Walmart May Launch A Video Streaming Service, To Battle Netflix And Amazon

Walmart may be the next giant to enter the video streaming wars according to a report from The Information. Walmart is reportedly considering launching its own video streaming service to battle Netflix and Amazon Prime Video utilizing Microsoft Cloud Servers in a five year deal. Walmart wants to undercut its competition by pricing its service at $8 per month or lower. Additionally, Walmart is said to be considering an ad supported free tier of service as well.

Walmart isn't new to video streaming game it already owns Vudu, a service for buying and renting movies. Vudu launched its own ad supported streaming service Movies on Us a few years ago which has failed to take off to date.

According to the report the $8 per month price comes from the idea that Netflix and Amazon are more popular with customers on the East and West Coasts. Customers may move toward a lower cost option. Currently, Netflix prices its service between $8 and $14 per month while Amazon Prime Video is roughly $8 per month.


Source: The Information

“The Interview” Hits Netflix On Saturday, At No Additional Cost

Still Haven’t seen The Interview yet? Well nows your chance, It’s coming to Netflix on Saturday and will be available to subscribers to stream for no additional cost.

Netflix announced today that the highly criticized Seth Rogen and James Franco comedy will be available to U.S. and Canadian subscribers starting on Saturday.

The terms of the deal were not announced, Sony announced today that The Interview brought in $40 million from on demand rentals and another $6 million from theaters.

The Interview was already available from various sources including YouTube and Amazon, but both services required users to rent the movie. Now it’s available to all 39 million Netflix subscribers free of charge.

Amazon Announces Fire TV

Amazon’s Fire TV has three times the power of any of the competitors listed above. It’s packs a quad-core processor, 2GB of RAM and a dedicated graphics processor for fast, fluid playback. It also has dual-band, dual-antenna Wi-Fi to enable instant streaming with a feature called “ASAP” that pre-loads videos based on what you’ve watched previously. The more you use Fire TV, the more accurate ASAP gets.

Amazon Fire TV has a remote and a search aspect that Amazon is hyping. The entire interface is incredibly fluid and easy to navigate, and the remote contains a microphone that can be used for quick voice search. This is a huge improvement over most set-top boxes that require you to search by typing a query one letter at a time.

In addition to its ability to stream video, Fire TV can play games, stream music, create slideshows of your photos and even launch a kid mode dubbed FreeTime that includes tons of free content from Amazon Prime. Fire TV isn't a closed ecosystem with apps like Prime Instant Video, Netflix, Hulu, YouTube, and Vimeo currently supported and more on the way.

Fire TV is available now from Amazon for $99. Fire TV is currently being offered with a 30-day free trial of both Netflix and Amazon Prime.

Source: Amazon

Netflix Support Officially Arrives On Samsung ARM Chromebook

Netflix subscribers who also own a new Samsung Chromebook on ARM can now enjoy Netflix on there Chromebook. The streaming movie giant is now officially supported on this Chromebook, around five months after the device was released.

Up until today, users who attempted to stream Netflix from the ARM-powered Chromebook were greeted with a message that Netflix was working with Google to provide access to the service “soon.” But “soon” has turned into “now,” which honestly doesn't come as much of a surprise: Google included a brand new Netflix plugin for the Samsung Chromebook in a dev release last month. Still, it was a frustrating waiting game – one that many people are now glad is over.

The hold up was due to the need for Google and Netflix to work out some DRM issues – issues that are solved by Silverlight on Windows and OS X, and by NaCl technology on Intel-powered Chromebooks. For the ARM Chromebook, DRM will be handled by that new Netflix plugin and some HTML5 magic.

Source: OMG!CHROME!

Netflix App To Be Available For The Surface Tablets

We overlooked an interesting feature mentioned last night at the Microsoft Surface tablet event. The Netflix app.

Microsoft showcased the Netflix app during last night's presentation saying it supported semantic zoom and that the Netflix app would be ready when Windows 8 launches later this year.

We're guessing that with SmartGlass you could start a Netflix movie on your Xbox console, pause it and resume watching the movie on your Surface tablet or Windows Phone. With the kickstand feature on the Surface, the tablet sounds ideal for mobile movie watching.

Apple In Talks To Stream EPIX Films To Apple TV

Apple is reportedly in talks to stream films owned by EPIX — a joint venture among Paramount Pictures, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Lionsgate — across a variety of devices, including the long-anticipated iTV, according to a report from Reuters. Two people with knowledge of the negotiations told the publication that the talks are in the preliminary stages and no agreement is considered near. The Cupertino-based company is reportedly looking to beef up the content offered through its Apple TV set-top box and upcoming devices. An agreement could prove troublesome, however, due to EPIX’s $200 million agreement with Netflix, which gave the company exclusive streaming rights through September.

Netflix For Android Sees Minor Update

Although there isn’t anything drastically new with it, users will surely appreciate the new stuff found with the Netflix app for Android. Being nothing more than a minor update, this one brings forth some of the expected things such as promised stability improvements and an assortment of bug fixes. In addition, users will also notice that the app now sports an improved interface for the volume control function.

Netflix In Talks With Cable Companies

Netflix’s chief executive Reed Hastings has been meeting with some of the largest cable companies in the U.S. to discuss integrating the company’s streaming product into cable services, Reuters reported on Tuesday. The site’s source said that at least one cable provider may experiment and offer the streaming service before the end of the year. If a partnership were to come from these talks, cable operators could offer Netflix as an additional on-demand option that would be added onto a subscriber’s monthly cable bill. The cable industry originally viewed Netflix as a threat to its $100 billion-a-year business, fearing users would abandon more expensive packages in favor of cheap online streaming services. Having Netflix as an added option could be appealing to many cable companies in an effort to retain “cord cutting” customers. “It’s not in the short term, but it’s in the natural direction for us in the long term,” said Hastings during an investor conference last week.

Yahoo! Now Rumored to Buy Netflix

Although Munster has a mixed track record, particularly on his usual beat of Apple predictions – he’s been shouting about the Apple television for a couple of years now – the suggestion of potential Netflix interest has had a healthy reaction in the streaming media company’s share price. Stock leapt on Wednesday, by over 11-percent, after Neftlix announced its users had watched more than 2bn hours of content in Q4 2011.

Previous acquisition rumors had pegged Verizon as a potential suitor to Netflix, something the carrier moved to dismiss in December. The streaming firm had struggled in 2011, after an aborted attempt to split away its DVD business as “Qwikster” and price increases drove customers away.

Netflix now intends to invest in its own original content, with the first show premiering next month. That’s arguably something Yahoo! might want to get involved in, making its own portal a destination with content viewers can’t see elsewhere.

Verizon is very serious about potential Netflix bid

Mediatech Capital managing partner Porter Bibb believes Verizon Communications is seriously considering making a bid for Netflix. Rumors swirled around recently suggesting that Verizon may team up with the kiosk movie rental service Redbox in 2012 to create its own streaming service to compete head-to-head with Netflix, although perhaps Verizon Communications is considering a different strategy. “I am hearing rumblings from inside Verizon that they are very serious about either Netflix or something similar,” Bibb told Bloomberg on Tuesday. Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam confirmed earlier this month that the company is looking to enter the steaming-video space in an effort to bolster its FiOS offering.