Cablevision says the service allows customers to transfer anything (their italics) that displays on their PC monitors to that widescreen TV. “We are putting an end to the need for families to huddle around their laptops or PCs to watch content together,” Cablevision COO Tom Rutledge press-released.

“Anything” presumably includes iTunes video and Hulu’s trove of network TV fare, an improvement over current PC-TV link of choice Boxee.

A “simple” software download to the PC activates the link, with no hardware in sight. Handheld personal electronic devices that are running through the home network also can make their debut on the big screen, Cablevision says. Internet radio and applications for email and spreadsheets apparently will work as well.

The signal slings through the Cablevision network system and onto a dedicated (unused) TV channel, similar to how home video players work.

Anyone with a computer and a burning desire to watch “Smosh” and “Happy Tree Friends” on the idiot box already has figured out how to do this — but there’s something to be said for a solution that loses the boxes and wires.

Cablevision said its beta test of PC to TV Media Relay will get under way in June. Mac users should stand by for the usual techno-lag, as it’s PC only for now.

The Watch Instantly programming begins this spring, the companies said. (The New York Times broke the story and gives the big picture.)

As with the Sony PlayStation 3, Wii owners can’t stream video until they get their hands on a software disc made available by Netflix. (Reserve a Wii Netflix disc.) Only Xbox 360 owners can skip that step.

The Wii broke big in the console market due to its family-fun games, in which players physically interact with the machine. Video hasn’t been in the picture until now. The Wii machines still cannot play high definition, however.

Xbox360, which does offers HD video, is light years ahead in the video game. PS3 added Netflix’s streams in November and has a built-in Blu-ray player.

“Our research shows that 86 percent of all U.S. Wii consoles are located in the living room,” Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime said in the Netflix-Wii press release. “The Wii console is the social hub around which friends and family members gather to play games and have fun.”

Watch Instantly plays catalog movies and TV shows, but not many current Hollywood hits. Video and audio quality are just OK. Netflix continues to integrate more content into the service — customers have the option of renting or streaming these titles — while rival Blockbuster plans to compete with streams of current films.

Netflix customers have access to the service without additional charge. Some titles are offered directly on the console. Beyond that, users use their computers to place videos eligible for streaming into a queue, then call up that content via the game console. The process is horsey, but it works.

The so-so Watch Instantly won’t bring Wii many new customers, but at least it’ll give big-box salesmen an affirmative answer to the “Does it play video?” questions.

Netflix chieftain Reed Hastings told CES last week: “Pretty soon we are going to be a streaming business with some DVDs.” He reported that in the last quarter, half of the rental giant’s subscribers had streamed at least 15 minutes of video each month.

Netflix announced a handful of video hardware partners for Watch Instantly during the Consumer Electronics Show. They include Panasonic, Sanyo, Sharp, Toshiba and Funai, which distributes the Philips, Magnavox, Sylvania and Emerson brands in the United States.

New Samsung HDTVs, home theater systems and Blu-ray players will be incorporating the OnDemand digital delivery service, a rival to various VOD schemes and Netflix’s Watch Instantly.

The “select” Samsung hardware will be showing up at retailers in the fall. In addition, current owners of “select” 2009 Samsung Blu-ray players and home theater systems, as well as Samsung LCD and Plasma HDTVs Series 650 and above, and LED HDTVs Series 7000 and above, get the OnDemand after firmware updates. The machines would have to be connected to the Internet.

Blockbuster OnDemand will have “preferred positioning on the Blu-ray interfaces,” the companies said. Meaning who shell out out for the hardware and don’t care for the service get to look at what amounts to an ad for Blockbuster as they boot up.

Blockbuster’s streaming media service comes into “millions” of new homes under the deal. Those potential viewers will be freed of the need for the existing OnDemand set-top box.

Blockbuster differs from Netflix’s largely catalog-driven Watch Instantly by offering current films and TV shows at the going rate. The Blockbuster service also offers an on-screen interface that doesn’t call for queue management via PC.

Watch Instantly requires a pain-in-the-rear double queue for those who want to watch a movie that streams in via PC and then to a digital device such as the Xbox 360.

Access to the Blockbuster streaming service is free; they company gets paid by the rental. Watch Instantly comes at no extra charge with a Netflix subscription.

Blockbuster chieftain Jim Keyes vows “the newest hit movies and high definition Blu-ray product” — say what? — the latter a major head-scratcher.

As part of the deal, of course, Blockbuster’s brick-and-mortar stores and web site will sell Samsung’s products. The rental dinosaur also made an OnDemand deal with TiVo.

Netflix’s streaming partners include Samsung, Tivo, Sony, LG and Microsoft via its Xbox 360.

I’m underwhelmed by Netflix’s Watch Instantly, and more than dubious that Blockbuster will be the one to make this type of direct digital delivery work. The presence of Samsung America in the chain is even more troubling, considering that company’s problematic machines and its Nixonian customer service.

But you never know.

Meanwhile, the CBS network has joined the other On Demand, from Comcast cable. The service, staggering about in some sort of beta, aims to give cable subscribers access to digital video content without additional fees. The handle is “TV Everywhere,” meaning the subs can get programming by streaming and downloading to a variety of digital devices, such as computers and mobile phones.

The test universe is something like 5,000 Comcast homes. The meta plan is to divert those viewers from Hulu and similar online services that give away their ad-supported content.

TV Everywhere driver Time Warner threw HBO content into the mix a few days ago. Starz! is aboard as well, for what it’s worth.

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The king of online video streaming remains the inauguration of President Obama.

During the Jackson service:

The wide-ranging content delivery network Akamaidelivered more than 2,185,000 live and on-demand streams (in Flash and Windows Media formats). Global traffic peaked at 3,924,370 visitors per minute, the company said. The load was about 2 terabits per second, the CDN said.

The Obama inauguration hit a peak of over 7 million active simultaneous streams, Akamai reported at the time. The CDN said global traffic was up about 20& during the service.

The CDN handles about 20% of the world’s Web traffic. A typical day’s peak would be something like 580,000 active streams.

CNN.com said it served up 9.7 million live video streams to 11.8 million unique visitors, in the period between 12 a.m. and 5 p.m. ET. CNN’s site hit a peak of 781,000 concurrent live streams, according to an online traffic report from the network.

Ustream reported 4.6 million total streams with 1.6 million total unique visitors. Its streams included one from CBS News. More than 12,000 messages per minute ran through its chat rooms. Ustream says its feed was the only one available on the iPhone.

Facebook saw 1 million users post about 800,000 “status updates” related to the Jackson memorial stream provided by CNN.

ABCNews.com, CBSNews.com, FoxNews.com and Hulu.com provided streams, to lesser numbers.

MSNBC.com said it served 3 million live streams of the event and a total of 19 million Jackson-related videos for the day. There were 7 million uniques during the service.

Hulu said its video streaming output was second only to the Obama ceremony. Hulu showed the Fox News feed.

Note: Different sources are reporting numbers for various time periods, but the above stats give the big picture.

In reaction to the big numbers, Akamai exec vp Robert Hughes had this quote moonwalked out to the media:

“When a public figure of global prominence such as Michael Jackson passes away, the public’s desire for up to date information and news is rarely satiated. Akamai’s network has seen a steady stream of online traffic when news of any sort related to Michael Jackson is updated, and we expected demand from a global online audience around the online streaming of his funeral would be no different.”

Update: Yahoo says it pumped out 5 million streams of the Jackson memorial, its biggest flow ever. During the Obama ceremony, it served up 1.8 million streams.

The mainstreaming of TV on computers via Hulu and a few other outlets has acclimated many people to watching premium content at traditional lengths, such as those of sitcoms and feature films. Producers of online video programming are taking advantage of the added time.

“A few years ago, three minutes ‘watching’ your computer felt like a novelty; now, it’s as familiar as your television set,” one web producer tells the New York Times.

The Monday media section of the Times examines the shift, which is news to pretty much no one with an interest in streaming video. Still, the story “Rise of Web Video, Beyond 2-Minute Clips” pulls together some interesting quotes and observations.

Here are some of the highlights of the Times’ story on online video lengths:

• “People are getting more comfortable, for better or for worse, bringing a computer to bed with them,” says Dina Kaplan, the co-founder of Blip.tv. … “On the Web, producers have this delicious freedom to produce content as long as it should be. They’re starting to take advantage of that.”
• Tom Konkle of the Web series “Safety Geeks” says the tradition of short Web videos reflected limits in Internet speed and server space. The online video experience has grown along with advances in computers and bandwidth capabilities.
• “More than anything else, the longer viewing spans may speak to the maturation of the medium itself,” the Times reported, noting that early kinetoscopes were about 30 seconds long, reflecting both the technology limits and expectations of audience’s attention spans.
• Jon Gibs, a vice president for analytics for Nielsen, said online video “(historically) has been very much a clip-based experience online. We believe we are moving into a transition period where more of that viewership is going toward long-form video.”

I’d add that the documented increase in video durations also reflect that the streaming audience is filling with teens and preteens who grew up with online video — and are far more likely to appreciate and consume longform entertainment on computers than older viewers accustomed to big-screen TVs.

That audience behavior — of convenience over presentation — brings to mind younger listeners’ widespread acceptance of inferior but highly portable audio formats such as MP3.

In addition to the longer durations, total time spent viewing online video has seen a significant jump in the past year.

The New York company “is treading over the carefully negotiated business arrangements of much larger companies and garnering accolades from tech-heads for doing what the big guys have failed to do,” the Times said.

The Boxee software is free, and works on Macs and the Apple TV box. A PC version is in “private alpha,” the company web site says (how’s that for a switch, Mac fans).

Boxee had one of the hottest booths at this month’s CES, the Times reported. Boxee’s blog said the company was approached at the consumer electronics show by “several device makers” interested in embedding the software in existing or future products.

One cable executive said the service was intriguing, but its business prospects were not so hot:

“There is a lot about Boxee that doesn’t work, like the business model, which is really nonexistent right now,” the unidentified cable exec said.

He probably should be hoping things stay that way. One of the biggest complaints, among the many about cable TV service, is its bundling of networks and stations, which effectively forces consumers to pay for channels they never watch.

Boxee admits its technology is not exactly user friendly at this point: “Boxee is not optimized for the Apple TV hardware, Netflix doesn’t work on it, etc.” (Although the user profile asks for Netflix account info.)

An Apple computer or one running on Linux does have to be connected to the TV unless an Apple TV device is attached. Boxee also can be used just on, say, a Mac computer.

A Boxee poll of its web site visitors found the Joost online video application was the one they most wanted to see incorporated into the software.

The web site includes a social media set-up that has links to your presence on the usual suspects. Your first “friend” will Boxee’s creator and CEO, Avner Ronen, 33, pictured.

The online video sources will join Netflix movies on LG disc players to be released in the first half of the year. Netflix already provides movies through LG’s network BD300 player (pictured).

CinemaNow brings premium (pay per view) content from most major studios and TV networks. YouTube, of course, offers a sea of user-generated content, how-to vids, vintage clips and curios. Netflix’s streaming content includes a lot of catalog fare at no additional cost to subscribers.

Netflix and CinemaNow already provide high-definition movies and TV shows; YouTube has been experimenting with HD for almost a year and recently went to wider screen sizes to accommodate the content.

LG’s move makes sense, as consumers continue to seek good reasons to upgrade to Blu-rays over DVDs. The high-definition format pleases videophiles and others who don’t mind sinking bucks into home entertainment, but the lower-cost DVDs continue to meet the needs of most consumers, market research shows.

The added functionality also would lower consumer resistance to yet another black box in the viewing room.

Samsung also has bundled the Netflix streaming video channel with a pair of Blu-ray units.

Similar moves by, say, Sony or Panasonic would open a new front in the home electronics wars, although many Blu-ray manufacturers seem to have their hands full trying to ensure the format’s discs work in their players.

Consumer confusion would be another sticking point for the combo Blu-ray and streaming video players.

“With these new alliances, LG continues its innovation leadership by allowing consumers easy access to multiple entertainment options in one device,” said Tim Alessi of LG Electronics USA, faithfully delivering your canned quote of the day.

CinemaNow recently was bought by Sonic Solutions. It has focused on delivering content via consumer electronics via deals with TiVo, DivX, ARCHOS, Dell, EchoStar Communications, Hewlett-Packard, Macrovision, Microsoft, Samsung and Technicolor.

Meanwhile, the Mac community founded more reasons to hate Microsoft when its Silverlight media player became the “official” Olympics online media delivery system, leaving Apple users to the leftovers on broadcast TV.

Here comes a break in the case: Silverlight now is streaming Watch Instantly movies to Macs — assuming they’re the newer-generation Intel-based machines. This move comes courtesy of  the recent release of Silverlight 2 and Play Ready DRM, a digital rights management technology that allows the app to protect copyrighted content on any browser.

Mac users, of course, aren’t entirely thrilled because they would be downloading a Microsoft plug-in onto their computers. A non-Apple DRM with unknown potential issues isn’t exactly welcome, either.

Still, somewhere between here and the end of the year, Netflix expects to deliver its streaming content to subscribers with the Intel Macs. Some subscribers reportedly have the upgrade now. Both Safari and Firefox browsers can handle the job.

Netflix’s product unit chief Neil Hunt provided this bit of canned quotery in the Watch Instantly press release:

“Silverlight with Play Ready offers a powerful and secure toolkit for delivery of dynamic streaming, which offers faster start-up, and higher quality video, adapted in real time to users’ connection speeds, Members who enjoy watching movies and TV episodes … that can be instantly streamed at Netflix will be thrilled with this next generation improvement of access and quality, on a broader range of platforms, including Intel Macs and Firefox.”

Meanwhile, Samung agreed to provide Netflix movie streaming via some of its recent players, the BD-P2500 and P2550. Terrific. Now if Samsung can just get its players such as the notorious BD-P1200 to play major studio Blu-rays. Like, say, the highly anticipated new James Bond releases like “Dr. No.”

This means delivery options for Watch Instantly include some LG Blu-ray players, the Roku black box and, coming soon, the new Xbox 360 media delivery system.

Update: Jason Snell of Macworld.com reviews the Watch Instantly stream on a Mac, noting that the quality and quantity of the movies and TV shows has improved since the Starz deal. “Still, where Instant Watching shines is in its collection of documentaries, classic movies, and TV series.”

Also, Dan Frommer of Silicon Alley Insider weighed in. Bottom line: “The movie and TV streaming service from Netflix is “a good start and worth checking out if you’re a Netflix subscriber with a Mac.”

southparkstudios.com has launched with full-length episodes and clips from the cranky ani show’s 12 seasons.

“South Park” creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone said of their new home: “We got really sick of having to download our own show illegally all the time so we gave ourselves a legal alternative.”

As of this afternoon, all but the most recent of 169 episodes in the “South Park” library are up there.

The rollout scheme goes like this: New episodes will go up “as soon as possible” after they debut on Comedy Central and remain on the site for a week. Then it’s off to limbo. A month later, they’re back and in the archives.

So as of right now, you’ll have to be patiently wait a day for “Major Boobage.” Who wouldn’t. Headed for the netherworld soon is “Britney’s New Look” (embedded below, for a few days).

The site also offers those with no lives the “South Park” Avatar Generator, with which they can become one of the show’s twisted kids. Of course I did it. “They can pick from millions of combinations to create their perfect self portrait in the ‘South Park’ world. To date 35,000 Avatars have been created,” your MTV Networks press release said.

The generator worked fine, and the result (left) looked a bit like me only not barnacled enough.

Looks like another heh-heh public beta, open to the entire plant: “The site which rolled out a beta version last Wednesday has already received over three million page views, over two million video plays, and more than a million streams of full episodes,” the SP flackery noted.

Perhaps this “beta” will give them time to work on the s-l-o-w loading times.

The site seeks to go global, which should cheer the demented in Britain, Australia and the like. Here’s Ane Garefino of South Park Digital Studios:

“One goal in moving forward is to make every episode of ‘South Park’ available world-wide. Currently, full episodes are not available in the UK, Australia and a few other foreign territories but we’re not far off from making that happen. We have some contractual issues to sift through but we’re getting there.”

In other news of young superweathy men and their creations, Digg founders Kevin Rose and Jay Adelson are sending their own web-only “Diggnation” show to the slightly annoying Blip.tv, along with a few other series from their revision3.com

“More than a dozen Revision3-produced shows will be made available,” your press release raved. “Taking advantage of the open nature of blip.tv’s platform, Revision3 will make each show accessible in multiple formats ranging from Flash to Quicktime to DivX to 3gp for cell phones.” The shows also go out via the Blip distribution network.

Revision3 also has been encouraging viewers to get with the Miro open-source video player, a desktop ap good for Macs and PCs.

The shows already get a good ride around the Net but Blip provides some ad bucks and a decent platform.

The mail-rental giant’s Watch Instantly feature today went to unlimited video streaming for almost all customers. Unless you’re paying $4.99 a month, you’re in. Previously there were caps on the number of online viewing hours. (Mac users, you get nothing — Windows only.)

Netflix says its streaming video library has about “6,000 familiar movies and TV episodes.” The main DVD library has something like 90,000 titles. I will be checking out the service via the 2-week trial offer. Self-serving ad link below.

As the world knows, Steve Jobs is about to announce movie rentals for iTunes in a few hours. This annual MacWorld speech has become a one-man CES for Apple and its competitors (last year it was the iPhone unveiling). Jobs’ rivals won’t let the man get onstage without a bunch of last-minute random vectors. First it was Amazon and its giant MP3 giveaway, now it’s Netflix.

Amazing to see the download/streaming universe expand so suddenly — in just six months — after years of slow growth. And much of the credit goes to, yep, Steve Jobs.

Clear case of bias: I sat in on a meeting with Jobs a few years back. Told him we loved his Macs, and he said he loved our web site and visited it daily. Cool guy. I’m a Mac owner as well but I put up with a PC laptop. And yeah, I own some Apple stock, too. Go stock.

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