Mari Silbey

Mari’s tech career started when she became the default “IT guy” in her first job out of college. Since leaving help-desk duties to the experts, she’s focused on trends in technology as a consultant, writer, reporter, analyst and at-home gadget tinkerer. Her current paid gig is with the non-profit organization US Ignite where she focuses on how networks and digital technologies impact smart cities. All posts on ZNF represent her own opinions and not those of US Ignite. Mari is a sucker for anything in the digital media space and covers interesting happenings in cable, telecom, and whatever else she feels like. Find her on Twitter at @msilbey.

TV Rights and the Sports Effect

No matter how many different ways you have to watch TV today – on your HD screen, 10” tablet, or Xbox Live – there is no free-for-all, a-la-carte nirvana. In fact, subscription costs for pay-TV services continue to go up, and, thanks in large part to sports programming, the trend shows no sign of reversing in 2012.

Sports franchises hold a lot of TV clout for several reasons. People don’t generally watch sports on time delay. Live events make mobile distribution more important. And sports fans can be fanatical, willing to pay large sums of money to catch their favorite teams. Because of program bundling, many others pay a lot of money too. In fact, Will Richmond calculated last February that folks who don’t watch sports and casual fans spend close to $3 billion a year on programming they don’t watch.

As we settle into 2012, there are a number of battles being fought between sports programmers and distributors over how much money sports are worth. Here’s a look at a few data points in the larger war. Is there a tipping point ahead? And how deeply will regulators get involved?

A Thunderbolt Dock for Christmas

I added the official HTC Thunderbolt dock to my Christmas wish list back in October when the Gingerbread OS update hit. The Android 2.3 release included several UI enhancements, but also an updated “desk mode” app for dock users. The app turns the phone into a functional bedside alarm clock complete with landscape photos, weather info and calendar updates. Since Santa came through for me this December, I’m now the proud owner of an HTC dock, and I have a few thoughts on both the dock and the desk mode app worth mentioning.

First, the dock itself is a lovely piece of hardware, with room for the Thunderbolt in landscape position, and an extra battery in the back. Unfortunately, the phone doesn’t fit in the dock with a case. That doesn’t sound unreasonable, except I never take my case off, and it’s causing me some annoyance to change habits now.

Case issue aside, I love the dock as a whole, and I like that the phone automatically jumps into desk mode when nestled inside. However, I have some complaints about the app’s lack of flexibility. For example, I can’t change out any of the icons in desk mode (Gallery, Music and Calendar are included), nor can I move any of the modules around. The layout is fixed. Also, while it’s possible to turn off the Friend Stream in the settings menu, there’s no option to jettison the calendar reminders that appear in the top left corner of the screen. Since somehow I have Facebook birthdays linked to my Google calendar (I don’t even remember doing that), that means random birthday updates show up on my display.

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

Discovering Read It Later

I am seriously late to the game on this one, but if it took me this long to discover Read It Later, I’m guessing that others have missed it as well. And this app is worth even some very-belated attention. Read It Later does just what you’d expect it to do. It allows you to … 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

Amazon Spins a Yarn with Silk on Kindle Fire

One of the selling points for Amazon’s Kindle Fire is supposed to be its Silk browser with embedded web acceleration capabilities. However, new data suggests Amazon’s claims of a better browsing experience are overstated. Google employee Steve Souders tested the performance of Silk on the Fire and compared it to web browsing on other tablets. … Read more

Time Warner Cable App Hits Android, No Live TV

Time Warner Cable was the first operator to bring live TV to the iPad earlier this year (apart from Dish with its Sling solution), and now TWC has added an Android app to its arsenal. Multichannel News reports that TWC hit the Android market yesterday with an app that enables remote DVR programming, channel tuning, and filtered program … Read more

Verizon FiOS on Xbox – All IP All the Time

Microsoft Xbox Fios TV live streaming

Verizon has a press release out today detailing plans for the launch of its FiOS TV service on the Microsoft Xbox. The service is still listed as “coming soon,” but all reports suggest general availability will happen before the end of the year.

It’s worth noting again that the new Xbox content (Microsoft is also partnering with Comcast) isn’t representative of a major shift in TV distribution models. Users still have to be subscribers of FiOS TV and Internet service to get access to the new Xbox FiOS app. However, it does illustrate how the shift to IP delivery is slowly taking place. Verizon currently delivers its VOD service over IP to subscriber set-tops, but its live television streaming happens over a QAM-based system. Several cable operators have started to deliver linear TV over IP to mobile devices, but although it was one of the first MSOs to promote the idea, Verizon still only has VOD content available for mobile viewing. I believe the Xbox app marks the first live TV streaming over IP that Verizon has introduced.