Former Trinity Mirror (LSE: TNI), Tiscali and Manchester City digital executive Richard Ayers has taken up a new role heading digital business development at the British Film Institute (BFI) charity.

Two contrary advertising watchdog rulings against the same movie company highlight how video advertising to children is handled differently on TV and the web.

Six Hollywood studios have urged the UK’s competition watchdog to throw out its assertion their Sky Movies deals are anti-competitive. But some of them are warming to its suggestion BSkyB (NYSE: BSY) should offer rival services like Netflix (NSDQ: NFLX) over its own set top boxes.

Chinese online video giant Youku (NYSE:YOKU) today announced that it has inked a deal with none other than Twentieth Century Fox (NSDQ: NWS) Home Entertainment to license 250 films.

Samsung, on a high after releasing some strong mobile numbers last week, today became the latest consumer electronics brand to hang its name on to some of the more buzzy trends in TV this year: gesture-controlled television, apps, 3D and cloud-based content. In a presentation at the Consumer Electronics Show…

Netflix (NSDQ: NFLX) CEO Reed Hastings tells paidContent the company has emerged from the “pain” of a consumer and investor backlash, after last year’s botched attempts at splitting the company.

Netflix (NSDQ: NFLX) fancies bidding against News Corp-controlled BSkyB (NYSE: BSY) for Hollywood movies and TV shows, even though international roll-out losses are set to exceed $70 million this quarter alone, CEO Reed Hastings tells paidContent.

HMV’s CEO says the slowdown in plastic music and movie sales is itself slowing down - even though its Christmas was nearly a tenth worse than the previous year.

Netflix (NSDQ: NFLX) executives launched the service in the UK and Ireland on Monday morning with pricepoints of £5.99 ($7.79) and €6.99 ($8.89) for unlimited online movie and TV subscription streaming, forcing rival Lovefilm to to restructure and discount its digital pricing.

Online video is becoming a fast-growing business in China, as well as the west.

Some countries in Europe, like France, are looking at ways of extending their copyright protection laws to streamed media, in addition to existing laws against unlicensed downloads. Other countries, it seems, are going in quite the other direction, as a recent decision in the Netherlands shows.

Amazon’s LoveFilm is continuing its film and TV content rights war with U.S. rival Netflix (NSDQ: NFLX), signing a deal with Sony (NYSE: SNE) Pictures Television for the right to stream titles including The Social Network and Salt.

The BBC iPlayer iOS app has been downloaded 1.1m times in the week since it was updated to run on Apple’s iPhone and iPod touch as well as iPad, says Daniel Danker, the broadcaster’s general manager of programmes and on demand.

Nearly 12 years after it first launched, iTunes Store has gone live in Brazil and 15 other Latin American countries, as the region’s consumer digital content market takes off.

Consumers are increasingly using Facebook for video - but, despite studios and broadcasters hosting more of their content on the social network, it remains mostly a gateway to video hosted elsewhere.

The new technology allowing consumers who buy entertainment in physical formats to consume it online for no additional cost has gone live and is going global, with launches in the UK this Christmas, Canada in 2012 and elsewhere in 2013.

“We confess ourselves slightly perplexed,” BSkyB (NYSE: BSY) finance chief Andrew Griffith told Wall Street investors, when asked about the Competition Commission’s judgement that Sky Movies is anti-competitive in the on-demand movie space.

BSkyB’s set-top boxes may have to offer services like Netflix (NSDQ: NFLX), Lovefilm and Blinkbox alongside its own Sky Movies, under new proposals from the Competition Commission.

The first feature film shot entirely on a smartphone will have its theatrical premiere in Los Angeles on 16 December. Olive, billed as a film about “a little girl who transforms the lives of three people without speaking one word”, was filmed on a Nokia N8, which was double-taped to…