Zach Borst, a 26-year-old filmmaker from Long Island, N.Y., wrote, produced and assembled a one-minute ad about a graduate getting a Chevrolet Camaro as a gift for a Chevrolet competition. When you see it, you’ll realize why Chevy picked it to air in the upcoming Super Bowl to an audience of 110 million people.

Borst may be a homegrown filmmaker, but he’s been shooting video since he was seven, and has several quality commercials online. He’d also won a previous Chevrolet competition at the Tribeca film festival; knowing what the client wants does usually help in advertising. For the “Happy Grad” ad, Borst used friends for actors, camera help and locations.

“Happy Grad” — filmed by Borst and company in four hours — beat out 198 other video submissions and 400 scripts in the contest. To air, Chevy will spend at least $3.5 million for 30 seconds of air time.

Apple could be set to rush soccer broadcasting into a new era with a revolutionary, multi-billion dollar bid for television rights to the English Premier League.

The technology giant is interested in acquiring exclusive rights to screen EPL games in England when the next package (for the 2013-2016 seasons) is tendered. The Cupertino, Calif., company is set to wade into a bidding war with established television heavyweights such as Rupert Murdoch-owned Sky Sports, ESPN and Al Jazeera.

This is would of course be a major push for its platform of Apple TV, which costs less than $100 which allows users to stream internet content on their television screens. The company already showcases properties from Major League Baseball, the National Hockey League and the National Basketball Association. But this is way different.

By going for the full British television rights to the EPL, one of the most lucrative sports products in the world, Apple could be signaling the start of an assault on true broadcast television.

Apple’s interest was first revealed by Charles Sale of London’s Daily Mail newspaper and was confirmed to Yahoo! Sports by Apple sources this week. The company is still in the early stage of formulating its bidding plans, but is keen to expand its sports packages and it sees soccer as a valuable way to gain a stronger footing in the British market.

The flurry of excitement surrounding the Apple news was further intensified due to the ongoing rumors in the technology field of a new, secret Apple television product that may be released at some point over the next two years.

Quite a few Apple HDTV rumors have been talked about today, although this time it comes from renowned Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster, who took to the stage at IGNITION: Future of Media conference this morning. According to his predictions, Munster is certain that there will be an Apple TV launching next year. He basically told everyone in the audience that if they were thinking of purchasing a new TV to wait, as it’s going to be amazing. Sounds awesome!

Earlier this year, Pius Heinz was deciding whether to play cards full-time –> Now that the 22-year-old German has won the $8.72 million prize at the World Series of Poker, he can steer his life in pretty much whatever direction he wants.

“Honestly I’m not sure what I’m going to do with the money,” Heinz said early Wednesday after winning the main event in a marathon session of Texas Hold `em. “Probably my family is going to get a couple gifts.”

Heinz won with an ace high, just nine hands after using the same hand to boost himself from a nearly insurmountable disadvantage against 35-year-old Martin Staszko.

Heinz called an all-in bet from Staszko with an ace and a king. Staszko held a seven-10 of clubs.

The board was a five of clubs, deuce of diamonds, nine of spades, jack of hearts and four of diamonds, helping neither player but cementing Heinz’s win in the $10,000 buy-in tournament that started in July.

Staskzo won $5.43 million for second place, a nice consolation prize, but it comes without a bracelet—the prize given to WSOP event winners and coveted by all serious card players.

“Have you ever worn it?” Heinz asked 2010 title winner Jonathan Duhamel as Duhamel handed him the bracelet.

“It’s got to be the happiest day of my life,” Heinz said. “But I can’t believe what happened—it’s unreal.”

Amanda Knox broke down in tears as she spoke to the public for the first time during an emotional homecoming in Seattle.

Melanie Amaro auditions for The X Factor judges. A Star is born!

I want NEVER gets. Last night, Jason Castillo went to bed a normal man, with a normal Twitter account and a few dozen followers.

This morning, Jason woke up to an inbox full of messages, thousands of new followers, and wants to sell his account for thousands of dollars. Well good luck on that one!

As previously mentioned Netflix made another fundamental mistake in launching their new spin-off brand, Qwikster: they didn’t make sure they had the name locked down on all of the big social networks before making the announcement. As Jason’s luck had it, he had long owned the @Qwikster handle. He’s willing to part with it — he just wants to make sure he’ll “be making bank” first.

After over a month of silence, Jason’s @Qwikster account sprang back to life just a few hours ago and, likely to Netflix’s horror, has been more active today than it ever was before.

Jason seems to have rallied the, erm, expert counsel of his friend Gabriel (@SoccerIsLifegc7) who says they’re “not talkin til the offers get in 6 figures”. Again good luck on that one! You guys are in a dream world (see below)

Someone should probably tell Jason that selling Twitter handles is strictly against Twitter’s Terms Of Service, and attempts to do so can quickly result in being dropped. Then Qwikster gets their name, free of charge. Social media is a mess anyway. Social Media = Second Life BS.

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings announced a further split between the company’s DVD and streaming offerings with an apology.

In an email to subscribers and a video, Hastings said the decade-old DVD-by-mail service would change its name to Qwikster and be operated as a separate business from the company’s movie-streaming business, which will retain the Netflix name.

But the announcement began with an apology to customers who felt abused by changes — including price increases — Netflix (Nasdaq: NFLX) already has made.

“It is clear from the feedback over the past two months that many members felt we lacked respect and humility in the way we announced the separation of DVD and streaming and the price changes,” Hastings wrote.

With the change, Qwikster will add an option for customers to rent video games in Wii, PS3 and Xbox 360 formats. Customers who subscribe to both Qwikster and Netflix will be billed separately for those services.

Netflix‘s decision to raise prices by as much as 60 percent is turning into a bit of nightmare.

The customer backlash against the higher rates will end September with 600,000 fewer U.S. customers than it had in June.

It will mark just the second time in 12 years that Netflix has lost subscribers from one quarter to the next. The last downturn occurred during 2007 when Netflix lost a mere 55,000 from March through June.

Netflix has turned into Wall Street’s equivalent of a box-office flop. Its shares plunged $39.46, or about 19 percent, to close at $169.25, leaving Netflix’s stock price more than 40 percent below where it stood before the company unveiled the higher prices. The cost to shareholders so far: more than $6 billion in paper losses.

Netflix suffered a bigger setback earlier this month when Starz Entertainment ended talks to renew the licensing rights to a key part of Netflix’s video library for streaming over the Internet.

Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter thinks the company’s shares could fall as low as $110. “It’s like they have taken the beef away from the buffet.”

Chill Report gets the move – Netflix just don’t want to be in the DVD mailing business anymore, although that was the actual reason Netflix became so successful and why Blockbuster disappeared. Now we’re all living in a new world with companies pushing content to online, which cuts out warehouse costs and packaging costs for DVDs and cuts out all the mailing costs. So the loss of customers is probably not as bad as it sounds.

Netflix management believes the convenience of Internet video is the main reason that it has added 17 million U.S. subscribers during the past three years, establishing the company as a major player in the entertainment industry.

Netflix still expects to bring in $10 million to $25 million more from its customers than during the July-September period than it did April-June.

Until Sept. 1, Netflix offered plans that bundled DVD rentals and unlimited video streaming for as little as $10 per month. Those options are now sold separately, resulting in a cost of at least $16 per month for people who want streaming and DVDs. Having both choices is appealing because Netflix’s streaming library primarily consists of old TV shows and movies, leaving DVDs as the main way to see recently released films.

Many of the people no longer renting DVDs from Netflix will get their discs elsewhere. That will most likely be great business for Redbox, which rents DVDs for $1 per night through 33,330 kiosks in supermarkets and other retailers. Shares of Redbox owner Coinstar surged $3.33, or more than 7 percent, to close at $48.55 today. Dish Network’s shares edged up 11 cents to $25.82.

Internet retailer Amazon.com Inc. launched a free streaming service for subscribers to its two-day shipping service earlier this year. Greenfield and other analysts believe Google Inc., already the owner of YouTube, is eager to expand its Internet video offerings to include more movies. One way Google could achieve that would be to buy Hulu.com, which has been put up by for sale by the television network owners that supply its video content. All interesting stuff!

Janet Devlin’s Audition – The X Factor 2011 (Full Version)
Incredibly nervous 16-year-old Janet has flown over from the depths of Ireland to be at her audition. Living in a tiny village in the middle of nowhere has meant that she spends a lot of time on her own, using her songwriting abilities as a form of escapism. She’s not sung in public before due to her lack of confidence, but she’s managed to summon some courage to perform today. One look at the judges’ faces proves that her trip to England wasn’t wasted. Incredibly nervous 16-year-old Janet has flown over from the depths of Ireland to be at her audition. Living in a tiny village in the middle of nowhere has meant that she spends a lot of time on her own, using her songwriting abilities as a form of escapism. She’s not sung in public before due to her lack of confidence, but she’s managed to summon some courage to perform today. One look at the judges’ faces proves that her trip to England wasn’t wasted.

The BBC have launched a whole new version of its iPlayer app, destined for connected TVs that sport a Net connection. In essence this means the BBC has taken its TV content online, added on-demand features, advanced search powers, playability on multiple platforms both mobile and static, and then fed all of its lessons back into an app…for TVs.

The new BBC iPlayer app for TVs is aimed at those who have also bought a Net-connected TV because they like the interactivity, social networking, TV on-demand, email, weather reports and everything else that a “normal” TV can’t offer. This is actually an enhancement of a system the BBC trialed on Virgin TV set-top-boxes back in 2008, with the new system being aimed at many more consumers.

The BBC is rolling it out as an app for Sony PS3s at first, but will then be made available for other platforms soon after.

The BBC took the popular iPlayer Net TV solution international for the first time as an iPad app, and note that the iPlayer service is already used by millions of UK citizens every day (145 million uses in December 2010). The BBC introduced a form of interactive TV for digital transmitted content back in 1999, bringing additional text info, multiple-angle viewing to some shows, and a degree of “on-demand” tech for events like the Wimbledon Tennis Championship, where viewers could choose which court’s play to watch instead of merely receiving the BBC’s edited content.

Writing about the tech on its official blog, the BBC even highlights that the system relies on the Javascript and HTML5 standards and that it’s working on a version that uses Adobe Flash and Air so it can reach the widest possible set of Net TV hardware.