The NY Times reports that Warner Bros. is financing online video productions on its own rather than asking that advertisers pay production costs. The studio is introducing 24 Internet video shows including short movies, webisodes and games. Says the NY Times: “The shift underlines a growing realization among the big Hollywood studios: Web entertainment is evolving so quickly that they must take on more financial risk to keep up.”

Nielsen said that it launched a service–called KeepingTrac–that will let clients know if their commercials aired the previous day rather than waiting weeks to learn about their ratings. Ad company Carat is the first customer.

Divx Networks filed a preemptive lawsuit against Universal Music Group saying that its Stage6 video sharing site does not violate copyrights. DivX says that its YouTube-like site is protected by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. You may recall that Veoh also filed a preemptive lawsuit against Universal Music Group, which later filed suit against Veoh.

Variety says that Apple is looking to lower the price of its TV show iTunes downloads to $.99 rather than the $1.99. Naturally, Hollywood’s not really excited about this plan. But lowering the price may initiate higher sales and allow room for premium HD content in the future at higher price points.

The NY Times’ David Pogue reviewed Vudu’s new movie delivery service delivered to TVs via set-top boxes. The box costs about $400 and since Vudu uses peer-to-peer streaming technology, it can hold lots of movies in its hard drive.

VideoEgg, an online video ad company, raised $15 million in a round of financing, led by Focus Venture. VideoEgg does overlay video advertising like YouTube’s recently announced overlay video ads.

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