iTunes Gets HBO Content

HBO and Apple today officially announced that programming from HBO is now available for purchase and download via the iTunes Store. Programs include ‘The Sopranos,’ ‘Sex and the City,’ ‘Deadwood’ ‘Rome,’ ‘Flight of the Conchords’ and ‘The Wire.’

‘We’re very excited to make these legendary HBO programs available on the iTunes Store,’ said Henry McGee, president of HBO Video. ‘Whether catching up on ‘Sex and the City’ in anticipation of its upcoming movie release or reliving a favorite ‘Sopranos’ episode, we think viewers will love being able to watch these shows on their iPod or iPhone.’

Television shows purchased and downloaded from the iTunes Store can be viewed on a Mac or PC, iPod nano with video, iPod classic, iPod touch, fifth generation iPod, iPhone or on a widescreen TV with Apple TV.

With the announcement, Apple also introduces more variation in pricing for TV shows. ‘Sex and the City,’ ‘The Wire’ and ‘Flight of the Conchords’ are $1.99 per episode, and ‘The Sopranos,’ ‘Deadwood’ and ‘Rome’ are priced at $2.99 per episode.

At this point, the biggest hole in Apple’s iTunes Store offerings is movie selection. While Apple’s offerings are steadily increasing, they still are a tiny fraction of what’s available via NetFlix.

(Via Podcasting News.)

Internet Video Viewing Up 64%

U.S. Internet users viewed 11.5 billion online videos in March 2008, a 13-percent gain versus February and a 64-percent gain versus March 2007, according to figures from ComScore.

All Your Views Are Belong To YouTube

In March, Google Sites ranked as the top U.S. video property, with more than 4.3 billion videos viewed (38 percent share of all videos), gaining 2.6 share points versus the previous month. YouTube.com accounted for 98 percent of all videos viewed at Google Sites.

Other highlights:

• 73.7 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed online video.
• 84.8 million viewers watched 4.3 billion videos on YouTube.com (50.4 videos per viewer).
• 47.7 million viewers watched 400 million videos on MySpace.com (8.4 videos per viewer).
• The average online video duration was 2.8 minutes.
• The average online video viewer watched 235 minutes of video.

Here are the details:

*Rankings based on video content sites; excludes video server networks. Online video includes both streaming and progressive download video.

(Via Podcasting News.)

Google Reader For iPhone Updated; A Taste Of The Future Web

Google Reader got an update today, but it’s more than an updated news reader – it’s a taste of the future of the Web:

We on the Reader team are heavy mobile Safari users. To make our (and your) Reader iPhone experience better, we wanted to really take advantage of the iPhone’s capabilities.

Today we’re releasing a new beta version of Reader designed for the iPhone and other mobile phones with advanced browsers. You can use it by visiting http://www.google.com/reader/i/ on your phone.

This new version is designed to offer many of the same features as the desktop, while making it quick and easy to act on items. If you’ve used list view, then it should be familiar to you. Scan the titles for an item that interests you, tap and it expands in place. Starring, sharing, and keeping unread are done in place, so you never have to leave the list view or refresh the page. We think it’s a very fast way to power through your reading list.

The overall iPhone experience is years ahead of its competition, but iPhone Web apps have lagged behind.

Google’s update brings us an important Web app that’s carefully tuned to the capabilities of the iPhone. It makes better use of the screen space, there are fewer wait times, and it’s clear that the people that designed the app are eating their own dog food.

How long will it be until mobile content creation apps catch up with this? Don’t be surprised if, within 6 months, there are iPhone blogging, podcasting and vlogging apps as sophisticated as this.

(Via Podcasting News.)