Web Archives - Page 9 of 38

Wide Open West Shows its Moxi with Ultra TV

Cable provider Wide Open West (WOW) is beating Comcast to the IPTV punch with a new service called Ultra TV. Not that WOW is delivering TV over IP exactly, but it is deploying the Arris six-tuner IP gateway to combine standard TV delivery with lots of IP entertainment goodness. WOW joins BendBroadband and Canada’s Shaw … Read more

Aereo: the Good, the Bad, and Where It Could Get Ugly

Fox network creator Barry Diller introduced a new over-the-top video service yesterday called Aereo. Many are already calling it dead in the water, but there are several reasons I’m more optimistic about Aereo than competitive OTT services launched in recent years.

To take a step back, Aereo is offering a service that delivers broadcast TV stations over IP and bundles them with a DVR. Stations are available on iOS and Roku devices, with Android, PC and Mac browser support scheduled to kick in by mid-March. The service is $12 a month, and is currently invitation-only in New York. Aereo will open up to the public in NYC on March 14th.

In order to be successful, Aereo will have to deliver stellar quality of service. These are free broadcast TV channels after all, which means people can use their own antennas to get the same content at no cost. However, in addition to the DVR add-on (which is pretty compelling in itself for today’s non-cable households), Aereo promises decent picture quality – no need to futz with antenna positioning or manipulate around dead zones. That’s a potential combination of DVR, picture quality and convenience. Not bad.

In addition, I think Aereo’s got a few other things going for it:

How Much Is HBO Worth?

Ben Drawbaugh, of Engadget HD, has decided HBO just isn’t worth $17/month. Ben’s something of a HD snob, which I characterize in the nicest way possible, and finds HBO “unwatchable” — preferring instead to rent or purchase higher quality Blu-ray discs. And has therefore cancelled his subscription.

By comparison, I’m much more tolerant of perhaps somewhat inferior audio/visual presentation… given sufficiently compelling content along with viewing flexibility. So I find HBO to be one of the best values in home entertainment, primarily due to HBO GO – which provides access to all of HBO’s original programming, think Sopranos or Boardwalk Empire, along with a small rotating selection of mainstream movies. HBO GO was originally streamed to mobile devices like the iPad or iPhone, but has branched out

Will it be Netflix vs. Amazon? Or OnLive?

While Netflix may or may not have gained paying streaming subscribers last quarter, they’ve clearly given up on the idea of peddling physical video game rentals. But, I have to wonder, if thinking games and given their current emphasis on digital delivery, might Netflix elbow into OnLive or Steam‘s territory at some point? In regards to … Read more

Live TV Hits More Devices, But Only at Home

Both Time Warner Cable and Cablevision have announced TV Everywhere updates with promises to bring live streaming to more devices. Beyond iPads, the new platforms they plan to support include laptops, game consoles and select smart TVs. While I’m all for any extra features the cablecos want to throw at us, an expanded ecosystem of … Read more

Dear Content People, Please Let Me Pay You

As push back on the overly broad SOPA rages, outspoken investor and reluctant content pirate Fred Wilson once again emphasizes the challenges facing the content industry… and their potential customers.

Making movies is expensive and risky. I totally get that the studios need to make a lot of money on those movies to make their business model work. But denying customers the films they want, on the devices they want to watch them, when they want to watch them is not a great business model. It leads to piracy, as we have discussed here many times, but more importantly it also leads to the loss of a transaction to a competing form of entertainment.

While Fred primarily focuses his discussion on the studio release window (this time), consumer frustration extends to all sorts of global media. And, unfortunately, I doubt we’ll see an expeditious resolution given a still archaic licensing and distribution quagmire that still emphasizes the sale of physical goods.

I do see signs of forward progress, but it’s clearly gonna be a long slog. Like Fred and many of you, I find myself frequently frustrated.

Play Santa with Google’s Custom Video Messages

Everyone could use a few procrastination helpers this time of year, and Google’s provided another one in the form of brand new custom Santa video messages. The video app complements Google’s other service launched last week to let users send personalized Santa phone calls. The phone calls alone are hilarious, but the video version of the … Read more

New Verizon App Won’t Be the Death of FiOS

Reuters dropped a veritable bombshell yesterday when it reported that Verizon has plans to launch a streaming service in 2012 to compete with Netflix. It wasn’t a bombshell because Verizon’s never talked about this before. After all, we got an inkling of the operator’s plans at CES last January. It was a bombshell because the … Read more