Video

BitTorrent announced Wednesday that the company has named Doug Walker, former chief executive of Alias Systems as its new CEO.

Walker replaces Bram Cohen, the company's cofounder who steps aside to become BitTorrent's chief scientist. Eric Klinker, former chief technology officer of Internap, is now BitTorrent's new CTO.

As inventor of BitTorrent, the peer-to-peer file sharing protocol considered by many to be the Rolex of Internet piracy tools, Cohen is revered by techies and file sharers. As CEO of BitTorrent, a startup trying to cash in on the technology by offering a legal content-distribution service, Cohen has … Read more

Birthday alarms and reminders have been taken a step further with Kaltura's new Facebook app, the clunky-sounding Friends' Video Cards. It's a cool, fun way to fill an e-card with video and photo content and get mutual friends in on the deal.

I test drove Friends' Video Cards with a greeting for my friend Erin, whose birthday it just happens to be today. Creating the card is cake--the Friends' Video Cards app conveniently pulls your friends' upcoming events or lets you name your own occasion. You just add a title and invite mutual friends, if you want, to … Read more

OK, folks, here's your chance to show some Playboy bunnies just how good you are at NBA '08.

Wednesday night, from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m., at Bloomingdale's locations on Beverly Boulevard and on Santa Monica Boulevard in Los Angeles and on Market Street in San Francisco, the ladies with the iconic bunny tails and ears will be on hand, ostensibly for the launch of a new Playboy line of clothes, but also to play some video game hoops with fans.

Now, you may be a wizard at using your joystick to make Shaq slamdunk over … Read more

Video stores appear to be heading the way of the car hop and drive-in theaters.

Movie Gallery, which operates under the names Movie Gallery, Hollywood Video, and Game Crazy, filed for bankruptcy on Tuesday, according to a story by Bloomberg. The collapse of the country's second-largest video-rental chain is staggering when one considers that only two years ago, Movie Gallery's stock was trading at $33.

On Tuesday, the stock closed trading at 22 cents, less than the cost of a movie rental.

Netflix and video-on-demand services being offered by cable companies have cut deeply into the traditional video-rental … Read more

One of the most frequent questions I get from CNET Download.com users is "What free software can I use to edit video?" If I didn't respond to you personally, it's likely because there's not an easy answer. It depends on what type of video you have, and what you want to do with it.

Let's start with the basics. If you didn't know, you likely already have Windows Movie Maker, which was included with Windows XP Service Pack 2 and recently beefed up for Windows Vista.

The XP version of Movie Maker is adequate for putting together clips into larger videos, adding simple transitions, and making basic edits, but I can't recommend the experience. The review on CNET Download.com is overly harsh, but it encapsulates several problems you may encounter.… Read more

Reviews of BBC's iPlayer program have been mixed. The service offers U.K. residents access to television programming through a downloadable player that can queue up shows, and grab entire seasons at a time. Most of the criticism has been toward its staunch DRM and lack of Mac and Linux compatibility, which will be changing shortly. Yesterday, the BBC announced it's chosen to move to Adobe's Flash platform to deliver its video content on the iPlayer, taking the service from Windows-only to a Web-based platform.

Windows XP users will still be able to use the iPlayer software … Read more

Sony BMG, one of the top four music labels, will begin offering music videos from the likes of John Mayer, the Dixie Chicks and Beyonce.

On Tuesday, the companies said that they will stream the videos from the artists' profile pages. Sony also said that it will also include some audio tracks available as well.

The companies will split the advertising revenue, according to a statement. MySpace has also agreed to promote Sony artists throughout the site.

Record labels are looking to expand into different distribution outlets outside of Apple. Independent bands have flocked to MySpace to promote themselves, but … Read more

The New York Post reported on Tuesday morning that New York-based video-hosting community site Vimeo plans to announce this week that it will be distributing videos at a high-definition resolution of 1,280x720 pixels, making it apparently the first user-generated video-sharing site to do so.

The Post's Peter Lauria connects the new push for making high-definition technology available on user-generated video sites to the ongoing price drop in consumer-grade HD cameras--an inarguably hot item this holiday season.

But back to Vimeo--it's an interesting site. Originally a side project for CollegeHumor exec Jakob Lodwick, the site's close-knit community, … Read more

To the British, at least, video games are now officially acknowledged as an art form on par with movies and TV.

Well, maybe that's a stretch. But the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) has announced that it has added Sims creator Will Wright as a fellow, a prestigious honor that has previously gone to the likes of Charlie Chaplin, Steven Spielberg and Alfred Hitchcock, according to PC World (via Variety).

This is pretty cool. If you're not familiar with Wright, well, he's generally considered the reigning king of video games. In part that's … Read more