certain players push proprietary implementations of a new standard, that’s when the standardization process goes awry, Huggers argues.

“The tension between individual motivation and collective consensus has brought an end to many noble causes in the past, and here, the pace of progress appears to be slowing on bringing HTML5 to a ratified state. History suggests that multiple competing proprietary standards lead to a winner-takes-all scenario, with one proprietary standard at the top of the stack, which is not where most of us want to be,” he writes.

In other words, while Apple has been instrumental in pushing HTML5 adoption by not supporting Flash in its mobile products, it could also undermine the standardization process by pushing a proprietary implementation of the web standard. Which isn’t good for anyone, or the future of HTML5.

Photo by Michael Halminski, courtesy of NOAA’s National Weather Service (NWS) Collection.

Related content on GigaOM Pro: HTML5’s a Game-Changer for Web Apps (subscription required)

Social TV is all the rage these days, with startups like Bazaar Labs and Philo pushing apps that allow Foursquare-like check in functionality and virtual rewards while letting users tell their friends what they’re watching. Even Comcast has gotten in on the trend, with a skunkworks project called Tunerfish that’s launched its own social check in service.

Now CBS is jumping on the bandwagon, with the introduction of a social TV service called TV.com Relay that will leverage its digital assets to enable users to share what they’re watching and collect virtual rewards. But that’s not all — CBS plans to use its traditional broadcast properties to push awareness of TV.com Relay, with on-air promotion of the app during primetime programming.

That will be a huge advantage over many of the other players in the social TV market, many of which are startups that are striking individual deals with different programmers. Even Tunerfish, which gets some help from being built within Comcast, is run independently of the larger cable group and thus is more or less on its own when approaching cable networks to create promotions.

Another key differentiator is that TV.com Relay is only about TV shows. The app will leverage all the data that TV.com has accrued over the past several years, which includes detailed information for all TV programming since 1953. While the other social viewing apps allow users to “check in” to TV programming and web video, CBS Interactive general manager Anthony Soohoo said in a phone interview that its app will be limited to just shows that appear on cable and broadcast TV networks. “You won’t be able to check in to ‘dog on a skateboard,” he said.

While TV.com Relay is a CBS product, Soohoo said that the company will be agnostic about which shows it will push. In its first iteration, CBS will be focused on just getting users to check in to what they’re watching, and recommendations will be based on friends’ viewing and the social graph. But Soohoo sees the opportunity for adding new features, like games related to different programs, as time goes on.

Related content on GigaOM Pro: Three Reasons Over-The-Top TV Apps Will Beat Big-Cable (subscription required)

International Friendly: Bayern Munich vs. Real Madrid; when two of the world’s best soccer clubs face off, friendly is going to be relative. (ESPN3, 11.55am Pacific)

Rockstar Energy Mayhem Festival; the best in Metal come to tear it up including KORN, Rob Zombie, Lamb of God, Five Finger Death Punch, Hatebreed, Chimaira, Winds of Plague and others (Stickam, 12pm to 11pm Pacific)

This Week In Startups; Entrepreneur Jason Calacanis and a rotating group of guest experts bring you this weekly take on… ohh, whatever. Show us your cute dog, Jason! That’s all we want. (Ustream, 1pm Pacific)

iPad Music Video: Eye of the Tiger Remix; Jordan Hollender and his boys covered the old Survivor track Eye of the Tiger, playing the entire tune with iPad music apps. Check out the awesome music video of their remix below:

The web series Project Rant today released their newest video rant recreation, with a twist. Instead of its traditional format, which uses a user-submitted complaint as source material, YouTube Comments pays tribute to the hyperbolic and homophobic comments Rant episodes have been receiving on YouTube — comments that are kinda sorta NewTeeVee’s fault.

See, you might remember that last March, YouTube asked us NewTeeVee-ers to curate a selection of lesser-known but excellent web series as a part of its guest editor program. The shows spent a day being featured on the YouTube front page, gaining an impressive bump in view counts as a result.

Project Rant was one of the series we featured, and thanks to that experience it ended up joining the YouTube Shows page, which has been another great source of promotion. However, it’s also meant a distinct uptick in offensive and poorly spelled comments — which eventually inspired this video.

“The best thing about getting a larger audience is the ability to interact with them,” Rant co-creator Luis Esteban Caffesse said via email. “With so many views in such a short time — and given the fact that it’s YouTube — obviously quite a few of the comments we got were overly negative. Given that turning negativity into entertainment is what we do… we thought it would be an interesting twist on the show — turning the mirror onto the people who rant anonymously about videos we make about people who rant anonymously. As one of our fans said, ‘this episode is so meta it’s almost a palindrome.’”

Since being featured on YouTube last March, Project Rant has gone from about 1,000 subscribers to 16,500, and its channel views have climbed to 4.6 million views. This newest video so far has over 400 comments, my favorite of which is:

People who say this one isnt (sic) funny are fake and gay.

In short: Internet success has its price, but this is the very definition of turning lemons into lemonade.

Related GigaOm Pro Content (subscription required): Why Viacom’s Fight With YouTube Threatens Web Innovation (subscription required)

Knocking Live Video Launches New Version Of FaceTime Competitor; the developer of video streaming phone-to-phone app Knocking Live Video is launching a new version of its iPhone app today, which has been optimized for Apple’s iOS 4. (TechCrunch)

Flash Player Hardware Video Acceleration for Macs Enabled; support for H.264 GPU decoding on Mac OS X is now officially enabled in the latest Flash Player, which can significantly improve the performance of HD video. (Adobe Flash Player blog)

Sony Bravia Adds Sevenload Channels; Sony will add 100 “channels” from the German online video portal sevenload to all its Bravia TV sets, as well as other connected devices such as Blu-ray players and home cinema sets. (Broadband TV News)

Virgin And Sky Involved In Connected-TV Spec Development; Virgin Media (NSDQ: VMED) and BSkyB (NYSE: BSY) have been helping shape specs related to the Canvas connected-TV project, though each opposes it and the former has complained Canvas is anti-competitive. (paidContent:UK)

KickassTorrents Taken Down After Copyright Concerns; one of the fastest growing and most visited torrent sites on the Internet has been pulled offline after an inquiry from the Ukrainian authorities. (TorrentFreak)

MTV UK Launches First Web Drama; MTV Networks UK & Ireland has announced plans to run a web-only drama, Being Victor, on the mtv.co.uk website. (Broadband TV News)

Anti-Piracy Failure Takes Down Creative Commons Videos; an anti-piracy group called GVU successfully ordered video hosting site Vimeo to take down several Creative Commons videos created by a journalist and an independent filmmaker. (TorrentFreak)

Google announced a new Chrome extension called Chrome to Phone today that makes it easier to send web content to Android 2.2 (Froyo) handsets. Om covered the announcement over at GigaOm, but here’s the gist: The new extension will make Chrome display a special button in the browser address bar to send maps, YouTube videos and entire web pages directly to your phone. Check out the Google promo video embedded below for details.

Om saw this as further proof that “mobile and the cloud will eventually converge,” but for me, it raised an interesting question. If extensions like this one tie together Chrome on your PC and your Android handset, what will be in store on this front for the Android-based Google TV once it launches this fall?

Right now it looks like Chrome to Phone won’t run on the Google TV out of the box, because the extension needs an app that’s exclusive to Android 2.2. Google TV will at least initially be based on Android 2.1.

However, it shouldn’t be too hard to develop a Google TV-specific version that would make it possible to send any content you find online straight to your TV set. Imagine you’re watching TV while browsing your Facebook feed on your laptop. You stumble across a video a friend recommended in your feed, click on a simple TV button in your browser, et voila: The clip shows up full screen on your flat screen.

The idea of the browser as a remote control for your connected TV or set-top box isn’t new. In fact, there have been a number of attempts at using the iPad as a remote control. However, most of these were based on dedicated apps, which force you to switch back and forth between the web and the TV remote — something that is counter-intuitive to the Google TV paradigm of uniting traditional television with the web.

NewTeeVee reader Peter Davias had an idea to take this union one step further after reading our post about Broadcom’s Inconcert Maestro technology this week. Here are his thoughts, as published on his personal blog:

“What is killer would be a Chrome extension (or Firefox add-on) that recognises your laptop is connected to a web enabled TV. On loading a web page with video embedded there is an option to “send” that video direct to the TV for viewing. When the NBA season is in full swing I stream the games through Justin.tv on my PC. I’d like to “send” this stream to the TV for viewing rather than having to fiddle with plugging my laptop in the TV each time.”

Peter’s love for pirated NBA streams aside, the ability to pipe any video content, be it a YouTube clip or a live stream, straight from your browser to the TV would be awesome, and it reflects how we consume media these days. TV makers and platform operators may like the idea of channels and apps that they can treat like traditional programming, allowing users to hop from one channel to the next.

However, in reality, video is much more mashed up and integrated into our online experience, which predominantly happens on the browser. If you really want to capture this, then you need to couple the browser on a user’s laptop, phone or tablet device with the TV — and Chrome to Phone could give us an idea of what this is going to look like.

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Video streaming startup Dyyno announced today that it has rolled out a solution for customers that want to stream live or on-demand video to Roku’s broadband set-top box, allowing them to instantly build pages that appear in Dyyno’s Roku channel or build their own branded channels with its help.

Dyyno’s live TV portal offers content owners the opportunity to quickly turn on video streaming on the Roku player without having to download the SDK or do any app development on their own. The TV portal allows any small business to very quickly create a channel through its Roku app. These customers need only pay cost associated with streaming volume on that channel. Customers can also build dedicated Roku channels using the Dyyno backend. In this scenario, Dyyno will help them create custom branded channels of their own for a one-time setup fee as well as the streaming costs.

Roku has been aggressively adding channels to its lineup of content ever since it opened its Channel Store last November. With an open SDK, third-party developers can build and submit channels to be displayed on user TV sets through the Roku player. But Dyyno’s platform is aimed at helping those that don’t have the resources to build channels on their own.

Dyyno CEO Raj Jaswa points out that adding the ability to stream to user TVs through the Roku Player will enable its customers to deliver video to all three screens. The company also streams to Apple iPhone and Adroid mobile phones.

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