Netflix launched its first foray into original programming with the release of the TV show Lilyhammer Monday. The show, which stars Steven van Zandt as an ex-mobster in a witness protection program in Norway, was co-financed by Netflix and is, at least in the U.S., only available to the company’s subscribers – a move that mirrors original series produced by cable networks like HBO and Showtime. But there’s a notable difference: Unlike HBO, Netflix is releasing the entire first season on day one.

The company’s chief content officer Ted Sarandos announced the release on the company’s blog with the following words:

“Do you love the indulgence of watching episode after episode of your favorite shows on Netflix? Have you ever wished you could do the same with new shows when they premiere on TV?”

He went on to say:

“Unlike any major TV premiere before it, we are debuting all eight episodes of the first season at the same time today. Conventional TV strategy would be to stretch out the show to keep you coming back every week. We are trying to give our members what they want; Choice and control. If you want to watch one episode a week, you can. If you want to watch the whole season this week, you can do that too.”

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings echoed a similar sentiment when asked about the unusual move during the company’s most recent earnings call:

“Netflix’s brand for TV shows is really about binge viewing. It’s the ability to just get hooked and watch episode after episode. It’s addictive. It’s exciting. It’s different. And our release strategy for original content emphasizes that brand strength, which is to be able to get hooked and pour through those episodes rather than get strung out.”

It’s a remarkable move, and it shows how different Netflix is from the traditional TV world, despite the company’s repeat insistence that it’s just like HBO. Netflix’s subscribers are not used to any schedule, and the company wisely chose not to break with those expectations.

But it’s also a gamble on a different kind of buzz. Traditional TV networks try to generate as much buzz as possible within the first few weeks to get enough people hooked on a new show to keep it going. Netflix on the other hand can be perfectly happy if the majority of its customers watch something else on the service in the next few weeks, as long as it gets a core fan audience hooked on the show  - at which point they’re going to talk about it, much in the same way you’d recommend a show like Arrested Development or Breaking Bad to a friend who hasn’t seen it.

Finally, the binge viewing approach also tells us something about how Netflix views its online competition. Hastings has long said that he is not interested in catch-up TV, and the fact that Netflix hasn’t been offering current-season TV shows the day after they air on TV has been the biggest difference to Hulu.

Of course, Hulu has recently been struggling with broadcaster’s demands to protect the next-day window. Fox shows are now only available to paying Hulu Plus subscribers or viewers who authenticate as Dish subscribers on the network’s website, and other networks may follow suit sooner or later. With Lilyhammer, Netflix seems to tell Hulu: Look, we can get new content too – and we’re not slave to anyone’s schedule.

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Reality TV show The Tester attracts hundreds of thousands of viewers per episode — but if you’re not a gamer, you’ve probably never even heard of it. That’s because The Tester has been running exclusively on Sony’s PlayStation Network, where last season, each episode was viewed 352,000 times on average.

PlayStation Network executive producer of original programming Kevin Furuichi told me during a phone conversation last week that The Tester’s third season, which begins this Tuesday, will for the first time be available for streaming on the web as well, which should result in even bigger viewership numbers. “We are really excited that we are able to deliver an audience,” Furuichi told me.

Check out the trailer below:

The Tester has twelve gamers competing in challenges that look like a mixture of Fear Factor and real-life video games, and the winner will get a job as a Production Associate in Sony’s Santa Monica video game development studio. Furuichi told me that his team initially tried to make The Tester look more like a web series, with shorter, snack-sized episodes. But the audience actually wanted to see more, so now the show is running half an hour per episode, much like a traditional TV show. Furuichi readily admitted that Sony learned some things from traditional TV production for The Tester: “It is not about changing reality TV,” he said.

So why does Sony produce original programming like The Tester for its PlayStation Network audience? It obviously works well as branded entertainment; the contestants regularly get to try out new Sony game titles, and even meet a few game industry legends. But Furuichi also said that it’s about adding value to the PlayStation Network in general. “It brings people into the network,” he told me.

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In these heady two-or-three-screen days, the Grammy Awards has been a classic case study in how social media engagement can pay off ratings-wise. Viewership of the on-air broadcast have increased dramatically since 2009 in younger demographics, with no small amount of credit due to the increasingly elaborate digital campaigns implemented by the Recording Academy.

This year, the main action can be found on Grammy Live, a three-day orgy of live-streaming and social media beginning this Friday and continuing through Sunday, February 12. The events covered will include host-anchored behind-the-scenes coverage (with talent including Alison Haislip and John Norris) and video of other events leading up to the awards, including the MusiCares Person of the Year Tribute honoring Paul McCartney.

While last year, Grammy Live was powered by YouTube’s then-fledgling live-streaming service, this time the awards are working directly with CBS for interactive content, using Akamai (a AKAM) and AEG Digital Media’s internal player to deliver the live stream.

“Partnering with our network partner affords us enhanced opportunities,” Grammy Live executive producer Peter Anton said in a phone interview, such as being able to get more on-air mentions for Grammy Live programming. “It wasn’t part of our overall scheme, but this year there have been broadened opportunities through this new partnership.”

On Sunday, the live stream will follow awards attendees from their limos to the post-show after parties, with multiple camera angles available backstage during the show. Basically, any video you could possibly imagine watching will be accessible via Grammy.com and the Grammy Live iOS apps (optimized for both iPad and iPhone) for a true two- or three-screen experience — except for the actual Grammy Awards, which will only be watchable on CBS.

After the show, the Grammys will once again face the problem they had last year: actually getting the live performances from the broadcast online in a reasonable amount of time. Unfortunately, the issue remains the same — each performance must be individually approved for release by the artist and rights holders before the Grammys can post it, which isn’t the most efficient of processes.

“We’ve created a mechanism to deliver content almost instantly, and we hope to have most available on iTunes and Vevo right after the show, but we’re still subject to outside approval forces that we just can’t control,” Recording Academy CMO Evan Greene said in a phone interview.

While the Grammys have added an on-site opportunity to expedite getting those releases, the fact remains that if Adele isn’t happy with how she sounds next week, the Grammys won’t be able to officially release her performance.

But despite the limitations of the industry being celebrated, the Grammys are still finding ways to push digital content. A Facebook contest has given up-and-coming band The Almost Kings the opportunity to play a half-hour set on Grammy Live; a deal with Pepsi and Pandora has lead to an original video series spotlighting this year’s Best New Artist nominees.

And then there’s We Are Music, a sort of visual playlist creator powered by Rdio that allows you to combine photos and 30 second clips of music for an iTunes Visualizer-esque experience that you can then share with others (like so). “Music is a part of us. It pens our love letters. It delivers our motivational speeches…” the site says. “Now it’s time to bring your story to life.” It’s kind of cheesy. It’s also kind of true.

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Surveys conducted and sponsored by research firm BTIG suggest that movie viewers might actually spend more money on films, if they were available online or on cable video-on-demand services at the same time as they are available in theaters. The post from BTIG’s Richard Greenfield (free registration required to view) details three different surveys conducted over the last few weeks, which asked respondents to forecast their theatrical and home entertainment spending if windows were to collapse.

All of the surveys leveraged Survey Monkey to poll respondents, but the most complete of the three polled the Survey Monkey Audience (SMA) network, racking up 1,124 responses. About 70 percent of respondents from the SMA survey said their spending on entertainment wouldn’t change if priced in the $20-$25 range. But while the majority of users predict no change, the number who say they would spend more outnumber those who predict they would spend less by three to one.

According to Greenfield, that group appeared to be price-sensitive and more likely representative of today’s average consumer that respondents from the other surveys. Those who expected to spend more would be doing so because they saw cost savings from concessions and parking outweighing the difference in price and convenience of watching at home. In addition, some respondents suggested that they were unhappy with the current moviegoing experience.

In aggregate, the survey shows that Hollywood studios would likely make more revenue with the collapse of movie windows. More importantly, those sales would come with better margins since they wouldn’t be sharing with exhibitors. The fear seems to be that putting pressure on the theatrical window could cause some exhibitors to go out of business, which would in turn destroy that distribution channel.

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Video discovery startup Taboola has been growing fast, adding top publishing partners like BusinessWeek and The Washington Post, as well as expanding into the live streaming video vertical. Those new partners have helped drive growth for Taboola, which now reaches more than 100 million uniques a month.

According to data from Quantcast, Taboola has reach of more than 110 million unique visitors a month. Of those viewers, more than 65 million are in the U.S. alone. As a result, Taboola generates more than 300 million recommendations every day, CEO and founder Adam Singolda told me by email.

While Taboola, which provides a widget for recommended videos, has traditionally been used by news publishers like the New York Times who are trying to expand their available video inventory and advertising revenues, it’s been tapped by two new partners in the live streaming vertical. Ustream and Major League Gaming now both make Taboola recommendations available to their viewers.

With the move to provide recommendations for live streaming viewers, Taboola has had to add capabilities beyond just the contextual targeting that it typically uses to match up video recommendations for users. Because videos are live, the recommendations engine doesn’t have as much data to go on. So Taboola is providing recommendations based on behavioral targeting while viewers are watching live streams.

Outside of the live video market, Taboola has also added new partners. Those include BusinessWeek, The Washington Post, Food Network, The Hollywood Reporter, Daily Caller, Ask Men and Gannett’s Navy Times. With some of those publishers, the Taboola video widget is on every page of their websites.

As publishers try to expand their use of video, they need ways to highlight the content that they’ve produced. Taboola can not only provide recommendations, but can also expand the amount of video available to viewers by recommending those from other publishers and sharing revenues between them.

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Google is asking the Federal Communications Commission for permission to test a mysterious Wi-Fi and Bluetooth-enabled “entertainment device,” in employees homes in four U.S. cities. So inquiring minds want to know, what exactly is it? And why is Google filing for the experimental license? Does that mean the search giant is getting into manufacturing its own devices?

On the what is it category, it appears to be homebound, so it could perhaps be a set-top-box style device, or a new addendum to Google TV. Here’s what Google’s application, which was filed in December, offers in terms of information:

Google is developing an entertainment device that requires testing outside the laboratory environment. The device is in the prototyping phase and will be modified prior to final compliance testing. … Users will connect their device to home WiFi networks and use Bluetooth to connect to other home electronics equipment. This line of testing will reveal real world engineering issues and reliability of networks. The device utilizes a standard WiFi/Bluetooth module, and the planned testing is not directed at evaluating the radio frequency characteristics of the module (which are known), but rather at the throughput and stability of the home WiFi networks that will support the device, as well as the basic functionality of the device. From this testing we hope to modify the design in order to maximize product robustness and user experience. Utilizing the requested number of units will allow testing of real world network performance and its impact on applications running on the device, so that any problems can be discovered and addressed promptly. (emphasis mine)

Google asked to test 252 devices between January 17 through July 17 in Mountain View,Calif.; New York, Cambridge, Mass. and Los Angeles. Its employees will have them, so maybe you can hit a Google employee’s home to watch the Super Bowl and then start sniffing around.

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Super Bowl weekend is upon us, and this year, the big game is going to be streamed live online for the very first time. Who wants to see the game between the Giants and the Patriots on a tiny laptop screen, you might ask? Cord cutters and other folks without cable or even a TV set for one, but the live stream also comes with some extra perks that the TV broadcast won’t offer: Viewers will be able to select from different camera angles, pause the game and other fun stuff.

Are you one of those people who just watch the game to catch a glimpse of the ads? No worries, you’ll find all of those online as well. There is also a bunch of second-screen action going on this year to deliver tweets and other extra content to your cell phone or iPad while you watch TV. And speaking of mobile: You’ll even be able to watch the entire game on your handset. You know, in case that laptop screen is to big, or you happen to be away from both Internet and TV.

Here’s our growing list of online resources for Super Bowl XLVI on Sunday 02/05:

• NBCSports.com will show the entire game online starting with some of the pregame action at 2pm ET (11am PT). The kickoff is at 6:30pm ET (3:30pm PT), and the game will feature HD-quality streams from multiple camera angles, DVR-like functionality to pause and replay the action and a number of social features.
• Verizon subscribers will also be able to stream the game on their phones through the NFL Mobile app, which is available for both iOS and Android. More info on the app here.
• Viewers in Canada will be able to watch the game via Bell’s mobile apps.
• Twitter has aggregated all the relevant accounts and hash tags to follow in this blog post.
• Hulu has once again aggregated Super Bowl ads in its Adzone.
• YouTube has Super Bowl ads, recipes and more in its AdBlitz channel.
• At least five of the ads shown during the game will use Shazam to offer free downloads, sweepstakes and other stuff meant to entice you to join the second-screen action. More about this on Shazam’s blog.
• Sports social mobile app PlayUp has teamed up with St. Louis Rams running back Steven Jackson and Buffalo Bills wide receiver Stevie Johnson to chat with football fans during the game.

We’re gonna update this list with additional links in the coming days. Stay tuned!

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Google rolled out a significant update to its Google TV platform this week, which started to reach Sony’s Google TV devices a few days ago. The update brings Google TV to Android Honeycomb 3.2, which makes this the last big update before the platform migrates to Android 4, a.k.a. Ice Cream Sandwich. The new software has so far only been made available to Sony devices, but an update to Logitech’s Revue is forthcoming.

Here’s what’s new to this update:

• Google TV now supports hardware acceleration, which should make apps with animation effects much snappier.
• Updated devices also support HTTP Live Streaming. This should not only help with HTML5 web video, but finally make local media streaming through apps like Plex work on the platform.
• Improvements to the way Google TV identifies channels will make it easier for app developers to build their own EPGs.
• Google TV’s Chrome browser was also gets an uplift.

So when will Ice Cream Sandwich come to Google TVs? We asked a Google spokesperson, but didn’t receive a reply in time for this story. There are rumors that the Ice Cream Sandwich update will be made available before the end of the year. Google TV folks have said in the past that there will be smaller updates throughout the year, with a bigger emphasis being put on updating apps for the platform in the coming months.

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Currently most online video services have a sort of hunt-and-peck approach to finding things you might want to watch. You pick a video, watch it and then when it’s done you have to hunt down something else that might be of interest. But the latest version of Remixation’s Showyou app attempts to simplify the discovery process by making discovering new videos easier and more enjoyable.

The latest version of Showyou includes new ways to navigate content by category or by the social network that they’re pulled in from. There’s also a way for users to search and see all content curated by hashtag on Showyou and via Twitter. Finally, the update provides more information about others that you follow and gives you the ability to see what they’ve been sharing b clicking on a user’s avatar.

The trick to what makes Showyou work is that videos play in-line, without users having to exit the app. That reduces the amount of time it takes between finding videos, and there’s always something interesting being shared in the grid. Showyou displays videos from YouTube, Vimeo, Break Media, some Viacom shows like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, as well as videos from The Verge, TED and other Internet publishers. Altogether, the Showyou app pulls in about 5 million videos a day, according to Remixation CEO Mark Hall, or about 150 to 200 each second during peak times.

That’s led to huge amounts of user engagement for its users. While session times on most video sites typically run less than 10 minutes, Showyou users watch about 35 to 40 minutes of video whenever they open the app, or about eight videos per session on average. Online video needs better discovery mechanisms for users, and apps like Showyou are helping to increase viewership and keep users tuned in.

(Disclosure: Remixation is backed by True Ventures, a venture capital firm that is an investor in the parent company of this blog, Giga Omni Media. Om Malik, founder of Giga Omni Media, is also a venture partner at True.)

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One of Pirate Bay founders convicted of aiding copyright infringement said the group is considering taking its case to the European court, after Sweden’s top judges refused to hear their appeal against a guilty verdict handed down in 2009.

In a ruling on Wednesday, the court said it would not grant the right to appeal to Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij and Carl Lundström, three of those convicted in 2009 — effectively cementing their jail sentences and a SEK 47 million ($7 million) fine. Another one of the site’s founders, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, had already lost the right to appeal after missing a hearing due to illness. All four have since moved abroad.

But Sunde, who now runs the online payments service Flattr but faces an eight month jail sentence and multimillion dollar fine, told me that the group would “probably” take their case to Europe — although other options were still available.

In addition, in a post on his blog, he said that the Pirate Bay had broken “the monopoly of information”, accused the Swedish legal system of corruption, railed against the entertainment industry, SOPA, PIPA, ACTA, and drew parallels with Wikileaks.

TPB has been one of the most important movements in Sweden for freedom of speech, working against corruption and censorship. All of the people involved in TPB at some time have been involved in everything from famous leaks projects to aiding people in the arab spring. We’ve fought corruption all over the world. We’ve promoted equal opportunities to poor nations around the globe.

The ethical argument will rage on, particularly in the wake of controversial legislation such as SOPA and ACTA.

But in the meantime, the organization appears to be taking defensive measures and the main Pirate Bay site appears to have been taken down. It is currently redirecting to a Swedish mirror, thepiratebay.se, in what Torrentfreak reports is an attempt to prevent domain seizure by US authorities — as was seen recently with the shutdown of Megaupload

A lawyer for Lundström, a pharmaceuticals millionaire with ties to extremist groups who had helped fund the Pirate Bay in its early days, told Sweden’s Dagens Nyheter that the decision was “absurd” and that the technical legality of torrent services still had to be examined closely.

“I am disappointed that the court is so uninterested to dissect and analyze the legal twists and turns of one of the world’s most high-profile legal cases of all time,” Per Samuelsson told DG.

However the case proceeds, it seems that the Swedish court’s decision could spark further action against other sites, according to the country’s Anti-Piracy Bureau.Stockholm’s Aftonbladet newspaper said the APB is preparing “a new offensive against filesharers”.

The highest court has made it clear that anyone who takes any part in these crimes, even those who supply the internet connection, will have to face up to their responsibility,” said Henrik Pontén, legal counsel for Sweden’s Anti-Piracy Bureau

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There’s no time like the present to be using technology to make something really big. Of course, a lot of people and companies are already doing just that — but unfortunately, they don’t always get the kind of wide exposure they deserve. That may be partly because the media coverage of such big-picture, highly technical projects is not as accessible and absorbing as it could be.

So it’s awesome that video sharing site Vimeo has joined forces with General Electric and video publisher Cinelan to launch “Focus Forward” – a micro documentary series that aims to showcase big, world-changing technology innovations in a compelling way. The project’s website describes its mission thusly:

“In the span of three minutes, these films will encompass everything from medical advances to economically viable ‘green’-powered homes to the development of wireless technologies in Third World countries, not to mention innovations in transportation and healthcare, gene therapy and waste management, or any other sphere of art and knowledge that inspires them.”

In all, it’s a very cool mission. The series launched in January at the Sundance Film Festival, and some of the biggest names in documentary filmmaking — including Morgan Spurlock (of Super Size Me fame) Gary Hustwit (who made Helvetica and Objectified) and Jessica Yu (who won an Oscar for Breathing Lessons), among others –are signed up to make Focus Forward films that will premiere online and at film festivals throughout the year.

But to me the most exciting thing is that the project, which is hosted on Vimeo, will also be open to submissions from the general public. People who submit videos to the contest, which is called the “Focus Forward Filmmaking Challenge,” will be up for $200,000 in cash prizes, including a $100,000 grand prize. Submissions will open during the Tribeca Film Festival this April, and the prizes will be handed out next year at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival. This is what Focus Forward says it’s looking for:

“We’re looking for professionally produced, three-minute end-to-end stories about people or organizations whose innovative efforts in medicine, computer science, robotics, engineering, green energy, or other fields of applied technical knowledge have had a significant positive impact on humanity. Recent, cutting-edge inventions that are changing how we live today are of special interest.”

With how inexpensive digital SLR cameras with video capabilities have become in recent years, and the huge amount of innovative tech projects out there, there is a lot of opportunity to create awesome films that fall into the Focus Forward mold. It’ll be exciting to see what people come up with.

Here’s a video explaining what the Focus Forward Film Challenge is all about:

Focus Forward – Short Films, Big Ideas: Filmmaker Challenge from Focus Forward Films on Vimeo.

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For years, YouTube has worked to shake the perception that it is all about amateurish user-generated content. It’s hardly just the home of dogs on skateboards and stupid human tricks anymore, as the amount of professional and semi-professional content being produced and uploaded increases. But now that it’s got the content, it needs to get better about helping viewers find it.

YouTube is betting big on original programming, reportedly spending more than $100 million on 100 channels of professional content. Those channels are mostly being focused on various verticals: action sports, for instance, or food or fashion. But while it’s investing in quality, Kamangar told the audience at the D:Dive Into Media conference this week that it’s still too hard to find the stuff people want to watch.

To fix this, YouTube also redesigned its website to highlight content that is relevant to its users. The idea behind the redesign, according to Kamangar, is that once users have selected channels that interest them, they will be shown the newest videos of interest to them. In the same way that viewers typically pick between a handful of favorite TV stations, allowing users to self-select channels could potentially keep them coming back.

It’s a step in the right direction, but it’s not perfect. As I’ve noted before, the biggest issue is one of discovery: Once users have chosen the channels that they’d like to subscribe to, it’s difficult to find new content that might be relevant to their interests. Suggested channels — including its featured new channels — are hidden off to the side and below the fold.

Kamangar admitted Tuesday that discovery is still a problem for YouTube. “Google historically has been a search company, so for us to get the discovery and recommendations right, it’s a big challenge. But it’s the kind of challenge that the engineers at Google absolutely love,” Kamagar said.

YouTube is the second-biggest search engine in the world, behind parent Google. But it’s one thing to serve up the right video when a viewer searches for it. It’s a whole other thing to anticipate what a viewer wants to see and help them find it. That’s something YouTube will need to get better at, especially as it tries to increase the average session time that users are staying online for.

The site has a massive number of users stopping by the site every day, but few of them stick around for very long. That’s something the company has been struggling with since its inception. If it’s going to become a bigger competitive threat to traditional programmers, it’ll need to step beyond the hunt-and-peck process of video search and provide better discovery tools.

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A dedicated Apple TV set was a hot topic at the end of 2011, spurred mainly by comments Steve Jobs made in his official biography by Walter Isaacson. So far in 2012, news on that front has been relatively quiet, but a new note by longtime Apple TV set booster and Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster (via Fortune) is reigniting discussion Wednesday morning.

Munster claims discussions with a “major TV component supplier” which had been contacted by Apple about its TV display parts lead him to believe Apple is still on track to introduce a dedicated television device in late 2012. However, there’s a caveat: Munster thinks if Apple can’t get a revolutionary new content model in place, then it won’t move on the market this year.

The analyst then goes on to suggest three possible scenarios that might constitute a unique Apple approach to the television market. Those potential solutions break down roughly as follows:

In Munster’s first scenario, Apple would basically leave TV programming to existing operators and simply layer its own interface software on top, including menus, guides, DVRs and content discovery. Munster notes that Apple was expected by some to manage its own wireless network in the U.S. ahead of the iPhone launch, but instead partnered with AT&T and focused on UI and UX instead of content. Remember that apps came after the iPhone’s original introduction.

Apple could also partner with existing networks to offer live TV, and at the same time, deliver on-demand content from providers like Netflix, Hulu Plus or any other content partner willing to play via an App Store-style distribution channel, Munster suggests. It’s a “best of both worlds” type solution, and would probably still come complete with an overhauled UX, but might be trickier to negotiate than option number one, since it involves negotiating with two different types of content providers.

Munster’s last option is a completely customizable, a la carte option that would see users subscribe to live TV packages from content providers. This would be the most revolutionary of the options in terms of the existing TV experience, but it would also involve a dazzling shift in the way providers make their content available, and the negotiations involved in doing so would be challenging, at best. In the end, there’s also no real guarantee that selective programming is what viewers are after, especially if existing, less flexible bundles from other sources cost less.

GigaOM’s Ryan Lawler wrote last year that Apple’s television effort was more about experience than about content, and described a likely outcome of Apple’s TV endeavors that pretty much mirrors Munster’s second scenario listed above.

Given the challenges involved in negotiating the third solution, I have to agree that a system that works with existing content sources, but also opens up the possibility of apps for different kinds of content makes the most sense as a solution that could still make big waves in the TV industry while also remaining realistically possible in the near-term. Which of Munster’s Apple TV predictions, if any, make the most sense to you?

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Dancing babies, cute kittens and . . . quantum physics? Science may not be the first thing that comes to mind when you are thinking about YouTube, but the video site has seen a boom of educational content. YouTube is expected to announce on Wednesday that views of educational videos have doubled on its site in 2011, with close to 80 percent of these views coming from outside the U.S.

A significant part of this has been driven by the smashing success of the Khan Academy. Salman Khan’s no-frills biology, calculus and physics lessons have clocked close to 120 million views on YouTube since he started uploading them in 2006. However, there is a growing movement toward more entertaining and visually appealing lessons that speak the language of the YouTube generation.

The most recent examples for this type of programming include some projects launched in January as part of YouTube’s new channel initiative: Crash Course, for example, combines lessons about biology and world history with smart humor, a YouTube-typical in-your-face style of narration and professionally animated graphics.

Crash Course is a co-production of Hank and John Green, of Vlogbrothers fame. The channel launched just days ago, and the duo have already managed to get around 275,000 views with little more than two lessons posted. John Green told me during a phone conversation this week that he has been very excited about this initial success: “It really stabs in the heart the lie that YouTube is about cat videos,” he said.

The Vlogbrothers are among dozens of content makers that have been receiving sizable advances from YouTube to professionally produce content. Reports put the total spent by Google for this kind of content north of $100 million. That money buys YouTube participation from stars like Rainn Wilson and Tony Hawk, but the initiative also includes around a dozen channels with news and educational content.

Many of these channels are part of YouTube for Schools, a program launched last month that offers educational institutions access to a controlled YouTube environment to ensure that students don’t goof off watching the latest music videos. Green told me that he has already received “dozens of emails” from students who were introduced to his new show by their teacher. “People are already watching Crash Course in classrooms,” he said.

But with great power comes great responsibility; in this case, there is a duty to get the facts right. Green has been using a real-life educator to make sure that he doesn’t get his history dates mixed up. Fact-checking is absolutely necessary for this kind of content, he told me, admitting, “I don’t trust myself.”

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Palo Alto, Calif.–based video encoding startup EyeIO left stealth mode on Wednesday with the announcement that it has licensed its technology to one of the biggest players in the online video space. Netflix is using eyeIO’s encoding technology to cut down on the bandwidth of its streams, allowing the company to deliver HD video without busting subscribers’ bandwidth caps or overwhelming networks in emerging markets.

EyeIO has been operating stealthily since the end of 2010, and it was able to win Netflix as a customer last summer. Netflix hasn’t said where and in which capacity it is exactly using the technology it has been licensing from eyeIO, but the company’s VP of Product Development, Greg Peters, said in a press release that eyeIO is “an important part of the technology [Netflix uses] to improve video quality and overcome bandwidth challenges presented by Internet infrastructure.”

Standard-definition Netflix streams can consume up to 2.2 Mbps of bandwidth. Netflix’s 720p HD videos come in at roughly 3.8 Mbps, and 1080p videos go up to 4.8 Mbps. EyeIO CEO Rodolfo Vargas told me during a phone conversation on Tuesday that his company’s encoding technology can achieve better-looking results than most established encoders with 20 percent bandwidth savings and that eyeIO can still deliver similar quality to other encoders with up to 50 percent bandwidth savings. Content in 720p could be streamed using 1.8 Mbps, he explained. The company does this by optimizing the encoding process, which means that the results are regular, albeit smaller, H.264 files that can be played by end users without any need for additional plug-ins.

Bandwidth savings like these could be crucial to a company like Netflix both in wired as well as wireless networks. Netflix has been struggling with ISPs’ imposing bandwidth caps, and it is allowing its subscribers to voluntarily degrade their streaming quality to avoid hitting those caps. The company also started an aggressive international expansion last year, rolling out its service throughout Latin America, where average network speeds are often lower than in the U.S.. And finally, Netflix has also seen significant traction on mobile devices, where bandwidth caps are often much lower than on fixed networks.

EyeIO was founded by online video technology veterans; Vargas used to be the senior program manager for video at Microsoft, and one of his co-founders, Robert Hagerty, used to be the chairman and CEO of teleconferencing provider Polycom. The company is privately funded and currently has fewer than 10 full-time employees but is looking to expand over the coming months.

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Mobile video sharing startup Klip is adding a new feature that will let its users share their videos with just a select group of friends and family. The app maker has enabled this with the rollout of “Circles,” which is what it calls the private groups that users can set up.

Klip users can decide who is in their circle by selecting other users. When it comes time to shoot or upload a video from their camera roll, they can then choose to share the video publicly to the Klip network or privately, just to members of their Circle. Then, members of the Circle videos can have private conversations without worrying that they’ll be viewed by the general public.

Even if a video is originally marked as private on Klip, it can still be shared by the original uploader on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, email and SMS. That said, uploaders can’t switch videos from public to private, or vice versa. They’ll need to re-upload the video if they want to change its status.

While social video sharing apps like Klip have grown in popularity, few of them have tackled the privacy issues associated with sharing everything everywhere. Apps like Socialcam and others are great for sharing videos to a wide audience, but not so great at giving users control over exactly who can see them.

Klip isn’t alone in trying to solve this problem. Vmix’s Givit, for instance, has also released a website and mobile apps for sharing videos privately among friends.

The latest version of Klip — version 2.2 — just became available on the iTunes App Store and can be downloaded now. In addition to private video sharing, it’s also added new features, like the ability to browse all the videos you’ve liked, as well as the ability to broadcast your Klip activity to Facebook through the social network’s Open Graph.

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At the D:Dive Into Media conference Tuesday, YouTube CEO Salar Kamangar gave his views on how the video marketplace is evolving both online and off. While much of the company’s efforts have been based on advertising — with some small portion of video-on-demand sales, Kamangar said his company could potentially create a service that could enable content providers to create their own subscription-based video offerings on the YouTube platform.

In laying out the current marketplace, Kamangar estimated that about 20 percent of all video revenues — both online and off — come from sales or rentals, with 40 percent coming from subscriptions and the final 40 percent coming from advertising. It’s his belief that the amount of ad spend will grow as a percentage compared to some of the other business models.

YouTube isn’t totally ruling out the possibility of launching subscription capabilities that content partners could leverage, however. Kamangar gave an example of being able to sign up for individual yoga channels, for instance. While he warned that it’s a bit premature and that YouTube doesn’t currently have a product to announce, it’s definitely something YouTube is thinking about. “We’re a media platform want to be biz model than media partners demand,” Kamangar said.

That comes as YouTube begins to rethink how it positions itself and as it is investing heavily in more than 100 channels of original programming. Kamangar said YouTube is making that investment as a way to catalyze something that’s going to happen and to make it happen more quickly. In that way, he compared YouTube’s funding of original channels with how Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers is catalyzing iOS app investment with the iFund.

“What we’ve learned from our experience with YouTube is that you can’t predict what’s going to be big. We’re trying to place our bets far and wide,” Kamangar said.

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Want to run Boxee on your PC or Mac? Then hurry up; Boxee is removing all copies of its PC-based app from its servers by the end of the day Tuesday to fully concentrate on the Boxee Box.

The company announced the move late last year, and Boxee VP of Marketing Andrew Kippen confirmed Monday that the company is going through with its plans, despite some criticism from Boxee’s early adopters.

Boxee released the last version of its software for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux at the end of December, and Kippen wrote at the time in a blog post:

“We believe the future of TV will be driven by devices such as the Boxee Box, Connected TVs / Blu-Rays and 2nd screen devices such as tablets and phones. While there are still many users who have computers connected to their TVs, we believe this use case is likely to decline as users find better alternatives. People will continue to watch a lot of video on their computer, but it is more likely to be a laptop than a home-theater PC and probably through a browser rather than downloaded software.”

The most recent PC version of Boxee won’t be supported by the company going forward. Boxee will instead concentrate all of its efforts on the CE market, where it’s been selling the Boxee Box manufactured by D-Link for more than a year. It recently released a USB dongle that brings live broadcast TV to the Boxee Box and also released an iPad app last year.

Still, some of Boxee’s early adopters are pretty upset about the company’s decision to cease support for PCs. The blog post announcing the change provoked hundreds of comments, most of them negative. Boxee may be able to win some of those users over, but many are likely going to look for other solutions. Benefiting from this could be two media center products:

• XBMC is the open-source media center software Boxee is based on. It originated on the Xbox and focuses mainly on local media playback, but can be extended to play online video from various sources through a number of add-ons.
• Plex is, like Boxee, also based on XBMC, but has been going a slightly different route, focusing on a client-server architecture that makes it possible to play media on many different platforms. Plex most recently introduced an app for the Kindle Fire  as well as a personal cloud service.

As for Boxee, cutting its losses and concentrating on its CE platform should help the company keep up with an emerging market that pits it against much bigger players like Google and its Google TV platform. Boxee currently has 45 employees, and the company has raised a total of a $28.5 million in funding.

Check out our video review of the recently released Boxee Live TV dongle below:

Watch this video for free on Video

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Hulu has seen a massive change in the media ecosystem since it was first announced as a joint venture between Fox and NBC Universal. But while the company was formed primarily as a way for content owners to distribute and monetize content online that would otherwise be pirated, Hulu CEO Jason Kilar said that there’s more reason for Hulu to exist now than there was four-and-a-half years ago.

At the D:Dive Into Media conference on Tuesday, Kilar highlighted that the company’s content offering is much bigger today than it’s ever been, with more than 330 content partners, not just the three (Fox, NBC and Disney) that hold an ownership stake. He said there’s more content for users, more users and a lot more usage of the site now than at launch.

But while that growth could be seen as a positive for the industry, there’s been some worry that services like Hulu, Netflix and others could eventually eat into existing business models. In response, Kilar likened the onset of Internet video to the invention of TV. When movie studios first looked at that new invention, there was some fear that TV could be a potential threat to their existing business models. And yet, TV created a huge amount of value for the industry.

In the same way, while Internet video is seen as a potentially cannibalizing force to existing models, Kilar theorized that it would grow to become a huge opportunity for Hollywood as time goes on. The important thing is that those media companies should not be blind to consumer behavior and demand as it evolves. “You need to balance that existing business while also planting seeds that can bear fruit as time goes on,” he said.

He also had a very positive view of the online video ecosystem beyond just his own business. “There’s going to be many winners in this space in the next 10 to 15 years,” he said.

Some other takeaways from his interview:

• Kilar said that the $420 million in revenue that Hulu announced at the end of 2011 was not a revenue miss. He said the board plan for the year was for $408 million, but in the first half of the year the company was pacing well above that, which led to the forecast that Hulu could near $500 million for the year. But in the third quarter the ad market softened and pricing changed.
• Hulu expects to spend $500 million on content next year, but won’t need to raise additional capital to pay for it, Kilar confirmed.
• When discussing the various online, mobile and other connected device rights that Hulu and others need to secure, he said it wouldn’t be surprising for our grandkids to look back and chuckle about how a laptop with keys is seen as different from a mobile phone, which is different than a tablet.

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Video chat is changing the way people communicate, which is becoming increasingly evident in the way it’s being used for virtual work. Remote teams are turning to video communications to provide more face-to-face contact between team members. That’s why Elance recently introduced video chat to its users, as a new feature embedded directly into the site.

Elance has grown pretty dramatically over the past few years, as more and more jobs move online and work becomes more virtual. To provide more value to its users, the company wants to do more than just connect employers and contractors. That’s why it has a virtual workroom that enables collaborative work and communications tools between them.

In their virtual workrooms, contractors can send messages, submit invoices, respond to to-do lists and other features. And now, Elance has added a new video chat feature to enable more “face-to-face” contact between collaborators, without users having to enter a whole different application to connect.

According to Elance VP of Small and Medium-Sized Businesses Ved Sinha, the addition of video chat to the virtual workroom will reduce the friction that comes when employers and contractors work together. While many had previously interfaced through other applications, building the chat window directly into a contractor’s dashboard enables instant communication with the click of a button.

To do this, Elance uses Tokbox’s OpenTok video chat client, which enables businesses to embed video chat into their websites. While there are plenty of video chat offerings available on the market today, Sinha told me by phone that OpenTok was the only solution that allowed Elance to build video chat directly and seamlessly into the virtual workroom.

That was a big advantage for Elance, which wanted to ensure its users didn’t have to open a different client or application to get in touch with one another. And for its clients, the feature should enable better coordination and more productivity.

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