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Grouper is the eighth-largest, web-based video streaming site on the net. It get about 1% of all traffic and it’s viewers typically spend 5 minutes on the site. On teh other hand, YouTube has 43% market share and viewers spend 13 minutes on the site in a sitting. Sony Pictures has chosen to purchase Grouper as their entryway into the web based content landscape. Competitors in the sector number more than 200. Besides YouTube, some of the other video sites that have attracted attention are Revver, Metacafe, Heavy.com, Dailymotion and Guba.

“Connect (Sony’s digital music site) has been horrible,” Bajarin said. “They definitely need an iTunes’ equivalent. What they are likely going to want is to capitalize on their own content and marry it with some user-generated content.” Bajarin said Grouper’s users are mostly teens and young adults who are comfortable buying on the Web. To such an audience, Sony may be able to sell music and consumer electronics, as well as movies over the Web.

The Sausalito, Calif.-based Grouper was founded in 2004 by a group that included Josh Felser, one of the founders of Spinner.com, which was sold to AOL in 1999 for $350 million. Felser, 42, has remarked recently that the market for video-sharing sites has been heating up but that Grouper’s leadership was not seeking a buyer. “We had other options including financing,” Felser said. “When this started, we were pursuing an operating deal with them. We made this deal because we want to win and we think Sony will help us do that.”

Read [News.com]

AOL, 20th Century Fox, Sony Pictures, Universal Pictures, and Warner Bros. have teamed up to offer consumers downloadable movies through the AOL Video portal. These new partnerships build on AOLs current 17 video partnerships and 45 on-demand channels that AOL Video announced in July. The AOL Video portal is a one-stop destination to find, watch and share millions of free streaming and pay-to-download video content from broadcast and cable television, and movies.

Through AOL Video, popular movie titles - from recent DVD releases to a large selection of movies representing all genres will be available for purchase and download with prices ranging from $9.99 to $19.99 per movie. Once downloaded, movies can be viewed offline as well as on other PCs and compatible portable devices.

As part of AOL Video’s ongoing expansion of its video-on-demand line up, television content from Fox and Sony Pictures will be easily accessible through the AOL Video portal’s online interactive programming guide (IPG). The AOL Video IPG brings together free and download-to-own video content and organizes it into more than 50 video-on-demand channels. Additional AOL Video on-demand channels will launch in the coming months.

AOL Video will feature Fox and Sony content, for paid download within five new on-demand channels: Fox, Fox Classic Television, FX, Speed, Fuel TV, AXN, and FunnyBone.

Even though Samsung released their Blu-ray player a couple of days ago and Sony’s Blu-rau VAIO has hit the market it really wasn’t that much of a big deal until there was content available (nice timing guys!). The discs have now arrived. Sony Pictures Home Entertainment launched the first slate of Blu-ray Disc (BD) titles today.

Titles available at retail today from SPHE include: “50 First Dates,” “The Fifth Element,” “Hitch,” “House of Flying Daggers,” “XXX,” “The Terminator,” and “Underworld Evolution”—a rather impressive launch.

“Ultraviolet,” the first day-and-date BD title from SPHE will debut one week later on June 27. On July 11th, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment will release “Basic Instinct 2: Risk Addiction” on Blu-ray. “Stealth”; “Species” and “The Last Waltz” (MGM) will debut on Blu-ray Disc July 25th, along with “Benchwarmers” day-and-date with DVD.

Read [Gearlog]

To prevent stock piling up on the shelves Sony Pictures is going to hold their Blu-ray content from shipping to stores for 30 days. The new releases date will be in June 25, pushed back from May 23, to coincide with the first Blu-ray player from Samsung, the BD-P1000. The Sony Blu-ray Disc titles that are now slated to arrive in stores June 20 are “Underworld Evolution” (arriving the same day as the DVD), “50 First Dates,” “The Fifth Element,” “Hitch,” “House of Flying Daggers,” “A Knight’s Tale,” “The Last Waltz,” “Resident Evil Apocalypse” and “XXX.” Warner is also expected to release their first discs around the same time, but no firm date has been announced.

Read [HDBlog.net]