News Bytes: October 13

Hulu Envy: SNL Planning Standalone Site; So Does HBO

via paidContent.org

NBC Universal (NYSE: GE) is looking at launching a standalone site for Saturday Night Live, high on its success with SNL clips on Hulu and NBC.com in this election season, reports B&C. Though the plans are still in early stage, the site could include SNL's current sketches library, as well as dress rehearsal skits that have never aired, the story says, and would also feature additional original comedy from the cast. The idea is similar to what Viacom's (NYSE: VIA) Comedy Central has done with The Daily Show and Colbert Report, with their own standalone sites. My two cents: SNL beyond the election skits still sucks, so stick to the knitting, don't get into the rights-clearing quagmire, and keep pushing on Hulu and NBC.com. NBCU is a founding partner in Hulu, along with Fox.

Meanwhile, others not part of Hulu are also considering their own standalone site, or at least beefing up their present ones. We have mentioned about Universal Music Group's plans to develop a Hulu-like site for music videos. According to AdAge, HBO's on-again-off-again digital strategy now includes developing a video portal at hbo.com, with show offering clips and some full episodes.

Microsoft to Release Silverlight 2 Tuesday

via NewTeeVee

Microsoft officially announced the release of its Silverlight 2 media player today; the new version will be available for download starting tomorrow. Microsoft also said it’s signed up new customers for the video player, including CBS College Sports.

The Silverlight 2 beta underwent a pretty massive stress test as it was the video player NBC used for the most recent Olympics; according to a Microsoft press release, the player served up 70 million video streams and 600 million minutes of video watched. Silverlight was also used by broadcasters in France, Russia and other countries to deliver the games online.

But the Olympics did more than put Silverlight through its paces. Microsoft said that the Olympics boosted its market penetration for Silverlight in the U.S. by more than 30 percent. But that stat rings a little hollow as the company didn’t offer up a definitive number of people using Silverlight.

On a conference call today, Scott Guthrie, corporate vice president of the .NET Developer division at Microsoft, said that “one in four consumers now have access to a machine that has Silverlight installed,” and that he expects Silverlight to be running on hundreds of millions of PCs “very quickly.”

Microsoft also announced a host of new customers that will be using Silverlight, including CBS College Sports, Blockbuster’s MovieLink movie service, Home Shopping Network and Hard Rock Cafe International.

The online video battle between Microsoft and Adobe is certainly heating up. Silverlight 2 is available imminently and Adobe’s Flash 10 is in beta.

DISH Network's 1080p VOD service gets inspected, looks impressive

via Engadget

A couple of months back, we saw what was to come with DISH Network's 1080p video-on-demand service. Now, the cats and kittens over at Sound & Vision have a definitive writeup explaining the value of the aforementioned offering. At the time of review, Speed Racer was DISH's 1080p VOD movie of the month, so critics fired it up via the satcaster's set-top-box while comparing it to the version on Blu-ray. Obviously, DISH's 1080p isn't the same quality 1080p as what you'll find on a BD-50, but the results were pretty astounding, regardless. In fact, critics had a tough time deciphering between the two from a normal viewing distance, and while they were fully expecting to be underwhelmed by DISH Network's 1080p material, they were actually stunned by just how impressive it looked. Of course, the dearth of titles available at any given time means that this won't sway potential customers in and of itself, but you can rest assured DISH is looking to beef up its 1080p HD VOD lineup as quickly as possible.

AT&T Takes U-verse to Circuit City, Walmart

via Digital Trends

Telecommunications operator AT&T has announced it will begin selling its U-verse broadband Internet and digital video service through retailers Circuit City and Walmart beginning this month. The offerings will be available in more than 600 retail locations in and near neighborhoods where U-verse services are available: right now, that includes regions of Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, Nevada, Ohio, Oklahoma, Texas, and Wisconsin, although AT&T plans to expand the offering to other locations in the future.