Audio and video

Dish's new ad-skipping feature has aroused anger among TV broadcasters, but the company's chairman sees it as a wake-up call to the industry.

In a recent interview with The Wall Street Journal, Dish Chairman Charlie Ergen defended Ad Hop, the new feature that lets Dish viewers skip advertisements.

Cheap Web-based TV is a threat to pay TV, believes Ergen, a trend created in part by the networks themselves because of their failure to develop ads better targeted toward viewers. Ergen is hoping Ad Hop will convince TV networks to create "more meaningful" ads that people won'… Read more

Netflix subscribers who use the site's iOS app on their iPhones or iPads will find a few surprises in the latest edition.

Netflix version 2.2 for iOS adds a small but healthy number of enhancements. First among them is a new scrub bar for controlling your content.

The bar itself is bigger and better, letting you more easily navigate to any section of your video. Thumbnails now appear above your finger on the scrub bar so you can travel to a specific scene of your favorite TV show or movie. You can also rewind 10 seconds at a … Read more

Google Voice users can now tweak their settings to screen unwanted callers in favor of family and friends.

Users of the call-forwarding service have apparently been asking for a way to handle callers not in their address book. And Google has answered that request, as detailed in a new blog.

Two new groups of callers are now available in the Google Voice settings menu -- people in your address book and anonymous callers.

You can customize the response received by people in your address book by setting a special voice mail greeting. You can also set a different greeting for … Read more

Samsung has found yet another way to compete with Apple.

The Galaxy S smartphone maker is officially kicking off its new iTunes rival Music Hub service starting today. Available as an app with the new Galaxy S III phone launching in 28 different countries, Music Hub borrows more than a page or two from iTunes but also adds a paid subscription model.

The service will offer Samsung phone and tablet owners access to 19 million songs, with prices comparable to those found on iTunes, according to Reuters. Users can stream music and download it from the Hub to play it … Read more

YouTube might not be getting all of the attention Facebook gets nowadays, but that doesn't mean it isn't growing.

The Google-owned online video site announced its seventh birthday in a blog post yesterday, and to help celebrate the milestone, it announced that users now upload 72 hours of video to its service each minute. To put that into perspective, just one year ago, YouTube users were uploading 48 hours to the site every minute.

Just in January, YouTube said that 4 billion videos are viewed on the site each day. At the time, it also said 60 hours … Read more

How much online video did you watch last month?

Across the U.S., 181 million Internet users tracked by ComScore caught a total of 37 billion videos in April. That means 84.5 percent of the U.S. Internet audience viewed an online video, and the average person spent 21.8 hours doing so for the month.

Grabbing 157.7 million viewers, Google was the top site for video watching, thanks mostly to YouTube. Yahoo came in second place with 53.6 million viewers, followed by Vevo with 49.5 million, Facebook with 44.3 million, and Microsoft with 42.… Read more

The Google+ Hangouts On Air feature has gone global, Google revealed today, meaning you can now share yourself via video with Google+ users in 40 other countries.

Unveiled last September, the Hangouts On Air takes the traditional Google+ hangout a step further.

Instead of just holding a video chat with a small circle of people, you can broadcast to a much wider audience through the On Air version. That makes it an ideal forum for celebrities and organizations that want to promote themselves or reach out to fans and followers. But it's also accessible to anyone who has a … Read more

Fans of the late sci-fi series "Jericho" could see the show popping up on Netflix if all of the myriad details can be ironed out.

The online video company has reportedly been speaking with CBS, the show's former network and production arm, about reviving the series, said TV Guide. CNET News is published by CBS Interactive, a unit of CBS.

A Netflix spokesman declined to offer any information, telling CNET that the company does not comment on rumors or speculation.

However, TV Guide reported that preliminary talks between Netflix and the network have already begun. CBS President … Read more

Is Spotify looking to beat Pandora at its own online radio game?

The streaming music provider may be building an online radio service that could rival that of Pandora, according to Bloomberg.

Citing "two people with knowledge of the situation," Bloomberg said the new service would launch before the end of the year and be funded by advertising. Spotify has just begun informing content partners about the new service, according to the sources.

Spotify currently works as a downloadable application that provides access to your local music libraries and lets you search for and play music online. Users … Read more