Digital Media Bytes: Last100 Edition

A periodic roundup of relevant news… from our friends at Last100: Distribution is King and other takeaways from Netflix Q4 earnings call The downside of our CE partners adding the Amazon Pay-Per-View service is more competition for Netflix but the competition is pretty indirect because of the Pay-Per-View business is in big new releases that … Read more

Tech On TV & What We’re Watching

While catching up on Secret Diary of a Call Girl, and inspired by Engadget’s periodic Screen Grabs column, a few bits of tech caught my eye last night. Season 2 is just getting started (in the US, anyway), and the first thing that struck me is the opening sequence resembling the (former?) Zune desktop software … Read more

The Future of SlingPlayer Mobile

While I’m not quite ready to speculate on Sling Media’s future retail presence and hardware initiatives, in light of recent defections, we do have a few clues as to their current mobile strategy.

SlingPlayer Mobile (SPM), which enables you to watch your home television programming on the go currently supports numerous devices, including many running Windows Mobile, PalmOS, and Symbian, for a $30 one time fee. Their Blackberry client is currently available as a public beta. Unfortunately, for some, only GSM handsets are supported at the moment. But I believe Sling will also get software running acceptably on the Storm. We also know Sling hopes to submit the frequently-requested iPhone app (above) to Apple for approval early this year (Q1). Of course, there’s no guarantee Apple will permit 3G streaming – they’ve been inconsistent in how they’ve handled other video apps – and we don’t yet know Sling’s pricing strategy given Apple’s hefty 30% cut.

So, what’s next for SlingPlayer Mobile? Megazone, who heads up some of Sling’s beta programs, recently provided a few clues on the Sling Community forum:

As has been pointed out, the actual development information hasn’t been released yet so it is premature to be talking about development. From what we have seen it looks like webOS is an all-new environment, so it would need an all-new SPM which would not be a small task. At this time we’re taking a wait and see approach to webOS. When it ships we’ll watch the adoption rate and decide if it warrants developing SPM for webOS or not. Keep in mind it has currently been announced for one device (the Pre) on one carrier (#3 and currently falling) so it remains to be seen if and when it appears on additional devices and carriers for the worldwide market and achieves a significant market share.

In the past Sling Media and Palm have worked closely. In fact, back in my Sling days I attended a few events with Palm and SPM was featured on their website. I understand the business case MZ is making, but it’s also critical to look ahead and predict a successful platform… and region. (ie: The dev cycles spent producing UIQ support probably hasn’t paid off.) While there’s no guarantee Palm will succeed with WebOS, they’ve got a ton of buzz, a ton of investment, and a positive track record in this space. If I were Sling, I’d be banging down Palm’s doors for an opportunity to collaborate.

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Will Your TiVo Tweet?

TiVo programmer Ryan Rose has hacked his washing machine to send text message notifications over Twitter when his clothes are done. He did this for a practical reason, to prevent forgetting about his laundry which might sit in the damp washer and mildew. You can follow the washing machine’s activity on Twitter (412 people, including myself, already do) to be instantly informed when Mr. Rose’s laundry is done. Why would you want to? More on that later… Here’s video of “PiMPY” in action:

I’m a big fan of Activity Streams such as Twitter and FriendFeed. Once current user contributions across all the social web sites are freely distributed, with an emphasis on privacy, a new web era will arrive. My vision originates from Professor David Gelernter‘s “Life Streams” as defined in his 1993 book Mirror Worlds: The Day Software Puts the Universe in a Shoebox – How It Will Happen and What It Will Mean.

Apparently I am not alone in my opinion that Activity Streams are the next big thing. Some of the most influential people in social media (MySpace, Google, Plaxo, Comcast, Nokia just to name a few) recently attended a DiSo meeting to discuss the future of how their user’s activity will be published. (Ian Kennedy, formerly of Yahoo and now head of Nokia’s Ovi service, kindly recorded the DiSo meeting using his phone.) One of the points discussed during the event was that activity streams are not just generated by people but that machines, like PiMPY, can also broadcast what they’re doing. Mr. Rose’s place of employment is noteworthy, and it got me thinking about the possibilities of machines with their own activity streams – particularly TiVo.

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A Sneak-Peek Pic from FrameChannel

Sneak-peek screenshot of new FrameChannel UI due in February

Chances are reasonably high that you’ve never heard of FrameChannel. Wireless photo frames are still new in consumer adoption terms, and the idea of a content provider for these frames is a bit counter-intuitive. (Aren’t you just supposed to put your own pics on them?) Nonetheless, FrameChannel is expanding rapidly. At CES, FrameChannel was represented in about twenty different booths, and over the holiday season, ten different companies sold digital frames with access to FrameChannel content. Since its founding two years ago, parent company FrameMedia has inked deals with 30-40 providers including Reuters, Getty Images, People.com, WeatherBug, and at least one financial news aggregator. Want RSS feeds of your own photos from one the many online photo sites? You can get that with FrameChannel too.

FrameMedia has a good head start in what promises to be an interesting new media space. Think of a customized online portal, and then picture it on a frame in your living room. Microsoft’s interested, and has its own beta FrameIt service (more on that later). There’s also reason for other large aggregators like Yahoo and Google to get in on the game. But, for right now, FrameChannel appears to be ahead of everyone. And FrameMedia has a plan for it to stay that way.

In talking to COO and co-founder Jon Feingold last week, the key to FrameChannel’s future success is both distribution and the ability to deliver content intelligently. For example, if you’re tagged in a photo on Facebook, or there’s a live game happening with one of your favorite sports teams, FrameMedia’s goal is to have FrameChannel deliver that data when it’s important to you, i.e. in the moment, but probably not so much in a week, or two, or three. FrameMedia is also laser focused on integrating with as many photo sharing sites and social networks as possible. The company wants to make sure you can access your content no matter where it’s stored, in addition to the best of everything else on the Web.

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Digital Media Bytes

A periodic roundup of relevant news… from our other blogs: SageTV HD200 HD Theater GeekTonic Review After putting the HD200 through the paces for about a month at the GeekTonic House, it’s finally time to share how the new SageTV HD200 performs compared to the earlier SageTV HD100 and how it stacks up as a … Read more

Comcast’s Crossed Wires

I’m somewhat concerned to learn that the RIAA may be enlisting broadband providers, such as AT&T and Comcast, to police their networks for content theft. While I don’t condone software or media piracy, I’m uncomfortable with Comcast tracking my every move online. Especially given their apparent inability to keep their records straight. As John Aprigliano discovered when Comcast misidentified him as a movie pirate:

Waiting in my snail mail box for me was an unassuming letter from your favorite cable provider, and mine, Comcast. Contained in this letter was information pertaining to an alleged torrent download called “Cadillac Records.” I have come to learn that “Cadillac Records” is a movie with Adrien Brody and that their marketing for this movie must have really sucked because with what ever thousands or millions of dollars they used to promote this movie, I have never heard of it

We’ve heard cases like these before, where customers are assumed guilty until proven innocent. Fortunately, John knows a bit about networking and helped Comcast discover their “alleged infringement” error. As it turns out, the offending cable modem, identified by hardware MAC address, was no longer in his possession. Having been redeployed by Comcast after he moved.

I can also speak firsthand of Comcast’s inability to handle customer moves… and confidential data. My post last April documents how we ended up with the former resident’s email account and password. Leading back to my privacy concerns. What exactly did Comcast do with John’s account and personal information after (incorrectly) flagging him for a DMCA violation… Was this data provided to a studio or distributor? What about law enforcement? And how did they follow up with those entities once it was determined this was a false positive? Further, has his account been cleared of this inaccurate transgression?

We’re going to need a lot more transparency in how these issues are handled.

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ZNF ‘Round The Web

Leaving comments across the blogosphere… Which HD video Web service is the best? Still shots seem kind of irrelevant when talking video. But another good measure might be to test different source HD formats and see how these sites do reencoding them. Upload limits are also an important consideration. But possibly most important, to me … Read more