March Madness, baby! If you didn’t already have a good reason to drive down to Costco and pick up a huge new TV, this is it. Of course, that shiny new flatscreen won’t help you much for those games airing during office hours, but there is hope. The good thing about the NCAA Men’s College Basketball Tournament is that all games will be available online and on your phone in real time.

And no, you won’t have to jump through any annoying registration hoops like with the Olympics. In fact, there are so many options to to join in on the fun that we decided to compile a handy little guide for all your March Madness needs.

Here’s how you can follow the games live:

The NCAA’s March Madness on Demand site is the place to go for live streams of all the games, starting with Selection Sunday on March 14th all the way to the National Championship game on April 4th. Missed a game? No worries, the site will also provide game highlights and full game archives. Make sure you have Microsoft’s Silverlight installed if you want to use the site’s high-quality video player, with up to 1.8 Mbps.

The player offers features like picture-in-picture highlights of the current game’s best moments, as well as a boss button. (Now you just gotta find a way to quickly hide those pizza boxes in your desk drawer when your CEO walks by your cubicle.) The high quality player also utilizes IIS Smooth Streaming, meaning it will automatically adjust the bandwidth usage to accommodate your Internet connection and computer speed. No Silverlight on your PC? Don’t worry, the NCAA still has a standard-def video player that will play in pretty much any web browser, thanks to Flash.

March Madness on Demand streams will also be available on CNN.com, ESPN.com, Facebook, TV.com, CBS.com, CNET.com, GameSpot.com and other sites around the web.

The March Madness on Demand iPhone application gives iPhone and iPod Touch users a chance to tune into the games on the go. The application offers access to live video via 3G, EDGE and Wi-Fi for $9.99. There’s also a scoreboard, and users can schedule score alerts to keep up to date with the games. Don’t want to shell out 10 bucks? There’s also a free application available. It doesn’t have any live video, but video highlights and news updates.

FLO TV will provide live video of all 63 games to AT&T customers with compatible handsets as well as owners of the FLO TV Personal Television, through the CBS Mobile channel.

Here are some other good online video resources to check out:

The NCAA Vault features full-length videos of the best games the Men’s College Basketball Tournament has seen in the last ten years. The site offers access to 150 games as well as some nifty social features.

Hulu won’t carry March Madness live games, but the site has come up with its own unique flavor of vaguely related madness, offering a Best In Show bracket that lets Glee compete against Community and Mercy against House. Who said March Madness wasn’t something for everyone?

We’ll add more links with related video content while the competition is underway, so make sure to check back occasionally.

Panasonic started to sell its new line of 3D TVs through a partnership with Best Buy today, offering a bundle of a of 50-inch plasma TV, a 3D-capable Blu-ray player and a pair of glasses for around $2900. Consumers will also soon be able to buy similar set-ups from Samsung and Sony (sw SNE).

However, at least some of these devices won’t be available at Amazon and other online retailers. Panasonic announced that it’s going all bricks-and-mortar with 3D TV to educate consumers about the technology, according to an article from Marketwatch.com.

Question is, will consumers bite? Not only are 3D set-ups significantly more expensive that your regular LCD or LED screen, with pairs of extra glasses alone costing $150 a pop, but there’s also limited content available to show off the technology. Panasonic will give buyers of its 3D TVs a free Blu-ray disc of Monsters vs. Aliens, which is Dreamworks’s first 3D release. However, 3D box office blockbuster Avatar won’t even be available in 3D when it’s released on Blu-ray and DVD some time before June.

The reason for that decision, according to News Corp. COO Chase Carey, is that “the market is not there” for a 3D release of Avatar, Dow Jones reports. This revelation puts a damper on hopes that Avatar will help to kick-start the home 3D market after becoming the commercially most successful movie ever at the box office. Carey said that a 3D version of the movie could be released later down the road, hinting at the possibility that studios could use 3D as another way to enforce release windows in a world where viewers have gotten used to instant satisfaction.

Hollywood is on schedule to release more than three dozen 3D movies this year, but a slow adoption curve of home 3D set-ups, as well as the need to squeeze as much money as possible out of slumping DVD and Blu-ray sales, could entice other studios to adopt the idea of a 3D window as well – which in turn could hurt sales of 3D equipment. It’s like a snake swallowing its own tail, in all of its stereoscopic beauty.

Relief for consumer electronics makers like Panasonic and Samsung could come from sports programming. ESPN has announced that it will start a 3D sports network by June — just in time for the World Cup — and in the coming months DirecTV also plans to launch three 3D channels with movies and sports programming. Question is: Is that enough to entice consumers to plunk down 3000 dollars or more for a 3D setup?

GigaOm Pro analyst Alfred Poor predicted last October that the 3D market was just about ready for takeoff, but that it will take until 2012 for a critical mass of content to be available. I asked him how he feels about this now, given the fact that consumers may have to be extra patient to get their hands on 3D releases. Here’s his take:

“15 or 20 feature films a year do not make enough content to fill one week of major network prime time programming. There are going to be some early experiments with 3D, such as ESPN’s plans for 3D coverage of sporting events, but that won’t be enough to justify buying a new TV for anyone but the early adopters.”

Poor added that it will take until 2013 before 3D uptake will be significant. Maybe Hollywood will have come around and actually put out some 3D titles on Blu-ray by that time.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user bark.

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It’s hard to top having Barack Obama as a live-chat guest, but that isn’t stopping YouTube, who is following up their user-generated interview with the President with FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski.

Next Tuesday, Mar. 16, Genachowski will be answering user-submitted questions to topics like Access and Affordability, Mobile and Wireless and Security and Privacy. So if you’ve always wanted to grill a member of government about why web access isn’t as free and plentiful as it is in other countries, then go to YouTube’s CitizenTube channel and submit your question.

There are four days left to submit, and so far only 15 questions (one of which is this video, embedded above) have been contributed. So your odds of getting Genachowski’s attention? Pretty good. Oh, and while we’re at it: Feel free to link to your question in the comments if you end up participating.

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Cable Firms Seek FCC Help in Fee Disputes; several major cable companies and a public interest group asked the Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday to intervene in disputes over transmission fees. (Washington Post)

Kyte now Offering Broadcast-Quality Live Video Streaming Backpack; the LivePro backpack, made by LiveU, will be released at SXSW. (TechCrunch)

Microsoft Launches Free Rival to BBC iPlayer; new UK-only video service will launch with a thousand hours of free British programming. (TimesOnline)

Distance Ed Students Forming College Clubs Online; students working toward degrees online are forming groups to recreate the social and professional opportunities of campus life, including video lectures and Q&As. (USA Today)

Online Challenge: Getting TV Viewers to Pay Up; in Canada, Bell Canada and Rogers’ cable division launched subscriber-only online TV services last fall, but they’re not making any money yet. (The Globe and Mail)

Covering the Street Protests in Tehran: How Reuters Curates UGC via Twitter; Beet.TV speaks with Greg Beitchman, Global Editor of the Reuters News Agency about Reuters’ use of citizen journalism. (Beet.TV)

The folks behind the music video jukebox Sonicswap are at it again, this time launching what could soon be every Nexus One user’s best friend. Tunevision compiles music video playlists based on your Last.fm, iTunes or Sonicswap usage data — users can also start from scratch by simply entering a few band names. Think Pandora, but for music videos. The functionality is very similar to the original Sonicswap site, with one big difference: There’s also a mobile version of Tunevision that runs on a Nexus One via Adobe Flash 10.1.

Of course, Adobe hasn’t officially released Flash 10.1 for Android yet, but Sonicswap worked closely with Adobe on the development of the app. Sonicswap CEO Dan Skilken recorded a quick video demo of the app running on a Nexus One for us (embedded below), and I gotta say: It looks pretty darn cool.

Tunevision serves music videos from YouTube and Sony’s online properties, and it offers its users the ability to fine-tune their playlist through sliders that impact factors like the popularity of the artists selected. Users can also start off their playlist with a number of Last.fm user names — a neat feature if you want to compile a list based on the taste of a group of friends.

The application is currently only available on the web, but a Adobe Air client is in the works. Tunevision will release an Android app based on Air in the next couple of months, and Android users will also be able to access a mobile version of the site as soon as Adobe releases Flash 10.1 for the mobile OS.

Skilken made a point of telling us that something like this wouldn’t have been possible on the iPhone. “There is no question in my mind that the performance of Flash on Nexus is so good, that Steve Job’s ranting is motivated by the fear of this unlocking the walled garden,” he wrote us in an email, adding that the development of the Android app only took a couple of days.

Sonicswap also won’t have to wait until Apple approves the app, though it will have to hold out until Adobe finally ships its Android Flash 10.1 player. Adobe demoed Flash 10.1 on a Nexus One in January, and the company told us at the time that it was on track to release the Flash 10.1 player for Android phones in the first half of 2010.

SonicSwap, which is based in Palo Alto, Calif., has four employees and has raised $2.5 million in angel funding.

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For want of an embed code, the band was lost…to their own independent label. Viral music video experts and indie rock band OK Go, after publicly squabbling with EMI over the lack of embedding on their YouTube music videos, have left the label to create their own.

This new label, Paracadute Recordings, will take over the distribution and promotion for their newest album Of The Color of Blue Sky, sales for which may be experiencing an uptick following the release of the State Farm-sponsored Rube Goldberg video for This Too Shall Pass, which is currently at 6.8 million views on YouTube (no small thanks to the fact that it’s embeddable).

OK Go’s decision isn’t terribly surprising when you consider their very public stance on big labels — that they function best as an aggregator of risk, giving support to new bands. As lead singer Damien Kulash said in our interview in January:

I’m not, you know, in any way celebrating the f—ing evil sons of b—-es who run things and the awful contracts they gave people. But the truth is that to tour internationally or to afford to work in the kind of studios we want to work in is not even close to within the range of of our own pocketbooks. Basically major labels are and have been, for a long time, essentially big gambling banks.

The move to their own label may mean that fancy recording studios and those international tours are no longer be a reality for them, at least for the time being. (They are kicking off a new tour in April, but will be staying domestic.)

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The Tribeca Film Fest, the festival co-founded by Robert De Niro, is going virtual, according to a post on its blog, offering film fans around the country a chance to engage online with the films and filmmakers being feted.

Beginning April 23, those who purchase a Virtual Premium pass will get “full backstage access” to the festival goings-on, which means being able to watch eight or more of the feature films premiering at the festival and red carpet coverage, and to participate in live Q&As with the filmmakers (according to a representative for the fest, these chats will be text-based).

The Virtual Premium pass costs $45 — which isn’t too bad, given that you get to watch yet-to-premiere films like Edward Burns’s Nice Guy Johnny or opening night selection Shrek Forever After. The pass is not available to international audiences, though, and the red carpet live-streaming will be available to the general public, not just pass holders.

However, full passes to the physical fest cost $250-$450 (though you can buy tickets for individual films separately). That extra $200 might be worth the chance to touch Shrek star Cameron Diaz in person — something the Internet can’t currently replicate. But you’ll also probably have to get out of your pajamas.

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YouTube has started to serve ads on mobile phones, but you may not even notice them. The online video platform is now serving display ads on m.youtube.com in the U.S. and Japan, according to a blog post, and will sell banner ads on a full-day basis. Today’s advertiser is Mazda, which bought the mobile ad in conjunction with its banner on the regular YouTube home page. The blog post reveals that YouTube has already run campaigns for Kia and Sony as well.

These ads do not, however, extend to custom YouTube interfaces like the one used by Google’s Android phones or Apple’s iPhone, which is how I suspect most of us are accessing YouTube on the go. YouTube also told us that it hasn’t started to directly monetize the videos on mobile platforms. The lack of Flash on handsets may be one reason you won’t see any overlays on your handset yet, or the fact that YouTube isn’t showing any kind of pre-roll advertising to mobile users.

Still, YouTube’s new ad spot on its mobile site shows its commitment to monetization. Citigroup analyst Mark Mahaney recently estimated that YouTube is going to make about $945 million this year through advertising. The site will top $1.1 billion in gross revenue in 2011, according to Mahaney’s predictions.

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The consequence of Apple trying to create an entire new genre of gadget? We all have to figure out how we’re gonna use it. The iPad commercial, first spotted during the Academy Awards last Sunday, featured no shortage of happy users resting the device on their laps…

But how do you physically get into that position? I mean, do you have a scuff-resistant coffee table or an armchair and ottoman? Have you done so much yoga that you can hold your legs up for literally hours at a time? Do you have some new fancy La-Z-Boy or a hospital bed?

Well, if you don’t, and you don’t want to spend a few hundred dollars on some new furniture, then Quirky has a handy device for you. The Cloak case not only protects your $499 device from the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, but it doubles as a stand for the device in both portrait and landscape positions.

There are other cases available out there, sure, but this one does address the major issue many of you have with using the iPad as a video device — watching a movie or TV show play in your lap isn’t a replacement for a television, because of where the screen rests.

This is only the first of many options sure to address this issue. But in the meantime, as of writing, Quirky has sold 22 out of their initial stock of 620. It’s available in green, purple, blue and black. Maybe give it a look-see.

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Vice-President Joe Biden packed light for his trip to Israel this week: He didn’t bring the White House camera crew. And so on Thursday, when the former senator visits Tel Aviv University to address the Israeli public about American commitment to the security of Israel, he won’t be doing so on the official White House site — he’ll be talking live on Justin.tv.

According to TheHill.com, it’s tough to stream video to Whitehouse.gov without using a White House camera feed. So for the Tel Aviv University broadcast, they sought out another option.

According to Evan Solomon at Justin.tv, the broadcast will be hosted on multiple Justin.tv accounts, the primary one broadcasting in English. Two other accounts, meanwhile, will also be streaming the speech: One with Hebrew audio translation, one with Arabic audio translation. The broadcast begins at 9 AM GMT/1 AM PST, but will be archived on Justin.tv if you’re not up that late/early.

The video will be available internationally, and hosted on sites including the site of the U.S. Embassy in Israel. “This is basically just a Justin.tv user starting a broadcast like anyone else could. It just happens to be a Vice Presidential speech in Tel Aviv,” Solomon said.

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Sony’s Playstation Network is now carrying HD movies from 20th Century Fox, Sony Pictures, Universal Pictures, and Warner Bros., the company announced today. Sony previously negotiated similar agreements with Walt Disney Pictures, Paramount Pictures, and the company was quick to point out in today’s announcement that this marks the first time a game console-based service has signed up an online video platform is offering HD downloads for sale from all six majors.

Sony has been offering HD downloads through the PS3 ever since it launched the Playstation Network’s movie download section almost two years ago. Playstation users also have access to Netflix VOD through a pop-in disc. Sony recently announced plans to extend the download platform to Bravia TVs, Sony PCs and other connected devices. It also plans to extend its new HD line-up to the UK, France, Germany, and Spain soon.

The Playstation Network currently offers access to more than 2,900 movies and 17,800 TV episodes, and over 1000 of the movie titles are available for sale or rent in HD. Sony told us today that it has delivered more than 829 million downloads worldwide since the launch of the Playstation Network, but those numbers also include free and paid-for games and game demos as well as digital comics.

The PS3 may be the first one to get HD content from all six major studios, but it’s not the only one trying to bring HD content to the living room. Sony is squarely competing with Microsoft, which has been busy forging content deals with big and small studios alike for its Xbox Live service. Xbox users have been able to stream videos in 1080p since late last year, and the New York Times reported in January that company is in negotiations to bring live content from Disney and ESPN to the Xbox.

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For some people, defining success online can be a subjective thing. For viral mavens the Fine Brothers, it’s all about the numbers. Literally.

The pair behind Movie Spoilers in One Take, My Profile Story, and the Lost parody series have recently begun not just making content for themselves, but partnering with some of YouTube’s biggest stars to help them create the best possible — and most popular — videos. Not only are Benny and Rafi Fine now officially the chief creative executives and heads of production for the YouTube star comedy collective The Station, but they’ve been making shorts with individual YouTubers — the most recent example of which being the Shane Dawson-starring Degrassi spoof series.

You might not be familiar with Degrassi: The Next Generation, either because you’re not a Canadian teenager or because you don’t get cable channel The N, which airs episodes in the United States. But fans of the Canadian teen soap will tell you that when it comes to “going there” on controversial or uncomfortable topics, Degrassi does — drugs, abortion, homosexuality, school shootings and date rape are all considered to be acceptable topics for the show to explore, making it one of the more daring shows out there.

It’s that at times over-the-top edginess which Dawson and the Fines parody in both Hot Teens Gone Wild on Degrassi: Part 1, released last November, and sequel Hot Teens Go Wild on Degrassi: Part 2, which debuted on Saturday. At over ten minutes each, each sketch definitely pushes the patience of the typical attention-span-deficient YouTube viewer, but that hasn’t stopped Part 1 and its accompanying trailer and bloopers video from earning over five million views, and Part 2 from being seen by 1.5 million over the last three days and featured on G4’s Attack of the Show.

The secret to getting people to stick around for a longer video, according to Benny Fine, with whom I spoke via chat, comes from building an audience with “topical sketches and viral videos,” he said. “Once we built a bit enough subscriber base, they really are your supporters, they want to like everything you do, so you can toss in something longer every once in a while in between your other content, and they will watch it and support it.”

Dawson, who the Fines have been mentoring since 2008, takes a similar approach, and all three are Degrassi fans, which lead them to create the first parody video together (Dawson stars, while all three of them wrote and directed it together). And when it came out, the cast and crew of Degrassi noticed — and loved it. “We were surprised at how fast so many associated with the show found out about it. We have dealt with other shows that need not be named [Lost] that have not had the same reaction to spoof content from us, so it’s been refreshing. But it also makes sense, as Degrassi is a forward thinking show that has made some of the best ancillary web content ever for a TV show,” Rafi Fine said.

Its cast and crew are also active Twitter users, who Dawson replied to when they Tweeted out the video — and that’s how, for the sequel video, they were able to get Degrassi star Lauren Collins to make a cameo as herself.

By parodying a relatively unknown Canadian show, the team has seen “thousands of comments” from people who had never heard of Degrassi or had stopped watching it, but were going to go back to the series or potentially buy DVDs. The positive reaction from the Degrassi folk has also got them hoping that they might be able to work with producers on a future parody installment, though no official overtures have yet been made. “We’re trying to figure out the best way to handle that situation,” the Fines said as a pair. “But it’s a good spot to be in, when you actually do love a show so much that you’d love to work with them to help the series.”

With their knack for getting content to go viral and their relatively independent place in the web video economy, the Fines have become increasingly vocal advocates for transparency in reporting view counts, considering them to be the only true barometer for success in the online video world. “The new media community itself is causing everyone not to be forward thinking as much as they should,” Rafi said. “Viewership should be the #1 priority and #1 determining factor of success online, but because so few can get it, the community devalues it or cheats to get it.”

And the key to getting views, according to Benny, is building an audience that’s personally engaged with your content. “Everyone should be on YouTube in some capacity, because that’s the only place a shell of sustained viewership exists,” he said.

“Good content is one side, views is the other. If you don’t have the views, you are not a success no matter how good your show is — unless you are the web for different reasons,” Rafi said.

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Web-connected TV: A Distant Dream for App Makers; app developers are staying away from Yahoo’s Connected TV and similar platforms because environment is too restricted, fragmented. (Business Week)

A Detailed Look at VUDU’s Streaming Technology, and What It Means to Walmart; optimized encoding and flexible UI deployment give VUDU advantage over competitors. (BusinessofVideo.com)

AVG and LimeWire Secure World’s Largest Peer-to-Peer Network; version 5.5 of LimeWire offers paying users automatic virus scans for all downloads. (emailed release)

Auditude Announces Advertising Agreement with Dailymotion; ad platform will monetize Dailymotion’s 12 million videos. (emailed release)

Piracy Rises in France Despite Three Strikes Law; infringement up 3 percent in spite of law that boots repeat infringers of the Internet. (Torrentfreak)

Enterprise Webcasting Provider IVT Announces Jim McGovern As New CEO; McGovern used to be CEO of Marketwire and then itzbig before joining IVT. (BusinessofVideo.com)

MSI Selects Roxio CinePlayer to Power Home 3-D Entertainment; company will bundle Roxio’s newly-released Roxio CinePlayer with its 3-D All-In-One PCs. (emailed release)

Cisco has unveiled a new routing system that it claims can handle 12 times the traffic capacity of the nearest competing system. And it’s all about the video. The company in a much-hyped announcement this morning introduced the CRS-3, a router that can move up to 322 terabits per second — enough to download the entire printed collection of the Library of Congress in one second, Cisco said, or deliver all movies ever made in about four minutes. Check out GigaOM for the full story.

SetJam launched a major redesign of its video aggregation site today and also announced a $275,000 bridge investment from the New York Angels and Hudson River Angels investment groups.

The company is competing with aggregators like Clicker and Mefeedia, and directly targeted Clicker in its release — a statement by CEO Ryan Janssen addressed Clicker’s recent raising of $11 million by saying: “Clicker has stated their strategy plainly: They are going to spend $20 million to buy a brand. Let me also speak plainly: We are going to spend a fraction of that making online TV easy. We’ll see where both companies stand two years from now.” Today’s redesign is considered a key part of that strategy, and playing around with it revealed some nice features, some understandable bugs and one or two problematic choices.

While the overall site design is simultaneously a little heavy on white space and cluttered with banner ads, the actual show interface is quick and sleek, allowing you to filter out paid or free viewing options according to your preference.

Joining the site took literally one second thanks to Facebook Connect, and you’re also able to add sites to which you might already be subscribed. By sites to which you might already be subscribed, I just mean Netflix, though a “Coming Soon” notice indicates that Epix will also be available at some point.

SetJam, like Clicker, doesn’t host or embed any content, instead directing you to the pages where content can be found. Clicking on my first selection, the pilot for the FX animated series Archer, kicked me directly to the episode on Hulu. Connecting my Netflix account to my SetJam listings took slightly longer than the Facebook setup, but when I searched for one of my all-time-favorite movies, the 1950 classic All About Eve, SetJam took me right to the Netflix Instant player for the film, enabling me to watch, well, instantly.

The pull-down menu on SetJam doesn’t currently include options beyond Hulu for where the video might be available for free, whereas Clicker will offer multiple viewing options (and designate which might be HD). I did discover some new viewing options, though — for example, I had no idea that Lifetime was hosting a limited number of old How I Met Your Mother episodes. When I clicked to watch Season 2, Episode 6 of the series on SetJam, the link took me to Episode 10 — but only because Episode 6 was no longer online.

Clicker’s listings in comparison didn’t seem as updated as SetJam’s — its How I Met Your Mother listing wasn’t nearly as up-to-date (at least when it came to the episodes currently available for free on MyLifetime.com), and didn’t list Netflix Instant as an option for watching the second season of TNT’s Leverage, whereas SetJam was right on top of that. (In that case, however, SetJam did not offer a link to the TNT website, where Leverage is also available.)

One thing SetJam does that Clicker doesn’t — acknowledge physical media. Were I to search for something that was unavailable online, SetJam’s “Get It Delivered” tag would allow me to either add a DVD version to my Netflix queue or buy it on Amazon. The former is a lot more useful to me than the latter, but having both options is helpful.

The database of content isn’t perfect — to test its more obscure listings, I searched for the show Queer As Folk, and found that SetJam didn’t make a distinction between the original British series (available on Hulu) and the American remake (available from Amazon on DVD). And not being able to compare Amazon’s DVD prices to other sites is good for Amazon, but not ideal for consumers.

But the spirit of competition is alive in this space, and SetJam in many ways ups the ante for others seeking to index the vast wealth of TV and film content available online.

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The blogosphere has been in a bit of a frenzy ever since The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that Google has started to test a new service on selected DISH set-top boxes. The Journal’s Jessica Vascellaro told her readers that the application makes it possible to search for content carried by DISH as well as YouTube videos and that it is “using elements of Google’s Android operating system.” It’s supposedly being tested by Google employees and their families as we speak.

Many blogs have concluded this to be Android coming to set-top boxes, an idea that’s not entirely unheard of but that hasn’t officially been pursued by Google itself. Dave Zatz is a little more skeptical, pointing out that DISH’s upcoming app store featured a Google app many moons ago. Personally, I think the timing is very curious: Why would news about a partnership between Google and DISH leak just days after the pay TV provider loses in court against TiVo?

Just a quick reminder: A federal appeals court ordered DISH and Echostar to pay $200 million to TiVo last week, upholding a patent infringement ruling from last September. At the core of the dispute are TiVo’s time-warping patents, which essentially describe DVR-like functionality. Some analysts have concluded that the ruling could force DISH to stop distributing DVRs altogether, but the satellite TV company has already declared that it won’t impact existing DVR users.

Last week’s ruling set TiVo’s stock prices soaring, and DISH’s shares tumbled. However, they’ve almost recovered by now, thanks in part to yesterday’s news that the company is now in bed with Google. So what’s causing this confidence?

One option could be that traders hope Google could help DISH with its ongoing legal issues. That’s unlikely, but not entirely impossible. If Google weer to enter the set-top box market, it would have a vested interest in fighting overreaching patents, and it could assist others in doing so — think HTC vs. Apple, only for TV boxes.

The second option: DISH wants to replace DVR functionality with over the top video, giving its users access to free and paid online programming as well as its own VOD in order to forgo altogether any future per-subscriber payments to TiVo. The Wall Street Journal noted yesterday that Google’s app lets users “personalize a lineup of shows,” which sounds like DVR functionality to me, albeit possibly without any local storage if fed by the cloud. Again, somewhat unlikely. DISH may embrace over the top, but it’s still first and foremost a satellite TV provider, and as such needs to offer some kind of time-shifting functionality for TV programming.

The third option? A bargaining chip. DISH has announced that it’s going to keep fighting against TiVo, but most observers assume that the company is eventually going to have to settle. Having Google as a strong partner on your side could help during these negotiations, and the mere possibility that DISH could eventually replace a local DVR with cloud and over the top services should also help to keep the price down.

DISH may be testing some really interesting Google technology, or it may just have a neat search app in store that offers access to EPG data as well as YouTube videos. However, the fact that it opened up the kimono this week is nothing else than corporate politics.

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Photo by The Bui Bros. (thebuibrothers.com)

Ah, the Sci-Fi Channel original movie. Even the channel’s recent name change to SyFy can’t keep Saturday nights from being must-see TV for B-movie fans who like their snakes mega-sized and their spiders on ice.

A pretty wide range of actors have done their time fighting CGI-rendered monsters, and today the Internet’s own Felicia Day joins their ranks, taking the lead role in the Little Red Riding Hood-inspired Red, which is due to premiere in 2011. (She’s a werewolf hunter!)

Being famous on the Internet doesn’t necessarily translate to offline success, but Day is the rare star who might just pull it off — at least, by SyFy’s standards. Why? Let’s look at the numbers.

First, what does SyFy consider to be a success? Well, their last major ratings hit for an original film was the premiere of Megafault in October 2009, which starred the late Brittany Murphy and was watched by 2.6 million people.

2.6 million people is a lot — but right now, Day has nearly 1.75 million Twitter followers, a number that keeps climbing, as seen in this chart from the last three months:

And that audience can be mobilized. According to Microsoft, the first two seasons of The Guild have reached nearly six million downloads, making it one of the most popular shows ever on Xbox LIVE. In addition, every episode of the show’s first season, as hosted on YouTube, has topped one million views, and her first appearance on Atom.com’s Legend of Neil pushed the show to almost 420,000 views (the site in general has less viewership than YouTube, but most other episodes of the series received about half as many views).

And here’s the big one, of course: the Guild Season 3-promoting Do You Wanna Date My Avatar music video, which with 8.5 million views is the most-viewed video on The Guild’s YouTube channel. If just one third of the people who watched Date My Avatar tune in for the premiere of Red next year, then that would mean 2.8 million views.

There’s no way to be sure how many Twitter followers Day will have in a year’s time, but 1.7 million is nothing to scoff at, and that number is likely to climb. If just half of that number were to tune into SyFy when they normally wouldn’t, that’d still mean an impressive bump in the network’s typical Saturday night viewership.

All of this is conjecture, though, and the challenge is getting people away from their computers and in front of their TVs. Network shows featuring Day as a guest actress haven’t benefited much in the ratings department from her guest spots: Her September 2008 House appearance did 12.3 million, while her December 2009 Lie to Me episode did 6.59 million — both numbers being relatively standard for those shows.

But neither of those shows seriously promoted Day or really capitalized on her online fame — meanwhile, SyFy makes prominent mention of her web series work in the Red press release. Personally, I think that’s a good sign, and who knows? By 2011, TV and web content might be well-integrated enough that we’ll see TV commercials for Red plugging its star as “Dr. Horrible’s Felicia Day.”

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comScore released its Video Metrix numbers for January today, showing a decline across the board for all the major video sites. U.S. viewers watched 32.4 billion videos in January, compared to 33.2 billion views in December. The number of unique viewers also declined from 177.9 million to 173.4 million.

Two of the sites that seem to have been hit particularly hard are Hulu.com and the music industry joint-venture Vevo.com. Hulu was only able to generate 903 million views in January after breaking the magic barrier of one billion views in December. Vevo fared slightly better, but saw a huge decline of unique viewers.

Video views across the board were down 2.5 percent in January, but Hulu’s views fell a whopping 11 percent. Some of this can be explained by seasonal viewership behavior, with popular TV shows like Glee going on break. However, one shouldn’t expect Hulu’s ratings to get better any time soon, given the fact that the immensely popular Viacom shows The Daily Show and The Colbert Report will be leaving the site this week.

The reason’s for Vevo’s disappointing numbers is less obvious, and the numbers actually look pretty good at first. Vevo was able to gather 32.4 million unique viewers in January, which is up from 28.1 million in December. However, the site didn’t launch until Dec 9th, which means that its average daily traffic actually was down close to 15 percent. Vevo saw its average daily number of views decline around four percent.

Vevo is already getting a helping hand from YouTube with its traffic numbers; comScore not only counts videos viewed on vevo.com, but also on Vevo’s YouTube channel as well as on artist sites affiliated with Vevo’s owners, the Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment.

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Television ratings may be down across the board, but it’s been a good year for awards shows so far. First, the Grammys broadcast reached 23 million viewers in February, and then last night the 82nd annual Academy Awards had its best viewership in five years, with 41.3 million views.

While we’re still waiting to hear from ABC.com about how its video coverage performed, Livestream.com’s hosting of the AP’s red carpet concluded with George Clooney saying farewell to over 100,000 viewers.

Oscar chatter on Twitter was also huge according to our friends at Trendrr, with “Oscar” mentions peaking at nearly 70,000.

Meanwhile, the other big drama of the night — the big face-off between Cablevision and ABC, which was resolved 15 minutes after the ceremony began — created two big spikes in Twitter traffic, with the two terms tracking pretty cleanly together.

And The Hurt Locker’s underdog triumph meant that positive Twitter sentiment about Avatar plunged, which is best interpreted as fans mourning James Cameron’s defeat.

While the lack of live-streaming for the actual ceremony was frustrating for both Cablevision customers and cord-cutters nationwide, the social media surrounding the ceremony seems to have done its job and driven audiences to ABC. Though the fact that the highest-grossing film of all time (before inflation) was up for seven awards probably didn’t hurt, either.

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The Financial Times will move its video assets to Brightcove, according to a report from Journalism.co.uk.

The paper, which is currently publishing between 200 and 300 videos per month, had previously signed up with Maven Networks, which was bought by Yahoo in early 2008. Yahoo decided to shut down Maven merely 17 months after the acquisition, announcing that it was going to “wind down its Maven Networks customer base.”

Yahoo  told us at the time that each client had a different time line for a transition off the Maven platform. It looks like The Financial Time’s time has come now, even though the exact date for the transition to Brightcove is not known. A Brightcove spokesperson couldn’t be reached for comment on the switch.

The Financial Times is seeing more than a million video views per month. However, the paper is now considering to move these videos behind its pay wall to add value to the premium section of the site.

Journalism.co.uk is reporting that the FT’s Lead Product Manager Stephen Pinches told the audience of a Beet.tv panel in London that keeping the paper’s videos free is “not a given.” Pinches described video as one of the most valuable assets of FT.com, adding that there is going to be a gradual transition of video behind the site’s pay wall. Pinches also said that the Financial Times eventually wants all of its journalists to produce video.

The Financial Times is another prestigious media powerhouse win for Brightcove, which most recently announced a contract with Japan’s Nikkei. It has also been serving videos for the New York Times, the Guardian and the China Morning Post. All in all, Brightcove powers video on more that 300 newspaper web sites worldwide, according to a recent blog post.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Nat Tarbox.

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