CEO Reed Hastings unveiled the company’s plans to take its business international next year—albeit streaming-only, not mail-order rentals. “We’re looking to the second half of 2010 to make our streaming offering international,” he said, during the company’s Q309 earnings call. “The plan is to start small in one market, prove out our model, and expand into other countries.”

France on Monday narrowed the windows between a film’s release and its debut on other platforms.Titles will move to video-on-demand four months after they hit cinema screens instead of the present 7½ months under a new “media chronology” to which the industry and the government have agreed. The change puts VOD on a par with DVD release.

Pay TV webs will get titles 10 months after cinema release rather than 12 months. Free TV takes over at 22 months rather than at 24-36 months.

Gaul is unusual in having a highly regulated set of release windows overseen by the government and the industry, including exhibitors, distributors, producers, broadcast organizations and new-media companies.

We are living in exceptional times. Scientists tell us that we have 10 years to change the way we live, avert the depletion of natural resources and the catastrophic evolution of the Earth’s climate.

The stakes are high for us and our children. Everyone should take part in the effort, and HOME has been conceived to take a message of mobilization out to every human being.

Last week, the company announced a mobile movie subscription service for PlayNow, allowing users to watch up to 60 movies a year on their phone. About 15 films will be available at a time for users to choose from, with new titles added monthly. Sony Ericsson hasn’t yet said which studios will offer films, or which films they will make available.

A one-year subscription to the PlayNow movie service will be included with select phones sold initially in Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands, Germany and the U.K., but will be rolled out to additional countries.

To watch movies on their phones, users will first have to download the movie to their computer and then transfer it to a handset, where they can watch it an unlimited number of times for 90 days. Films are only viewable on Sony Ericsson mobile phones.

Meanwhile, the company said today it has inked a deal to offer premium apps on PlayNow through GetJar, a Lithuanian company that sells 45,000 apps. Sony Ericsson said it will continue to offer free and premium apps through its Fun & Downloads section, where it sold more than 150 million music, ring tones, games, themes, wallpapers and movies in 2008.

Supplementing the linear network’s coverage, Speedtv.com will stream portions of this years Le Mans 24 Hours race on June 13-14.

When Speed is not providing its 19 hours of live coverage from Circuit de la Sarthe, Speedtv.com, in conjunction with Radio Le Mans, will stream the action during noon-to- 4:30 p.m. and 10 p.m.-to-midnight windows on June 13.

Some of the international content Hulu has added includes: Digital Rights Group’s GreenWing, Peep Show,Doc Martin and Kingdom; Endemol’s Fear Factor UK, I Want to be a Hilton and Chains of Love; Bollywood films from Saavn, including Sarkar, Deewana and Hera Pheri; and U.S.-based anime producer FUNimation’s Mushi-shi, Shikabane Hime and Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood.

* New Options for Uploaders: In our continued effort to give you ultimate control over how your videos are presented, uploaders can now tweak the appearance of their video when played on YouTube or in an embedded player. Just insert any of the hint tags below into the tags field of your video and voila! 

yt:crop=16:9 (zooms in on the 16:9 area, removes windowboxing) 
yt:stretch=16:9 (fixes anamorphic content by scaling to 16:9)
yt:stretch=4:3 (fixes 720×480 content that is the wrong aspect ratio by scaling to 4:3)
yt:quality=high (default to a high quality stream, depending on availability) 

On this occasion, NPA Conseil and www.tvarevoir.fr developed a catch-up TV indicator. The fist study measures the proportion of programs broadcast between March 15 and 21, 2009 that were made available online and on demand by national TV channels . It shows that national channels (TF1, France 2, France 3, Canal+, France 5, M6 & Arte) offer more than half of their hour volume broadcast during major audience hours (17:00 to 24:00) on catch-up TV services. Entertainment, information and magazines (especially those on access prime-time) are the main programs available. Prime-time programs (films and TV series) are seldom available, as they are often proposed for rentals.