There’s been a flood of video news over the last two weeks, and mostly your friends here at Zatz Not Funny have been too busy to cover the excitement. We promise to do better, but in the meantime, here’s a quick round-up of happenings.
Austin gets Google – It won’t happen until 2014, but Austin is the next city on the list for Google Fiber, and Google Fiber TV. Exact pricing isn’t nailed down yet, but execs say it should stick close to the Kansas City deployments where gigabit Internet service is $70/month, and Internet plus TV rings in at $120 per month.
Vdio launches – The founders of Rdio have introduced Vdio, a new streaming VOD service. It’s no Netflix killer, however, as Vdio comes without a monthly subscription option. Like Amazon VOD or iTunes, everything you want to watch through Vdio requires an individual paid transaction. For now, you also have to be an existing Rdio subscriber.
Simple.TV gets funding – The folks at Simple.TV have branched out from their Kickstarter roots and raised a very official-sounding sum of $5.7 million. Dave says that “by incorporating just a single OTA tuner and requiring owners supply their own USB storage, [Simple.TV] remains the province of geeks.” But the company apparently has bigger plans for its DVR streamer. The founder says the company wants to add cable and OTT content, and extend the software to third-party hardware.
Cablevision goes outside the home – This headline definitely got obscured by other news. Cablevision has started to offer a very, very small amount of its pay-TV content to subscribers on mobile devices outside of their home Wi-Fi networks. Don’t put away your Slingbox yet, however. So far the only video available on the go is content Cablevision actually owns, including News 12, News 12 Traffic & Weather, and MSG Varsity channels.
AT&T plans new streaming service (maybe) – AT&T sent out a survey to U-verse subscribers last month asking how they’d feel about a new streaming video service that would come in at a “significantly lower price than traditional pay TV services.” Such an offering would include a Wi-Fi router and 6-Mbps Internet, and there would be no usage-based pricing for data. Hmm. Color me skeptical. Even if AT&T does go through with something like this, I’d be shocked if the company could come up with a compelling content bundle at a compelling price.
Have you mentioned Aereo? I think that’s the most newsworthy item in a long time. I took the plunge this week and said sayonora to my cable TV, and am going to only have Netflix, Apple TV, and OTA HD through my TV. No more paying $85 a month just to get ESPN or Food TV. I’m giddy with excitement!
Mari may riff on her Light Reading post covering some of the recent noise around Aereo. I’ve been waiting to comment further until I can actually try it here in the DC metro – maybe another month or so? I like the concept, but I’ve seen some complaints in regards to picture quality… and the Boxee Cloud DVR we have isn’t very good, which is somewhat comparable but thus far remains free of legal threats given the antenna location in our homes.
I’d agree, Mr. Furter, that Aereo is the most exciting video news out there. Even if it gets shut down, it is at least a camel nose under the tent in the right direction.
Thanks for the link, Dave, I hadn’t seen that blog. It made me think, “What IF all the OTA went pay-only?” I then realized, who cares. As long as we have something like Netflix, Amazon, iTunes, I’ll live. I’d be pissed if I had to miss any NFL games, but what’s the worst thing that can happen – I spend more time with my kids? Or my -gulp- wife? :^)
They can do what they want, but to me, the writing is on the wall. Their days are numbered, and they know it.
Too… many… comments…
Google Austin is terrific. I hope that Google keeps it up, but hopefully even just two cities are enough to catch a little fire under the incumbents asses.
Cablevision outside? Wasn’t clear why this was news until I clicked through. Your lead-in would make a little more sense if you included the word “live” in there someplace. Again, useful precedent even if not much there yet. Comcast could do NBC for example if they followed the example. Lets see if they do.
AT&T? Believe it when I see it, and no I don’t see how they’d be the ones to offer breakthrough pricing or unbundling or whatever. But hey, maybe. DSL into your house they provide in lots of locations where U-Verse isn’t offered, and a package of stuff on top of that. Certainly possible except of course for all those contracts etc. Even Google ended up basically offering the same package of channels and similar pricing for the content anyway.
Aereo… I’ll wait until you post something. Again, the precedent it sets is more important than the service, at least for now.
Wow I totally missed the Simple.TV thing. That’s really cool. I’d kind of written them off after
1. They explained that if you buy two boxes you have to have two harddrives, crazy.
2. The FCC changed the rules around making it so that we may not be able to use the basic over air package all the cable companies force us to get for broadband.
Anyway, sounds like they’re getting back on track. I’m still really hoping they can put together a great product.
Having a major network consider ending OTA broadcasting because of Aereo seems like a big deal.