Amazon's On-Demand Video Good, Not Great: Mossberg

Both Battleground and Lilyhammer get mixed reviews, as streaming services branch out

(NEWSER) - Online streaming sites Hulu and Netflix both launched original series this week, as both services take baby steps toward competing with regular television, reports Gigaom . A look at each:

• Hulu's Battleground is the more conventional of the two, a 13-episode comedy about a Senate campaign in Wisconsin that started today, with a new 22-minute episode airing each Tuesday. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has solid praise for Battleground, saying it is "a smart, well-written comedy series you might find on a premium cable network." The AP is less kind, however, calling it "a light, watered-down knockoff of The Office," while the New York Daily News comes down somewhere in-between.

Instant Video selections streamed for free by Prime members

(NEWSER) - Another blow to Netflix ? Amazon.com announced today that it will increase the number of Instant Video selections that Amazon Prime members can stream for free. The new partnership with Viacom will add TV episodes from MTV, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon, TV Land, Spike, VH1, BET, and more networks, bringing the total number of Prime Instant Videos to more than 15,000. In short, it means that Amazon Prime members will soon be able to watch past episodes of Jersey Shore for free. More»

Amazon Prime customers can now access 7K shows, 2K movies

(NEWSER) - Netflix and Hulu beware: Amazon has struck a new blow in the battle for streaming content. A deal with NBCUniversal has added some 1,000 movies and TV shows to the web giant’s streaming library. Alongside a deal with CBS, Amazon now provides its Prime customers—who pay $79 a year for free shipping and other perks—with 7,000 TV shows and 2,000 movies, Mashable reports. Meanwhile, Netflix faces a setback as customers quit over its new pricing plan . More»

Retailers and cable providers going after its online streaming business

(NEWSER) - Netflix is taking over Hollywood. What started as a DVD-by-mail rental service 10 years ago has become an all-you-can-watch, instant-stream entertainment cornucopia, providing more than 20 million subscribers with more than 20,000 movie and TV titles, all at the push of a button. DVD sales are slackening. Less TV is being watched. Studios are losing money. But retailers like Amazon and Wal-Mart are hoping to break up a Netflix nation, reports the Los Angeles Times . More»

Tim Berners-Lee blasts those chipping away at its 'egalitarian principles'

(NEWSER) - Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the British engineer credited with inventing the World Wide Web, has a message for us: Social networking sites, app developers, and other entities, if left unchecked, will ruin his creation—which now belongs to all of us. "The web evolved into a powerful, ubiquitous tool because it was built on egalitarian principles," he writes in Scientific American , but "some of its most successful inhabitants have begun to chip away at its principles." His complaints:

• Social networking sites: They are "walling off information posted by their users from the rest of the Web," making each site "a closed silo of content, and one that does not give you full control over your information in it."
• Smartphone apps: "It is better to build a Web app that will also run on smartphone browsers," rather than a "closed" smartphone app, he writes, adding that he is especially wary of the iTunes store, which is not an "open marketplace."