Streaming

Disney Movies Online, which allowed you to stream films if you owned them on physical media, is being axed. [Deadline]

Hulu Has a New Video Games Channel

Expanding its reach ever so slightly from TV and Movies, Hulu now has a video games hub, which will feature trailers, reviews and gameplay footage for numerous games. And while that doesn’t inspire awe quite yet, it could someday become home to a solid collection of video tips and walkthroughs. [Hulu]

Spotify Is Testing a Web Player That We’ll Probably See Next Year

If you’ve been looking for a way to stream Spotify tracks without having to use the standalone app, that day may come sooner than later: Spotify has confirmed with us that they have begun testing the feature with a small audience. A web-based version of Spotify has been a rumor for awhile now, and rumblings…

Coming Soon to Vimeo: Paywalls

Early next year, Vimeo will introduce a new feature to its PRO account holders. In short, those users will be able to charge for their videos on a per view (or per whatever) basis. It’s a move that could either attract a whole different class of known independent filmmakers or amass a sizable mountain of…

Users Start Giving Up on Streaming Video If It Takes Two Seconds to Load

The faster the Internet gets, the less patience we all have with even the most insignificant of waits. A new study shows that a mere two second delay is enough for many people to give up and move on. According to the recent study, based on 2.3 million views by 6.7 million unique users, users…

There’s now a Hulu Kids section, with 43 child-friendly, commercial-free channels. Barney! Spongebob! TV babysitting!

Vizio Co-Star: The Best of the Bad Google TV Boxes

Google TV is still confused, confusing, and not a very helpful thing to buy into your life. So far, the TV gadgets using it have been mediocre. Vizio’s stab at Google TV, the Co-Star, is the best box yet—but will anyone care? What Is It? A Google TV box that’ll stream video, add “smart” searching…

Cable Industry Launches New Research Lab to Fight Off Streaming Services

The cable industry is pulling together and setting up a Silicon Valley research center, in an attempt to fight off the threat of online streaming services like Netflix and Hulu. Reuters reports that cable TV executives—from the likes of Time Warner and Comcast—are pooling resources to set up the research lab in Silicon Valley next…

Here’s the Horrendous First Scene of Amazon’s Original Musical Comedy “Browsers”

Rumors are flying that in a bid to get some original content, Amazon is close to pushing through a musical comedy about four interns working for a “Huffington Post-esque” website, a project that was previously dropped (and rightly so) by CBS. What could possibly come of this? We thought long and hard about it, and…

CBS Shows Will Stream on Hulu Plus Next Year

CBS is home to many shows in which some unsuspecting individual with a special gift helps law enforcement agencies solve crimes once a week. And if you happen to be a fan of these shows, but don’t like watching them over broadcast or using the CBS site, there’s good news: they’ll stream on Hulu Plus…

Roku Search Finds the Video You Want No Matter Where It’s Hiding

Roku Search is a new one-stop tool that helps you find the content you want to watch across the many streaming services available on the set-top box. This new centralized search is an obvious addition that makes Roku more useful. Bravo. Instead of going from one service to the next trying to find a particular…

Boxee TV: This Media Streamer Is Now a Cloud DVR

Boxee’s origins were humble: once a free-to-download media center app for computers and Apple TVs, the software evolved into a full-blown media streaming box for home theaters, and a powerful one at that (if ultimately flawed). But it was still sequestered from the main TV experience. With Boxee TV, we get one step closer to…

3M Streaming Projector with Roku Review: Can’t Wait Until They Get This Right

Do you want a small, portable projector that can stream a near-endless supply of movies and TV shows onto any surface with no extra hardware? Of course you do! Which makes 3M’s Roku-streaming projector such a welcome concept—and such a let down. What Is It? A palm-sized projector with a built-in Roku stick for streaming…

Xbox Music Hands On: The Perfect Music Service—If You Use Nothing But Microsoft Stuff

We’ve known that Microsoft has been working on a music service for a while now, and we finally got a chance to check it out first hand. Xbox Music is exactly what you’d want in a streaming service and store. It’s complete in a way that Spotify, Amazon, and even iTunes aren’t. Microsoft’s new music…

The New Slingbox 350 and Slingbox 500 Stream Video at 1080p and Look Weird As Hell

We spotted them a week ago but the new Slingbox 350 and Slingbox 500 are finally official and they’re just as weirdly designed as we expected. Both Slingboxes can stream video to your phone, tablet or computer at 1080p, with the 500 adding built-in Wi-Fi and HDMI and both Slingboxes will spice up your living…

Is the BBC Working on a Free Spotify Rival Called Playlister?

The Telegraph is reporting that the BBC is developing an on-demand music service called Playlister, which will provide access to “hundreds of thousands” of tracks for free. While it sounds like a direct rival for the likes of Spotify and Rdio, the newspaper’s numbers suggest that the service would provide a fraction of the songs…

New 1080p Slingbox Makes Unexpected Debut at Best Buy

Zats Not Funny spotted what appear to be two new models of the Slingbox at Best Buy. The Slingbox 350 and Slingbox 500 would be the first refresh of the Internet streaming box in ages. It’s about time! Whereas the old Slingboxes streamed TV from your living room to wherever you are at standard definition…

The NY Post reports that Apple’s music-streaming Pandora ripoff has hit a snag; Sony wants more cash. No rush, guys! https://gizmodo.com/apple-might-be-trying-to-launch-its-own-pandora-knock-o-5941217

This $50 Stick Turns Any HDTV Into an Android-Powered Smart TV

If you’re wondering how you can breathe life into that old TV set, the FAVI SmartStick might be what you’re looking for. For $50, you get a dongle that provides your TV with Android and access to streaming movies and music. The stick, which runs Jelly Bean and packs 4GB of storage, plugs into any…

What Device Do You Watch Most Web-Based Video On?

A new consumer-tracking survey by NPD suggests that times are changing: apparently the TV has overtaken all other devices as the go-to device used to watch online video. According to the survey it’s taken quite the lead: nowadays, so it says, 45 percent of online video content is viewed through a TV, 17 percent on…