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Hulu announced last week the launch of Hulu Plus, a premium version of the popular streaming site that will cost $10 per month.

Buyers of the subscription get expanded content, and the ability to play the shows on their HDTVs, Blu-ray players, Xbox 360 (with Gold subscription), PS3 and iPad and iPhone.

Hulu Plus gives users season passes for most current shows, which is a massive improvement from only being able to watch the trailing five episodes of a given show. You will also be able to watch back seasons of the shows.

The major complaint of the service, so far, is that there are still ads, just like in the free version.

Today, CEO Jason Kilar says the company is considering offering a more expensive version of the service, one that will completely ad-free.

Kilar also noted that there would be "many" models for the distribution service, but did not elaborate.

Any ad-free model would likely cost $15-20 per month.

According to sources cited by NewTeeVee, Apple is looking to take the unpopular Apple TV set-top box to the next level, bringing TV episode rentals down to .99 cents, half the current pricing model on iTunes and elsewhere.

Apple is currently trying to get TV programmers to drop the price on rentals, with mostly everything else remaining the same. Once purchased, consumers have 30 days to watch the video with rentals then expiring 24 hours after you start.

What will be different, besides the pricing, will be that episodes will now be streamed, within the cloud, and not downloaded, following the broader industry trend led by Netflix and Hulu.

Although still unconfirmed, the upcoming Apple TV is said to use iOS 4, the operating system used on the iPhone. It will also use flash memory, moving away from the HDD seen in the original model.

UK retailer John Lewis has presented info given to them by suppliers, and it appears that in September the iPod Touch will finally get a much-needed refresh, adding new hardware and software features.

The media player will add a 5MP camera with flash, which will also be able to shoot 720p HD video.

Furthermore, the device will get a gyroscope and accelerometer, as well as FaceTime for video conferencing.

Rob Hennessey of the retailer also says the new iPod will be marketed towards "teens" and "youths," moving slightly away from previous marketing directives.

Additionally, social networking will be a centerpiece, likely meaning Facebook and Twitter apps will be pre-installed.

Pic, story, via Pocket-Lint:

T-Mobile UK users now have set prices for the upcoming launch of the iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4 with up to six options available for each smartphone.

The cheapest plan, at £25 a month will get you only 100 minutes, 100 texts, and 500MB of data, a practically useless plan.

For £30, the plan moves up to 300 minutes, 300 texts with same 500MB data.

Moving up the ladder to £35 will get you 600 minutes, 500 texts and the same 500MB of data. The trend continues from there (as pictured).

The most expensive plan is £60 and gets you unlimited minutes, 500 texts and 1GB of data.

The more expensive the plan, the cheaper the phone itself costs upfront.

Last week, Best Buy employee Brian Maupin was suspended for posting viral videos spoofing iPhone 4 and HTC EVO 4G zealots.

The iPhone video is so popular it has topped 3.4 million views.

Best Buy suspended Maupin while they investigated the situation, although neither video directly names or even implies the retail giant. Maupin went as far as to say that he expected to be fired completely this week.

Today, Best Buy has concluded their investigation, and Maupin is free to head back to work in the morning.

Says the company: "We have completed our investigation into the videos created and posted by Brian Maupin, the aspiring film-maker and Best Buy employee. This is an important situation for us because it involved balancing our social media guidelines with a commitment to creating a supportive environment for our employees. It's important to note that our investigation involved three videos that were posted in late June because they were openly disparaging of our employees, our customers and our vendor partners. Our investigation is over, and these videos are no longer on the web. Contrary to rumors, Brian has not been fired, and is scheduled to return to his job at Best Buy this Friday."

Yesterday, complaints began surfacing online that AT&T was "capping" upload speeds for iPhone 4 users, slowing upstream bandwidth to a crawl in Metropolitan areas such as New York City and Boston.

Today, the wireless carrier has blamed software from Alcatel-Lucent for the issues, saying a fix is in the works.

Additionally, the company says only 2 percent of users are affected by the defect.

Lucent declined to offer a timetable for the fix, and would not reveal which areas were being affected.

Customer complaints have been filed from NYC, Central Jersey, Boston, Orlando, Seattle, South Jersey/Philly, Columbus, Cleveland, West Houston, Phoenix, Northern Colorado, St. Paul/Minesota, Suffolk County/Long Island, Quad Cities, South Jersey, Denver, Detroit Metro, Cincinnati, Baltimore, Salt Lake City, Las Vegas, Kansas City, Fairfax, and Minneapolis, so far.

According to a new report from Bloomberg, Microsoft's Xbox Live service brought in $1.2 billion revenue for the fiscal 2009 year.

For the year ended June 30th, about 12.5 million Xbox Live users paid an annual fee to play games online which Bloomberg says would account for about $600 million in revenue. Xbox Live COO Dennis Durkin says on top of that, sales of DLC, movies and TV topped subscription revenue for the first time ever, and by a significant margin, leading us to the final $1.2 billion figure.

Success with Xbox Live is key to Microsoft's Entertainment division, which has seen slow sales of Zune media players, slow smartphone sales, and a barely profitable Xbox 360 console, which sees most of its profit from software and accessory sales.

Adds Matt Rosoff, an analyst at Directions on Microsoft: "Xbox Live has helped sell a lot of consoles and created a lot of loyalty. Everyone has been talking about Microsoft’s inability to innovate, but this is a pretty good example where they have innovated. They timed it just right with this one."

Google is readying orientation detection for the upcoming Chrome OS, giving the Chrome browser the ability to use accelerometer data to keep track of which way is up.

If you rotate, the interface rotates with you.

Furthermore, upcoming apps and games can use the tweak as a method of control.

There are no current browsers with the capability, although Mozilla has promised a stable version of it for Firefox 4.0. Safari is likely to add it as well, as it is part of WebKit.

Chrome OS, for the most part, still remains a mystery to the general consumer, although Google took time to explain the cloud OS in a series of videos.

Hulu announced last week the launch of Hulu Plus, a premium version of the popular streaming site that will cost $10 per month.

Buyers of the subscription get expanded content, and the ability to play the shows on their HDTVs, Blu-ray players, Xbox 360 (with Gold subscription), PS3 and iPad and iPhone.

Hulu Plus gives users season passes for most current shows, which is a massive improvement from only being able to watch the trailing five episodes of a given show. You will also be able to watch back seasons of the shows.

After the announcement, a Google search found that Hulu Plus for the PS3 appeared to need a PlayStation Plus subscription, which also costs money.

Today, those fears have been put to rest, with Hulu confirming that a PlayStation Plus subscription is only required, temporarily, while Hulu Plus is still in its "preview phase."

HTC has explained this week why the company's phones are seeing a "slow" rollout of the upcoming Android 2.2 firmware update, going as far as to say that the Gingerbread 2.5/3.0 update may be pushed back until 2011.

Says Eric Lin, HTC's global PR and online community manager: "It takes time to port all of our applications over to Froyo and then make sure that it is running well on each of our devices. That’s not like a one week kind of project. We need to make sure that our applications are taking advantage of the Froyo features. To make sure that they’re all running properly on the OS now that it’s a new version. And then to make sure that it's running on our hardware as well as we expect".

Lin did promise that the update would be quicker than past updates, like from 1.6 to 2.1: "I don’t think you’re going to see that really long six month, seven month lag, like you saw in the updates from 1.6 to 2.1, simply because it’s a less severe change. Switching from 2.1 to 2.2, they made a lot of tweaks, but they didn’t make any gigantic changes, so it should be a much swifter process."

If a leaked AT&T retail memo sheet is accurate, then a couple of smartphones with Windows Phone 7 should be hitting the carrier by the end of the summer.

A store signage overhaul usually means it is two months before an actual device launch, so early September is the likely release date.

On the other end of the world, Australian carrier Telstra is expected to launch the devices in October.

The two phones on AT&T are expected to be from LG and Samsung.

Microsoft has a lot riding on the phones, especially after the recent failure of the Kin devices.

Aiming to differentiate itself from the iPhone and Android phones, which use home screens of widgets and icons, Microsoft says it has tried to blend applications together for a more "integrated experience," allowing the OS and applications to "share information with the user in a natural and seamless fashion."

According to Gizmodo and other sites, AT&T has begun capping upload speeds on the Apple iPhone 4, containing the speeds to as low as 100kbps in metropolitan areas like New York City.

When the phone launched, users were reporting upload speeds as high as 1500kbps.

A few of the other reported affected areas are: "NYC, Central Jersey, Boston, Orlando, Seattle, South Jersey/Philly, Columbus, Cleveland, West Houston, Phoenix, Northern Colorado, St. Paul/Minesota, Suffolk County/Long Island, Quad Cities, South Jersey, Denver, Detroit Metro, Cincinnati, Baltimore, Salt Lake City, Las Vegas, Kansas City, Fairfax, and Minneapolis."

Users in other regions have reported fast upload speeds, so the situation appears to be isolated to certain places.

AT&T has not responded but most speculate the drop in speeds are related to maintenance to the HSUPA network.

Netflix has expanded its Watch Instantly streaming catalog today, striking a major content deal with Relativity Media.

The deal will allow Netflix to compete more directly with premium TV channels such as HBO and Starz, as Relativity Media films will be "licensed directly and exclusively to Netflix for streaming to its subscribers during the "pay TV window."'

Many of the blockbuster films will hit Netflix months after they become available on DVD, just like they hit premium stations.

Netflix says "it will be the first time that studio quality theatrical feature films will be streamed via subscription by Netflix instead of being broadcast by the traditional pay providers, and it opens up a new revenue stream for such movies."

Some of the first movies available under the new deal are "The Fighter," and "Skyline," both of which are set for a 2010 release date in theaters and set for a Netflix streaming launch in early 2011.

Citing sources "familiar with the plans," the LATimes is reporting that Sony Pictures Television is set to launch two new movie channels by the end of 2010.

The first channel, dubbed Sony Pictures Movies HD for now, would be the company's first cable channel completely devoted to movies

Says television analyst Derek Baine: "They have been very successful internationally with their channels, but in the U.S. they have not had the leverage of the other media conglomerates, which have a bunch of different cable channels. Perhaps they are doing this because the market to sell movies to broadcast and cable networks has been so bad."

The channel has a tentative launch date of October 1st.

Sony's venture would be very similar to the popular Universal HD and MGM HD channels that are currently available to most cable subscribers.

The second channel would be the widely popular FearNet station, which is a joint venture between Comcast, Sony and Lionsgate. FearNet is currently available as a VOD channel through Comcast, FioS, and Cox and offers a plethora of horror films.

Sony Japan has announced the launch of a white slim PlayStation 3 model for the nation, dubbed the "Classic White" colorway.

The console will have a 160GB HDD, but Sony has promised larger capacity models for the future.

"Charcoal Black" was the current only colorway available for the slimmer models. Sony had offered a "Ceramic White" version of the "fat" PS3 in 2008.

Furthermore, Sony has launched a 320GB capacity slim PS3, but only in black.

Additionally, starting tomorrow, the 120GB model will move to "open price," meaning retailers can price it at whatever they want.

The new consoles go on sale on July 29th, priced at the equivalent of $340 for the smaller HDD model and $400 for the larger capacity model.