Microsoft is temporarily shutting Soapbox, its video sharing site, to new users. After two months, Microsoft will open up the service to new users again. Current users however, will still be able to access the site and upload videos. Apparently, too many users were uploading clips from TV and movies, which is what got YouTube in trouble and sued by Viacom for over a billion dollars. Microsoft is expected to use some filtering technology to prevent users from uploading copyrighted videos.

Content delivery provider Limelight Networks filed for an IPO looking to raise $201 million. In 2006, Limelight raised $130 million in a financing round led by Goldman Sachs Capital Partners.

Angel investors provided $25.6 billion in funding to companies in 2006, That’s an 11% increase from 2005, Healthcare and medical devices accounted for the largest share of angel investments (21% percent) followed by software (18%) and biotech (18%). About 51,000 businesses received angel funding in 2006.

TV Guide announced that it was launching an online video search site next month. It would feature video from TV networks but not user-generated content like YouTube. Seems like TV Guide is trying to be relevant again especially since the company recently changed the format of its print TV Guide magazine. This new venture puts TV Guide in competition with Blinkx.

Seems like its the end for viral video company iFilm. Parent company Viacom said it was folding iFilm into its Spike TV brand and launching a redesigned SpikeTV.com. iFilm was one of the early viral video hosting sites on the Internet, which MTV Networks acquired in 2005 for $49 million.

Last week satellite radio company XM was sued by the National Music Publishers Association (NMPA) with both organizations saying that XM isn’t paying royalties for its music download service. The record industry (RIAA) sued XM last year. XM’s service called “XM+MP3″ allows subscribers to download music to their receivers equipped with hard drives.

Movie Gallery, the second-largest movie rental chain behind Blockbuster, announced that it was launching an online movie rental service later this year. Just this month, Movie Gallery acquired Disney’s failed movie service, Moviebeam.

Last week, a federal judge ruled against Cablevision’s  attempt to launch a network digital video recorder, giving a victory to Hollywood. (Read the decision in its entirety here (PDF).)
Network DVRs–sometimes called nDVRs–lets users store TV shows on a cable company’s network rather than on a set-top-box. For some screwey reason, the judge ruled that those recordings would be unauthorized reproductions. Oh really? How do you figure? It’s amazing that the case even went to court!

What’s the difference where the recording is made? Whether it’s at my home or a network from my cable provider.

The studios argued in the Cablevision lawsuit that because the company was doing the recording, not individual customers, their copyrights were being violated.

Cablevision contended that its network technology was comparable to individuals recording shows in their homes because it was planning to dedicate separate storage space for each subscriber. In other words, if 10,000 subscribers decided to record the show “Lost,” 10,000 separate copies would be made in the network, Cablevision said.

The fact that Cablevision was willing to save separate copies of TV shows for every customer shows that they were willing to play fair. They could have said that they were storing all shows together, to save storage space.

A network DVR would save cable companies money since they wouldn’t have to distribute set-top DVRs to customers. It’s a forward-thinking approach, which would have left set-top box makers like Scientific Atlanta and Motorola worried about their revenue streams.

It would be a win for consumers as well. Why buy a stand-alone DVR when you can buy hard drive space on a TV provider’s network? An HD Tivo DVR costs $800, plus monthly fees of about $20 per month. Instead, customers can avoid paying $800 and have one less box under their TV sets.

So what happens if I want to host my own media remotely? Like in a network attached server, where I keep files for streaming or products like Sling or Orb that allow you to view TV shows from anywhere with an Internet connection.

Cablevision said it is thinking about appealing, which I hope they do. This judge’s decision is stuck in the 90s.

Last week, I discussed why network DVRs are the future. Despite some of their negatives, I hope they can survive.

There’s no question that Internet video is popular. And it’s great to see some research numbers behind it. Measurement company Comsore released data on the U.S. streaming video market and found that almost 123 million people (or 70% of the total U.S. Internet audience) viewed 7.2 billion videos online in January 2007.

That’s a lot of bandwidth.

In fact, Comscore found that the average video streamer viewed 59 streams in one month, which is almost two videos per day. I’d say that I watch at least a hundred videos per month, but then again, I do write and blog about Internet video. I regularly surf YouTube, Revver and Stumble Upon Video just to pass the time and to look for interesting things to write about. It’s kind of cool to watch Internet video for your job, isn’t it?

Comscore also found that viewers watched an average of 151 minutes of video online during the month, with the average viewing time per video at 2.6 minutes. This is somewhat surprising since I don’t like to watch videos longer than 45 seconds generally. Anything longer than that and I feel like I’ve been watching an eternity. I want to see the action and move on to the next one. I have watched a few long-form videos, most notably the 9/11 documentary Loose Change on Google Video. But mostly, I’d rather get comfy and watch longer videos on my TV screen.

(My favorite video is something called “Charlie the Unicorn” a hilariously weird animated 4-minute clip which features Charlie the Unicorn going to Candy Mountain, but I digress.)

Here are some other interesting items:

Google Was Top Streaming Video Property. Not surprisingly, Google/YouTube was the top streaming video property in January, with 54.7 million total unique streamers and 1.167 billion total video streams. Most of that is coming from YouTube.com, which accounted for 992 million video streams, leaving Google Video at just 175 billion streams. Seems kind of puny compared to YouTube. I still wonder when Google will integrate its Google Video and YouTube properties—will that ever happen?

Highest Video Consumption Time: Weekdays from 5-8 P.M. That’s also not too surprisingly. It suggests that viewers are watching video after work, which means that most videos are not work related. I’m glad to see that people are watching video for pleasure rather than work. In fact, Comscore found that video consumption was 60 percent higher than average during 5 to 8pm. After 8pm, I’d guess that people move on to their TV screens. On the weekend, the highest relative video consumption occurred between 7:00-11:00 P.M. This is TV prime-time, but Saturday nights are always a slow day for TV networks.

Advertisers Take Note. According to Erin Hunter, executive vice president of comScore, advertisers can use this information to target ads. “Shrewd marketers will utilize a multi-channel strategy to capitalize on these adjacent ‘primetime’ blocks in order to maximize their marketing impact,” said Hunter.

Mike Garcen at MissingRemote writes that he’s been getting lots of e-mails from ReplayTV about their new DVR software offering a “whopping 20% discount”. I’ve been getting them too, but I remember signing up to be on their list. And I haven’t asked to be removed–yet.

Yes, they are getting annoying, but since I follow the industry I figure it’s a small price to pay. And 20% is pretty cheesy.

I was a loyal ReplayTV customer for many years. From about 2000 to 2006, I owned the Panasonic ShowStopper DVR with about 30 hours of recording time. I later upgraded it with a bigger hard drive, which really helped me keep using the Replay for a few more users.

I would always scoff at Tivo users, with their pretty menus and cute sounds. My Replay was lots better, I would say. And in many ways, I still think the menu and user interface design are better than Tivo’s. (Check out my post where I offer suggestion to improve Tivo’s UI.) But I’ve been using Tivo for almost a year now and am used to Tivo’s interface. Some things still annoy me, but not like they used to.

I think it was a mistake for ReplayTV to get out of the hardware business, and switch to PC software only rather than a stand-alone DVR box. And I hope they can survive in the software DVR market, especially with established software like BeyondTV.

Video spam has arrived. The Wall Street Journal has an article about video spam which is beginning to cause headaches for Internet video sites like Revver or YouTube.

Video spam is essentially keyword spamming, such as mislabeling clips just to get viewers to watch their unrelated video. For example, tagging a video with “Britney Spears” is a sure way to get people to watch.

But how common is it? It’s difficult to tell, even though it seems there’s a new YouTube clone launching every week. From the WSJ article:

A YouTube spokesman disputes the idea that video spam is common, saying it “is not a significant problem on our site, and its effects are miniscule.” But other online-video executives say falsely labeled video clips are becoming more noticeable. And some say an anti-video-spam war has begun as they try to head off spammers’ efforts to clog their sites before consumers get annoyed and tune out.

“Without a doubt, we’ve noticed an increase in the past six months,” says Tim Tuttle, a vice president at Time Warner Inc.’s AOL Video and a co-founder of the Truveo video search engine AOL acquired.

As more video sharing sites offer payments to video producers, there may be some economic incentive to post bogus videos or mislabel them. Revver, however says that keyword spamming has actually dropped over the past year. But Revver says each clip that’s uploaded is reviewed by employees, which would definitely cut down on spamming. But not everything is caught. The article describe one video using keywords like “Britney Spears” or “Paris Hilton” on Revver that’s looks to be an advertisement for Palm Inc.

Revver took down the video once they were alerted by the WSJ, but like any spam, it’s sure to pop up again. You can only control spam, it’s very difficult to completely eradicate it. So expect that this time of video spam to continue.

In fact, having automated software that can detect mislabeled video using bad tags or keywords may be a growth opportunity for someone interested in this market. Viewers are also helping control video spam by alerting website operators.

This makes sense since users upload video and tag their videos. They should also help to eradicate video spam.

[Via TVOver.net]