hulu

Verizon Communications considered buying Hulu when the streaming-video site was shopping itself around to potential acquirers earlier this year.

Hulu was just one of the online video options Verizon looked at, CEO Lowell McAdam said at a UBS investor conference today in New York.

"We continue to look at alternatives," he said during a one-on-one discussion onstage, which was Webcast.

Verizon was among many potential suitors looking at Hulu when it was seeking a buyer this summer. Hulu ultimately did not find a partner.

That Verizon looked at Hulu, which streams television shows and movies, underscores the growing … Read more

Watching a Netflix or YouTube video on a computer screen can feel a little crowded, especially in a huddle of friends.

To fix that problem, many televisions are now adding these services to the TV interface, creating what are now considered "smart TVs." Services like Netflix, Hulu, Pandora, and YouTube are readily available on those TVs for streaming media to the big screen.

But if you don't own a streaming-ready TV, you have dozens of options to emulate the experience. Popular devices like Roku, Boxee, and the Apple TV have cropped up, each offering a different way … Read more

Nook Tablet or Kindle Fire?

That's the question that's already bedeviling consumers and gadget aficionados alike.

In a matter of weeks, it seems, the tablet market has been compressed to just a handful of choices. The iPad 2 still rules the high end ($500 and above), but the "e-reader as tablet" option now looms large in the sub-$250 range, with the $199 Kindle Fire going mano a mano with the $249 Nook Tablet.

The Kindle Fire has just started shipping, and the Nook Tablet will follow as soon as tomorrow (a few days earlier than originally expected).

Last year, Barnes & Noble released the Nook Color at the same $249 price. Back then, a 7-inch color e-reader that could run apps as well as read color books and magazines, and even play movies and music, was a revelation. The Android tablet could even be rooted--to many, it became known as the not-so-secret most-affordable Android tablet around with the best design (other similarly priced and more-generic Android tablets are, by comparison, terrible).

With the Fire on the horizon, Barnes & Noble knew it had to up the ante.… Read more

As the holiday shopping season gets under way, chances are good that you will come across someone shopping for an Amazon Kindle Fire.

Thanks to its attractive $199 price tag, the Kindle Fire quickly has become the most talked about tablet since the iPad 2. While some will argue that it's actually an e-reader, I've come to the conclusion that the Kindle Fire is more than enough tablet for the typical consumer. But no matter what you call it, it's going to be popular.

When the entry-level Kindle starts at $79.99, you may balk at the … Read more

BrightRoll, a San Francisco startup providing digital video advertising services, has raised $30 million in financing.

BrightRoll currently manages 2.25 billion video ads monthly, or nearly one out of every three video ads served in the United States, according to data from comScore and BrightRoll's internal reporting. The company reports it has reached more unique viewers than Hulu and the top four television network websites combined.

The company says its year-old mobile network currently generates about 250 million monthly pre-roll video impressions on 6,000 mobile apps and websites.

"We challenge the assumption that the networks who … Read more

The next two weeks are going to prove very interesting in the tablet market once both the Kindle Fire and the Nook Tablet start hitting shelves.

Once it was revealed that the Nook Tablet would be featuring content from many major third-party players like Netflix and Hulu Plus to spice things up on that advanced e-book reader, everyone began to wonder what Amazon would come up with.

Although it looked like Amazon was just going to rest on its own ecosystem of products (Cloud Drive, Cloud Player, On-Demand video streaming, etc.) and promote those via the Kindle Fire, it turns … Read more

In case you didn't already know, Amazon really wants you to know about the features on its Kindle Fire.

After touting earlier this week highlighed applications, we have one more reason to consider the 7-inch device.

According to a follow-up to Wednesday's press announcement, Amazon also plans to offer support for Hulu Plus and its library of content. So in case the access to Amazon's standard library of movies, television shows, and music isn't enough, Hulu Plus can offer you more. … Read more

For those who aren't Hulu Plus premium subscribers, the Hulu Plus app for Android offers only a tiny taste of the popular Web site's video catalog. A link on the Home screen leads to all of the free content (which is not much), while pretty much every other link eventually leads you to a premium member log-in screen.

Meanwhile, for paying Hulu Plus subscribers, the experience is quite a bit different. The app opens up to a dashboard with all of your basic functions: TV, Movies, Queue, History, Search, and More. The More icon leads to Favorites and … Read more

Hulu has signed a licensing deal with CW Network that will give the online-video service something that its archrival Netflix doesn't have.

Two weeks ago, Netflix announced its own deal with the network operated by Time Warner and CBS, parent company of CNET. But in that deal, Netflix customers will get only previous seasons of current CW shows, such as "Gossip Girl" and "The Vampire Diaries."

Hulu said in a press release today that under the five-year agreement, it will "offer next-day access to the most recent five current prime-time episodes [at Hulu Plus, … Read more