Alas, the Foursquare conference, hosted by the Quadrangle PE fund, is an invitation-only affair. And the event, which kicks off tomorrow, is closed to the press except for reporters onstage to interview the stars. And those conversations don’t get released to the public.

That’s a particular bummer this time. Because the Quadrangle guys–who have had a rough year–had the foresight to get a lineup that includes GE (GE) CEO Jeff Immelt, who appears to be in the final stages of selling NBC Universal to Comcast (CMCSA) CEO Brian Roberts, who will also be onstage. Sure would be nice to hear what they say.

Another panel that piques my interest, if only because of the title: “Are Popularity and Profitability Correlated?” It features Twitter’s Stone, LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman and YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley. And would-be moguls are represented by a start-up pitch panel that includes Dennis Crowley of Foursquare, the superbuzzy mobile service whose name has nothing to do with Quadrangle’s conference.

So once again, here’s the complete list of those you won’t be hearing from this week as they gather at the Plaza in Manhattan. Unless, perhaps, one of my more ambitious colleagues sneaks in–I’m thinking of you, Bobby MacMillan–and gets us a first-hand account.

2009 SPEAKERS
EMILIO AZCÁRRAGA President, Board of Directors and CEO, Grupo Televisa
DENNIS CROWLEY Co-Founder, foursquare
BARRY DILLER Chairman and CEO, IAC; Chairman, Expedia, Inc. and Ticketmaster Entertainment, Inc.
BRIAN DUNN CEO, Best Buy
CHARLES FORMAN Founder, OMGPOP
REED HASTINGS Founder, Chairman and CEO, Netflix
REID HOFFMAN Executive Chairman and Founder, LinkedIn Corporation
CHAD HURLEY CEO and Co-Founder, YouTube
JEFF IMMELT Chairman and CEO, GE
PAUL JACOBS Chairman and CEO, Qualcomm Incorporated
OLLI-PEKKA KALLASVUO President and CEO, Nokia
JASON KILAR CEO, Hulu
LESLIE MOONVES President and CEO, CBS Corporation
ANNE MULCAHY Chairman, Xerox Corporation
JAMES MURDOCH Chairman and Chief Executive, Europe & Asia, News Corporation
BRIAN PHILLIPS CEO and Co-Founder, Thread
DAN PORTER CEO, OMGPOP
BRIAN ROBERTS Chairman and CEO, Comcast Corporation
PAUL SAGAN President and CEO, Akamai
ERIC SCHMIDT Chairman and CEO, Google
IVAN SEIDENBERG Chairman and CEO, Verizon Communications
BIZ STONE Co-Founder, Twitter
HOWARD STRINGER Chairman, CEO and President, Sony Corporation
BEN VERWAAYEN CEO, Alcatel-Lucent
DAVID ZASLAV President and CEO, Discovery Communications

MODERATORS
MARC ANDREESSEN General Partner, Andreessen Horowitz
KEN AULETTA Author and Writer, “Annals of Communications”, The New Yorker
MARIA BARTIROMO Anchor, Closing Bell; Host & Managing Editor, Wall Street Journal Report, CNBC
JAMES CITRIN Co-Leader, Board & CEO Practice, North America, Spencer Stuart
DAVID FABER Anchor, Reporter, CNBC
MICHAEL HUBER Co-President and Managing Principal, Quadrangle Group
BECKY QUICK Co-Anchor, Squawk Box, CNBC
GEOFFREY SANDS Director & Leader, Global Media, Entertainment & Information Practice, McKinsey & Co.
JOSHUA L. STEINER Co-President and Managing Principal, Quadrangle Group
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS Anchor, This Week; Chief Washington Correspondent, ABC News

That’s the pitch Apple has been making to TV networks in recent weeks. The company is trying to round up support for a monthly subscription service that would deliver TV programs via its multimedia software, multiple sources tell me.

Apple (AAPL) isn’t tying the proposed service to a specific piece of hardware, like its underwhelming Apple TV box or its long-rumored tablet/slate device. Instead, the company is presenting the offer as an extension of its iTunes software and store, which already has 100 million customers.

A so-called “over the top” service could theoretically rival the ones most consumers already  buy from cable TV operators–if Apple is able to get enough buy-in from broadcast and cable TV programmers.

That’s a big if: Apple has told industry executives it wants to launch the service early next year, but I have yet to hear of a single programmer that has made a firm commitment to the company, which has tasked iTunes boss Eddy Cue with promoting the idea.

Industry executives believe that if anyone jumps first, it will be Disney (DIS), since CEO Bob Iger has shown a willingness to experiment with Apple and iTunes in the past: In 2005, Disney was the first player to sell its programming on iTunes, via a-la-carte downloads. And Apple CEO Steve Jobs is Disney’s largest single shareholder, a result of Disney’s 2006 acquisition of Jobs’s Pixar animation studio. Apple didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Network executives I’ve talked to are intrigued by the idea–they are eager to find new revenue streams–but are also wary, for several reasons.

Cable networks, for instance, don’t want to threaten existing relationships and subscription fees from cable providers like Comcast (CMCSA). And programmers are also worried about the effect a subscription service would have on advertising revenue: Even if the service didn’t distribute TV programs until after their initial air date, that could cut into ratings, which now measure viewership over the course of several days.

But the move to deliver TV and movies over the Web is already well under way. Netflix (NFLX), for instance, already bundles free streaming movie and television along with its disc-by-mail subscription service. iTunes and Amazon (AMZN) rent movies on a one-off basis, and Google’s (GOOG) YouTube is trying out the same thing. Meanwhile, Hulu, the joint venture between GE’s (GE) NBC, News Corp.’s (NWS) Fox, and ABC, is figuring out how to launch a paid service that may include rentals, paid downloads or subscriptions.

So Apple’s proposed subscription service, which the company has floated in the past, is no longer a huge stretch. Says one executive briefed on the company’s plans: “I think they might get it right this time.”

At first glance, it looks like the company beat them. Netflix (NFLX) posted earnings of 37 cents a share on revenue of $394.1 million. Wall Street had been looking for 31 cents and $390 million, respectively. The company said it ended the quarter with 10.3 million subscribers, which is the high end of the range it had promised to deliver.

And guidance was strong, too. From the company’s press release, here are Q2 predictions:

– Ending subscribers of 10.4 million to 10.6 million
– Revenue of $403 million to $409 million
– GAAP net income of $27 million to $32 million
– GAAP EPS of 44 cents to 53 cents per diluted share

And here’s the company’s revised guidance for 2009 (full year), which it increased:

– Ending subscribers of 11.2 million to 11.8 million, up from 10.6 million to 11.3 million
– Revenue of $1.63 billion to $1.67 billion, up from $1.58 billion to $1.635 billion
– GAAP net income of $96 million to $106 million, up from $88 million to $98 million
– GAAP EPS of $1.56 to $1.72 per diluted share, up from $1.43 to $1.59 per diluted share.

All of this seems to compare favorably with Wall Street’s expectations. Via Citibank’s Mark Mahaney, here’s what investors were looking for (click to enlarge):

Netflix shares have been bouncing around in the aftermarket following the earnings release, and last I looked, they’re just about flat. It will probably take investors a while to figure out if they’re disappointed that the numbers aren’t even bigger.

UPDATE: The stock is now down around 5%, presumably because guidance wasn’t strong enough. I’m back for the earnings call, which I’ll live blog part of: I’m particularly interested in Netflix’s digital strategy, so I’ll be focusing on that.

CEO Reed Hastings: Subscribers renting more DVDs and Blu-rays than ever. Disc rental will continue to grow for many years, so we’re investing in that.

More realistic Blu-ray pricing (previously discussed) of 20% to 25% premium for subs. Though we’re paying the studios a higher premium for Blu-ray. If we can get those costs in line, we can promote Blu-ray more agresssively [i.e. bring down your prices, Hollywood, and we'll push more of your high-margin discs].

We are losing customer to $1 kiosk rentals. “By end of they year, kiosks will likely be our #1 competitor,” as rental stores fail. “Longterm effects,” of cheap kiosks “are not positive for us, or the industry as a whole.”

Streaming: Overall consumer embrace of online video growing. “Not hard to believe that online video will grow substantially every year for a long time”. [Duh]. Important for us to be spending “aggressively” on streaming content. “But that means we are essentially buying many titles twice now”. Buying once on DVD, and again on streaming. Great for content owners, ok for us since costs for streaming are lower than physical distribution.

We believe we’ll get more streaming licenses as TV networks, who control titles, look to increase distribution. We are looking to a day, when we have plentiful content for streaming… “we will simply be a fourth option for consumers and a fourth revenue source for networks and studios”. It’s possible that within a few years, all CE devices sold will include a Netflix component.

It’s easy to focus on the Internet for its distribution abilities, but its important to think about social possibilities. Future of Internet TV is closer to Facebook and social networks than the standard grid lineup. Social, social, social. Long term outlook for Internet TV is very promising.

[Join to pass on most of CFO notes] No “cocooning” effect from recession apparent in DVD usage. Acquisition costs “record low” in part because of depressed online ad pricing.

Q&A: “Tremendous amounts” of hardware partnerships in the pipeline. Xbox renewal? No answer.

Have sub growth slowed at end of quarter? No. Q4 growth back-end loaded because of holidays, and Q1 growth front-end loaded for same reason.

How about a fee-based service for a streaming only service by year’s end? We talk about that from time to time, but not pressing. For now, combination of DVD rental and streaming is what consumers are interested in. A streaming-only service would be a “sweetner” to what we have now. We don’t think it would cannibalize, though.

Can you talk about streaming-enabled devices’ contribution to subscriber additions? No details, but we think it’s helpful to have Xbox, Blu-ray players, etc. “It’s definitely a very positive part of the ecosystem for us”.

What are dynamics to adding more content to streaming library? More money.

Can you talk more about new marketing efficiencies? There aren’t any new ones, really. Weak economy, lower ad prices, plus consumer excitement about streaming product.

What does competition look like on streaming front from Apple and Amazon? Right now, “all three of us are three drops of water in the pool that is watching television”, … “we all recognize in the long-term there will be competition between us” but we’re all “so tiny” compared to TV-viewing that that’s what we’re focused on.

That appears to be it for streaming-related queries. I’ll check back in with the full transcript later on.

That instruction comes from Rep. Eric Massa, a Democrat who represents the Rochester area, and it’s aimed specifically at Time Warner Cable (TWC), which is starting to experiment with broadband “caps” in Massa’s hometown. Rabble-rousing quote: “Just at a time when access to information is driving our economic recovery, Time Warner is moving to stagnate the 21st Century technology needed to rebuild America.”

But any of the big Internet pipe players contemplating charging their users on a per-use basis–and most of them are–can expect to get similar blowback from lawmakers. It’s a no-brainer: Consumers now expect to be able to use as much data as they want. And the cable guys–or the phone guys, in the markets where AT&T (T) and Verizon (VZ) are offering Internet service–are easy political targets.

That’s a problem for the cable/phone guys, who want to use the caps to manage the boom in Web video. Their spin: They need the caps to make sure that power users who are consuming hours of movies, TV shows, etc., via their PCs shoulder an appropriate bill for the bandwidth they use. The cynics among us think the plan is designed to discourage people from ditching their cable TV service in favor of  Netflix (NFLX) on-demand, Hulu and TV downloads from Apple’s (AAPL) iTunes.

The cable guys are aware of the brewing backlash. At the industry’s annual convention last week, they were musing openly about better ways to sell their plans: Not as “caps” on use, for instance, but as “additional levels of service.” That’s going to take some awfully persuasive campaigning, and that’s not the kind of thing monopolists excel at.

But perhaps they can just use this “Simpsons” clip to make their case:

Mark Wattles, who founded onetime Blockbuster (BBI) rival Hollywood Entertainment, has bought up a 5.7 percent stake in his former rival. And he says he thinks the company will be able to pay off its debt, $150 million of which comes due in August.

The SEC filing describing the purchase doesn’t disclose the price that Wattles paid for the shares. But he bought them on March 4th, the day after the stock plunged on reports that it was considering Chapter 11.

Blockbuster later said that it simply hired a law firm to help it with financing issues, and since then shares have rebounded. News of Wattles’ purchase pushed them up a tad more–by the end of the yesterday they were trading at $0.76, up 17% from the day before.

Wattles bought 6.8 million shares on March 4. If he paid 50 cents for each one–the midpoint of the trading range that day–he would have spent some $3.4 million. That same investment would have been worth about 100,000 shares in red-hot Netflix (NFLX).

But if Blockbuster does file Chapter 11, Wattles has some protection: He already owns a slug of the company’s 9 percent senior notes, which means he’ll have a voice in any restructuring that takes place.

Wattles’s SEC filing comes with a mini testimonial to current Blockbuster management. That’s unusual for a disclosure form, so make of that what you will. Here’s the relevant part:

The Class A shares of Common Stock were acquired… because of his belief that the Issuer does not have a motive to reorganize under Chapter 11..  Given the operating fundamentals of the Issuer combined with the short term of its real estate leases (typically five years) and the aggressive and proactive manner in which the Issuer has managed its store base (including relocations, store closings, reductions in store size and subleases), Mr. Wattles does not believe that the Issuer has a motive to reorganize under Chapter 11.  … Mr. Wattles believes the Issuer will be successful in refinancing its revolving bank line of credit, or if it cannot, that it will be able to use cash flow from operations to meet its August repayment obligations and 2009 liquidity needs.

When I first met Avner Ronen in January, the Boxee CEO was beaming. His Web video company was one of the breakout hits at the Consumer Electronics Show.

But when I had lunch with Ronen yesterday, he was much more subdued. Going head-to-head against the TV establishment can take the wind out of you.

In the span of two months, Boxee has gone from obscure start-up to an irritant or worse for the TV business.

That’s because Boxee, which makes it easy to sort and play video you grab from the Web, symbolizes a real threat for the established players: That one day, many consumers will consume most of their TV via video they find on the Web. And then they’ll cut TV networks and cable operators out of the picture.

That’s a long way from happening, but just the notion of it seemed to be enough for GE’s (GE) NBC and News Corp.’s (NWS) Fox, which apparently forced their Hulu joint venture to stop working with Boxee last month.

Now Hulu and Boxee are in a cat-and-mouse game, whereby Boxee’s engineers try to find ways to get Hulu’s stuff onto their browsers and the Hulu guys try to stop them. (News Corp. is the owner of Dow Jones, which owns this Web site.)

Ronen isn’t optimistic that this is going to change anytime soon. He also says the past few months have taught him how little he knew about the media business prior to starting Boxee in 2007. Had he known how entrenched and complicated the relationships between broadcasters, programmers, cable networks and cable operators are, he says, he might never have tried to get the company going.

But Ronen still figures he’ll thrive in the long run. He notes that some big media companies that aren’t NBC and Fox–Netflix (NFLX) and Disney’s (DIS) ABC, for instance–have been happy to work with Boxee, or at least not to complain about the service.

I’ll let him explain why, and lay out Boxee’s future plans (which included a beta launch this summer and Boxee-enabled devices next year) in this video interview.

And if, like me, you’re going to be in Austin for South By Southwest on Saturday, you can ask him yourself, at a panel discussion where he’ll share the stage with College Humor’s Ricky Van Veen and B.J. Novak of “The Office.”

Blockbuster (BBI) didn’t provide much detail. It boasted about fourth-quarter same-store sales and said 2008 earnings would be above expectations, and that’s about it. But it assured investors it was working “diligently” to figure out how to pay some $380 million in debt that comes due in August.

Alas, investors are giving the numbers mixed reviews. After Blockbuster put out its release, shares opened up at 61 cents–up almost 30 percent from Wednesday’s close. Now that the penny stock’s shareholders have thought it through, though, they’re selling again, and shares have dropped below 50 cents. At the beginning of the week, they were trading above $1 a share. A year ago, they were worth more than $3.

Related note: On Tuesday afternoon, as the Chapter 11 reports were surfacing, I happened to be talking to someone who worked with the company about a decade ago, when it still ruled the home video market with an iron fist. At the time, he said, Blockbuster used to get frequent calls from an entrepreneur who was desperate to get the video giant to work with, or even buy, his company. Good thing that never worked out for Netflix (NFLX) CEO Reed Hastings.

But that hasn’t panned out for Blockbuster (BBI), which is  reportedly mulling a Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection filing. No confirmation from the company yet, but investors aren’t waiting around to find out: BBI shares are now less than a quarter a piece. At the beginning of the day they traded at 96 cents. UPDATE: Blockbuster confirms it has hired law firm Kirkland & Ellis “to advise it with respect to its ongoing financing and capital raising initiatives” but tells Reuters that it can self-fund its debt through the rest of the year and that it “does not intend to file for bankruptcy.”

A little less than a year ago, you may recall, Blockbuster was trying to buy Circuit City for about $1 billion or so. But investors couldn’t see the appeal of mashing a struggling retailer with a struggling video rental company, and the deal fell through. Circuit City is currently in liquidation.

Add this to Blockbuster–and Yahoo (YHOO)–investor Carl Icahn’s list of recent disappointments.

[Image credit: travdir]

But Mark Mahaney thinks he knows: The Citigroup analyst estimates that Amazon (AMZN) sold 500,000 devices last year. And he figures that the Kindle, which he delights in calling the “iPod of the Book World,” will become a $1.2 billion business by 2010.

Watching Mahaney get to his numbers makes for interesting reading, if you enjoy reading analyst reports: He derives the 500,000 number via a filing by Amazon partner Sprint (S), which handles the wireless service for the e-books. And he gets to the $1.2 billion number by assuming that Kindle adoption will be similar to that of Apple’s (AAPL) music player several years ago, and that Kindle owners will buy a digital book each month. (Click chart to enlarge)

Also worth noting: Mahaney’s larger thesis, which is that Amazon is making great strides at anticipating and adapting to a future where most of its inventory is delivered digitally. And as with Netflix (NFLX), that doing so isn’t an option–it’s required:

The structural challenge facing Amazon is that approximately 50% of its revenue is generated from the sale of books, music, and videos–three  product categories that are all in the process of being digitized. If Amazon can’t successfully jump the chasm from Internet-ordered/mailman-delivered media products to Internet-ordered/digitally-delivered media products, its financial fundamentals and its stock price will be significantly challenged.”

But maybe you don’t care about revenue models or stock prices. Maybe you just want to see shiny new gadgets. OK. Mahaney has a little something for you, too. Here’s what he envisions for Kindle 2.0:

• Longer and thinner than Kindle 1.0
• Less crummy key pad and buttons, so it’s less likely that you’ll accidentally turn the page
• No touchscreen
• No color screen
• Price: Perhaps as low as $300, down from today’s $359

My prediction: The geeksugar people are going to be baking a new Kindle cake next week.

Why? Because DVD sales have been on the down slope for quite some time and because no one seems to have much interest in Blu-ray, the expensive new DVD format pushed by Sony (SNE), which was supposed to replace DVDs as Hollywood’s cash cow.

And because, while people are more likely to spend time huddled around the TV these days, that doesn’t mean they’re going to actually buy movies–they may rent them, which is good for the likes of Netflix (NFLX), but doesn’t do much for Hollywood.

So who gets hit worst? Khan has ranked the major media conglomerates by their exposure to home entertainment, expressed as a percentage of earnings*:

Viacom (VIA): 21 percent

Time Warner (TWX): 20 percent–or 10 percent if you include the company’s contribution from its Time Warner Cable spinoff

News Corp. (NWS): 18 percent

Disney (DIS): 15 percent

All things being equal though, you’re probably still better off tied to the DVD business, which is slowing, than the ad business, which is disappearing.

Case in point: Viacom shares are down 60 percent in the last year. But that looks fantastic compared to the performance of sister company CBS (CBS), which is down 80 percent. And yes, I’m trying to argue that being down 60 percent is the new up. But that’s where we are these days.

*Khan uses different definitions of earnings–sometimes he’s talking about EBITDA, sometimes OIBDA, etc.–for different companies. Chances are you don’t care.

I can attest that the streaming service is indeed excellent–enough so that I’m likely to drop my subscription to Time Warner’s (TWX) HBO very soon. What I can’t tell you is the number of Netflix subscribers who are actually using the service, because Netflix (NFLX) isn’t offering up any real data about the program–only that “millions” used the service in the last quarter.*

But! That data point alone is enough to suggest that more than 20 percent of the company’s subscribers are using the service.

Here’s the algebra, courtesy of Barclays Capital’s Doug Anmuth: Netflix ended the quarter with 9.4 million subscribers. If “millions” means at least two million, than that means at least 21 percent of the company’s customers use streaming–while continuing to use DVD and Blu-ray discs.

That strikes me as a fairly astonishing number, given that it’s still not a simple process to get Netflix’s stuff on your TV, where you can best appreciate it. There’s now a handful of devices, like Roku’s specialized box and Microsoft’s (MSFT) Xbox 360, designed to get the company’s movies and shows on your big(ish) screen, and more on the way, like LG’s TVs that come prewired for the service.

But most of this stuff is getting viewed on viewer’s laptops, Netflix says. Just think of what the adoption rate will be like when that switches to TVs.

*A reader suggests that Netflix may not mean millions of viewers, but millions of views, or some other obfuscation. I thought about that one, too, and double-checked Hasting’s remarks, via Seeking Alpha. Here’s the relevant excerpt: “Our existing subscribers are watching instantly in ever greater numbers and in just the last month millions of our subscribers got more value from their Netflix subscription by streaming.”

Bear in mind that these are his scripted remarks, pre Q&A. So it seems to me he was being very deliberate here — he’s got a lot of folks using his Web service, and he wants to brag about it.

[Image Credit: jeffgunn]

That odd bit of cognitive dissonance surfaced yesterday, when the DVD rental company said it hadn’t been able to buy Web ads at a discount at the end of 2008. Hard to tell if it’s meaningful–does this mean the slowdown hasn’t been as great as people think, or is it just a statistical anomaly?–but it is interesting.

The details: During the company’s Q4 earnings call, CEO Reed Hastings told analysts that Netflix “didn’t see any benefits” from lower online ad pricing during the last three months of last year.

That’s odd, since Netflix (NFLX) buys more online ad inventory than just about everyone. Last year, when Nielsen Online was providing monthly reports about top advertisers on the Web, Netflix routinely made the Top 10 list, along with a handful or mortgage and finance companies. (Surely you’ve been annoyed by the company’s omnipresent pop-under ads). So if anything, its leverage should have increased in the past few months.

That prompted a follow-up question along those lines. Transcript via Seeking Alpha:

Youssef Squali–Jefferies & Co.

Barry, just a quick clarification, I think you said in your answer to a question that was posed before that you have not seen any benefit from lower ad rates in Q4. I’m just trying to reconcile that. Everything that we’re hearing from ad players out there, online ad players that at least on the CPM side and particularly on non-premium inventory where you guys seem to spend a lot of money, we’ve seen double digit declines year-on-year. Given the fact that you’re one of the top 20 online advertisers out there how can you not see a benefit?

Netflix CFO Barry McCarthy

You know, I put the question to our chief marketing officer in almost exactly the same tone and he reminded me that we already buy at low rates in mostly the remnant market so what must be happening is that the trickle down affect hasn’t yet hit the remnants space which is already incredibly discounted.”

It’d be great to think that remnant space–the cheap inventory Web sites usually hand over to ad networks or Google (GOOG) when they can’t sell it on their own–hasn’t come down significantly, but that’s not what I hear anecdotally, and that’s not what a barrage of reports has indicated.

The graph below, for instance, comes from ad optimization company PubMatic, which just reported “dramatic” drops in pricing over the last year. We’re likely to hear more of the same from Yahoo (YHOO) today. Anyone want to explain why Netflix hasn’t seen a benefit from those fire sales?

The company predicted that it would have 10.1 million to 10.3 million subscribers by the end of March, and 10.6 million to 11.3 million by the end of the year. Those numbers trump consensus expectations of 9.6 million and 10.3 million, respectively.

The rest of the company’s guidance was also strong: Netflix beat expectations with its predictions for Q1 and full-year revenue and earnings per share.

The company had already tipped its hand about its Q4 results when it told investors that it had “a remarkably strong quarter,” so those numbers aren’t that important in Wall Street’s eyes. For what it’s worth, the company posted earnings of 38 cents per share on revenues of $359 million versus expectations of 34 cents a share and $354 million.

“Consumers embraced the Netflix experience in near record numbers last quarter,” said CEO Reed Hastings, “with growth in our core DVD offering and growing momentum with internet streaming.”

Investors have been betting for quite some time that Netflix would be able to weather a recession, and even thrive during one, as consumers hunker down in front of their flat screens instead of spending money on more expensive entertainment. And they’re also hopeful about the strides the company had made toward delivering movies via broadband–a technology that so far flummoxed rival Blockbuster (BBI).

I’ll be listening to the company’s earnings call, which begins at 5 p.m. Eastern time, and will update this post if there’s anything particularly illuminating.

Here’s Citi (C) analyst Mark Mahaney’s helpful “cheat sheet” if you want to evaluate the results on your own (click to enlarge):

[Image Credit: jeknee]

No need to go on about my lack of interest in this forced marriage, which the consumer electronics business has been trying to make work for more than a decade (see the 1993 Time cover to the right). Slate’s Farhad Manjoo has done it for me. If you’re pressed for time, the title will do: “I don’t want my Web TV.”

Here’s what I do want: The ability to use my TV to watch all the great video the Web makes available–actual TV shows and movies like “The Office” on Hulu, “Lost” on ABC.com, “No Country For Old Men” on Netflix’s (NFLX) on-demand service. Which is where Boxee comes in.

The New York-based start-up makes elegant software that cobbles together offerings from all of those services, plus many more–with whatever media you have stored on your hard drive–and serves it up to you on your big screen, with a minimum of fuss. Right now it’s a niche product–it only works on PCs running Linux, or Apple’s (AAPL) Mac mini and AppleTV boxes–but that should change soon.

It’s slick stuff, and when you get a chance to watch it in action, it’s the first time that all those anecdotal stories about people dropping their cable TV subscriptions and just watching Internet video finally make sense: Why pay for cable stations you don’t want when you can watch just about everything you do want, on demand, for free?

This is also why I’m not sure how long the big cable companies will allow Boxee to operate unfettered. As the recent dispute between Time Warner Cable (TWC) and Viacom (VIA) illustrates, the cable operators are increasingly dismayed about paying the cable networks big fees for their content, only to find them giving it away online. And with Boxee providing customers with a real opportunity to drop cable TV in favor of a broadband connection, I worry that it’s a matter of time before they find some way to throttle the company.

Technically, the cable guys (and the telcos, who are also in the TV business) aren’t supposed to be able to do anything about Boxee. They’re just supposed to act as a dumb pipe serving up high-speed Internet access and keep their mouths shut. In the real world, I don’t think that’s going to fly. See: The many bandwidth caps the cable guys are starting to experiment with, which are aimed at heavy Web video users.

Boxee founder Avner Ronen disagrees, of course. He thinks the cable guys will want to work with his company (he plans to make money by licensing his software to gadget makers and extracting fees from content providers like Netflix, but that’s all down the line). And maybe he’s right: When I dropped by his CES booth on Friday, he was being swarmed by emissaries from CableLabs, the cable guys’ tech consortium. They were the third group of cable execs to visit the company that day.

I’ll let Ronen make his case in the video below; and I’ve also included a brief demo video from the company. But that clip doesn’t really do Boxee justice. Ask one of the 100,000 super-early adopters who are using the software themselves. Or any of the nervous cable guys who saw it last week.

Amazon’s data-free claim that it posted its “best ever” holiday season this month has gotten a deservedly skeptical reception. But here’s one vote in favor of Jeff Bezos’s e-commerce giant: A customer satisfaction poll that singles out just Amazon and Netflix for praise.

Forsee Results says that Amazon (AMZN) and Netflix (NFLX) were the clear winners in its annual survey of Web shoppers. And Amazon was the only company in Forsee’s Top 5 that got higher rankings this year than it did in 2007.

Even mighty Apple (AAPL), whose customers were generally fairly happy with their online shopping experience, saw its ranking drop one point over the last year. Here’s a list of results (click to enlarge):

You can spin this stuff any way that you’d like: It’s sort of interesting, for instance, that brick-and-mortar chains like Wal-Mart (WMT), Target (TGT) and Staples (SPLS) improved their scores. And not that surprising that Circuit City (CC), which is in the midst of a Chapter 11 filing, fared poorly. Click here for the full report (ignore the part about this being a U.K. survey). But the real report cards–tallies of what customers actually spent at the stores in the last two months–are just getting finalized now.