5 NETFLIX AND QWIKSTER ALTERNATIVE

Thinking of jumping ship on Netflix now that it has jacked up rates and spun off its DVD-by-mail service into Qwikster? Check out these alternatives to both Netflix's Instant Streaming and DVD-by-mail services.

Recently, we learned that Netflix will soon completely split up its Instant Streaming and DVD-by-mail services. Netflix will continue to be the home for Instant Streaming and a new company called Qwikster, run by the same guys who have been running Netflix DVD rentals for a decade, will handle DVD-by-mail subscriptions. If you’re like us, you’re wondering what the heck is going on over at Netflix headquarters. While we’ll be keeping our subscription for now, maybe it’s time to look at some of the rising competition in the instant streaming and DVD-by-mail space. Below are some of our favorites.

More from  Digital Trends: Netflix CEO explains price hike, renames DVD service ‘Qwikster,’ adds video games Five reasons Netflix may become the bargain bin of streaming services Netflix divorces discs, now what?

Hulu Plus

If you haven’t heard of Hulu, then you probably haven’t watched TV online before. Hulu is the best place to find just-ran television programs from Fox, NBC, ABC, Comedy Central, MTV, and other cable networks. Some programs are free to watch on the Web, but if you want to watch from a smartphone, tablet, Xbox, or TV box, you’re going to need Hulu Plus, which costs $8 a month and includes expanded access to older episodes and seasons of some popular shows, like 30 Rock and Modern Family. Unfortunately, Hulu is very weak in the one area where Netflix is very strong: movies. The film selection on Hulu is improving, but not at the rate we’d expect. Most of Hulu’s time and energy continues to go into obtaining rights to stream new episodes of TV shows that are on the air. It has a somewhat decent library of older shows, but it doesn’t have as many older TV shows as Netflix Instant Streaming. If you want to watch Cheers or Roseanne, Hulu is not your service. (Warning: Hulu does have ads.)

YouTube Movies

In an effort to beef up its Google TV and Android offerings, Google has begun renting new movie releases on YouTube. The service is usable on the Web and is now built into the Android Market, making it a highly convenient way to instantly stream new titles over the Internet. New movies typically rent for $4 and some old releases go for $2 or $3. You have 30 days to begin viewing a movie and 24 hours to finish watching it once you start. YouTube is still somewhat overlooked, but we really liked how easy and straightforward the service is compared with some others. YouTube is one of the most highly adopted services around and we expect that a YouTube app will soon hit the Xbox 360 as well, making it an attractive option for a lot of people. Best of all, we like that Google isn’t pressuring people to “buy” movies, instead only offering rentals. Purchasing a digital movie is not smart unless you’re certain that you plan to use said digital service for many many years to come. There’s no monthly fee for YouTube.

Apple TV (iTunes)

If you own an iPad, iPod, iPhone, or Mac, this may be an attractive option for you. Apple rents movies over iTunes. It also sells them, if you want to spend $15 to $20 for something you’ll only be able to use within iTunes. To make the most of your instant streaming purchases, you may want to buy an Apple TV. The Apple TV box costs $100, but it’s worth it if you have a big TV and like to watch your movies on it. Recently, however, Apple dropped $1 TV movie rentals, casting some doubt on exactly what direction its service and TV box will take. We should find out soon.

Amazon Instant Video (Prime)

Amazon’s Instant Video service costs the most up front, but is actually the cheapest of all streaming services and has the most perks. To get free Amazon Instant Video streaming, you must sign up for Amazon Prime, which costs $79 per year. Split up, that’s actually only $6.58 per month, but it does require 12 months up front and if you don’t like it, well, you’re stuck paying for an entire year. However, Amazon Prime comes with the added perk of free two-day shipping on almost anything ordered on Amazon with no minimum purchase required. Getting something in two days is pretty good, and the one-day shipping charge is only $4 per item. Amazon’s Instant streaming library is growing pretty fast. It has some high-profile shows that Netflix has, like The Tudors, Star Trek: The Next Generation, and Cheers, but also some series that Netflix doesn’t yet have, like Frasier, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and The L Word. Its movie selection is widening as well. However, Amazon offers something Netflix doesn’t: streaming movie rentals and purchases. Like YouTube Movies and iTunes, Amazon offers movie rentals for $4. It also lets you “purchase” movies for $15 to $20. If Amazon can beef up the number of devices that support Instant Video, it could be the best Netflix competitor yet.

Blockbuster

Blockbuster has a horrible reputation from its days ruling the retail rental market in the 1990s, but times change. Dish Network recently purchased the ailing company, which has been hit hard by the rise of Netflix and Red Box in the last decade. From what we hear, in October, a new Blockbuster instant streaming service will be unveiled that may include Starz, which will be leaving Netflix as of February 28, 2012. Starz provides most of Netflix’s access to new movie releases and composes as much as 8 percent of the Netflix Instant Streaming library. Currently, Blockbuster also offers movie and TV show rentals and purchases as well. Its pricing is largely consistent with YouTube, Amazon, and others: About $4 to rent and about $15 to $20 to purchase. Blockbuster is available on Android and iOS devices as well. We hope it will come to more devices and game consoles in the future.

But wait, there’s more. For those of you pondering leaving the newly formed Qwikster in the dust, Blockbuster offers one of the only comparable DVD-by-mail services: Blockbuster Total Access. The service costs $10 per month and includes Blu-ray movies and video games. Netflix has a base price of $8 per month for one DVD rental at a time (same as Blockbuster), but adding Blu-ray and video games means two more upgrades to your service, making it more than Blockbuster. The fact that there are still some actual Blockbuster rental stores and kiosks (like Redbox) here and there makes it all the more convenient, assuming you’re near a retail location.

EARTHQUAKES IN INDIA 55 KILLED 100.000 VILLAGE DAMAGE

GAUHATI, India (AP) — Rescue workers raced Monday to clear roads blocked by mudslides as they attempted to reach remote villages cut off after a powerful earthquake killed at least 55 people and damaged more than 100,000 homes in northeastern India, Nepal and Tibet.

Hundreds of paramilitary soldiers and local police cleared away concrete slabs, bricks and mud to rescue scores of people trapped under the debris of houses that collapsed after the 6.9-magnitude quake struck the mountainous Himalayan region Sunday evening.

At least 30 people died in the northeastern Indian state of Sikkim, where the quake was centered near India's border with Nepal, officials said.

Paramilitary soldiers pulled out 23 bodies and located seven others buried under mounds of concrete in Gangtok, Sikkim's capital, said police Chief Jasbir Singh. At least 50 people, some with serious injuries, were hospitalized, he said.

Another 11 people were killed the neighboring Indian states of Bihar and West Bengal. Seven people died in Nepal, and China's official Xinhua News Agency reported seven deaths in Tibet.

Most of the deaths occurred when houses, already weakened from recent monsoon rains, collapsed due to the force of the quake.

Heavy rains and landslides hampered rescue workers as they worked through the night to pull people from under the rubble, Singh said.

By midday Monday, workers had managed to clear the debris of landslides from one lane of the main highway connecting Sikkim, and an initial convoy of 75 paramilitary soldiers had started moving toward Mangan, the village closest to the quake's epicenter, officials said.

In Gangtok, police cordoned off the office of the state's top elected official after the building was severely damaged in the quake, Singh said.

Much of the damage near the epicenter was not immediately known because the region is sparsely populated with many people living in remote areas cut off by mudslides triggered by the quake.

Rain continued to fall intermittently Monday afternoon and the sky was heavily overcast.

Nepal's government said seven people died there, including two men and a child who were killed when a brick wall toppled outside the British Embassy in the capital, Katmandu. Nearly 70 people were injured, some of them seriously, and were in hospitals across Nepal.

In Katmandu, members of parliament who were debating the national budget ran out of the assembly hall into a parking area. They returned 15 minutes later and resumed their session.

TV broadcasters showed footage of buildings buckled, sidewalks cracked and two major roads collapsed in Gangtok, 42 miles (68 kilometers) southeast of the quake's epicenter near the border with Nepal. The Indo-Tibetan Border Police said two of its buildings had collapsed in Gangtok.

In India's West Bengal state, utility workers toiled through the night to restore power to a large swathe of the state which plunged into darkness after power lines were snapped by the quake.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh summoned the National Disaster Management Authority for an emergency meeting and ordered that rescue teams be airlifted to the worst hit areas of Sikkim.

The quake was felt as far as the Indian capital, with New Delhi residents also rushing out of shaking buildings. The quake caused some houses in China's Himalayan region of Tibet to collapse and disrupted a border county's telecommunications services, Xinhua said.

There were at least two aftershocks of magnitude 6.1 and 5.3, Indian seismology official R.S. Dattatreyan said. He warned more aftershocks were possible.

The region has been hit by major earthquakes in the past, including in 1950 and 1897.

___

Associated Press writers Binaj Gurubacharya in Katmandu, Nepal, Julhas Alam in Dhaka, Bangladesh, and Gillian Wong in Beijing contributed to this report.

CHINESE SEARCH ENGINE PLANS OVERSEAS EXPANSION

Beijing. The head of China's biggest search engine Baidu has said he aims to make it a household name in at least half the world within a decade, according to a company statement.

Baidu chief executive Robin Li made the comment in a meeting earlier this month with China's propaganda chief Li Changchun, a statement posted on the search engine's website late Thursday said.

"Robin Li reported on Baidu's target for the next decade to 'become a household name in more than half the countries around the world and represent Chinese businesses to influence global economies'," it said of the meeting.

Baidu, China's most popular search engine by far with a local market share of more than 75 percent, said Li Changchun had approved the plans.

Baidu already has a presence in Japan, although it is largely overshadowed there by international rivals Google and Yahoo!. It has also recently launched operations in Thailand and Egypt.

"This has been a push of the Chinese government for years now, making Chinese companies go global," Jeremy Goldkorn, of the Beijing--based web research firm Danwei, told AFP.

"Perhaps their idea is that they stand the most chance of success in non--anglophone markets where there are repressive governments.

"They can position themselves as something that is not American, and therefore less likely to be hostile."

Robin Li's meeting with the head of China's powerful propaganda arm came amid official concern over the growing influence of the Internet in China, which has the largest online population at 485 million people.

Last month Beijing's most senior Communist Party official visited the offices of two Chinese Internet companies, Sina and Youku, to urge them to stop the spread of "false and harmful information".

Youku is a video sharing service, while Sina runs a news website and a highly popular microblog that was used by thousands of people to criticize the government after a July train crash in which at least 40 people died.

PRINCIPAL MAKES CHEERLEADERS DON SWEATS UNDER RISQUE SKIRTS

PRINCIPAL MAKES CHEERLEADERS DON SWEATS UNDER RISQUE SKIRTS
When San Jose (Calif.) Piedmont Hills High School principal Traci Williams decided to actually enforce a longstanding ban on miniskirts at the school, her school-wide dress-code sweeps found a very surprised target: The school's cheerleading squad. Now members of the Pirates' spirit team are facing a season wearing sweatpants under their uniforms during school to avoid violating the dress code, a measure that they're none too pleased about.
As first reported by the San Jose Mercury News, the move to make cheerleaders wear sweats under their uniforms was enforced so they could fall in line with a dress code that requires all skirts or shorts to stretch lower than mid-thigh. The Piedmont Hills cheerleaders' custom-tailored uniforms came relatively close to achieving that benchmark, but Williams declared that they didn't quite hit it, leading to the necessary adjustments.
Administrators feel that they have a valid reason for stepping up enforcement of the miniskirt ban. While standards in teen clothing in school can vary widely from state to state, Williams described the attire worn by many of the students at Piedmont Hills as ranging from slightly inappropriate to nearly lewd.
"Pockets are hanging out," Williams told the Mercury News of skirts that had been identified in recent clothing sweeps. "Cheeks are hanging out. We don't want them bending over."
While the cheerleaders feel the school administration should ease up on its enforcement of the rule, the Mercury News reported that plenty of other students had been sent into a special building until their parents arrived with a change of clothes, all because their skirts were deemed to be too skimpy.
The difference, of course, is that the Pirates cheerleaders are wearing a custom-tailored, $300 school uniform during classes, all as part of a drive to improve school spirit on game days.
"This is really unfair to us," Piedmont Hills senior cheerleader Antonia Bavilacqua told the Mercury News. The skirts are still OK for games, just not during school. "We're just sad and hurt. It's our school colors and spirit. And they're making us feel like outcasts."
Now Bavilacqua is leading a charge to try and get Williams to ease up on her enforcement of the rule, citing both a prior case in Florida, common sense (another cheerleader cited the weather concerns, saying "It's 95 degrees outside"), and fashion sense as reasons to allow the cheerleaders to wear their uniforms in school one day a week.
After all, as one of the squad's other senior cheerleaders said, wearing sweatpants under a miniskirt is, "dorky."

Yet it doesn't appear that Williams has any plans of budging on her ruling, at least for the moment. If anything, her commitment to enforcing the miniskirt ban for cheerleaders and the rest of the school was only reinforced after attending the Pirates' football game against Evergreen Valley (Calif.) High last week and surveying their cheerleaders' uniforms.
"Their skirts were mid-thigh," Williams said. "If our cheerleader's skirts were that long, this wouldn't be an issue."

OFFICIAL PROBE CREDIBLE TEROR THREAT

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. officials said Thursday they were investigating a credible but unconfirmed threat that al-Qaida was planning to use a car bomb to target bridges or tunnels in New York City or Washington to coincide with the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, the first tip of an "active plot" around that date.

The Homeland Security Department said the threat is credible and specific but unconfirmed. The nation's terror alert level has not changed, but raising it was under consideration Thursday night.

Law enforcement officials were investigating three people who recently entered the U.S. The threat was received by the U.S. intelligence community late Wednesday night, officials said.

"There is specific, credible but unconfirmed threat information," said Janice Fedarcyk, the assistant director in charge of the FBI's New York division. "As we always do before important dates like the anniversary of 9/11, we will undoubtedly get more reporting in the coming days."

James McJunkin, the assistant FBI director in the Washington field office, said his agents weren't seeking any particular suspects.

"There's no named individual," he told reporters in a late-night news conference.

Security has been enhanced around the country in the weeks leading up to the 10th anniversary. Law enforcement officials have been wary, particularly after information gleaned from Osama bin Laden's compound in May indicated that al-Qaida had considered attacking the U.S. on the anniversary and other important dates.

The threat came in a single piece of information and was so specific — and came at such a time of already heightened alert — that it could not be ignored. The officials described the threat to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive security matters.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg told reporters that police there were deploying additional resources around the city but that New Yorkers should go about their business as usual. The city's observance of the attacks will go on as planned, Bloomberg said.

The FBI and Homeland Security Department issued a joint intelligence bulletin Thursday night to law enforcement around the country urging them to maintain enhanced security and be on the lookout for suspicious activity.

District of Columbia Police Chief Cathy Lanier said that all police would be working 12-hour shifts indefinitely and that any cars parked in odd locations risked being towed.
President Barack Obama was briefed on the threat information Thursday morning and directed the counterterrorism community to redouble its efforts in response to the information, a White House official said.

White House officials said there were no plans to change Obama's travel schedule on Sunday in light of the threat. The president is scheduled to mark the 9/11 anniversary with stops at New York's ground zero, the Pentagon and Shanksville, Pa., where one of the hijacked planes crashed. He will also deliver remarks Sunday night at a memorial concert at the Kennedy Center in Washington.

Law enforcement officials are checking out all of the details included in the threat, said Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y.

"No need to panic," King said. "They have not been able to confirm it yet."

Thursday morning, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told reporters that there was "a lot of chatter" around the anniversary of the attacks but that there was no information about a specific threat.

___

Associated Press writers Matt Apuzzo, Lolita C. Baldor, Julie Pace and Eric Tucker in Washington and Tom Hays in New York contributed to this report.