The continuing customer backlash at Netflix is taking on staggering proportions. The company (whose stock, by the way, is down another 7 percent in trading this morning) has lost a quarter of its value in the past month.

Things don't look to be slowing down, either – and competitors are viewing that as a golden opportunity to swoop in and steal some of those disgruntled customers.

Leading that pack is Blockbuster, which has called a press conference for Friday where it says it will unveil "the most comprehensive home entertainment package ever." That's corporate hyperbole at its best, of course, but the upshot appears to be the Blockbuster streaming service is about to become official.

The Dish Network property has been expected to jump into the streaming market for a while now – but has played its cards close to its vest. There have been rumors, though, that it might be offered free to Dish Network subscribers. Other whispers indicate it will include content from Starz, whose current relationship with Netflix is set to end on Feb. 28.

And just to ensure it reaches as many people as possible with its news, Blockbuster plans to stream its announcement online via Ustream.

Netflix saw its problems begin in July, when it announced plans to separate subscription fees for its streaming and DVD rental service, effectively raising the rates for people who subscribed to both by 60 percent. That resulted in the company being forced to lower third-quarter subscription estimates by 1 million.

Late Sunday, it angered people again by announcing plans to separate its streaming and rental-by-mail businesses into separate divisions, eliminating much of the convenience the site has been famous for. Starting in a few weeks, the DVD delivery service will be called Qwikster.

Couldn't get a ticket to this weekend's iHeartRadio Music Festival in Las Vegas? That doesn't mean you can't watch it.

The Clear Channel-sponsored mega-concert will be streamed in high definition exclusively on Microsoft's Xbox 360, giving gamers (and their families) the chance to see the acts perform live.

The concerts, which will feature Lady Gaga, Jay-Z, Coldplay, Kenny Chesney, The Black Eyed Peas, Steven Tyler, Alicia Keys, Jennifer Lopez, Carrie Underwood, Rascal Flatts, Bruno Mars, Kelly, Usher, Sting and Jeff Beck (among others), will take place this Friday and Saturday. Tickets to the show sold out in 10 minutes.

The concert will also be audio streamed.

“This partnership with Xbox 360 means that those who cannot be in Las Vegas in person will have the opportunity to experience the event as well through an HD video stream exclusively on Xbox LIVE,” said John Hogan, president and CEO of Clear Channel.

The collection of big apps is meant to promote the company's iHeartRadio app, which is designed to take back audience from services like Pandora and Spotify by offering easy access to over 800 terrestrial and digital-only stations via the iPod and iPhone.

The FTC wants to make changes to the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) that could have a significant impact on the entertainment industry.

The Commission has proposed several amendments to the privacy rules that are meant to protect kids under 13, the most notable of which is adding geolocation information to the definition of personal information.

This would include tracking cookies that are used for behavioral advertising (based on other Web vists). The agency says the updates are "intended to ensure that key information will be presented to parents in a succinct 'just-in-time' notice, and not just in a privacy policy."

The goal, according to the FTC, is to find a balance between keeping kids safe and not overly burdening companies in this era of rapid technological changes.

Video game publishers are certain to be affected by this, especially those who make iPhone games. With the game violence issue settled by the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this year, attorneys have noted that online would likely be the next potential trouble spot.

"I think the next big thing on the horizon is privacy and security," says Greg Boyd, an associate specializing in entertainment, media and publishing with the law firm Davis & Gilbert. "I think you can take a look at what's recently happened in the game industry with the hack attacks and we're going to have to pay a lot more attention to that moving forward. … Children are our most sensitive area."

In May, Disney-owned Playdom paid $3 million to settle charges it had violated the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act. The company was accused of illegally collecting and disclosing personal information from hundreds of thousands of children under age 13 without their parents’ prior consent.

"It's less about the content in the online environment as it is in fair warning and fees," adds Michael Zolandz, partner at SNR Denton. "I think that's the big issue in the commission's context. It's not so much what children are able to access. It's hidden fees or circumstances where it's a free download that then smacks you with hundred of dollars in add-ons."

Film and television companies should be equally aware of the changes, though, as more and more children are watching programming online. And the preponderance of using Facebook and apps to promote shows and engage viewers is exactly the sort of thing the FTC will be keeping an eye on.

Intel's Sandy Bridge technology is less than a year old, but the next big thing already appears to be on the horizon.

The company showed off prototypes for its "Ivy Bridge" processors this week at its Intel Developer Forum and the early word is encouraging – with faster speeds, lower power consumption and amazing battery life.

Now, I realize that processor chips aren't exactly sexy, so I'll avoid getting too deep into the weeds here. They are, though, the brains behind all the gadgets the entertainment industry depends upon to distribute content – so the more we know about them, the better.

Let's look backwards first: Rolled out in January, Sandy Bridge (technically called second generation Core processors) were vastly faster than the previous line and offered strong video processing capabilities as well as security enhancements for studios.

Warner Bros., Dreamworks and 20^th Century Fox partnered with Intel to deliver high definition content in a secure environment – and created enough of a comfort factor that studios agreed to release HD films to the PC market simultaneously with DVD and Blu-Ray releases.

Ivy Bridge will contain all of that – as well, apparently, as the ability to remain on standby for 10 full days, while remaining connected to the Internet. That's done by reducing the power required while a laptop is in idle mode, meaning the batteries can last a lot longer.

Apple machines still have an idle time advantage over Intel, able to run for up to 30 days, but they don't stay connected online.

Why is this useful? In short, when you take a Ivy Bridge powered laptop out of idle, your email will be caught up (theoretically, of course, the chips are still being fine tuned) or the movie you've paused can resume almost instantly.

Intel will likely talk a lot more about these chips at CES in January – but the company already had them up and running in its Ultrabook laptops, easing some fears that the technology was running behind. The early word on the systems sounds encouraging, though.

The videogame world has a long way to go to catch up with the television advertising market, but it has hit a notable milestone.

DFC Intelligence reports U.S. advertisers spent over $1 billion in 2010 on video games, a number that's expected to double by 2014. Globally, that number hit $3.1 billion, with expectations it will reach $7.2 billion by 2014.

The numbers include a variety of advertising vehicles: in-game ads, around game ads (such as on Web-based titles) and advergames (popular online and in the app store). In-game ads are seen as the weakest of the three areas. By 2016, advergames and around game advertising will account for 78 percent of game advertising revenue.

But DFC maintains the overall spend numbers by advertisers should actually be higher, given the worldwide spend on the gaming industry, which is expected to hit $67 billion this year.

"Video games have reached beyond adolescent males into a mainstream entertainment medium that touches every segment of the population," said DFC analyst Michael Goodman. "Despite this, advertisers continue to under utilize video games as an advertising vehicle. This is slowly changing as more games go online."

Facebook's a great way to waste 10-15 minutes. You can catch up with friends. You can let everyone know about the mundane details of your day. And you can learn more about your favorite brands and entertainment content.

Unfortunately, that 10-15 minutes often ends up being a lot longer per day – and, as a result, social media has grown into a viable threat to entertainment companies who are alredy fighting for viewers' attention..

A new Nielsen study finds that Americans spend more time on Facebook than anywhere else on the Web. While there's no real surprise there, the sheer volume of time people are spending is staggering.

In May 2011, we spent 53.5 billion minutes on the site. In other words, in one month, people spent the equivalent of over 101,000 years reading status updates and looking at photos.

Put another way, Facebook's dwell time is higher than that of Yahoo!, Google, all of the AOL sites and all of the MSN/Bing sites put together – with nearly 3 billion minutes to spare.

That's why more studios are looking to monetize that audience. Warner Bros. began offering movie rentals through Facebook in March. Now Miramax is jumping on that bandwagon, utilizing the Ooyala social service, allowing people to chat about the movies with others as they watch.

Facebook (and other, smaller social networks) present an attractive potential audience for video on demand – and an additional revenue stream. So far, though, the experiments have focused on older catalog releases. What many people want to know, though, is when a studio will be willing to try streaming a new home release on the site.

Social networks also present an opportunity. Ooyala's tech lets studios arrange private film streamings/screenings, which could be a low-cost way to run focus groups for trailers or test bonus content for DVD/Blu-Ray.

Facebook represents a wide open world for the entertainment industry. The question is: Who will learn to capitalize on it first?

Hulu's list of potential problems keep piling up.

As the bidding war for the streaming video service continues between Yahoo, Google, Amazon and Dish, NBC has launched a new app bringing full-length episodes of select shows to the iPad.

The app, for now, is an iPad exclusive – but the lure of free episodes of "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno," "America's Got Talent" and "Harry's Law" (among others) is a notable one.

The selection of full shows is admittedly a bit small for now, with very little archived content, but NBC is padding that with video clips, photo galleries and recaps to keep people engaged. The big question is how long the network will delay episodes of its fall series, once they begin airing. Will they air the next day – or 8 days later, as Fox is insisting on Hulu.

NBC's not the only company embracing the iPad, of course. Turner properties TBS and TNT also have apps that features full-length episodes of their programming.

Networks might be reticent to embrace the idea of quickly streaming their programming online, fearing it devalues their product, but failing to do so comes with consequences of its own.

When Fox enacted its delay policy for non-paying Hulu viewers, piracy rates on popular shows escalated dramatically.

The fight between the creators of the Call of Duty franchise and their former publisher Activision has a court date.

Jason West and Vince Zampella's case against the company will be heard before a judge on May 7, 2012. Both parties are suing each other over a variety of charges in a soap opera-like tale of betrayal, cash and skullduggery – but the money at stake – hundreds of millions of dollars - is very real.

“I’m really looking forward to having our day in Court,” Zampella told.Forbes, which originally reported the date. 

Activision abruptly dismissed West and Zampella in March 2010, alleging the duo had conspired to start a new company and recruit their team at Activision studio Infinity Ward to staff it, then strike a publishing deal with rival publisher Electronic Arts. The developers filed suit a few months later, seeking $125 million in royalties they say they were owed from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.

Activision countersued, folding EA into the case and asking for $400 million.

Since then, there's been a lot of glaring between the two – and Activision and EA have taken to squabbling in public about trivial matters, but this is the first notable public movement in the case.

The hearing, assuming it's not moved or the case isn't settled privately, will occur just four weeks before E3, the video game industry's annual trade show.

August, traditionally, is when game sales start to rev up for the holiday season. This year, though, they sputtered and died.

With the release date of Electronic Arts annual Madden football franchise moved to the end of the month, retail sales plummeted in August, falling 37 percent as compared to last year. Overall, year over year sales were down 23 percent.

Analysts has braced for the fall, but it still stung. Madden's absence created a vacuum that was filled by Square Enix's big budget Deus Ex: Human Revolution, which topped the sales charts.

Hardware sales fell 12 percent last month, despite Sony's decision to cut PlayStation 3 prices by $50 mid-month. Sony noted in a statement that inventory problems hampered some sales of the console.

"Despite inventory constraints at retail during the first half of August, PS3 hardware sales were very strong the last two weeks of the month following the $50 price cut," said Patrick Seybold, senior director of corporate communications at Sony.

The good news for the industry is that the drought of top tier games is finally over. Resistance 3 is already on shelves and Gears of War 3 will arrive on Sept. 20 with plenty of other games on their heels. It almost certainly won't be enough to save the year from once again falling short of last year's retail sales numbers, but it will let publishers go out on something of a high note.

The month's top selling games can be found after the break.

Ricky Gervais' biting (some might say mean-spirited) hosting gig at last year's Golden Globes probably guaranteed he won't be asked back in the near future in any official capacity. But that doesn't necessarily mean he's through with the awards show.

Gervais, on his blog, has floated the idea of live-streaming a podcast during this year's show, offering his own brand of commentary and ego-deflation to the proceedings.

The comedian stopped short of saying he would absolutely do the live-stream, but noted a few friends he'd love to have join him if he did. See the (obscenity filled) post below:

I've had one of my big ideas. 

What do you think of this?

A live 3 hour podcast during The Golden Globes. Me and a few chums (like Louis CK, Chris Rock, Karl Pilkington, John Stewart, Larry David popping in and out) doing our own alternative commentary.

People at home can have the telly on with the sound down listening to us online say things that no broadcaster could get away with.

No one could do a fucking thing.

The biggest live webcast ever? Who knows? Who cares? What's fun is the shit we might come out with. No money. No sponsor. No guide lines. Fuck me I can't wait.

Gervais ruffled feathers in 2011 by attacking the Golden Globes own dubious history and suggesting that some nominations were made solely to boost ratings.

That said, he made it clear from the beginning that he refused to acknowledge any sacred cows as host, with one pre-show ad that aired on Comedy Central ending with him saying "I'll be there, insulting them, throughout," Gervais says at the end. "Trying to make 'em cry. That's good to watch."