Retail giant Walmart is now offering streaming video rentals right from its website. Having acquired the VUDU streaming video service last year, Wal-mart is now mainstreaming (pun intended) its streaming service by making it available front and center on the Walmart.com site.

Netflix has announced that they are raising their rates, effective for new customers immediately, while the new fees for existing customers will be effective September 1st. The rate hike is said to be necessary to reflect the increased cost of doing business, particularly with respect to postage rates for mailing DVDs. While the new prices apply to everyone, the new pricing plans will most affect those who had the unlimited streaming plus unlimited DVD plan, as Netflix is now separating the two plans, and you must pay a fee for each separately.

Barely two years ago, networking giant Cisco purchased the Flip video camera (by buying Pure Digital, the makers of the Flip camera) and folded the Flip USB video camera business into the Cisco brand. This week Cisco has announced that they are killing the division, and killing the Flip camera, and a lot of people are pretty unhappy about it. Fortunately, the Flip camera is still available for purchase (links below); unfortunately, it won’t be supported. On the other hand, the Flip camera is so darned simple and straight-forward, it doesn’t need a whole lot of support.

In yet one more bid to ensure that Facebook users never leave Facebook’s site (and, of course, if they do, Facebook will be following them), Facebook has announced the launch of their Facebook Movies service. The Facebook movie service, which is a movie rental service, allows users to trade Facebook credits to rent and stream a movie for up to 48 hours. First up: the Batman movie, The Dark Knight. That said, the Facebook movie rental service isn’t actually being offered by Facebook itself, so much as being permitted by Facebook, for a cut of the action.

In a clear sign of the times, Netflix has just unveiled a new monthly plan in which you don’t get any DVDs at all. While this may sound like a page out of The Onion or other satire rag, we promise you that it’s true. The new Netflix “Watch Instantly Unlimited” (only) plan is a nod to the many Netflix customers who now only watch Netflix via real-time streaming, such as to an iPad or a Netflix set-top device, and don’t check out DVDs at all.

If you tried to watch a movie or television show on Netflix towards the end of last week, and found Netflix down, or otherwise unusable, you weren’t alone. In fact, the problem was not only on Netflix’ end, but it was an impactful enough Netflix problem that Netflix has spontaneously offered to give Netflix customers a credit on their account. This Netflix rebate is equal to a 3% Netflix credit.

DVD rental service Netflix has released the first in a planned family of direct-to-TV streaming devices. Made by Roku, the Netflix Player set-top box connects wired or wirelessly between your home broadband internet connection and a TV, instantly streaming one of the 10,000 available movies and TV shows you’ve added to your Netflix “Instant Queue”.

Hulu.com is a video-on-demand service offering 250 TV series, from old classics to contemporary favorites, and clips from a further 150 series; 100 full-length movies; sports highlights from the NBA and the NHL; and Web-based programs – all free! Firefly fans will be thrilled to find 14 episodes there, alongside Dragnet and, yes, Nanny and the Professor.

Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) is Amazon’s online storage service. Costing mere pennies per gig, many are turning to Amazon’s S3 service for their image and video hosting needs. It’s easy to sign up for Amazon’s S3 service, and also easy to set up. In fact, the hardest thing about using S3 to host your videos and images is figuring out how to link to your video and image files hosted on Amazon S3! So, we are going to tell you how to host videos on Amazon S3 right now! And we answer the question “what URL do I use to link to my video or image on Amazon S3?”

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) has issued a statement in which it admits that the figure it has been touting since 2005 – that piracy of movies by college students accounted for 44% of all of the motion picture industry’s domestic losses – was overblown by a whopping 300%.

While the U.S. attempts to keep GIs from blogging and posting video, not everyone has that restriction. Witness this hot-off-the-presses video, made with footage captured by a webcam mounted on one British Royal Marine’s helmet! This video takes you with this Royal Marine as he patrols in Afghanistan, become involved in a skirmish, and gets shot (fortunately, in the backside, and he’s relatively fine). There is no real gore in this video, but there is gunfire, and a lot of swearing.

What would you think medeval tech support would look like? Every once in a while we need a good laugh, and we think that this midevil tech support video – about what medeival tech support would have been like in mideval times – just fits the bill!

Microsoft joined the Internet Video sites today with its launch of Microsoft Soapbox. The new free Internet video site, offering free Internet video clips contributed by users, like YouTube and YouTube owner Google’s Google Video, hopes to capture YouTube viewers’ hearts and allegiance. On first glance, Microsoft Soapbox looks like YouTube and Google Video in the ways that you would expect. But is Microsoft Soapbox similar to YouTube enough to really be a contender? And is “similar to YouTube” enough, or does it need to be far better?

Chris Hughes has created a video of how to control your Roomba vacuum with your Nintendo Wii remote control – as Roomba hacks go it’s a good one – and the video is taking the Internet by storm. Oh, and if you want to try this Roomba hack at home, Chris has also provided the source code!

Our newest site on the web shows you “how to” with a collection of how-to videos! LearnHowTo.TV offers visitors a wde range of how-to videos, on a broad range of topics, all for free!