American Idol Blog

I just finished updating my American Idol blog update -- and included the Adam Lambert Mad World performance for those of you who missed it. If you recorded American Idol tonight, the performance was cut off because the show ran over. Rude huh... But check out my American Idol blog and you can catch my reviews and Adam's performance there.

i.TV is the Best Free iPhone App - Review

Review of i.TV (in the news)

"i.TV » This app for the TV lover by entrepreneur and movie producer Brad Pelo is the best available. Not only does it provide an onscreen television grid for listings, but it also has movie listings for local theaters, movie trailers, previews for TV series, episode clips, entertainment news and connectivity to Netflix so users can instantly add DVDs to their rental queue while on the go.

Best of all, there are full episodes of many series, including "Star Trek," "Desperate Housewives," "All in the Family" and scores more. And in some cases, there are dozens of episodes of a single series available for streaming. It also works with 3G.
It's an app that does a lot of things and most of them well. (Free)"

Thanks for the great feedback!

Blockbuster OnDemand to be on TiVo

Today Blockbuster is expected to announce a partnership with TiVo, whereby the former's digital movie library can be ported directly to the televisions of TiVo users.

The service, Blockbuster On-Demand, will be accessible to the 800,000 users with broadband internet connected to their TiVo units.

"Ultimately, our vision is to work with TiVo so that their subscribers can access movies not only through our On Demand service but also from our stores and through our by-mail service as well," said CEO Jim Keyes of Blockbuster.

TiVo struck similar deals with YouTube, Amazon and Netflix, an online DVD rental/film-streaming service with which Blockbuster struggles to compete in the digital space.

Netflix avails about 12,000 film and TV programs on the web to most of its subscribers, but most titles are several years old. In contrast, Blockbuster plans to offer a smaller selection — 5,000 to 10,000 titles — digitally at any given time, but the titles will be fresher. Films like "The Dark Knight," for example, can be rented for $3.99, to watch within 24 hours upon payment.

A relationship with Blockbuster is of additional real-world value to TiVo: the company agreed to sell TiVo units at a number of its 4,000 brick-and-mortar locations in the States, in exchange for a retailer's cut.

The pair will work in tandem to promote its liaison in the second half of the year. SVP-Digital Kevin Lewis of Blockbuster said the TiVo deal marks "the first of many" that the firm plans to announce with major consumer electronics firms.

Last week Blockbuster finalized agreements with two major lenders to extend its revolving credit line through 2010 — which will likely precipitate such liaisons. In December 2008, Blockbuster also inked a deal to serve films on mobile devices powered by Microsoft.

iTunes to offer HD movies and rentals

This week Apple announced it will offer high-definition movie sales and rentals via iTunes.

Recent box office titles, including "Quantum of Solace" and "Twilight," and be downloaded for $19.99 in HD; rentals are available 30 days after release for $4.99. The offering is Mac and PC compatible; widescreen and Apple TVs can also partake, but iPhone and iPod with video will continue to support only standard-definition versions.

Prior to this announcement, and after January 2008, Apple offered HD movie rentals exclusively via Apple TV. In September, support for HD TV shows was incorporated into iTunes.

To promote the new offering, a dedicated HD Movies page was added to the iTunes storefront.

Online video gross media spend is expected to grow 22.5% between 2008 and 2010. YouTube, which aspires to both monetize its offerings and compete with iTunes and Hulu in terms of providing premium content, continues to fuel audience traffic toward online video. In February it began testing a charge-to-download program that, if successful, may put it in iTunes' arena.