Search engine giant, Google, and US broadcast network, UPN, recently teamed to make the series premiere of the new UPN comedy, "Everybody Hates Chris," available on-demand on Google's Google Video service. The episode launched on the service on September 26th and was available via streaming video for four days. This is the first time that an episode of a new show has been offered on Google Video. "UPN's young adult viewers are avid online users, and streaming the premiere episode of 'Everybody Hates Chris' on Google Video is the perfect opportunity to reach this audience in a new and creative way," UPN president, Dawn Ostroff, said in a prepared statement. "Everyone at UPN is very excited about this innovative relationship with Google, which offers viewers who may have missed the premiere the chance to watch it and hopefully motivate them to watch the second episode on UPN."
In related news: Google has announced several enhancements to Google Video (note: the latter service allows anyone to upload videos using a special Google Video Upload Program at https://upload.video.google.com; Google will then host the video and play it back for free). The service now 1) allows users to watch videos online without downloading any special software; 2) allows users accessing it on Mac and Linux operating systems to watch videos using a variety of Web browsers, including Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari; 3) provides users with a larger viewing window than before, which they can resize to fit their browser; 4) provides more controls, including play, pause, skip back, skip forward, and volume controls, and a position timeline with a slider; and 5) provides large thumbnails on its search results page that allow users to play 10-second previews of videos that are available for playback.
(Note: a job ad that was posted on Google's Web site last month, seeking a product manager for "GoogleTV," may provide some clues on the search engine giant's plans to enter the interactive TV space. For more on the ad, see [itvt] Issue 6.28 Part 1.)
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