In recent years I’ve been a little bit jealous of our American neighbors when it comes to the range of options they have to access high quality video content. But with the recent announcement that Netflix will be expanding into the Great White North, I can feel a little better.

The idea of getting unlimited streaming movies for something that might be around $10/month is pretty appealing. And with more and more TV & compatible devices (PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Wii, etc) with Netflix support, I think this kind of service will have genuine mainstream appeal. No longer will folks have to mess with wires to connect their PC to their TV!

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Hulu recently announced that they will be introducing a premium service that is a departure from the free model that has made it so popular.  For $10 per month, subscribers to this new service will gain features like access to a larger content library and the availability of 720p video; however, premium subscribers hoping to bypass the embedded advertisements will be disappointed, as they will get the same number of ads as in the free service.  Response to the announcement has been mixed, with many people disappointed in particular that the advertisements will persist.

It should be noted that most people have been expecting this announcement ever since Hulu launched.  Despite its popularity, Hulu continues to lose money, and it faces stiff competition from the likes of Netflix and iTunes.  To help muscle into living rooms around the United States, Hulu and Microsoft will join forces to bring Hulu to the Xbox Video Marketplace dashboard, and Hulu will also be available on Sony’s PS3, Apple’s iPad and iPhone, and a slew of other devices like Bluray players and TVs.

Whether or not they’re interested in Hulu’s pay service, subscribers are likely to gain from increased entertainment options.  With a wide variety of hardware (set top devices, game consoles, placeshifting devices) and services (Hulu, iPlayer, etc) and ongoing investments by service providers in advanced network policy control to deliver optimum quality of experience, the marketplace will decide the winners; ultimately, the choice is up to the subscribers.

As an iPhone addict I walk around with my iPhone on a regular basis.   I went to New York City for a holiday weekend a few weeks back.  As I walked around Manhattan I noticed that it seemed most everybody had some kind of Smartphone. The interesting thing was that if I had been in Manhattan 5 years ago I would have seen everybody walking around with the phone to their ear.  This time everybody was walking around with their eyes glued to the little screen social networking, using Google Maps, or walking and checking email.

The other thing I noticed was the battery consumption on my phone.  I live in Tucson, Arizona.  As you can imagine it’s a much different place than New York in many ways.  But one of them for sure is the battery life of my iPhone.  In Arizona, my iPhone will go a few days between charges while on stand-by and most of the day if I am out and about using it to look things up, check my email, and even take the occasional call.  It’s kind of old school, but I still actually call people on the phone.

Anyway, while in New York my battery was lasting less than 4 hours.  When I checked the cellular data usage meter on my phone (its under the “about” menu for all the non-iPhone users) it showed my phone was transmitting more than 2 Mbytes every hour and receiving more than 2 Mbytes every hour and this was with it in my pocket, not doing anything.

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