Tag: video

Tvosz Introduces New Video Player & More Advertising Options

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TvoszTvosz, the Egyptian video sharing service, has launched a new video player, which looks neater, is quite faster, and introduces a number of new options like the possibility to control brightness, contrast and saturation; and direct access to a mini guide of other videos (related, top rated, most viewed, recent, …etc) while your video loads.

In addition to the new video player, Tvosz brings advertisers a number of new advertising options that they can use on the site, including:

Premium videos: these are prominently displayed in the video guide window to attract viewers.
Pre-roll Advertising: these are displayed before the video the user chose to view.
Post-roll Advertising: these are displayed directly after the video the user chose to view.
Mid-roll Advertising: these are set to be displayed in the middle of the video being played by the user with a configurable start time; and giving users the ability to close these midroll ads or navigate between them.

Shown ads are also targeted by video channel, meaning that a person viewing videos about sports will get sports-related ads displayed to them.

Tvosz

Talfazat: Online Streaming Of Live And On-Demand Arabic TV Content

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TalfazatJumpTV and NeuLion, two leading providers of live and on-demand international and sports programming over the Internet, whose merger is pending apporval, just announced the launch of a new online service under the name of “Talfazat“, that delivers a large selection of live and on-demand Arabic television content.

Talfazat.com offers Arabs worldwide an opportunity to tune into their favorite live television channels or on-demand programs with a simple Internet connection. It features more than 35 of the most popular channels and thousands of hours of video-on-demand from leading Arabic content providers including Dubai TV, LBC, Aljazeera News, Aljazeera English, Rotana, Future TV, New TV, 2M and many others.

Talfazat.com is a subscription-based service that provides streaming of content to computers and laptops affording users one central place to access leading Arabic-language entertainment. The website displays a customized user experience, easy navigation, superior video quality and a comprehensive selection of popular content from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.

Talfazat

This online video network has been launched in conjunction with Ramadan, a holy month in the Islamic calendar. Talfazat offers over 800 hours of the most popular Ramadan shows and series.

Talfazat has exclusive IPTV rights to stream television programming to viewers globally and many of the channels are not offered anywhere else. In the coming months, Talfazat plans to launch a set-top-box that will allow viewers to watch live and on-demand content on the television in addition to the computer. Talfazat will be a multi-platform Arabic service.

Talfazat Packages range from US$15 to US$25 per month, depending on the plan, with offers for longer subscription periods. A Ramadan Promotion sees them offering one month free when a three month plan is purchased.

# Talfazat

Ikbis Launch New Advanced Video Player

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IkbisIkbis, the popular Arab video and photo sharing website, has launched a new advanced video player with improved features, interface and performance.

The new video player looks a lot cooler than the old one, and feels more organized, using space in a better way, with a new on hover dock system instead of the old fixed bar at the bottom.

A new HD feature has been added to the player to enable watching videos in high definition, and it is now possible to skip forward by dragging the player head on the timeline.

And following the re-design the Ikbis homepage underwent recently, another key page, which is the single video/photo page was also redesigned now to be more compact/streamlined, giving users easier access to related content, commenting, embedding and social bookmarking services.

ikbis new single page

According to Ahmad Humeid, CEO of TootCorp, Ikbis’ parent company, the design also takes into consideration the increasing demand from advertisers that ikbis has been experiencing, especially in the Gulf region.

Tvosz.com, New Egyptian Video Sharing Service

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TvoszTvosz.com is a new Cairo-based online video sharing service, which aims to be an alternative video sharing website for Egyptian and global internet users alike, and a place for family-friendly content.

Anyone can have access to upload, download, view, share and experience everything from short clips captured on mobile phones all the way up to full-length, high-definition feature films.
However all videos are submitted for approval by the website’s team to ensure that all posted content is family-friendly non-offensive material.

Every video available on Tvosz is compatible with over all major manufacturers’ consumer electronics devices, making it easy to play back videos anytime anywhere.

Videos can be made public to be shared with the whole world or private for sharing with family and friends, whom they can invite and connect with through the websites social networking functionalities.

Finding interesting videos to watch is really easy by navigating through the several channels and groups; surfing through the different tags; checking out the latest, most watched, top rated or some randomly chosen videos; and of course also by searching the website using the built-in search engine.

Users can leave comments on videos, rate them, add them to their favorites, and even download them to their desktops, which is something other video sharing services don’t usually natively offer.
Users can also always go back and find videos they’ve watched by visiting their online playlists.

Tvosz screenshot

In the same spirit of sharing, videos from Tvosz can be directly posted to users’ favorite social bookmarking services; or embedded in users’ blogs or homepages easily using a provided bit of code.

The website is very well designed, organized and really easy to use. The interface is in English only for the time being.

Tvosz was launched from Cairo, Egypt, by Ahmed Samir, Osama Awwad and A. Abdel Aziz.

# Tvosz.com

Shoof TV, Arab Media Group’s Video Sharing Service

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Shoof TVShoof TV is an Arab video sharing website, which was intially launched by Arab Media Group, one of the largest media companies in the UAE, back in April 2007.

The site’s content is user-generated, with videos submitted from users all over the Middle East.
Users can upload files in several popular video formats, with file sizes up to 50MB. For larger files they can be sent via regular mail to Shoof TV for inclusion on the site.
Uploaded content is screened for objectionable content before appearing online.

The site visitors can vote on the videos using the ‘Applause’ feature, and also leave their comments on them.

As well as hosting user-generated media content, Shoof TV also hosts a number of competitions, with various prizes, to encourage more talented people from the Middle East to submit and share their content. Winners are selected by a panel of judges and by public SMS voting.

Shoof TV Screenshot

Khadeeja Al Marzooqi, the General Manager of Shoof TV, recently talked about the future plans for Shoof TV, and how a TV station will be launched towards the end of 2008, with 100% user generated content, relying on the clips people uploaded on their website.

# Shoof TV

Getmo Arabia To Bring Digital Downloads To The Middle East

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GetmoArvato Middle East Sales and Abu Dhabi Media Company yesterday announced the launch of Getmo Arabia, a new digital media platform for the Middle East and Africa, at the MECOM 2008 conference in Abu Dhabi.

Getmo Arabia will offer services direct to consumers through www.getmo.com where customers can download over three million songs, videos, movies, games and ringtones in English, Arabic and other Asian languages to their mobile phones & home computers.

The content will be available to users at significantly reduced rates, in hopes to kickstart a new era in the market for mobile & PC entertainment in the region.

Abu Dhabi Media Company also announced a partnership with Sony BMG, in which the record label will provide local and Arabic content for the platform, which can be accessed via PC or mobile.

Getmo Arabia is set to service the 33 million internet users and 80 million mobile phone users in the Middle East region.

At the time of this article’s publication, the getmo.com website is still not accessible online.

# More: Zawya, ITP

Waleg & Ikbis Launch ‘The Online Arabian Star’ Contest

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Waleg
Ikbis

Waleg, the first and largest blog network in the Arab world, and Ikbis, the popular Arab video and photo sharing service, have teamed up to launch a new online contest under the name of ‘The Online Arabian Star‘.

Talent TV shows; like Star Academy, SuperStar and a bunch of others on a bunch of Arab TV stations; have proven to be very popular with viewers all around the Arab world. This contest aims to capture some of that success online.

All contestants have to do is upload a video of themselves singing a song in Arabic, and then wait for the votes to roll in. The top 20 winners move to the second phase, and another round of voting is launched to select the winner according to user voting. The final winner gets a $500 cash prize.

For more details on the contest, you can visit the contest’s page on Ikbis or on Waleg.

The Online Arabian Star

It’ll be interesting to see how successful this contest is in terms of number of contestants, quality of the submitted material, and how much interest, attention and traffic it generates.

Ikbis Arab Video & Photo Sharing Site Launches New Design

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IkbisIkbis, the popular Arab video and photo sharing website, launched a new design last night. The new design feels a lot neater and more organized, which is great and isn’t that easy to achieve for a media content site.

A new ‘Contests’ tab has been added, so it’s clear Ikbis are going to be launching more and more contests to encourage users to post more high quality content.

A ‘Coming soon’ banner, showing two primitives and a mosquito, promises a new surprise soon; I’m guessing it’ll be a cool cartoon series by the talented Ikbis designers.

According to Ikbis, this new edition starts to reflect their evolved thinking and some of the new strategies they’ll be rolling out in the upcoming months.

ikbis screenshot

# Ikbis

EatLime, Fast Video And File Sharing

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EatLime, is an online sharing service that attempts to make the hosting and sharing of video and other file formats simpler and faster.

As with other services of this kind, the idea is quite straight-forward; you upload your file, and then share it with the world, by providing a link to your uploaded file.

But EatLime does it with a bit of a twist; Unlike other services, EatLime lets your friends start downloading your shared files as soon as you start uploading them, by providing a link that you can share with them, making the entire sharing process quite faster; All links to files you’ve uploaded to the system are saved to your account so that you can go back to them whenever you need; and you can import all your contacts from Gmail, Hotmail, AOL and Yahoo in order to send out links and share your uploaded files easily and quickly.

When it comes to video, you can upload videos of different formats, choose the player style you want for them, and then either automatically post to a number of services like myspace, facebook, bebo, orkut, hi5 to share with your friends, or have a link emailed to your friends so that they can watch it on EatLime.

The service is free and offers unlimted uploads up to 1GB for registered users. The interface is in English only, it’s very nicely designed, and registration is pretty simple and quick.

EatLime screenshot

EatLime was founded by Mohamed from Jordan and Adil from Pakistan.

# EatLime

MBC2 Movies In Motion, Social Networking & Video Sharing

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Media companies in the Arab world don’t usually have much more than a standard website/portal with which they mark their presence and just showcase their programme alongside a bit of content here and there; but in one of the Arab world’s first moves of its kind, the Saudi media giant MBC Group, which is based in Dubai Media City, has gone on and launched a major online service called ‘Movies In Motion‘ in association with the Dubai International Film Festival.

The service is available in English and Arabic and is really well built and pretty rich in features, mainly revolving around social-networking and video-sharing.

Users get to put together their network of friends; join or create groups around which communities can be built; they can list their favorite Movies, Actors and Directors; post articles, gossip, news, …etc; have access to reviews of movies playing on the MBC channels and the possibility to comment on them.

Another important part of the service is the video sharing one, where users get to upload and rate their own short movies, that could earn them prizes like the Nokia N95 and get their short movies played on MBC2; another possibility is to play around with current MBC on air promotions creating their own mashups.

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