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Netflix is announcing plans to offer users unlimited access to its streaming video service. They might as well do everything they can do to entice customers to stay with them as viewing options continue to increase, but this won’t help their bottom line any.

Netflix has a paltry 5.6% profit margin and while they’ve been locked in a death battle with Blockbuster their greatest competition comes from near instant viewing options offered by cable on-demand, and companies like Amazon and Apple.

Apple will reportedly announce an iTunes movie rental service at MacWorld this week as…

Catching up on some of what I missed out on at CES this year, some of the best:

Comcast CEO Keynote w/ Flight of the Conchords cameo @ -11:00

Bill Gates’ Last Day

And while this video doesn’t come close to doing it justice, Sony showed off an 82 inch 4K display:

CES 2008 - SONY 82″ Prototype 4k

Sir Edmund Hillary, the first man to summit Mount Everest pased away yesterday. Almost immediately video tributes - both professional and user generated - started popping up on YouTube.

And this one from the BBC.

The biggest news out of this year’s consumer electronics show has been about extending content to new mediums or shifting video viewing from one medium to another.

The headlines:

• Microsoft announced new content partnerships that will bring ABC and Showtime TV shows, Disney and MGM films, and the 2008 summer olympics to Xbox LIVE.
• TiVo announced web video capability for TiVo Desktop 2.6 with RSS support, making it simple for users to automatically download and transcode online video for TiVo and play it on their TV.
• Panasonic announced a partnership with Google to create YouTube-ready TVs and Picasa-ready cameras.
• MTVN…

Obama and McCain are reportedly the early leaders in New Hampshire.

MSNBC is offering their live stream for viewers here.
C-Span will offer their live stream beginning at 8pm here.
CNN is pushing I-Reports from New Hampshire here.

And The UpTake is reporting live from New Hampshire using Mogulus.

What a difference a couple months makes. MSNBC, which for too long relied on MSN’s lousy platform recently switched over entirely to Flash and today opened up the embed code for all their content.

Soon to come: search, rollover caption bubbles and a scaling function. Interesting that they chose Flash after holding out for so long, I guess Silverlight’s still not quite ready for prime time.

Just ahead of the Iowa caucus and heading into the New Hampshire primary, Barely Political’s Omama Girl, Amber Lee, launched a new video, this time with a Rocky Meets the Matrix storyline. Since its debut on January 2nd, the video has nearly 1 million views.

Results are still coming in from the Iowa Caucus, beamed to digital billboards across the state, Iowa party websites and Google maps. Obama is the projected Democratic winner with Edwards and Clinton neck and neck in the battle for second place. CBS just projected Huckabee will be the Republican winner.

The Des Moines Register has teamed up with YouTube for video surrounding the caucus but live video streaming is wide open, leaving citizen jounalism site The UpTake and blogger Shelbinator to split the live audience online.

The UpTake Live Caucus Stream

Shelbinator Live Caucus Stream

Corey Adds: And I always enjoy…