Starting August 11th, Microsoft will roll out a dashboard upgrade for the Xbox 360 with a bunch of new options for Netflix streaming, including adding movies to your queue without a PC. I got a chance to get hands-on with the upgrade tonight and Netflix customers are going to love what's in store for them.

The most significant upgrade made to the Netflix app for Xbox LIVE members is that users can now add movies to their Netflix queue without having to use a computer. You can now browse through 100 movies per genre based on the types of shows you've previously watched and when you find one you want, you simply add it to your queue. Browsing is simple and fast and being able to make Netflix movie selections directly via the Xbox is much appreciated. The one function that's still missing though is the ability to be able to actually search for a movie based on the title. Absent of that search function, you can only browse through the top 100 movie selections from each genre that are automatically presented to you.

In addition to the new browsing feature, Netflix videos now have better adaptive bitrate technology, which enables a smoother viewing experience when your Internet bandwidth fluctuates. Microsoft says this allows for better estimates of the user’s Internet connection and is now more accurate. If the Xbox detects that a users network condition has degraded, the Xbox can seamlessly switch to a lower stream while continuing to play out the existing buffered content. For anyone who has a broadband connection that tends to degrade in
quality, this enhanced technology should help, although I didn't see a difference myself probably due to the fact that I'm on a 50Mbps FiOS connection.

While it's unclear if any of the Netflix videos are encoded at higher bitrates than before, Microsoft says the video experience will also be a better one due to the fact that the upgraded Netflix app supports improved encoding profiles that allow them to deliver higher encoded bitrate content using less network capacity.

Along with these improvements, Microsoft is also releasing a new movie parties feature for Xbox LIVE Gold members that enables them to watch a movie with up to seven of their Xbox friends. It's a pretty neat function where all the avatars sit together in a virtual theater to watch the movie and can interact with each other.

While some might be hoping to see Facebook, Twitter, Last.fm and Zune video and 1080p Instant On features in this release, Microsoft says those won't be coming out until later in the year. Considering that Netflix streaming to the Xbox 360 only launched just over six months ago, it great to see Microsoft and Netflix already updating their app and making the experience even better.

Related Posts:

– 1080p Streaming On Xbox 360 Will Require 8-10Mbps Connection For Full Quality

– Detailing Netflix's Streaming Costs: Average Movie Costs Five Cents To Deliver

– Netflix Streams 1.5 Billion Minutes Worth Of Videos To The Xbox 360

– Review, Hands-On With Netflix Movies On The Xbox 360, HD Included

You gotta love it when a company like Amazon users the power of video to get their message out. Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos has an eight minute video uploaded to YouTube to explain the company’s acquisition of Zappos. Now that’s how video should be used.

As good as the content of the video is, the quality is terrible for me. Wish Amazon had used a service other than YouTube.

Back in May, Sorenson Media, best known for their Squeeze encoding software and the Spark video codec, launched a new video platform called Sorenson 360. After being hands on with the offering for the past three months, I've come to the conclusion that it's one of the most well thought out platforms on the market for small and medium sized customers.

While the company markets their new service as a "Video Delivery Network", the new SaaS based offering is really a video platform that has been built specifically for those who may not need all the bells and whistles of more complex platforms like Brightcove or Ooyala. Sorenson's new 360 system was designed for the needs of small and medium sized businesses and bundles in transcoding, storage, management, player design, delivery and analytics all in one easy to use system, all hosted by Sorenson.

While I've personally used a lot of video platforms myself, many of them are designed for content owners who have a lot of complex needs or are trying to monetize their content. As a result, many platforms have all sorts of functionality for ad insertion and monezitation which makes the platforms quite difficult to learn and use. While there's nothing wrong with these systems and are valuable for content owners who need that functionality, there's also another large segment of the market who simply needs to get their content online quickly and easily without all the bells and whistles. That said, I found the Sorenson 360 platform to be not only easy to use, but also rich in functionality. Added 7/24: Thanks to the commenter below for pointing out that I didn't mention if the platform supports streaming based delivery. Currently, all videos are delivered via HTTP and not via streaming based protocols.

Encoding of content for the platform can be done two ways. For content owners needing maximum control and highest video quality, it's best for them to uploaded videos using the latest version of Sorenson Squeeze 5. This seamless functionality built into the new version made encoding and uploading videos from my desktop a snap, but for me, it was even easier to upload videos via my web browser. For content owners who don't have encoding software on their computer, being able to drag and drop a file into the browser and have the Sorenson 360 system transcode it is much easier. I uploaded a bunch of clips a few minutes in length and the system transcoded them very quickly.

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While many, including me, have been asking for some time now when YouTube will show a profit and what their long-term business plan is, today, YouTube went on the offensive on their Biz Blog to "debunk the top five myths about YouTube". While one might think that Google is going to finally provide us with real data points on YouTube's business, the post doesn't provide enough details to truly debunk anything.

This is the first time I can remember that YouTube has gone on their blog to address topics being discussed about them in the industry and comes at an interesting time. In the past few weeks, we've seen more Google executives telling people in the media they are tired of analysts trying to figure out their costs and one has to wonder if this is the start of Google trying to fight back.

While the YouTube blog post ends by saying "These myths are officially busted", they didn't officially bust anything, at least not in my eyes. Without facts and numbers as compared to the rest of their business, the few data points they gave out don't provide enough details to debunk anything.

• Myth 1: YouTube is limited to short-form user-generated content. Google says, "We have thousands of premium content partners, from Sony to Disney to Universal Music, and fans can find hundreds of full-length feature films and thousands of full-length TV episodes on YouTube."

We know Google has premium content partners, but first define what a "premium" partner is? How do we know you really have "thousands of them"? And while Google does point us to their movies page, of the 12 videos clips highlighted for me on the home page, seven of them are trailers and not full-length feature films. What percentage of full-length feature films and TV shows make up the total number of videos on YouTube? Clearly not even 1%. Now that would be fine if these premium content partners are making up the vast majority of your revenue, but Google gives us no indication of that.

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We're super excited to announce that Marc Whitten, the GM of the Xbox LIVE division at Microsoft will be the keynote speaker at the Streaming Media West show on Wednesday November 18th. Marc joins Bill Stone, President of FLO TV and Emil Rensing, Chief Digital Officer of EPIX as the other keynote speakers for the show.

Marc's going to have some really cool stuff to show off on the Xbox 360 and while it's too early for us to talk about it now, we'll have some more details later on in the year.

Registration for the show is now open and all keynotes are FREE to attend.

Almost ten years ago to the day, on August 24th, 1999, I sat down for dinner at the Mayflower Park Hotel in Seattle with senior executives from Blockbuster about a new video on demand movie service that they claimed, “would forever change the movie industry”. Back at the time, I was working for Globix, which had just built out a CDN and we were in discussions with Blockbuster about using our network to deliver their movies.

Fast forward one year later to July of 2000 when Blockbuster and Enron announced they were teaming up to deliver a Blockbuster entertainment service, initially featuring movies on-demand, via the Enron Intelligent Network. Globix never did get Blockbuster’s delivery business but as we all later found out in 2002, there never really was any business between Blockbuster and Enron to begin with.

At the time, similar movie services were also being worked on between U.S. West and Intertainer, a company funded by Sony and NBC and if you remember that era, you’ll recall that all the talk in the space was about how video on demand was this “killer-app” that telcos would use to destroy the VHS rental business.

While Blockbuster (BBI) was ahead of their time in 1999 and was thinking about a digital media strategy way before consumers wanted the service and the Internet was even able to support it, that foresight on their part never materialized into any real online video strategy over the next ten years. Today, Blockbuster is getting it’s head handed to it from Netflix and others who have developed, executed and rolled out online video services with much success, in a very short period of time.

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With all the news this week about Comcast’s “On Demand Online” trial and the number of broadcasters who announced they will be offering up programming for the trial, I'm still not seeing where the business model exists for such a service. How many consumers are going to be willing to pay an additional fee every month on top of their cable bill, just to get the same content they get on their TV to their PC? Why do content owners think consumers are going to pay for the same piece of content over and over, simply to be able to consume it on different devices?

I don't think I'm different than most consumers, when I say that I would not pay more money on top of the $95 a month I already pay for cable and Internet, simply to be able to get that same broadcast signal to my Mac. What's the added incentive for me to spend more money with the cable company? Why wouldn't I just go out and pay a one-time cost to buy a Slingbox and then watch TV on any device I want?

While I keep hearing people say that over-the-top video delivery threatens to disrupt the traditional TV model, I don't see that being a reality. If cable companies actually thought about adding such services for free, to enhance their current offering, it would make a lot of sense. But you know that no cable company is going to offer any kind of over-the-top service for free. And while some have speculated that such services could be offered with a "small additional fee", I have yet to see any study that says consumers are willing to pay for it and what exactly is classified as a "small fee". We all know it's not going to be just a few extra bucks a month.

For all the talk of online video disrupting the traditional cable TV model, keep it mind that online video as yet to change the financial aspect of the business. Yes, it's been a disruptor as far as the technology goes for getting video to lots of devices, but it has not changed the underlying business models that exist today. I know the bigger picture here is what it will do for the future, but right now, only Comcast is even talking about testing a service, to a base of only 5,000 customers. Nothing is being disrupted, as measured by actual revenue from such a service and won't be for years, if at all.

Keep in mind that every time such a service is talked about, rarely does anyone talk about penetration numbers, how many consumers will sign up for it, over what period of time and what it will cost. It takes a really long time for any new service like this to make any significant impact and even longer when the business model makes no sense on paper. This also applies to STBs and all of the other devices like Xbox 360, TiVo and Roku's that are capable of playing a role in the over-the-top debate.

I think the key point here is that no cable company is willing to have over-the-top replace your cable but rather try to make it look like they are providing you with more value and as a result, charge you more money each month, for the same content you're already paying for, but to a different device. Does that really sound like a compelling offering to consumers that would get them excited? It doesn't to me, but maybe it does to others.

And while I'm on the subject, I hear phrases like over-the-top (OTT), Web TV and Internet TV all used interchangeably but rarely are they well defined. What do people think these phrases mean and what's the differences between them, if there is one? Maybe it's just semantics, but I'd be interested to hear how others would define these phrases.