News Bytes: August 1-4

MPAA New Website
via Cynopsis
One explanation for why it's so difficult to stop online piracy is that users often have trouble finding legit outlets that offer the movies they want to see online. The MPAA is out to remedy that with a new website that will point users in the direction of authorized portals such as Netflix, iTunes, Xbox Marketplace and the PlayStation Store, per Variety.

AOL Relaunches its AOL Video portal
via Cynopsis
AOL relaunches its AOL Video portal this morning with a much-improved interface allowing for more intuitive browsing and playback. (It actually looks an awful lot like Hulu now, except for the fact that the top of the page is reserved for sponsored instead of recommended content.) You can browse by programming genre (including a handy web original category), channel, TV show and UGC or use the Truveo-powered search engine to scour for specific titles. The video portal, which contains video programming from all four major broadcast networks as well as 33 cable networks, is being more tightly integrated into AOL programming sites both here and abroad including AOL Music, AOL Television and GameDaily. The front page defaults to most viewed clips from AOL's other programming portals. What's missing is social networking functionality and editorial suggestions - for instance a recommendation engine would fit nicely.

Aside from the breadth of officially-licensed fare - much of it clips - there is little to distinguish AOL Video from other portals. And let's face it; it's just too tough to compete with YouTube in the clip browsing business.

Verizon Brings Web Video to TV
via MediaBytes with Shelly Palmer » MediaBytes

VERIZON is beginning to bring web video to the television set. Verizon has begun testing the service, available through FiOS, in more than a million homes. Verizon will offer YouTube, Break.com, Blip.TV and Veoh through its FiOS VOD system.

Vid-Biz: Adobe, AOL
via NewTeeVee

Adobe to Add Interactivity to Flash Soon; more about mobile Flash in GigaOM’s interview with Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch. (GigaOM)

Lehman Forecasts $100M in Olympics Online Ad Spend; $1.5 billion overall expected revenue. (paidContent)

NYTimes Reviewer Says Dr. Horrible Worse Than Legally Blonde the Musical: The Search for Elle Woods; c’mon, seriously?! (New York Times)

Good-Bye TiVo, Hello Network DVRs?
via NewTeeVee
The simplicity of the idea behind network digital video recorders is what makes them so powerful. Unlike buying a TiVo or some dedicated device (including poorly designed set-top boxes), network DVRs allow you to save your favorite television shows online and play them back whenever your schedule permits.

The fact that you can’t rip the videos and share them with others makes this an ingenious solution for copyright owners, too. Which is why I could never understand the opposition on the part of media companies to the network DVR idea that was being promoted by Bethpage, N.Y.-based cable operator Cablevision. Fox, Universal, Disney and others sued Cablevision in May 2006 to block the service. Had the media companies asked, Cablevision, could have easily made it impossible to skip ads, which would have been a win-win for everyone. Instead, it turned out to be one long legal battle.

But today that battle came to an end, with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit overturning a lower court decision and allowing Cablevision to offer networked DVRs.

Cablevision had appealed the earlier decision, arguing that the Betamax decision that allowed folks to tape videos off television and cable at home set a precedent for its service. Cablevision is obviously is overjoyed by the court’s decision. Public Knowledge, a not-for-profit group, in a statement noted:

This decision is a great victory for innovation, technological progress and consumers’ rights. The Appeals Court reversed a lower-court ruling last year that made an artificial distinction between a VCR or TiVo device located on a customer’s TV set and a remote recording system (RS-DVR) operated by a cable company. The Appeals Court properly found that copies of material buffered for a mere 1.2 seconds do not constitute a copy over which a customer or cable company could be sued.

However, this ruling is not set in stone and will be open to more litigation. As Cynthia Brumfield notes on her blog, the “court also held open the door that Hollywood could argue that the RS-DVR is responsible for contributory, as opposed to direct, infringement.”

So what is the impact of this decision?

First of all, it wouldn’t be a surprise if other cable operators started offering this same feature, for it is clearly something that makes cable service useful. Time Warner Cable has a similar service called Mystro, which it scratched because entertainment giants were growling. Now it can get back in the business and start to use it as a tool to compete with Verizon’s FiOS TV service — at the very least in New York and surrounding areas.

I wouldn’t be surprised if telecom operators who are hawking IPTV jump on the bandwagon and use this as a way to compete with Hulu, NetFlix and Amazon’s pro-content, over-the-Internet services. The ability to record and watch television content anytime puts them on equal footing with the web-based video offerings — along with better quality.

I think the development is a positive for Cisco Systems (CSCO), which had acquired Arroyo, one of the key providers of this technology. On the flip side, it is not such a great development for TiVo (TIVO), which could see its standalone business come under pressure, especially if all cable operators start offering similar services. It could, of course, start licensing its user interface.

Motorola Hires New Cellphone CEO: Qualcomm's Sanjay Jha (MOT)
via Silicon Alley Insider
Motorola (MOT) finally has its turnaround man: The company named Dr. Sanjay Jha co-CEO and CEO of its Mobile Devices business this morning. Jha will lead the company's cellphone spinoff, scheduled for Q3 2008, and will be tasked with making the once-great cellphone company profitable again.

Greg Brown, who's been Motorola's CEO since Ed Zander left last year, is now co-CEO of the company, and will continue to lead Motorola's infrastructure businesses, which include wireless network gear and cable set-top boxes.

Jha, 45, was a rising star at Qualcomm -- most recently as COO, which he was promoted to in December, 2006. He has an engineering background and recently led development of Qualcomm's Flarion group -- a WiMax competitor -- as well as CDMA, Qualcomm's chipset and software division.

His task at Motorola: Right a sinking ship that's lost money, market share, and relevance, and figure out a multi-pronged approach to compete with cheap phones in emerging markets, high-end smartphone platforms from the likes of Apple (AAPL) and Research In Motion (RIMM), and services that rivals like Nokia (NOK) are increasingly investing in.