As I mentioned yesterday, internet movie channel Epix launched this weekend. The TV channel is available to Verizon FiOS customers, who can also login to the EpixHD web site to watch dozens of movies including new releases such as Iron Man and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button as well as older, more obscure titles including Bubba Ho Tep and Son of Rambow.

If you don't have Verizon FiOS you can request a 3-day weekend trial of the service, but I'm not entirely sure what the point is, since Epix doesn't plan to launch a web-only version anytime soon. Perhaps they're hoping you'll contact your local cable, satellite, or other TV provider and request they add Epix to the lineup.

If your invitation hasn't come through yet, you can take solace in the fact that I did score an invite. OK, that may not be much comfort, but I did manage to grab a bunch of screenshots of the user interface. It's kind of a mixed bag right now. The search function works quite nicely and you can click the watch button from the drop-down menu that appears when you're searching for a movie -- if the movie is available. Unfortunately, there are a ton of listings for movies that you can't actually watch yet, including Star Trek, GI Joe, and The Godfather I, II, and III.

You can also browser for movies by most watched, newest, genre, or other collections. You can also see all the movies from A to Z.

Browsing is sort of a cumbersome task though, since you have to scroll through thumbnails of movie posters. If it's not clear what movie you're looking at, you can mouse over the cover to see the title, but it may take a moment for the title to show up. And in the genre section, many movies are listed more than once (for example, the same title might show up in comedy, award winners, and action). And it's clear the web site wasn't really designed for geeks, because the sci fi category is dead last, which means you have to do a lot of scrolling before you get to it.

On the bright side, video quality was pretty good and you can even click a button to check your bitrate and other settings, which are automatically adjusted based on your internet connection settings.

Epix is a new premium TV channel that's a partnership between Viacom, Paramount, MGM, and Lionsgate. Today the company is announcing that Verizon is the first distributor to sign the channel, which means that Verizon customers will be able to watch thousands of movies in the channel's library. Now here's where it gets interesting: Epix isn't just a TV channel. As part of its offering, the group is also beta testing a web-based video service where users can stream thousands of titles. And today Epix announced it would be adding 3,000 HD videos to the lineup.

The problem is that Epix Megaplex (the web component) won't be open to the general public. It'll only be available to payng subscribers of the TV channel. And in fact Verizon hasn't even committed to making Megaplex available to FiOS TV customers yet, which means that not a single TV distributor is currently promising to make use of the Epix web video offering.

There are two problems with Epix Megaplex as a I see it. First, the company is using old paradigm thinking and making the web component available as a value added feature for TV subscribers when Epix could probably convince a fair number of domestic and international users to sign up as web-only subscribers or pay-per-view users.

Second, as TechCrunch's MG Siegler points out, why is it that you can walk into a video store and grab virtually any new release the day it's available, but you might have to visit a dozen web sites to find the same content available for download or streaming online -- if it's available at all? Wouldn't it be nice if Viacom, Paramount, MGM, Lionsgate, Hulu, Netflix, Amazon, and all the other companies offering online video would come to some sort of agreement that would let you find all of the videos you want in one place while making sure that the appropriate rights holders get paid?

Look, there are a lot of places to find online video these days. And in many ways, Clicker is just another one of these sites. But the service, which launched in private beta at TechCrunch 50 this week certainly has a lot going for it.

First off, in terms of content, it's hard to find a site with a better list of web video including network TV shows, webisodes, and high quality content from professional and amateur sources. The site is also extraordinarily easy to navigate. You can search for shows by title, genre, or media type (TV, movies, web shows, or music). Or you can just start typing in a search box to see what pops up. And results, with thumbnail images, will start to appear once you've entered a few letters.

One thing that's nice about Clicker is that right at the top of each show page is a link that tells you how many episodes are available online. Clicker doesn't host the videos, but rather scours the web for videos that are already online. If a video can be embedded in Clicker's site, it is, so you can watch without leaving the web page. If not, Clicker provides a link to the site where you can watch the video.

The site lets you subscribe to videos by creating playlists, and you have a nice array of options for each video. For instance, say you're watching one of the latest episodes of The Guild and decide you'd like to subscribe to the show. You can add all episodes to your playlist, just new episodes, or just the latest season. Then when you click your Playlist link, you can see a list of episodes you've watched or have yet to watch. There's also a "Season Pass" section that lets you see the shows you've subscribed to, although I'm guessing TiVo isn't going to be happy with Clicker co-opting its phrase for a series subscription.

You can request an invite for Clicker by visiting the service's homepage.

CBS, which owns the online TV portal TV.com recently redesigned the site, and today the company is announcing deals that will allow it to show online video from PBS, Sony, MGM, and other studios in addition to the Hulu and CBS content that's already available.

In other words, you can add TV.com to the long list of online video portals, most of which are showing pretty much identical content. What CBS hopes will set the site apart from the competition is the existing user base that uses the site to view TV listings, episode guides, and the site's social features. The site has active forums, reviews, and a ton of information about TV shows, actors, and other entertainment related items.

What it doesn't have is a user friendly interface for browsing online video. If you click on Videos or Shows, you may very well get to a page that has information about and video clips from a TV show. But it's not until you click on the full episodes button that you'll find out whether or not full episodes are even available. And I wasn't able to find a single page with a list of TV shows available for viewing like the ones you can find at Hulu and other popular video sites. Sure, most people will probably find it easier to search for content than to browse, and the search engine works reasonably well. But again, it just takes too many clicks to find out whether full episodes are available for streaming.

TV.com certainly has the potential to be a major player in the online video space. The site has a great URL and a good selection of content and features. But if CBS is serious about making it a portal for watching videos and not just reading about them, the site still needs a little work.

Yahoo! appears to be slowly pulling the plug on Jumpcut, the company's web-based video editing application. When you go to upload videos, you now get a message saying that Jumpcut is no longer accepting uploads. Users will be able to continue remixing videos that they or other users have already uploaded for the foreseeable future, but no new videos can be added to the site.

Yahoo! recommends users who want to continue uploading and sharing videos use Flickr. But there are a few major differences between Jumpcut and Flickr. First, Flickr users don't get the advanced editing tools that Jumpcut offers. And second, you currently need to pay for a Flickr Pro account to upload videos. So what Yahoo! is really doing here is driving users to YouTube and other free web video services.

Jumpcut showed a lot of promise. I think there's a need for a service like this, which allows users to upload videos and then perform some basic cut and paste edits, alter the soundtrack, or add subtitles and other effects. Not everyone has or needs Windows Movie Maker or iMovie on their computers, making a web-based service appealing. But Jumpcut always offered a walled garden approach. Users could upload and edit videos. But they couldn't export them. While you could embed Jumpcut videos on any web site, you couldn't save the finished video to your desktop or export it to YouTube.

[via TechCrunch]

There's no shortage of places to find online video these days. Most TV networks offer full length episodes of at least a few shows, and video portals like Hulu and Joost offer content from a wide range of sources. First on Mars wants a piece of that pie, and has taken an interesting approach that's more akin to FanCast or AOL Video's strategy of aggregatings programs from multiple sources including Hulu, CBS, PBS, and other network sites.

First on Mars has an attractive, if busy interface built on Flash. You can browse a long list of shows and networks and add favorite programs or shows to a playlist with the click of a button. Unfortunately there's no easy way to search, which means things can get unwieldy.

The site also lets you browser programs based on "mood." For example, if you select "Bleak," you see tiles for shows like American Gothic, Battlestar Galactica, and Jericho. If you're in a "Financial" mood you get an odd choice of programs including The Colbert Report, Cribs, and My Super Sweet Sixteen. I'm not sure what that says about our culture -- or about the number of programs available online.

First On Mars displays videos by loading web sites in a frame, which means you'll see the videos exactly as they appear on the original web page. But for some reason the selection seems to be a bit more limited than what you'd find on some of those original pages. For example, clicking on the PBS icon brings up Nova, but not Frontline.

[via VentureBeat]

Online video portal Sling.com is set to open to the public on November 24th. It's currently in private beta, but we got an early peek at the service. The online video player is easy to use, and there's plenty of content from a number of major US television networks as well as ton of videos from web sites like College Humor and 60frames.

While the selection of videos is pretty extensive, that's not really what makes Sling.com special. In fact, the content library looks pretty much like what you can already find at Hulu. That makes sense, since many of the TV episodes and full length videos are coming straight from Hulu.

What makes Sling.com unlike any other online video site is the way it works with the company's Slingbox hardware. If you have a Slingbox plugged into your TV set, cable or satellite box, or TiVo, you can use Sling.com to watch live video over the web. Sling Media has offered the ability to stream video over the internet since the company's inception. But Sling.com allows you to access live, pre-recorded, and web video all in one central location.

If you have a Slingbox, there's plenty of reason to choose Sling.com over Hulu. If not, the case isn't quite as compelling at the moment. Eventually Sling Media plans to roll out social tools that let users do things like record clips of TV shows and movies using a Slingbox and share them with other users at Sling.com. But that feature isn't available yet.

You can watch Sling.com's web videos in pretty much any browser. But if you want to watch live TV, you'll need to be running Windows and using Firefox or Internet Explorer. Mac support is coming soon. I also noticed a glitch during my test that caused Firefox to crash every time I switched from watching a live program to watching web video, and then back to live video again. Hopefully that issue will be worked out by the time Sling emerges from private beta later this month.

Web sites like Hulu, YouTube, and TV network sites turn your computer into a sort of video on demand terminal. Missed last week's episode of The Office? Just go online and watch it for free. That's all well and good when you're sitting in front a web browser. But what if you want to watch TV from the comfort of your couch?

ZeeVee is a company that offers offers an overpriced $499 set top box that you can stick next to your TV to your computer to grab internet video which you can then transmit to your HDTV for viewing with a remote control instead of a keyboard. Today the company released a beta version of its Zviewer software for PC so that you can try the interface for free on your computer. And if your computer already happens to be plugged into your TV like mine is, and you already happen to have a wireless remote control like I do, there's no reason to pay a dime.

So I was pretty excited to take Zviewer for a spin. But after playing around with it for a few minutes, the excitement has dissipated. First of all, the software is really designed for users with HDTV displays. The menu text is really too small to read on a standard definition TV. I know that the digital cutoff is coming soon, but would it have been that tough to let users toggle between high resolution and lower resolution modes?

Second, the Zviewer browser is basically a frontend for Firefox 3.0.3. That's good, in that it means any web video you can play in Firefox you can also play with Zviewer. But it also means that once you find the program you're looking for using the custom Zviewer interface, you click play and a version of Firefox opens up. If you have a $130 ZvRemote control that's designed to let you navigate the web pages without a keyboard and mouse, you're golden. If you have a standard media center remote control, things might be a bit more complicated.

Zviewer certainly shows promise. The software has the potential to turn your computer and television set into an easy to use video on demand terminal that's reliable enough for you to cancel your cable or satellite subscription. But today it's still just a bit too awkward to use unless you shell out the cash for ZeeVee's custom hardware.

Zviewer is free while in beta and is available for Windows only. A Mac version is expected soon.

[via ZatzNotFunny]

VideoSurf is a new search engine for web video. But unlike most video search engines, which let you find the video you're looking for and then leave you on your own, VideoSurf can point you to specific content inside a video.

For example, say you're searching for Battlestar Galactica episodes. You just type the name of the show into VideoSurf and it will pull up a list of episodes and clips from online video sites like YouTube, Hulu, and DailyMotion. But what if you only want to see episodes featuring Lucy Lawless? At the top of search results page you'll see a number of boxes with actors from the show. Select the one you want, and VideoSurf will filter your results and only display videos featuring that actor. What's more, when you hit play, you'll see a timeline at the top of the next page letting you know the moment when that actor appears.

VideoSurf's facial recognition service isn't perfect. I did detect one or two instances where the wrong person came up in a thumbnail. But it's pretty darn good.

You can also filter search results by video source, or category (for example, TV, movies, news, or entertainment).

VideoSurf is in private beta. But you can signup on the company's web site to request an invitation.