Why can't you buy a subscription to a digital streaming service like HBO Go without being a cable TV subscriber? Because HBO would put its relationship with the cable TV providers in jeopardy, and the cable TV providers supply parent Time Warner with the bulk of its revenues. As Gabriel Rossman points out in a column in "The Atlantic," "Cable is a total cash cow and a more flexible business model means lower revenues." Cable's business model involves bundling channels in addition to offering premium channels like HBO for an added fee. Time Warner, HBO's parent, has a business model …

Television is far from dead, says former IFC and Sundance Channel President Evan Shapiro, who has just taken a new position as president of Participant Media's television division, in an interview with Forbes. In fact, he says, "technology that everyone sees as a threat to TV's throne as cultural king is the very thing that enables its dominance." Indeed, Shapiro cites a recent Forrester Research report that finds that Netflix, iTunes, Hulu, and DVRs and the like have added 25% more TV viewing to our lives, which equates roughly to an hour more per day and 15 days' worth per …

YouTube Next is the division of YouTube that nurtures emerging online video talent. It was born out of YouTube's purchase of the content channel Next New Networks last year. As TubeFilter says, YouTube Next exists because it's in YouTube's best interest for everyone on YouTube to generate tons of views -- and eventually, more advertising dollars for YouTube and its partners. One way to achieve this is to help budding online video stars become better at what they do, which is precisely what YouTube Next has set out to do: they teach partners how to use the site's tools and …

To a great extent, the future of streaming and downloadable content on the Web is what's at stake in the increasingly contentious debate surrounding Net neutrality. On one side sit the likes of Comcast, AT&T and Verizon, large Internet service providers that are doing their very best to control that future. On the other side sit the likes of Netflix, Google and a host of other media companies that want to make sure their content is accessible to all without any restrictions or disadvantages imposed on them by those who control the Web's pipes. However, according to The New York …

Stacey Higginbotham at GigaOm serves up a history of Comcast's anti-Net neutrality practices since 2007. "No one has more power and is taking as active a stance in this business," she says. From blocking P2P traffic in 2007 -- which resulted in a slap on the wrist from the FCC -- to implementing data caps of 250 GB per customer (which it has resolutely stuck to), Comcast has made it clear that it wants to protect its business. In 2010, Comcast tried to request an additional payment from content delivery network Level 3 to deliver its traffic to Comcast subscribers. …

On Tuesday, All Things Digital reported that Google was looking to make an investment in the popular video game content creator Machinima.com, which receives most of its revenue from its channel on Google's video-sharing site, YouTube. The funding round was reported to be in the neighborhood of $30 million, which would value the company at $190 million. Since the news broke, most critics have said the move makes sense -- especially following Google's acquisition of Next New Networks in 2011. Sources tell Tubefilter that Machinima turned down a number of acquisition offers to get to this point -- including one …

If digital streaming is a gold rush, then Elemental Technologies, which today announced a $13 million round of funding, is the company selling the tools, says GigaOm's Stacey Higginbotham. The five-year old startup is selling GPU-transcoding servers to some big-name content providers, like ESPN, HBO Go and Comcast, making it "the arms dealer in the war between the pay TV providers, the content folks and streaming companies like Netflix," Higginbotham says. Elemental's servers come packed with graphics processors sold by Nvidia, which Higginbotham says enables it to convert videos into any format quickly and without wasting power. By using GPU …

Some things never change: media companies and pay TV providers will always wrestle over carriage fees. As All Things Digital's Peter Kafka points out, the result is always the same, too: the consumer ends up paying more. Nevertheless, the latest spat -- between Dish Networks, a satellite TV provider, and AMC Networks, owner of such shows as "Mad Men," "The Walking Dead" and "Breaking Bad" -- has taken an interesting twist: Dish claims that because AMC sells certain shows to digital streaming services like Netflix, Apple's iTunes, and Amazon Prime, its content is worth less to Dish subscribers. Kafka paraphrases …

Google bowed Google TV in 2010 with a good degree of fanfare -- but the service, a kind of operating system for television that combines the Web giant's search know-how with YouTube content, never quite caught on. For one thing, most major television networks blocked their online content from streaming to Google TV. Consumers and reviewers also complained about the system being slow and expensive. Now that Apple is widely rumored to be readying its own TV, The New York Times reports that Google is redoubling its efforts to make Google TV stick, having announced partnerships with such manufacturers as …

Following Facebook's $1 billion acquisition of photo-sharing startup Instagram, which makes it especially easy to share photos on mobile phones, The Wall Street Journal says speculation is rife that a video-sharing mobile app maker may become the next big acquisition target for a social media company. Like Instagram, services like Viddy, Socialcam and Mobli are attracting millions in venture capital dollars, in addition to drawing millions of users. And like Instagram, these video services are revenue-challenged: "The biggest issue in mobile is monetizing," says Dino Decespedes, vice president of mobile video app startup Mobli, Inc., which counts actors Leonardo DiCaprio …