Online television offers a truly dizzying array of choices. Viewers of services like Hulu and Netflix, as well as customers of iTunes and Amazon Digital Services, can stream, rent or purchase episodes of television shows from every era.

But not every show that ever aired is legally available online. Surprisingly, there are plenty of high-profile shows that are not available for online consumption – not even for purchase. For a variety of reasons, there are some seriously popular (or once-popular) shows that you just can't find online.

Here's my list of the concluded shows that were popular in their day and are not currently available online in any streaming form. DVD collections do not count, and the show doesn't have to be free online: shows on HBO Go are regarded as online, even if you have to subscribe to HBO to get them. (I'm looking at you, Sopranos.) And because legal is the watchword here, I am not going to count the ways you can download copies of episodes with BitTorrent or watch them on YouTube.

Note that the availability of online shows is constantly shifting. The Cosby Show was once on Netflix, then off, and now is on Hulu Plus. Nor is this list complete: you may have your own favorites that you can't find online. Stick around until the end, though; I've included linkst to a set of tools that can find shows even on obscure networks.

1. Batman

Image courtesy of Greenway Productions/20th Century Fox Television

Thanks to the DC Comics/Warner Brothers money machine, you can view Batman animated series episodes practically anywhere on the Internet. But the original 1966-1968 classic show starring Adam West and Burt Ward is not showing online at any Bat-time or any Bat-channel. For comic-book aficionados, this is both bad (it's Batman!) and good (the Batusi? Really?). But at the end of the day, who wouldn't want to relive the harrowing cliff-hangers we saw as kids while also catching the barely disguised innuendo we can detect as adults?

2. Full House

Image courtesy of Jeff Franklin Productions/Miller-Boyett Productions/Warner Bros. Television

Yeah, I cringed too. But the 1987-1995 run on ABC was hugely popular and its absence online is sure to be noted. This wholesome-to-the-max family drama with three men caring for three girls (trust me, it worked) actually poked a few holes in the usual sitcom situation, especially with the notion that dads could parent, too.

3. The Golden Girls

Image courtesy of Witt/Thomas/Harris Productions

In the days when comedy shows reigned supreme, this one showed viewers that old could mean funny. For seven seasons, from 1985-1992, this NBC show featuring four sharp women was acerbic enough keep even younger audiences interested. But older audiences flocked to this show, and might again if it was more widely distributed online.

4. The Honeymooners

Image courtesy of Jackie Gleason Enterprises

"To the moon, Alice!" Or at least to the nearest IP address, please. But alas, the comedic genius of Jackie Gleason and an incredible cast of comedy veterans is not to be found online now. Popular from 1953-1956, and then even more when it was revived as a part of a variety show from 1966-1970 (with sporadic episodes throughout the '70s), this comedy about working-class couples remains timeless.

5. Little House on the Prairie

Image courtesy of Ed Friendly Productions/NBC Productions

For about a season, maybe two, this NBC family drama followed the books written by Laura Ingalls Wilder fairly closely. But the popularity of the family drama pushed the writers to expand the Ingalls-verse to keep the show going. Until the end, it mostly worked. The saga of Charles Ingalls and his family in Walnut Grove, Minnesota, was compelling and genuinely warm, even if it bore little resemblance to history.

6. M*A*S*H

Image courtesy of 20th Century Fox Television

One of the longest-running shows on television, this medical procedural/comedy/war series ran for 11 seasons on CBS, bringing the Korean War into our homes every Monday night. You wouldn't think a show about a medical unit in a proxy war in Asia would be a hit so soon after the actual Vietnam War, but it was. The chemistry of the cast and the razor-sharp writing kept this show alive far longer than the conflict in which it was set. I'd like my kids to see this one.

7. Mork and Mindy

Image courtesy of Henderson Productions/Miller-Milkis Productions/Paramount Television

This spin-off from Happy Days (yes, go look it up) followed the adventures of one Mork from Ork in Boulder, Colorado, for four seasons. Not a long run, but Robin Williams, Pam Dawber - and even the late Jonathan Winters - created a show full of insane improvisation and sheer goofiness… and maybe a valid mirror on human behavior. That it's not online now? ShazBot, somebody call Orson.

8. The Six Million Dollar Man

Image courtesy of Kenneth Johnson

You can rebuild him. You can make him better than he was before. Faster. Stronger. But if you want to actually watch Lee Majors as the world's first bionic man online? Forget it, the show's locked up tighter than the OSI. Okay, so the show doesn't rank up there with the greats, but it was pretty decent sci-fi that managed to bring super-heroics to the screen and show us a surprisingly realistic future of bionics. Even if they always did run in slow motion.

9. Thirtysomething

Image courtesy of The Bedford Falls Company/United Artists Television

I may be one of the few people on the planet that has never watched a single episode of this show, but there's no denying its impact as an ensemble drama that drew in the lucrative demographic of, well, thirtysomethings to ABC for four seasons. The show's depiction of baby boomers in their thirties was smart, well-written and very much loved by its viewers.

10. The Waltons

Image courtesy of Lorimar Productions

This nine-season family drama based on the novel Spencer's Mountain ran from 1972-1981 depicting the lives of a rural Virginia family in the midst of the Great Depression and World War II. This was a big family, too, with seven kids, the parents, and the grandparents all trying to make do in one of the roughest American economies ever. A lot of people make fun of this show, pegging it as pure schmaltz. Yet the Waltons enjoy a lifestyle that many people not-so-secretly strive for - and might watch all over again.

Good night, John-Boy.

Find Your Own Favorites

If you are not sure if the show you want to watch is online anywhere, try Sidereel, which does a pretty good job listing the online availability of shows. It's not 100% accurate, though, so if your results come up empty, try Hulu next.

Even if you are not a Hulu subscriber, you can still search for TV episodes on the site. If Hulu does not have them, it may point you to other sources (like cable channel websites) where the show can be watched.

You might also try Netflix, which often changes show availability at the drop of a hat.

Hopefully, all your favorite shows will be online someday. Until then, what shows are you missing?

Lead image courtesy of Henderson Productions/Miller-Milkis Productions/Paramount Television

For baseball fans, it's an exciting time of year. For those who prefer to stream games online, however, the anticipation can be tinged with a bit of frustration. That's because baseball games are still easiest to find on traditional cable or satellite TV.

Fortunately for cord cutters, there are some options when it comes to tuning in online, some of them more, shall we say, up to legal snuff than others. 

First and foremost, there's MLB.tv. That's the official subscription streaming service of Major League Baseball in the U.S. For $20 per month, fans can live stream games in high definition from their browser with DVR-style control. For $25 per month, they can get access from iOS devices, Apple TV, Roku, Playstation 3, XBox 360 and more than 300 other devices.

For fans fanatic enough to throw $130 a year at a multi-device subscription service, MLB.tv looks like the way the go. But there's a catch — and it's a big one.

Hey! I Paid $130 And Can't Watch The Home Team?

Because cable companies and broadcast networks have a way of ruining things, MLB.tv only includes out-of-market games. That means that if I'm in Philadelphia, I can't stream the Phillies game from any of the MLB apps, because Comcast SportsNet is paying big bucks for the exclusive rights to those games.

MLB, in turn, wants to preserve that relationship by ensuring high-as-can-be ratings. As is so often the case, this arrangement works beautifully for the sports league and service providers, but sucks for viewers. 

One way to thwart this home team blackout is by using a VPN service like WiTopia, VyperVPN or StrongVPN to trick MLB into thinking you're located elsewhere. It might technically be dishonest, but it is, so far as I can tell, perfectly legal. 

A less legally straightforward option would be to tune into pirated streams from shady third party sites. Sites like firstrowsports.eu and vipbox.tv are neither the best designed or safest looking sites in the world, but for desperate fans who want to tune into games without paying, they certainly offer the goods. Sites that offer pirated streams typically do so via links to Flash-based video streams or require users to download a desktop app — at one's own risk, of course. 

Alternatively, some users prefer to use a Slingbox to remotely tune into games using their home's pay television service or broadcast hookup. 

Lead photo courtesy of Wikipedia

Television broadcasters are freaking out. Certain that the courts would see things their way, companies like CBS, Comcast and News Corp. instead found that the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Aereo, an Internet TV service they've been trying to shut down for a year. 

With Aereo's second legal victory under its belt, it might be time for broadcasters to focus on Plan B: to start, y'know, innovating like crazy. 

So Aereo Is A Go. For Now

At issue is whether or not Aereo violates the broadcasters' copyrights by retransmitting local, over-the-air channels so its subscribers can access them from smartphones, tablets and an array of smart TVs and streaming set top boxes. When Aereo launched in New York last March, the broadcasters immediately asked a judge to shut it down via preliminary injunction, arguing that indeed, it violates copyright law by generating a legally forbidden "public performance" without paying compensation. 

In its defense, Aereo has argued that the way it's retransmitting broadcasts — using tiny, remote antennae rented by its customers — does not constitute a public performance, since its use by individual viewers was inherently private. Aereo won a first round in court last July. Today, in a 2-1 decision, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the earlier ruling. 

The networks will undoubtedly continue pushing their case, opening the prospect of a full trial and eventually, a possible Supreme Court ruling. Broadcasters, of course, have every right to pursue a legal case against Aereo. This is yet another example of how technology has evolved faster than the law can keep up and how we, as a society, need to figure this stuff out.

In the meantime, broadcasters should prepare themselves for the possibility that Aereo will win in court, allowing its expansion to continue.  

Why Aereo Exists

Aereo is a pretty attractive service, especially for the cord cutter set. And for those who haven't yet considered canceling their cable subscription, products like this make it more tempting. It remains to be seen how much overall demand there is for Aereo, but the fact that it exists at all is pretty telling.

The legal niceties aside (those will be decided by courts, not blogs), Aereo is doing something innovative that empowers media consumers in a way that wasn't previously possible. That's because nobody — least of all broadcasters — made it possible. Now somebody is.  

When the Internet rose to prominence, newspapers didn't have the luxury of suing its brains out. They had to deal with the ways in which their landscape was shifting, which was ultimately better for consumers. Similarly, broadcasts may not turn out to have that luxury with Aereo. Trying to sue them out of existence is not an unexpected response, but it may not succeed. They need a backup plan. 

Should broadcasters have come up with this idea? It's nice to talk about how industries should disrupt themselves, but that's rarely how things actually work. It would have been totally counterintuitive for broadcasters to band together and develop the type of functionality that Aereo is offering. Smart, yes, but not necessarily a sound business decision within the framework in which these people generally think. 

What Should Broadcasters Do? 

It's a fruitless debate anyway. Broadcasters didn't come up with Aereo. Aereo did. Now the Comcast and News Corps. of the world need to think about what they'll do in the event that the disruptive little startup prevails in court. 

Aereo has already filed four patents that cover the precise technology its using, so it's probably not feasible to recreate its functionality. But what does Aereo do for viewers? It provides cheap, multi-channel, high-definition access to broadcast TV from an array of devices and allows for DVR recording. It lets you do all of this without paying for a cable subscription. 

To their credit, cable companies are already working on ways to bring live TV to tablet and smartphone owners. Comcast's TV Everywhere initiative clearly anticipated trends in the way people watch programs that could threaten their core business model, so they moved on it.

But while services like TV Everywhere and XFinity Streampix are nice, they're add-ons to a cable subscriptions, which some people simply don't want to deal with in the first place. It's unlikely that Comcast or Verizon is going to come up with a worthwhile Internet TV offering that doesn't hinge on their existing models — and the sky-high fees that support them. 

Broadcast networks might not be able to rent out tiny antennae, but they don't need to, either: They already have much of the infrastructure in place to provide live Internet TV signals and make them available from mobile devices and connected TVs. If they band together and offer enough programming, they could charge a small subscription fee. Think Hulu for live broadcast TV. In fact, yes, just tack this onto Hulu for a couple extra bucks. Bingo. 

There may be sound business reasons why broadcasters wouldn't consider doing this. Their relationships with cable providers may not allow it. But that rigid, no-we-mustn't mentality is exactly what created the void that allowed Aereo to crop up in the first place. It might be time to change that mindset.

Lead photo by schmilblick

Netflix's long-delayed integration with Facebook is here. This week, the company will roll out the option to customers in the U.S., where the archaic Video Privacy Act was recently amended to permit this type of feature. The integration is not as annoying as it could be, but I'm going to sit this one out.

First, the upside: It's great that Netflix was able to get an outdated law changed to remove an illogical stumbling block to innovation. If only it was always so easy. And in theory, I see why showing me my friends' recently-viewed movies could have some value. On a basic level, this feature makes sense.

(See also: Thanks Congress, But We Need Privacy Laws, Not More Social Sharing)

Netflix also deserves some credit for limiting the integration so that it doesn't barf my entire viewing history onto Facebook by default. I have to explicitly tell Netflix that I'd like to be that obnoxious. Instead, it uses Facebook's social graph to help recommend shows and movies within Netflix itself.

But do we need more frictionless sharing? 

Here's something nobody ever says: "I really love the way I can see everything my friends are listening to on Spotify via Facebook." They might say, "My friend posted a YouTube video of this awesome new song" or "I noticed everybody was posting about this new album, so I checked it out."  There are a few problems with this model.

I Don't Want To Share Everything

Not every detail is worthy of sharing, because not every detail is important. If I watch five minutes of a movie to see if I like it, it shouldn't get the same social vote as my all-time favorites. 

Netflix has much more valuable data than simply "John Paul watched Arrested Development." It knows about my historical viewing habits, informed in part by ratings and preferences I've explicitly declared. That's much more insightful than whether or not I clicked the play button. Hopefully these signals will find their way into Netflix's social integration in time (if they're not lurking under the hood already). 

Sometimes we like to indulge in things that we wouldn't necessarily tell the world about, just like I might occasionally blast "This is How We Do It" by Montell Jordan on Spotify in the middle of my workday when nobody's around. (Now you know). On Netflix, you'll be able to opt out of sharing on a video-by-video basis, which is smart. 

But I still think sharing should be an opt-in experience, not an opt-out one. Something should be important enough for me to *want* to share it and then willingly expend the effort required to do so. I shouldn't have to stop before playing each video and think, "Wait, do I want to *not* share this?"  If we have to think a thought like that, we're probably sharing way too much. 

I'm Not The Only One Who Uses My Netflix Account

Chances are, you're not the only person watching TV shows and movies on your Netflix account. I know I'm not. If my roommate is binging on Keeping Up With the Kardashians, do you really want me to auto-recommend shows to you? 

A roommate is one thing, but what about an entire family? As Techcrunch's Sarah Perez writes, anybody who connected to her via Facebook and Netflix is going to see a lot of Dora the Explorer, Tinker Bell and Sesame Street, because that's what her young daughter likes to watch. The more crowded your household is, the less useful this data becomes. 

Thankfully, Netflix is working on personalized profiles to help solve this problem, but they're not ready yet. Until that feature launches, this one is going to be decidedly imperfect. 

I Already Know What My Friends Like, Because We Talk To Each Other

With or without Facebook, television and movies are already an inherently social type of content: We watch them with friends and family and we talk about them in social gatherings. I already know what my friends like, because we're human beings who, despite heroin-grade addictions to technology, still talk to each other face-to-face.  

Seriously, I feel like I have a pretty good idea of the shows and movies that people I know like, with or without an algorithm. It's entirely possible Netflix could dig up some gem via Facebook's social graph, but if it's worth watching, I'm sure I'll come across it eventually. Besides, I don't know about your queue, but mine is perpetually overloaded. 

Doesn't Facebook Already Know Enough About Us? 

Companies like Facebook already know so much about us. Do we really need to funnel more data about our lives onto their servers? 

I realize this is just an inevitable feature of our digital world and that I should suck it up. And usually, I do. Google knows even more about me than Facebook. I willingly hand over all that data, but it's getting to the point where if divulging a new set of data about myself to some company isn't going to add a significant and obvious value to my life, I'm going to skip it.

Of course, I'm already surrendering this information to Netflix by using their service in the first place. But my relationship with them is clear: I pay $8 per month and I get to stream whatever content they're offering. They use data about me to improve the experience, and I happily keep shelling out that money.  

With Facebook, it's less clear. I joined without much thought eight years ago, am vaguely addicted to it and constantly wonder how much value I'm really getting out of the service. It weirds me out sometimes. I think about quitting.

It's also still forging its business model. It won't rely on subscription fees, but instead will find a way to turn that data about me into dollars.  That's fine, in theory, but I don't know exactly how they'll do it or if I trust them in general. 

Out of all the lines the press uses to describe Google’s interests in funding better content on its biggest social platform, the dominant one by far is: “YouTube is trying to compete with television.”

Right.

Yes, Google in all its infinite wisdom wants to compete with the decades-old giant that is the multi-billion dollar television industry with paltry investments of $100 million or so every couple of months.  /sarcasm

YouTube Cannot Replace TV

The notion is just plain silly - it even made Time Warner’s CEO laugh. But this motif, if you will, continues to dominate the discussion - much to the chagrin of YouTube itself. Whenever YouTube invests in networks or lures mainstream celebrities (or almost celebrities) to start “channels,” which it has been doing with increasing frequency over the last two years, that same line pops up. I am officially sick of it, and YouTube is too.  

2011 was the year marking Google’s biggest investments into video content, and it was this same year that the “YouTube competing with TV” meme was born. Media outlets everywhere served up some derivative of this sentence, including Reuters, which wrote “the Google-owned site is issuing a direct challenge to the television industry.” A direct challenge!  

Can you blame Reuters though, when everyone from the Wall Street Journal to the Hollywood Reporter, was doing the same thing? Hell, I am guilty of it, too.

And it isn't going away. Canada's The Star printed the headline just yesterday: “YouTube aims to compete with TV.” 

No, Canada, YouTube does not aim to compete with TV. How could it?

TV Still Rules

YouTube doesn't want anyone to think it has any intention of replacing television. The company hews to the sentiment first expressed by Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes not so long ago - namely, that it's ludicrous to think YouTube's relatively tiny content budgets, ad rolls, and Internet infrastructure could really compete with the giant television industry.

YouTube — realistically — views its place in the entertainment industry as complementaryto television and Hollywood. If you consider things in light of the Life is Like a Jar of Rocks analogy, here the rocks are Hollywood, the pebbles are television, and the sand is YouTube and Web content. There’s plenty of room in the jar for everyone, and no one is trying to replace the others.  

YouTube wants to be the sand to TV’s pebbles in the entertainment jar, everyone. Let’s all write it together so we remember: YouTube is the sand to TV’s pebbles in the glass jar of entertainment.

There's only one problem. No matter how accurate the analogy, rocks, pebbles and sand make for far less interesting copy than the threat of taking down TV. No matter how ridiculous that might be.

Updated: I've rewritten the last section in light of new information. 

Image via YouTube. 

Roku debuted its next-generation streaming set-top box, the $99.99 Roku 3, on Tuesday night, complete with a faster processor, an updated interface, plus an innovative remote control that hides a headphone jack.

But Roku's secret sauce lies deep inside its box, under a heading marked "Search."

For many, Roku is synonymous with video streaming, combining virtually every online streaming service available - Amazon Instant Video, Crackle, Hulu Plus, Netflix, Vudu, and many more - under one umbrella. Although Roku has dabbled with games - it added a motion controller with the Roku 2, allowing users to play popular games like Angry Birds - the company's success has been based on simply providing the most movies and TV shows for the lowest price. In January, Roku announced that Time Warner Cable would bring up to 300 additional "live" channels to its customers who own a Roku, allowing them to tune into live TV without the need for a dedicated cable box.

(See also Roku Meets Time Warner: Baby Steps Towards A New Kind Of TV.)

In fact, the most distinguishing feature of the Roku 3 is its new remote control, which hides a headphone jack that turns off the volume of the TV and routes it through the jack, allowing a viewer to watch television without disturbing her partner. (In-ear earphones are included.) Aside from that, the Roku 3 features an updated processor for faster scrolling, Ethernet, 1080p support, a microSD slot... and that's about it. The one thing that users will immediately notice, the new UI, is also being rolled out to most of Roku's other devices in April, including the Roku LT, Roku HD (model 2500R), Roku 2 HD, Roku 2 XD, Roku 2 XS and the Roku Streaming Stick.

Search Becomes A Focus

All of that variety - Roku says it hosts up to 750 streaming channels - inevitably led to some form of consumer confusion. Last October, Roku unveiled its cross-service search application, allowing users to search for movies, TV shows, actors and directors across Netflix, Amazon Instant Video, Hulu Plus, Crackle, VUDU and HBO GO. Within the Roku 3, search has been made part of the core functionality, meaning that users don't have to load an app to discover which video service hosts "Cheers."

"It's what we call one-stop search," said Lloyd Klarke, director of product management at Roku. "Instead of having to go into Netflix's catalog and search there, come back out, go to Amazon, come back out - here, the objective is focus on what you want, we'll help you find it, and then you can find out where to go, and watch it."

After searching for an actor, like Daniel Craig, a list of his movies appear. Click a movie, and you can see which services offer the movie. Search results are divided into two groups: those services you subscribe to, and those you don't. Within each group, the results are ordered by price, automatically guiding you to the cheapest option. (Some results include the caveat "From..." indicating that a more expensive option might be available.) HD availability is also called out.

A Growing Problem

Several other companies have made a stab at cross-service search, but none seem to have done it quite as well as Roku.

Last year, Verizon launched its Viewdini app for LTE phones and tablets that are subscribed to its services, but customers have complained of crashing and limited search offerings. Clicker.tv (now TV.com) lets users search for a show and then find a particular episode; hovering over it brings up as list of services that offer the episode for purchase, but with no indication of the price. Clicker.tv/TV.com also doesn't seem to offer any way to narrows the search according to which services you subscribe to, let alone launch them. Flixster may be the best of the bunch: Searching for a movie brings up a list of services that offer it for rent, purchase and subscription streaming, as well as the struggling UltraViolet digital locker format. But the service indexes only movies.

Update: A couple of commenters have noted below that both Google TV and the Microsoft Xbox 360 both search across services, too. That's true, although Roku's implementation appears to be as efficient. Another, important consideration is price: while some Google TV "buddy boxes" are priced at the $99.99 price point of the Roku 3, several implementations are directly integrated into more expensive TVs. However, Google TV's PrimeTime feature taps into Google search, giving it a leg up in search complexity. The point, however, is that to my knowledge, no independent Web service offers the same search functionality as the Roku 3, which is one of the most cost-effective hardware streamers available.

Roku's search service isn't perfect - with so many channels to choose from, and thousands of titles to index, it may never be. It's also doubtful that Roku will ever be able to adequately index live content from TWC and any other providers with which it strikes deals. 

Apps like Peel, Thuuz and Netflix itself point the way toward recommending what you might want to watch, based on your historical preferences. But for me, recommendations are often guided by threads at forums I frequent, by people I know recommending movies they've discovered and I might want to watch. Being able to quickly find those movies and TV shows, as cheaply as possible, makes Roku's cheap streaming set-tops even more valuable. 

Table stakes in the online content industry these days is owning the rights to "exclusive" content, and Microsoft took a small step in that direction, agreeing to distribute Pulp, a "comedy about comics," which premieres Monday on its own Xbox platform.

"Microsoft might not seem like the obvious partner for an indie comedy, but the film industry has changed," Adam Hamdy, Pulp's co-director, told The Telegraph. "Xbox 360 can instantly distribute Pulp to millions of UK customers, and publicize the release in ways that simply aren’t possible traditionally."

The Competition For Content

That's the same argument, but writ small, that online content houses like Amazon, Hulu and Netflix have chosen to try and win audiences. Netflix, of course, is shaping the future of TV by signing up shows like House of Cards, Lillyhammer, and a new season of Arrested Development - though some have speculated that Netflix should be on a deathwatch, instead. Hulu has done the same thing to a lesser extent. Amazon has also ponied up, buying the rights to the critically acclaimed television series, Justified.

And HBO, one of the first paid services to orient itself around original content, has said that more customers are tuning in to watch its original series - at least via its HBO Go application - then to watch movies. That may be because movies on HBO come and go, depending on licensing deals, while its original series - including The Sopranos, The Wire and Game of Thrones, among others, live on forever on HBO Go.

Last March, Microsoft began positioning its Xbox game console as more of a video set-top box on on the order of a Roku, with more minutes spent watching recorded movies and television content than playing games. Last year, Nielsen found that consumers spend an average of about an extra hour per week on a game console watching recorded video.

Microsoft's recent moves are in line with that trend. In September, Microsoft hired former CBS exec Nancy Tellem to run a new Xbox content studio, although the first efforts were essentially interactive "Sesame Street" programs. Adding exclusive distribution of Pulp is a more traditional content play, something that one might expect Tellem would orchestrate with Hollywood.

Microsoft representatives did not respond to requests for comment by press time.

Content Is King, But Breadth Is Queen

The difference between Microsoft and a service like Netflix, however, is that Redmond inextricably tied to the Xbox platform; although Microsoft outsells all other game console in the world (in 2012, the company claimed more than 63 million Xbox 360s had been sold, lifetime) Netflix has vastly more distribution across Apple's iOS and Mac platforms, plus Android phones, tablets and various set-tops like the Apple TV, Roku and WD TV boxes, among others.

For Microsoft, however, an exclusive content deal means two things: profits and cachet. Microsoft's interactive division is forever flirting with losses (last quarter, Microsoft's Entertainment and Devices Division recorded a $19 million profit). Although Microsoft may in fact have paid money to license the premiere of Pulp, it's equally likely that studios could pay Microsoft to promote their films, a strategy that the industry is beginning to see with Roku (via banner ads promoting recent films) Comcast and Cox (ditto) as well as Hulu Plus (via a carousel of promoted shows).

Microsoft may not have the clout of a Netflix, but analyst Richard Doherty of The Envisioneering Group has characterized the Xbox as the most socially connected TV platform, and Microsoft's "second screen" Smartglass technology gives the service a technological leg up on the competition. Now, Microsoft set on expanding its Xbox from a game console to a content distribution hub. The company may be far behind its competition in that regard, but the race is far from over.

It's been 63 years since Nielsen started measuring what we're watching on TV. For most of that time, the concept of "TV" has  pretty much remained the same. But in the last half decade, the old model has been blown wide open by the Internet as more people go online to catch their favorite shows. To stay relevant, Nielsen is being forced to change its methodology. 

By the time the 2013 fall season begins, the 23,000 homes Nielsen uses to sample TV viewership will be equipped with a new system that takes Internet content into consideration, according to a scoop by the Hollywood Reporter. 

Piecing Together Fractured Viewing Habits

The report was short on details, but from the looks of it, Nielsen is going to start tracking select online video sources like Amazon, Netflix and Hulu as well as streaming devices like Xbox 360 and other gaming consoles. By the end of the year, TV viewership from iPads will be counted as well. That's good, considering the rising popularity of iPad apps like YouTube, Netflix and Hulu Plus and the ongoing push by cable operators and networks to make shows available on tablets. 

It's not clear which online content sources will be tracked at launch, since participating in Nielsen's ratings measurement system will require opt-in technical changes to the way those videos are encoded and streamed. 

"On the path to capturing all viewing in all homes, this foundational change addresses the lion’s share of viewing, in effect including any home with a TV that can receive video via an external source," Pat McDonough, Nielsen's SVP of Insights and Analysis told ReadWrite via email. "In collaboration with clients, we will continue to expand the reach of television audience measurement."

This isn't the first Internet-inspired change Nielsen has made to its methodology. In December, it announced a partnership with Twitter to launch a new social TV metric that will take into account the social chatter about popular shows. 

It's all part of Nielsen's larger plan to more accurately track media consumption habits that are increasingly fractured across time, devices and sources. Since the advent of TV, there's never been a change this dramatic in how people consume it. The seismic shift that's happening now calls for an equally significant retooling of how various aspects of the industry function. In a business fueled in large part by advertising, there are few moving parts more crucial than accurate audience metrics.  

Perfect Timing: Internet TV Is Growing Up 

The ratings updates come at a pivotal time for Internet TV. Online video has more than 182 million unique viewers watching 38.7 billion videos, according to ComScore's U.S. Digital Future in Focus 2013 report. The most popular video service remains YouTube, followed by Hulu, Vevo, Yahoo and AOL, in that order.

And we're not just talking about Justin Bieber songs and viral kitten videos anymore, either. In the last few years, YouTube, Netflix and Hulu have all been investing heavily in the production of their own TV-quality content. 

2012 saw a few Web original shows amass a notable amount of buzz online. This year, shows like Netflix's House of Cards are finally starting to grab the attention of everyday, non-cord-cutting viewers and generating almost as much discussion as popular shows airing on A&E or HBO. In May, Netflix will exclusively stream the fourth season of Arrested Development, a cult classic show whose low ratings got it booted from Fox a decade ago. Like House of Cards, the show is expected to draw plenty of attention, not to mention more new media pundits pontificating about the future of TV.

Online TV Ratings Could Help Fuel The Future

How many people will watch Arrested Development? We won't know, unless Netflix decides to tell us. And if it doesn't perform as well as hoped, why would it bother? The company declined to release viewership numbers for House of Cards, saying it had "no motivation" as a non-advertising based business to do so. 

That's true, but without an integrated, cross-platform method for tracking viewership, nobody inside or outside the industry has any way of knowing how popular a given show truly is. That's chiefly useful for advertisers, but such insight is valuable to plenty of others. 

There could hardly be an example more illustrative of the need for such a system than Arrested Development. The show got its start on broadcast television. As a Netflix exclusive, season four will be different only in how the episodes are released - all at once, rather than sequentially. Other than that, it will be very much the same show: Same dysfunctional family played by the same actors, presumably picking up the story line (or at least general premise) of the original. It's still a TV show, so why not measure it like one? 

As a journalist, I would love to know how well the new season does compared to the original three. Hell, I'd be curious to see how many views those first few seasons have racked up on Netflix since they've been available to stream. 

It's not just reporters, researchers and media nerds who could benefit from those insights. This is the first time a television show has made the transition to an online-only service. Will it work? Plenty of other content producers and streaming providers would love to know, and sharing such data could help inform future decisions about premium video content, potentially helping to shape TV's future.

Cord-cutting, it is commonly known, isn't ideal for sports fans. There are just too many games that require a cable subscription to watch and pirating each one would be too cumbersome. Fortunately for those who want to tune into Superbowl XLVII this weekend, there are a few options that don't require a traditional TV setup. 

The Super Bowl will be streamed in its entirety from two main browser-based sources. First, there's NFL Live, which will feature "Road To the Super Bowl" and all the other pre-game programming beginning at 11am Eastern Time. The game itself kicks off at 6:30pm ET. You can also stream the whole thing from CBSSports.com.

The NFL's official mobile app will have a stream available as well, but it looks like you'll have to have a pay TV subscription through Verizon to get it. There are a number of Super Bowl and team-specific apps as well, but there's no indication that any of them will be offering a free stream. We'll certainly update this post if we learn otherwise. 

For some, the excitement doesn't come from the play-by-play but rather from the commercial breaks. Thankfully, the world's most expensive television ads will be available online as well. Hulu's Ad Zone will stream the commercials live as they air to all viewers, whether they subscribe to Hulu Plus or not.  A Hulu spokesperson confirmed that the service will not be live streaming the actual game, only the ads.  

The Super-Social #SuperBowl 

As is now standard with any major televised event, the Super Bowl will be unfolding on our second screens and social streams. GetGlue users will be able to unlock special Super Bowl-themed badges by checking into the game and its commercials. Doing so will also unlock a free month of Hulu Plus, thanks to a new partnership between the two companies. You'll also have the option of checking into the Super Bowl and following it on Miso, an Android and iOS app that is generally considered to be GetGlue's closest competitor. 

If you're not into the whole TV check-in thing, you can always follow the game on good, old fashioned Twitter. There are the official accounts for the Super Bowl, CBS Sports and the NFL, plus individual team accounts for the San Francisco 49ers and Baltimore Ravens.

The hashtags to watch (and use) are as follows: #SB47, CBSSuperBowl, #Ravens #SBRavens #RavenNation #49ers #Niners #QuestforSix.  Neither CBS nor the NFL is officially citing #SuperBowl as a Twitter hashtag, but we can't imagine it won't be used widely. 

Lead image courtesy of John Morgan. 

The 57th Presidential Inauguration falls on Monday, January 21st, this year, which coincidentally, also happens to be Martin Luther King Jr. day.

"It's almost like fate and history coming together," U.S. Rep. John Lewis told the Associated Press. Lewis, the representative of Georgia’s 5th Congressional District, is a civil rights leader who worked closely with King in the 1950s and '60s. "If it hadn't been for Martin Luther King Jr., there would be no Barack Obama as president," added Lewis.

Lots Of Performers

Performers at the inauguration include Beyonce and James Taylor, and the inauguration parade includes guests like Bobak Ferdowski, aka NASA’s Mohawk Guy.

MSNBC estimates that up to 800,000 people will attend the inauguration this year, and scalpers are reportedly charging $2,000 for tickets. For those of us wanting to watch at home through our electronic devices, however, the options are entirely free.

Both Apple and Google are offering free apps for their respective devices, with both companies dubbing them the “Inauguration 2013” app. Apple’s iOS app is available on iTunes, naturally, and Google's Android app can be downloaded through Google Play, and both promise you “a front row seat at the ceremonial swearing-in with the app’s built-in live stream.” Both apps have been reviewed favorably.  

Fox News will be streaming on their site, and CNN will be livestreaming via CNN.com as well as through its apps for iPhone, iPad and Android. Yahoo, meanwhile, has partnered with ABC News for its Inauguration Control Room, which promises not just all day interactive coverage, but commentary from a bunch of unusual pundits, including Buzzfeed’s editor-in-chief Ben Smith, former White House executive chef Walter Schieb and Michael Waldman, a former speechwriter for President Clinton.

Or, if you are so inclined, you can watch the same coverage on ABCNews.com, GoodMorningAmerica.com, on the ABC News mobile app, or on the ABC News YouTube Channel.

YouTube Is Reliable

Speaking of YouTube, while the Google-owned video sharing site has yet to announce its plans for the inauguration stream, it is more than likely a live stream will be available through its Election Hub, or through various partners' individual YouTube channels, which include the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. The White House has also set up an Inauguration 2013 channel, and will be streaming here.

As someone who has tried both individual news sites' livestreams as well as YouTube’s, the live stream offered directly on YouTube is by far the most reliable. (YouTube did invest heavily in its livestreaming infrastructure to cover the Olympics, after all.)

NASA will also offer a livestream of the inauguration parade, no doubt highlighting the Mars Curiosity Rover replica that will be rolling along with all the high-school bands and other attractions. NASA will broadcast on Ustream, which served it well during the Curiosity landing.

Photo courtesy of Andrew F. Kazmierski / Shutterstock.com.

Aereo, Barry Diller's uber-controversial Internet TV service currently available only in New York, is expanding. This spring, consumers in 22 more U.S. cities will get the ability to tune into broadcast TV channels via desktops, tablets and smartphones. And the TV networks are not happy. 

Aereo uses tiny, remote antennas to grab broadcast signals and convert them into video formats that can be transmitted over the Internet and watched from any device and recorded for later viewing. It's a brilliant idea, but one that immediately won the ire of the TV industry, who responded with a lawsuit. In July, a federal court ruled that Aereo did not violate copyright law in the way broadcasters alleged, allowing the service to continue operating as a larger legal battle looms. 

In its corporate rhetoric, Aereo very deliberately positions itself alongside the VHS tape and DVR, two technologies whose core functionality was challenged by the content industry on copyright grounds. The company and its supporters are hoping that the courts see the similarities as well. (For more insight, see Is Barry Diller Stealing Broadcasters' Content? Patent Application Says Maybe Not.)

Aereo's fate is far from firmed up, but that's not stopping the company from pushing forward with its expansion into new markets. Specifically, it will launch later 2013 in Boston, Miami, Austin, Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Washington, DC, Baltimore, Detroit, Denver, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Tampa, Cleveland, Kansas City, Raleigh-Durham (NC), Salt Lake City, Birmingham (AL), Providence (RI), and Madison (WI).

For $8 per month - the price of a Hulu Plus subscription - users can tune into whichever over-the-air broadcast channels are available in their area. It's the same stuff you can get with a digital antenna affixed to your TV, but Aereo makes it available across devices and has built-in DVR recording functionality. 

Will people really want to drop $8 monthly to access broadcast TV more conveniently? Aereo is banking on it. Even combined with a Hulu Plus subscription, users would pay only $16 per month for access to a huge selection of content, some of which is live - including many live sporting events. That beats cable's hefty monthly bill, but it still won't get you Game of Thrones or the latest episode of Breaking Bad. 

If Aereo manages to survive its legal challenges (and the company just raised $38 million to fund its expansion and pay its legal bills), it's yet another step toward making the cord-cutting lifestyle a viable alternative. Of course the Cable/Satellite industry isn't sitting still: on Monday Time Warner Cable announced a limited deal to make some of TWC content available on Roku set-top boxes - although users will still have to have a cable subscription.

See Is Cable TV Tuning In Its Own Obsolescence?

Since there weren't already enough strangely shaped, wireless computers to plug into your television, Asus on Monday announced a new one at CES called the Qube. It's a Google TV-powered device, but instead of bringing clarity to the Google TV product line, it adds even more confusion - if such a thing is possible.

The Qube has a custom Asus interface, and it uses Asus' own cloud storage service instead of Google's. Just what the brutally low-margin TV business needs: more infighting with itself.

From Q to Qube

First, Google made something called a Nexus Q. It was the most inscrutable computer-like object of 2012 - a heavy, glowing orb that does the same things as every other decent smart TV box. Except for the TV part, which is what Google TV is for.

The Q was supposed to cost three hundred freaking dollars until Google un-launched it because no one understood what it was, and there's still no word on if or when it will re-launch. (I have been trying to give mine away since Google I/O, and no one will take it.)

What About Google TV?

The obvious question about the Nexus Q was, what about Google TV? Google TV has been a failure so far. Would there be an official Nexus-branded Google TV box to set things right by standardizing and streamlining the interface?

Well, not yet. There's just this mythical CES beast called a Qube by Asus. No Nexus brand, no price, no release date. It has a "rotating on-screen cube" interface for a motion-sensitive remote or smartphone, which sounds insane to use, and it's backed by 50GB of Asus's own WebStorage service. So this thing actually competes with Google, even though Google approved it.

Sure. Sounds like a slam dunk.

I'm sure this contraption is very exciting to everyone at the Consumer Electronics Show, which is known for being attended by zero consumers. As for real "consumers," it's probably fine that they would have no idea what a Qube is or what to do with it. After all, plenty of CES gadgets never get released - what difference will one more make?

ReadWrite's Taylor Hatmaker is right about one thing: 2013 should indeed be a unusual year for the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), as the industry struggles to find the next big thing.

(Read CES 2013: 5 Things You Won't See.)

Rattled by declining prices and lingering worries over the "fiscal cliff," gadget makers are likely to be more conservative than ever, focusing on extending tried-and-true trends rather than breaking out brand new ideas.

In fact, it's likely that CES 2013 is going to be, well, boring. As a 20-year veteran of the show, here's what I am expecting to see in Vegas this year:

1. Microsoft

No, I'm not totally disagreeing with Taylor here. As she correctly notes, 2012 was the last year that Microsoft plans to appear at the Consumer Electronics Show, although Consumer Electronics Association chief Gary Shapiro portrayed the company's absence as a "hiatus." Right.

Microsoft may not have bought booth space, but it will be represented by its manufacturing partners, which plan to show off Windows 8 PCs, tablets, all-in-ones and convertibles. The personal computer is simply too big to ignore, but I hear that the number of pitches for Windows 8 PC unveilings at CES is down, and that many companies are focusing on trivial matters, such as new colors. (Colors!?) Even the Surface Pro isn't expected to show up at CES, even though it's due out soon.

2. Tablets - From Off Brands

Yes, Taylor's right that a veritable flood of tablets were launched at the 2012 CES, but history tells us that where the big names tread, the smaller names are sure to follow. Amazon and Google, as well as Apple, have shown that there's a market for smaller, more manageable tablet form factors, and second- and third-tier providers are likely to try and bleed cost further out of the equation. You'll still see a number of Android tablets, mostly from by manufacturers you've never heard of.

Plus, I think we'll see more purpose-built tablets and peripherals. Last year, Razer showed off Project Fiona, a gaming tablet that ended up being vaporware. But I still believe that some manufacturer will throw out a Nexus 7-sized tablet with a Microsoft-style touch keyboard cover attached to it, and see if anyone will bite. Also look for tablet makers to try and shoehorn their products into some sort of software/hardware ecosystem.

By the way, Taylor's right: most major smartphone announcements are being delayed until Barcelona's Mobile World Congress in February.

3. TVs That People Will Actually Buy

People aren't buying 3D televisions. And while manufacturers will likely show off 4K, UltraHD TV technology, Taylor correctly points out that high prices and a lack of content make UltraHD pointless for most people right now. UltraHD doesn't make sense until cameras, cable and TVs all support it. (Still, while I may not buy the mammoth 110-inch UHDTV Westinghouse will show off at CES, that doesn't mean I don't want it.)

What people will buy, however, are connected televisions - and ways to connect their TVs - especially if they're cheap. Westinghouse just announced a television that supports its Streaming Stick, a $100 plastic stick that plugs into compliant televisions. There's still too much confusion here, which is why peripheral manufacturers like Roku and the small Google TV ecosystem just won't go away.

4. Connected Content

This is a catch-all category, encompassing everything from connected cars to second-screen apps that fling content to TVs and other devices, as well as peripherals that stream audio from Pandora and other services. This may sound like old news, but connected services creeping into more and more mundane devices is actually a game changer.

I'm hoping for more on the automotive front, but everything I've heard points to more autonomous automotive safety features, rather than suites of connected services. Blame the carriers' data caps for this: Streaming high-bandwidth media into your car might quickly blow through your data plan. Sending maps and other low-bandwidth data services makes more sense .

5. Digital Health/Fitness

They will never equal the splash of a new big-screen TV or smartphone, but digital fitness products should have an, er, healthy presence at CES. Consumers want things to both track their progress and distract them while exercising, and technology manufacturers are stepping up.

6. Crap

Seriously, I've seen enough smartphone cases to last a lifetime. USB keys, external hard drives, notebook sleeves, USB lights, fans, stickers and the like dominate huge swaths of CES's show floor. Sure there's a market for some of this stuff, but there's a fine line between junk and innovation. 

You know what I'm really hoping to see? Personal drones. Yes, the ones that we'd otherwise use to spy on enemy soldiers. I'd like to see a whole corner of the show floor devoted to those things, as a tool for tracking game, scouting inaccessible locations, and otherwise just having fun.

Would it be controversial? Absolutely. And that's just what CES needs. Otherwise, I'm afraid this year's show may end up being the dullest one in years.

For more, check out CES 2013: 5 Things You Won't See.

Image source: Flickr/PrimeImageMedia.com.

It passed the House, the Senate, and just before the new year, the President signed it into law. In a significant shift in video privacy - online video rental companies can now share information about the movies you rent or buy. As you might expect, things are about to get more social.

According to the new law, companies have to ask only once. You can opt out, but if you don't, say goodbye to the rights to your video data for two full years. As per the change, Netflix will introduce new social features that basically link users' Netflix and Facebook accounts and share their viewing history with friends. Netflix was previously unable to do this in the U.S. by the 25-year-old Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA), which banned the sharing of personal data for anything but law enforcement purposes (even now, Hulu remains in court for previously sharing viewers' info). 

On the surface, sharing viewing history may not seem like a big deal, but the law undermines the privacy of Internet users, and takes away user control over significant amounts of potentially sensitive personal data. 

Looking back, it's ironic this new law even passed, as the VPPA was originally enacted in the 1980s in response to a local Washington newspaper publishing a list of Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork's rented videotapes during his nomination process. At that time, Congress was up in arms over this privacy breach, which helped scuttle Bork's appointment and led to the phrase "borked" entering the language. But less than a month after Bork's passing on December 19, 2012, it seems that Netflix investment of roughly half a million dollars in lobbying Congress to update the law was enough to do the trick. 

The Privacy Issue

Almost one year ago to the day, Marc Rotenberg, the executive director and president of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), testified in Congress against the bill, citing his organization's interest in "supporting the rights of Internet users to control the disclosure of their data held by private companies."

"The debate over online privacy and Netflix does not exist in a vacuum," Rotenberg stated at the hearing. "It is becoming increasingly clear that only privacy laws actually safeguard the privacy rights of Internet users."

In an interview with ReadWrite, Rotenberg said he urged the Senate Judiciary Committee to update the law with new safeguards. His warnings were not heeded. "Senator Franken (D-Minn.) and Senator Feinstein (D-Calif.) made some improvements to the House bill but it was still a step backward for online privacy," Rotenberg said. 

So...is sharing bad for online privacy? The experts ReadWrite talked to seemed to think so.

Jules Polonetsky, the director and co-chair of the Future of Privacy Forum, said the the real issue is that people don't know they're sharing. When that sharing is done without user consent and system settings are unclear, it's bad for the public. "This is about the sharing of your records of video rental history, as opposed to on a clear, permission basis, enabling people to key-in sharing mode," he said. "Sharing should be in a clear opt-in basis."

Polonetsky compares the risk to what social video sites Viddy and Socialcam did when they first launched, gaming the Facebook system so anyone playing those companies' videos automatically alerted their Facebook friends to what they were watching. That accidental sharing is a major problem, Polonetsky warned.

"I saw a rabbi I know sharing a fairly raunchy video about girls on bikes, falling off bikes... a conservative, corporate lawyer sharing a somewhat offensive video, none of them clearly understanding that by clicking on some filthy link shared by their friends, to see what the attraction was, they'd be letting hundreds of their friends know and sullying their reputation."  

Rainey Reitman, the Electronic Frontier Foundation's activism director agreed. She said the move is bad for the public because unclear sharing undermines the "strong legal protections put in place to protect video watchers... A major concern is that individuals will enable the function and not realize that it is continuing to broadcast their video watching habits to social networks - for years."

Selling Your Video History?

Another potential problem stemming from the law, Reitman said, is whether video companies will use that information as a commodity and sell it. "Once data is combined with our social media profiles, it can be part of the data used by the online advertising industry for advertising purposes and we'll be forced to rely on the often confusing privacy settings on social networks to protect our video watching history."

Polonetsky said that turning on this stream of sharing data on a service like Facebook would likely increase targeted ads. He added that although this change tot he law has been pushed by Netflix, not Facebook, social sharing is a huge business driver, and ultimately a win for that site. 

"Generally [Facebook's] motto has been, we want a lot of data so advertisers can reach you," he said. "Facebook can and will make available what you're doing, what you're watching, what you're reading, to be used to tailor ads to you on Facebook - and increasingly off of Facebook."

Not All Bad?

The new law is not all bad, said Polonetsky. When it comes to sharing information people do want known, like live Television, sports and films while they tweet or post, it can be a boon for both users and entertainment companies. But it's only positive if people have an on-off switch, and awareness of what they're sharing.

"If you can actually draw together the eyes now watching this video, this game, and comment, I think there's a real positive," he said. Still, he warned that the way the new systems get set up will be critical to the law's long term effects. Again, the key is that people have to know the settings in order for the sharing to benefit them and not inadvertently spread information they'd rather keep to themselves. "It's got to be cut in a way that very affirmatively makes clear that you are in sharing mode so there's no cause for accidents. That's UI design."

Polonetsky isn't the only one who sees the glass half full. Privacy expert and attorney Alan Chapell of Chapell & Associates thinks the old VPPA law was out of date. He pointed to the fact that the law treated the video differently from other content, such as music services like Spotify, which are able to share. 

"The VPPA created a rule set that treated movie consumption differently from book and music consumption," he said. "Drawing that type of distinction in a digital world doesn't make sense. If a consumer wants to be able to tell friends, via Facebook or some other platform, which movies he's streamed via Netflix he should be able to do so."

Chapell is right, people should have the right to share when they want to do so. But the underlying issue is that this new law creates a system where the public could easily end up sharing personal data without their informed consent. 

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.

After an ill-timed outage on Christmas Eve zapped popular video provider Netflix - the popular refrain has been clear: Blame the cloud. But when there's a car crash, do we blame the highway or the humans driving the vehicles? Is Netflix really the victim here, or did it drive off the road all on its own?

Reports of Netflix crashing again on Christmas Eve day started trickling in about an hour after my youngest daughter, stuck inside on a bitter cold Minnesota day, complained that the service wasn't working on my iPad. That problem was alleviated by slapping a password on the device and sending her into the kitchen to help the rest of the family prep for dinner like she should have been doing in the first place. But the inconvenient timing of the outage was enough to cause a bump of coverage on the national news.

As the postmortems came though, it appeared that - once again - Netflix's problem lay within the cloud on which the service is hosted: Amazon Web Service's Ashburn, VA, data center.

Virginia? Again?

Neither AWS or Netflix have released a detailed report on what actually happened, but reports indicated that it was the elastic load balancers at the Virginia data center that somehow dropped the ball and led to significant traffic loss for Netflix viewers trying to watch their favorite Christmas movies. The service was back up by Christmas Day, but dropping the ball on Christmas Eve didn't make Netflix many friends.

Meanwhile, as many people noted during the Netflix outage, Amazon's own Instant Video service had no reports of problems. That raised a few eyebrows for customers wondering how Amazon managed to keep its own service going while its competitor was kaput.

No one is accusing Amazon's business units of collaborating to bring down Netflix. But the very fact that Netflix relies on a competitor's infrastructure to deliver its services seems to generate a conflict of interest.

A lot of those same industry observers are also calling for Netflix to get the hell off of Amazon's cloud. This is not the first time, after all, that AWS problems have smacked around Netflix and other popular Web services, and that Virginia data center specifically seems to be cursed.

I think a service like Netflix (of which I am obviously a customer) should keep its destiny in its own hands. But if you think that moving to it's own cloud will be the sure-fire cure-all for Netflix' reliability issues, think again.

The fault for the Netflix outage, the company would like us to believe, lies solely with AWS. But does it really?

Or does the problem lie with misuse of AWS tools? If the elastic load balancers were indeed the reason for the Christmas Eve outage, who was ultimately responsible for configuring those balancers?

Winning The Blame Game?

The highway analogy applies here, too. AWS is the highway, a shimmering ribbon of concrete, on-ramps and bridges that enable cars to get from point A to point B. Most of the time, the highway's operations run smoothly. But when someone misuses the highway, chaos will most certainly ensue - no matter how good the infrastructure is. 

If you don't like the highway example, pick another brand of infrastructure, like a building or a ship or a bridge. It's all the same: Use the infrastructure the wrong way, and bad things happen.

Netflix would (and can) argue that sometimes, no matter how well you're operating within the infrastructure, that infrastructure can break. That's true. Tragically, things fall apart and people and businesses can get caught in the wreckage. Such is life in an entropic universe.

But even if AWS has a faulty infrastructure, doesn't Netflix still have ultimate responsibility to create the solution? After all, customers are "renting" their movies from Netflix, not Amazon. And as pointed out, this is not the first time there's been problems at this particular data center. Why, after getting slapped off the Internet this summer, didn't Netflix make sure such an occurrence would happen again?

Netflix shares were down slightly on Thursday (about 1% as trading drew to a close). Maybe some shareholders are asking themselves why Netflix hasn't done more to shore up te reliability of its service. I know this customer is.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.

Time Warner has officially entered the YouTube content industry by investing $36 million into Maker Studios, a prominent network on the video-sharing site that gets roughly 2 billion views a month. (So much for the rumors of Yahoo snapping up the network!) The Time Warner Investments group deal is for $1 million more than Google invested in Machinima - typically seen as the leading YouTube network - and marks the first time a major outside media conglomerate has made a big investment in the YouTube space. 

Rachel Lam, the head of Time Warner Investments group (which led the investment which included big names like Robert Downey Jr and Elizabeth Murdoch), will also join the board of directors at Maker Studios. Lam’s presence should be welcomed, as the YouTube network has been embroiled in a scandal with the space’s biggest celebrity, Ray William Johnson, over predatory contract disputes. (The network also failed to transition Johnson’s AdSense account following his departure from the network for two months - which I estimated at the time resulted in at least a $112,000 revenue loss for Johnson.)

Why Time Warner Did The Deal

"In just a few short years, Maker has established itself as the go-to network on YouTube for top creative talent, and the combination of outstanding creative with formidable audience reach has translated into Maker's phenomenal growth as a company," Lam wrote in a statement sent to multiple publications. (Apparently, despite the recent departure of top talent, the statement was not meant to be ironic.) "Our investment in Maker gives us insight into next generation video content and the ever-evolving online video landscape, as well as access to new producers of content for Time Warner's existing television, film and cable network operations."

Maker Studios was found in 2009 and acts as a production studio, distribution network and ad sales team for YouTube-based talent.  PandoDaily reported Maker Studios has garnered $78.5 million in total equity funding (not counting Google’s Original Channels investment), while TechCrunch and All Things D put Maker Studio’s total raised at $44 million. Maker Studios did not respond to ReadWrite's requests to clarify this funding amount, but the consensus is the company is valued at $200 million. Viewership for the network has been steadily increasing, with the network even surpassing Machinima in terms of views in October. 

The Time Warner Investments funding comes at a good time for Maker Studios, and not just because it helps the network move on from accusations of unprofessional behavior during the Ray William Johnson scandal: The network has just completed a 40,000-square-foot production space in Culver City that includes sound stages, production offices, prop and wardrobe areas, editing bays and recording booths.

"We're extremely excited and grateful to have the support of Time Warner and our other investment partners who are some of the most respected names in media and entertainment, and are thrilled that we will be able to provide even more resources and opportunities to our valued network partners," wrote Danny Zappin, Maker's co-founder and CEO, in a statement sent to multiple publications.

Traditional Media Finally Getting It  

Eugene Lee, the co-founder of the YouTube analytics service for media companies and brands called ChannelMeter, told ReadWrite that Time Warner's investment "validates" the YouTube space and shows traditional media is finally " recognizing that viewers are moving online and that online audience is growing." 

Lee predicted the infusion to Maker Studios is just the beginning of outside investment in YouTube content. Lee also said that the cash infusion is likely to "light a fire" under YouTube networks like Machinima, Fullscreen and Alloy Digital to "get their A-game on" and "be smarter with their money."  Machinima seems to already be doing that, having just laid off 10% of its staff this month, which the video-game and entertainment network called "a reorganization to address its global growth." 

App by app, Google is creeping onto my iPad. Days after overhauling Gmail and pushing out improvements to Drive, the company has given iOS 6 one of the things users wanted most: a native YouTube app for the iPad and iPhone 5. Compared to the old, pre-iOS 6 version, this is a huge step up.

The interface matches the new visual language Google has been including across all of its major Web and mobile products lately. It's a clean layout with the same, more modern-looking typography that we've seen in its other recently-updated iOS apps. The navigation is hidden until you slide it out by tapping the menu button in the upper left. 

Better Video Discovery

It looks nice, but by far the biggest improvement is the app's renewed focus on video discovery. Finding and subscribing to users and channels is the easiest it has ever been on the iPad, either on the old native version or the lackluster, tablet-friendly Web app Google initially slapped up. The app's search function - which accepts both text and voice inputs - breaks down results into videos and channels, making it easier to not only find the video you were looking for, but subscribe to more videos like it. The more channels you subscribe to, the more active your YouTube home feed will be and the more ad revenue Google will make fun you will have watching entertaining videos. 

YouTube's new iPad app fits in nicely with the service's ongoing quest to carve out its role in the future of TV. This app is definitely an improvement in that regard. I AirPlayed it to my HDTV via the Apple TV box and found that the experience translates pretty well to the bigger screen. Finding content is easier, and a growing selection of the videos published to YouTube are of a higher, TV-esque quality. 

How YouTube Could Better Snag My Attention

There's still room for improvement, though. If YouTube really wants to keep my attention while I'm on the couch, its iPad app should support continuous playback so I'm not left hunting and pecking for new content to watch every time a video ends. If I've subscribed to a channel (or have selected a video that happens to be part of a playlist), it's a safe assumption I want to see more, or at least that YouTube wouldn't be rude to ask if that's the case once a video is finished playing.

I don't watch a lot of TV, but when I sit down on the couch with my iPad and Apple remote in hand, there are a few apps that dominate my attention. Netflix, Hulu Plus and, to a lesser extent, Amazon Instant Video are where I get most of my movies and TV shows. For Web video, Boxee's universal, Instapaper-style "watch later" button is invaluable, and ShowYou is about as good as social video discovery gets on the iPad. So there's a lot of competition in my device's "Entertainment" folder.

But I definitely could see myself spending a lot more time with YouTube thanks to this update.  

Tuesday morning, Deathwatch-favorite Netflix announced a new partnership with Disney. While the financial terms have yet to be disclosed, this looks like a huge step in the right direction for the embattled video service.

Under the terms of the agreement, Netflix will become the online distribution platform for Disney's straight-to-video releases in 2013. In 2016, it will carry pay-per-view versions of Disney's new, theatricallyreleased films. Effective immediately, Netflix will also have access to a back catalog of classic Disney films for its current subscriber base.

What It Means For Disney 

By cutting a deal, Disney gains a pay-per-view foothold (and likely some perks to be named later) in the biggest online video distributor without giving up anything but Dumbo and Pocahontas. Its classic freebies will serve as a powerful lead-in for up-sells, and it will retain the power to charge a fee it considers fair for premium content. The deal also draws considerable leverage from cable operators that may have been less willing to negotiate a favorable revenue split.

What It Means For Netflix 

The Disney deal is a major lifeline for Netflix. First, it brings reliable, popular content into the system right now, repairing some of the actual and perceived damage caused when Disney/Starz pulled out. It also shows Wall Street and other content providers that Netflix will be around for the long haul. If the mother of all content licensing providers is willing to do a deal, other suppliers are more likely to want in as well. It remains to be seen how far Disney has locked out competitors, but Netflix will draw new interest that it really needed.

According to Ross Rubin, Principal Analyst at Reticle Research, the deal is a very good thing. "This is, as Red Hastings has observed regarding Amazon's investments, a gold rush, with many online video providers such as Google, Hulu, Amazon and Netflix looking for original and exclusive content, and Disney has an unparalleled brand in home video. Kids' movies are a great fit for Netflix as some of its heaviest users are parents who use it as broadband babysitting."

The agreement also formalizes what everyone knew was coming: Netflix is evolving beyond the buffet model. Premium content will remove the pressure from the baseline offering and allow all sorts of new opportunities that provide legitimate value.

For example, millions of Netflix users catch up on back seasons of still-running TV shows, only to find themselves stuck in the limbo between the Netflix catalog and the current season. That's a well-qualified sales opportunity sitting on the table. Now Netflix and content publishers can monetize that opportunity while consumers willing to spend a bit extra on a premium subscription or an a la carte purchase can stay up to date on their favorite shows. 

This deal puts pressure on other video distributors to follow suit. Hulu, with its close ties to NBC, Fox and yes, Disney, will probably launch a counterattack soon. 

Let's be clear. This is a win for Netflix, but Disney is in charge. Netflix's content model was getting pinched, and it needed an out. Content is still king, but the deal helps Netflix last long enough to maybe tip the scales a bit more toward distributors.

Top image courtesy of Katherine Welles / Shutterstock. Bottom image courtesy of Shutterstock.

New York Magazine recently broke down Korean Pop singer Psy's earnings from Gangnam Style - now the most popular YouTube video of all time. As you'd expect, he's making serious bank. The one figure that caught my eye was the magazine's breakdown of Psy's YouTube profits, which it estimated at $1.7 million, or to be precise with view numbers from today, $1,763,764.63. 

That figure was calculated based off the standard YouTube partner rate of a $2 CPM, meaning for every 1,000 views Psy receives $2 if he is running ads on his video, which he is. Psy isn't running the relatively unobtrusive TrueView ads that let you skip after the first couple of seconds either, he is running big-brand long-form ads, so Psy could very well be making more, or less, depending on what kind of partnership he has with YouTube. We'll never know, as partners are not supposed to reveal this information. (Mahola CEO and longtime YouTuber Jason Calacanis is cited as providing the magazine with the CPM information.)

Other interesting figures uncovered by New York Magazine include Psy's revenue from digital sales in the U.S. ($243,720) and a share price rise of 26% for Psy's management company YG Entertainment since Gangnam Style was put on YouTube.  

There was a time when YouTube - and all of Internet video - was dominated by cat videos. dumb stunts and crotch kicks. And while we'll never be free of such lowbrow gems, the genre has grown to accommodate decidely more sophisticated content - particularly in the technology arena.

While websites have traditionally dominated this space, thanks to YouTube, Revision3 TV and their competitors, a new breed of video content producers are building careers. Though YouTube's turbulent relationships with talent have been widely publicized, other video makers tell a different story - one that sees the online medium as a critical component to their professional visibility and ultimate success.

For more insight, I sat down with a couple of top content creators: Jon Rettinger, known by his legion of followers as TechnoBuffalo, and Shannon Morse, Linux aficionado and co-host of Hak5.

Where It All Began

Between them, their fans number in the millions, but it took years of hard work to get there.

Shannon Morse Tech geekdom for Morse began at home. The theater and choir club enthusiast grew up watching her father build computers - and he helped her build her first machines. When she didn't make it into the theater program at college, her love for all things entertainment never waned. On a whim, she traveled with friends to Toronto to watch a live performance of Pure Pwnage, and met the cast and crew. Several return trips later, she met the talented guys at Hak5 and had an epiphany. As Morse puts it, "Talking about tech tied together my entertainment and geeky technology sides."

For Rettinger, it was addressing a market niche that wasn't there. "About 6 years ago, my computer broke and I thought about switching to a Mac. When I couldn't find any videos on YouTube that talked about how to use a Mac, I figured it was a good excuse for me to document my own experience." Those initial YouTube videos, produced while he held a full-time job running a marketing department, quickly attracted lots of viewers. He knew a business idea when he saw it.

Soon, Rettinger joined the YouTube partner program, at a time when he had about 8,000 subscribers. Still in search of funding, he pitched the idea for TechnoBuffalo to a venture capital firm - and was promptly laughed out of the room. But one of the VCs took pity on him, pointing out that he was inexperienced and suggested he get an MBA. Rettinger signed up for school and during his first semester, he pitched his idea again to a private equity firm and landed the funding he needed to launch the TechnoBuffalo website.

Jon Rettinger

Growing An Audience

TechnoBuffalo launched in 2010 and focused on strategically incorporating social media as a business tool. Today, the website has seen seven consecutive months of traffic growth - with a combined 15 million page and video views in October. "By trade, I'm a marketing guy, so I was able to quantify social media effectiveness," Rettinger says. He used social media to get people involved and invested in the content of the site. He gave previews, incorporated feedback and essentially crowd-sourced the launch.

Morse grew her audience organically. "When I first started, I didn't know a thing about growing an audience. I just decided to be myself and talk to people. Being friendly was actually a key component to my growth in Internet media."

Both talk about the importance of maintaining that connection to the audience. But they warn you need a thick skin to deal with some of the trolls.

Revision3 TV Enters The Picture

Hak5 started in 2005, around the same time as Revision3. After three years of operating independently, Hak5 co-host Darren Kitchen ran into Revision3 co-founder Jay Adelson in a Tekzilla IRC chat room. As luck would have it, the pair were invited to a Diggnation taping in NYC.

After just a few meetings with CEO Jim Louderback, they had a new distributor and network. Kitchen and Morse still produce the show themselves and it is the longest-running show on the Revision3 TV network.

Rettinger's initial discussion with the Revision3 didn't end in an immediate deal, but when he ran into Louderback at CES in 2010, things resumed moving forward. "They gave me the freedom I wanted," he recalls. "Which was a really big deal for me."

The benefits of working with Revision3: their network, industry connections and reputation for growing and nurturing talent.

What's On The Backend?

In addition to writing and hosting, Morse runs the Hak5 webstore - so if you have any order problems, you know who to turn to.

Throughout the day, she's researching, plugging through emails and writing show notes. In the studio, the co-hosts do a quick rundown of the episode and set up the shot. Paul Tobias - cameraman and editor - handles the technical aspects, using Panasonic cameras and a slew of wireless microphones. Recording takes about an hour and then it's off to prepare for the next episode while Tobias edits and sends the finals off to Revision3 for distribution.

At TechnoBuffalo, the setup is simple. Ralph Liernas does all the filming. They shoot with a Canon 5D Mark II, use a Zoom H1 and Rode microphone for audio. Rettinger does all the video editing himself with Final Cut Pro. He's got this down to a science: filming to editing to upload in just 1.5 to 2 hours.

The Nitty Gritty - Compensation

So how much do these folks make? The compensation model is pretty much what you'd expect. With Revision3 as their exclusive advertising and distribution partner, the Hak5 team gets a cut of ad revenue. Additionally, their fans support the show through their purchases at the Hakshop, where the duo personally make and sell hacking gadgets.

For TechnoBuffalo, there is also ad revenue both from the website and videos. So ad clicks, page views and cost-per-action (CPA) deals - where for example, they get a cut if viewers sign up for Netflix (or other partners) using a special code linked to the show. A salary from TechnoBuffalo, sponsored videos and featured content on the website round out the revenue stream.

Is there still room to succeed in this crowded field? Rettinger and Morse say yes. While professionalism is important (minimizing the um's and like's), Morse says, "Don't be afraid to make a fool of yourself in front of people. They'll laugh with you and appreciate your work."

Rettinger, who is a bit miffed that he chose the twitter handle @jon4lakers, adds, "And please, please, pick a good name."