Redbox, which became the fastest- growing U.S. video retailer with DVD kiosks and a $1-a-day rental price stores couldn’t match, is developing an online strategy to stay competitive with larger rival Netflix Inc.

The company, the biggest division of Coinstar Inc., may use a Web service to expand its library beyond the 200 or so titles crammed into each of its 24,000 or so DVD dispensers, President Mitch Lowe said in an interview from Redbox’s headquarters in Oakbrook Terrace, Illinois.

“The way we look at it is, How can it help us deliver to our customers things we can’t do in our kiosks?” Lowe said. “What role might it play in expanding our selection?”

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Netflix Inc. is adding to the group of movies that its subscribers can watch online or over Internet-connected devices at the same time as they would have appeared on premium pay TV channels such as HBO or Showtime.

The deal announced Tuesday with film financier Relativity Media LLC adds to a batch of newer movies from The Walt Disney Co. and Sony Corp. that can be watched online through Netflix’ 2-year-old deal with Starz Entertainment LLC on a service called Starz Play.

Among the first films in the deal are “The Fighter,” starring Christian Bale, Mark Wahlberg and Amy Adams, and “Season of the Witch,” starring Nicolas Cage. The films are set to hit theaters later this year.

READ ARTICLE IN AP

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Hulu, the online TV and film portal, has finally rolled out a subscription service, according to a note posted to the site on Tuesday.

For $9.99 a month, subscribers of Hulu Plus get access to a full season’s worth of their favorite TV shows–and even past seasons in some cases–and “not just a handful of trailing episodes” that the free-version of Hulu offers, according to CEO Jason Kilar, who wrote the note.

Hulu Plus marks the first time the service has charged for content and it’s arrival has been long anticipated. Supported by Disney, NBC Universal, and News Corp., some of Hulu’s backers, especially News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch, have been pushing for a paid service for over a year. The word out of Hollywood for a long time is that advertising just doesn’t provide the kind of return that the studios and networks are accustomed to generating. Apparently, when it comes to premium TV shows, the ad-supported model works for television but not for the Web.

READ ARTICLE AT CNET

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Al Gore, the world’s pre-eminent environmentalist, has embarked on his toughest recycling challenge: his own cable channel.

For much of the past year, Current TV has been quietly undergoing an overhaul that will change just about everything but the struggling channel’s name. Current declined comment for this story.

It’s a revitalization project Gore & Co. embarked on after exhausting a more lucrative possibility: selling the channel. Current’s founding partner, Joel Hyatt, spent much of 2009 shopping the network with a price tag that wildly overestimated the company’s worth, confirmed sources at several conglomerates. Current even had extensive sale talks as far back as 2007 with Google, where Gore serves as a senior advisor.

READ ARTICLE AT HR REPORTER

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?Jason Calacanis, Internet entrepreneur and”L.A.’s brash tech superstar,” thinks the future of the web is streaming video and he’s willing to put his money where his mouth is. Literally, since his mouth is on ”This Week In Startups,” one of the shows featured on streaming video network ThisWeekIn.com. The Mahalo.comfounder teamed up with actor and web series creator, Kevin Pollack, and a group of investors including Sky Dayton (founder of Earthlink and Boingo) and Matt Coffin (founder ofLowerMyBills.com) and put $300,000 into expanding the network.

This Week In already has 8 shows and a steadfast plan for growth. They’ve been casting for new talent and will be launching additional shows in the coming months.

READ ARTICLE IN LA WEEKLY

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‘With the TV business evolving into eyeballs on the internet, TV studios are trying to wrestle control of how their shows are being watched.

The major networks have their sights set on the 2010-11 television season at this week’s upfront presentations in Gotham, but there’s another behind-the-scenes frenzy taking place that’s all about the not-too-distant future.

The TV biz is engaged in a delicate balancing act of adjusting how and where to program their shows on the Internet, fearful of undercutting their traditional sources of revenue — the 30-second spot and cable subscriber and retransmission fees — but fully aware that they don’t want to miss out on consumers’ ever-increasing thirst for watching shows online.

The risks are obvious: Five years ago, in the wake of ABC’s groundbreaking pact to offer its shows on iTunes, networks rushed to post their shows and clips on their Websites, as well as elsewhere. But there’s been a big drawback to getting viewers in the habit of watching on their computer screens, as the ad dollars reaped are much lower online than they are on the TV set. And with mobile devices, the iPad, HD TV sets and Internet-enabled Blu-rays making it all the easier to access the Web, the threat has spread to cable operators: They fear consumers will pull the plug altogether for the lower-priced alternative.

READ ARTICLE IN VARIETY

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Film schools have long served as launching pads for film and  television careers, and now most major universities offer at least  some sort of filmmaking courses, even for those not looking to  jump into entertainment. A number of schools have begun looking  academically at the impacts of new media on culture and the future  of entertainment, but so far the more practical nuts and bolts of  web series production and distribution have yet to make it onto into the university course lists.

In Los Angeles, two new Web TV education programs have launched this month looking to fill that gap —and at a fraction of a film school tuition. NewMedialocity and Web TV Workshop both offer four-week intro courses for creative types looking to learn how to get an original web series project off the ground. Both take the approach of teaching through experienced guest teachers—those brave souls who for better or worse have learned some of the internet’s unique lessons and opportunities over the past few years.

READ ARTICLE AT TUBEFILTER

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Apple is about to make it easier for Hollywood to use the iPhone as a promotional tool to tubthump new movies and TV shows.

The company unveiled iAd as its latest i-branded offering that will enable marketers to more effectively create spots that are integrated in popular Apps on the mobile device.

The mobile advertising platform, Apple’s first foray into the space that Google has dominated online, won’t just help marketers but turn into a lucrative new revenue source for the computer maker, as well, especially as more consumers stare at their mobile devices.

Apple will sell and host ad created for iAd. Developers will receive 60% of the revenue.

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Marlee Matlin had an idea for a reality show that she hoped would bring some insight into the lives and struggles of deaf people and how they cope. But while reality TV has brought us wife swappers, party girls, aging rock stars and dieting divas, apparently no one was ready for something that real.

So instead, the hearing-impaired actress who won an Academy Award as lead actress for her role in “Children of a Lesser God,” took her show “My Deaf Family” to Google’s YouTube.

“Deaf and hard of hearing people make up one of the largest minority groups,” she said in an interview through her interpreter, Jack Jason, “and yet there has never been a show, a reality documentary series that features what life is like for them.” Matlin financed the show, which tells the story of a family in Fremont, Calif. All the family members are deaf, except for the oldest son, Jared, and the youngest, Elijah. It is narrated by Jared.

Matlin shopped her pilot to network executives, who purported to “love it.” But none would take the plunge.  ”They didn’t quite know if they could pull it off, or even how,” Matlin said.

Refusing to give up, Matlin turned to the Internet, more specifically to YouTube, the world’s default broadcaster of Web video.

READ ARTICLE IN LA TIMES

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The world’s most popular video website is getting into the pay-per-view business.

Google Inc.’s YouTube announced today that it will make a total of five movies from the 2010 and 2009 Sundance film festivals available for online rental. It’s the first time that YouTube has given content providers the option to provide video for a fee, rather than streaming it for free with advertising.

The Sundance movies are just a prologue for a much more ambitious pay-per-view venture, said people familiar with YouTube’s plans who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss confidential business plans.

READ ARTICLE IN LA TIMES

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