The 2008 Summer Olympics will be the largest live streaming undertaking ever. Late last week, buried at the end of a VideoNuze blog post about Move Networks, Will Richmond reported that Move Networks will support Olympics streaming.

According to a Move PR consultant the extent of the company’s role and the geographic scope are still being determined. Still, this is exciting news for those planning to watch the Olympics online.

The high-def and DVD-quality p2p video distribution platform Vuze has landed $20 million in funding, according to an article in MultiChannel News.

For those who are unfamiliar with Vuze, it is built on top of the Azureus bittorrent client, one of the most popular, and open-source, file-sharing utilities. Just like Napster and BitTorrent.com, Vuze is a legal re-incarnation of what was formerly a platform for piracy. Some of their 100+ content partners include Showtime, Starz, A&E, BBC, PBS, and The History Channel.

The NBA announced today that it is following the NHL and MLB and will syndicate content to Joost. Select classic games and highlight packages are now available on the P2P video service but the content is limited and will be for the considerable future.

Sports programming is most valuable if it is current but there is a market for classic games, and this type of evergreen content is particularly suited for the web.

ESPN Classic has been able to stay in business based on this idea and if the NBA can sell online ads on games and highlights that would otherwise not see airtime it’s a win-win.

Above: NBA Content on Joost

The larger question is what long term value Joost can offer the NBA and other leagues still trying to figure out how to make money on the web.

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Days like this make me miss one of the staple websites of the first dot-com bubble, FuckedCompany. I can’t help but imagine that Roo Media would be on the top of the list. I’m still baffled by the inner workings of the online video syndicator, but this is a roller coaster ride that everyone seems to want to get off.

Today, four members of the Board of Directors resigned. Three of them were named to the board on May 30th of this year.

Before joining the board at Roo, Simon Bax was Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer at Pixar Animation Studios; Stephen Palley is Executive Director of Pali Capital; Scott Ackerman is a partner at Wagner, Francis, Richman & Ackerman; and Doug Chertok is a Senior Managing Director at Hudson Ventures.

The resignation of these four directors leaves only two directors on the board: Robert Petty and Robin Smyth, the company’s Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer, respectively. As I write, Roo’s stock has hit a new 52-week (and possible all-time) low of $.14.

Whats going on over there? And when is News Corp going to step in to protect their strategic investment?

For those who have been clamoring for a look at the CPMs of online video advertising, the Web Video Report published a list of CPMs and format offerings from some of the leading providers of online video.

In the pricing survey, WVR looks at the wide range of CPM (and other pricing models) available from publishers ranging from mainstream publishers like The Wall Street Journal to web-video specialists like Break.com and social networking sites such as MySpace.

There’s been a lot of discussion today surrounding an LAT article about striking WGA members working with VCs to start digital content companies. Writers can start all the digital content sites they want, it won’t make any difference. Online video in its current state is most valuable as an extension of TV, and MSM owns the most valuable portals.

Independent writer-driven portals? We have those, they’re called Funny or Die and My Damn Channel and they have been at most modestly successful. Their long term potential will never rival that of longer form content distributed on TV.

What these sites have driving their success is star power more than writing. Hollywood will have the eyeballs and as a result the big bucks for talent and promotion for the foreseeable future, and writers is are kidding themselves if they think they can compete on their own.

UPDATE: Bidding ended this morning with one bid at the $25,000 starting price by Paul Lanzarotti, a former wireless exec. According to his LinkedIn profile, he recently started Duel Network, described as “a wireless, peer 2 peer competitive gaming network.” One to watch.

Original: YouAreTV Goes On Sale, No One Bids

Video sharing site YouAreTV has put itself up for sale on eBay. The site which attempted to build a community around independent film and original content has been around for several years but never built a major following.

In a blog post, founder David Dundas broke up with his community, pointing to the demise of similarly comunity focused video sharing sites Odeo (sold to Sonic Mountain for an undisclosed amount) and Kiko ($258,100 on eBay).

So far no one has bid for the company at its $25,000 starting price.

Economies of scale are huge in online video and more difficult to achieve for long tail content. Unfortunately, being lumped in with everything else on a site like YouTube makes finding great original content more difficult to find.

Taking place parallel to advancements in digital media content delivery is development of the next generation of cable set-top boxes. While there have been a number of short-term solutions for getting online content to the TV, in the long run the cable box is stiil the best way. Google knows this and it’s only a matter of time before they’re involved.

Last year Google hired OpenTV CTO Vincent Dureau to lead their Television Technology group, and they have made no secret of its intention to become a major media/advertising company. The TV set its their last frontier. Access to the TV will enable them to build on their ad-targeting ability to make advertising across all mediums more efficient.

But access does not come cheap. MSOs have close relationships with the current leading set-top box manufacturers and want to maintain as much control over what’s inside those boxes as they can. As we have seen before, Google’s size puts it at a rare advantage, enabling them to exert real force to change industries. As they did with mobile, Google could bring about changes in the cable industry.

MSNBC.com today launched the beta of their new online video player. Feeling more like a video portal, the player features a wide-screen aspect ratio and a sliding 300 x 250 companion banner that only appears during pre- and mid-roll ads.

Looks to me like they’ve leveraged some of the Hulu player. But head on over and let us know what you think.

One of the oldest federal programs, The Department of Labor’s Job Corps, started in 1964 has begun posting videos of inspirational speeches by Job Corps students and graduates on YouTube.

While it’s not as exciting as say, the U.S. Military’s YouTube channel featuring bombs being dropped on Iraq and soldiers firing big guns, more federal agencies are beginning to use online video to reach a larger audience.

It’s surprising that there haven’t been more attempts by government and non-profits to generate viral marketing using this medium.