I am astonished how small companies like YouTube, Revver, Brightcove, Blinkx and Guba are coming out of the shadows and leading the way in on the online video revolution.

Guba has been working on a technology for eight years around an arcane technology involving a Usenet search service that lets users find multimedia content disguised as text files. Usenet is a system of online bulletin boards that predates the Web.

Well, it turns out that they have discovered a way to efficiently and safely and quickly download theatrical features to digital devices and Hollywood is impressed. The 30-person San Francisco-based company is streaming videos for Warner and Sony studios.  It’s competing directly with iTunes, Amazon, CinemaNow, and MovieLink and doing very well.

I had the opportunity to interview Guba’s Bart Myers at the Streaming Media West conference in San Jose earlier this month.   

The company also provides a very good upload service for community generated videos.

The issue of copyright protection of video is looming large and Guba is handling this right.  The imperative for proper rights management is only becoming clearer as evidenced by today’s legal actions of Universal against MySpace.

Andy Plesser

Party, Party with the Guba and the AlwaysOn Crew in San Francisco on 11/30! I heard from Adriana Gascoigne about this networking party they are throwing in San Francisco and she has graciously extended the invitation to the Beet.TV community.  Thank you Adriana!