According to BI, Yahoo would be willing to purchase on-demand streaming TV service Hulu for $2 billion, as long as certain demands are met.
Hulu is owned by Disney (ABC), News Corp. (Fox), Comcast (NBCU) and private equity firm Providence.
Yahoo is only willing to make the deal if Hulu guarantees them 4-5 years of exclusive access to the media content.
Hulu, on the other hand, seems to be only willing to give 2 years of exclusivity, albeit with 5 years guaranteed access to the content.
Says one source:
If [Hulu's content creating owners] came out and said, we’ve renewed [Hulu's exclusive rights] for four years at the same terms we have today – it’s really easy to model [a valuation between] $1 billion and $2 billion – maybe more.
Without four or five years of exclusive streaming rights to TV shows and movies, Hulu is not worth anything.
If Hulu does offer 5 year exclusivity, Yahoo would have enough time to “build enough equity with consumers that you’ve created a real leader in premium content and premium advertising,” adds the source.
Without exclusivity, Yahoo (and other bidders) could simply just bid for the rights to stream the content in the future, as it would cost significantly less. In fact, when the exclusivity period for Hulu’s current content ends, Google and Amazon are expected to bid hundreds of millions of dollars for the rights.
Result for: comcast
The Internet currently uses IPv4 (Internet Protocol version 4), which uses 32-bit numbers, allowing for the availability of a total of 4 billion IP addresses.
According to experts, about 94 percent of those addresses have already been allocated, and the Internet may run out of IP addresses by 2011, at least under the current IPv4 system.
A new system, IPv6, would use 128-bit numbers, allowing for an almost infinite amount of IP addresses. So far, however, adoption has been slow.
If adoption of the new system doesn’t happen soon, Google Internet evangelist Vint Cerf warns that a “black market” for IP addresses would start, taking “away from the decentralized nature of the Internet.”
“Without IPv6, the Internet’s expansion and innovation could be limited,” also notes American Registry for Internet Numbers president and CEO John Curran. “Delaying IPv6 deployment may strain the work of Internet operators, application developers, and end users everywhere.”
Google is one of few companies that already puts all its services on the IPv6 protocol, with Facebook being another notable company.
Verizon and Comcast, two of the largest ISPs, have begun testing the protocol, as well.
Result for: comcast
Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem (DECE), the syndicate of technology, cable and entertainment companies has introduced their long awaited cloud-based digital locker today, dubbing the service Ultraviolet.
Consumers would create an Ultraviolet account which would allow them to purchase movies, TV shows and music and access it from any web-connected device like HDTVs, Blu-ray players, smartphones, tablets and gaming consoles.
DECE consists of Best Buy, Cisco, Comcast, Cox Communications, Fox Entertainment, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Intel, LG Electronics, Lionsgate, Microsoft, Motorola, NBC Universal, Netflix, Nokia, Panasonic, Paramount Pictures, Philips, Samsung Electronics, Sony, Toshiba, and Warner Bros.
The group expects to launch the service later this year, and any device manufacturer, entertainment producer or other company “that want to offer the UltraViolet service would have to license its technology specifications from the consortium,” says IW.
Licensing requirements will be “as light as possible,” however.
The two notable names missing from the list are Disney (who is creating a rival system; Keychest) and Apple, which already has iTunes as a “digital locker” for content played back on iPods, iPads, and iPhones.
