13 Movie Online Services is WAY too many. (PPV Part 2)
May 10th, 2011 § Leave a Comment
Netflix 
vs. Google TV 2.0 PPV (powered by Honeycomb 3.1) 
vs. YouTube rentals 
vs. iTunes 
vs cable PPV vs 
VUDU vs. Blockbuster OnDemand 
vs 
Facebook OnDemand vs 
BigStar Movies vs CinemaNow OnDemand vs. Alphaline ( Sears/Roxio) vs. Redbox (due 2011) vs. 
Flixster via Warner Bros. vs anyone else ?
What happens when the airlines have a fare war? You know, you can fly from NY to L.A. for $xx.xx and then the next thing you know, another airline tops that price by $ 20.00? Or gives you a free bag to carry on board? All of a sudden 5 or more airlines have the same special going on. Who do you fly with? Decisions, decisions… It all begins to seem and look the same to you. You get to the same destination, same approximate times, using the same type of transportation, in the air for just about the same money. Who suffers? Ultimately the carriers do.
Meet the carriers. Not the airlines, but the carriers of movies online. I count thirteen (13) of them – eleven (11) of them are live as we speak. All boasting the same movies for the most part for the same prices. All rentable at the same time for about the same amount of time. And I’m not even counting Redbox as an online rentable service…yet. What’s a consumer to do – who do you choose? And why. Do you ‘subscribe’ to a Netflix monthly or do you pick off a film on a one-off basis from another provider. More importantly, how do all of these guys begin to differentiate themselves from each other? How and where do they market themselves? Netflix is clearly the 900lb gorilla today. I guess iTunes is # 2. But beyond them, I can’t really tell who’s in third place. But more importantly, do I really care? Do I need3 or 5 or 7 similar services? On top of all this, I have Verizon’s FIOS cable service at home with thousands of movies to choose from to watch on any given day/hour.
I have licensed movies before from each of the studios and it was no easy task. Number one, its VERY expensive. Figure an upfront fee to be paid to play, maybe between $500k-$1m. That’s just for starters. Then there are the guarantees against each title licensed. Therefore as a provider of online fare, you’ve got to re-coup that fee with a certain number of minimum rentals or turns of the gate so to speak. With nearly 13 services out there plus cable choices, I’m going to take a guess here a few will not make it. Not only must you guarantee upfront cash, you also must explain how you are going to market the studios films, how you will digitally protect them from piracy ( good luck on that one) and how you will separate yourself from the rest of the online movie ‘noise’. All of this and then compete with the new ‘premium’ $30.00 a pop cable TV onDemand offering ( not that I think that’s going to be too successful – it’s the least of these companies problems).
However, the one issue I have with all these services is this: I am unable to save ANYTHING I purchase or rent for viewing later on a rainy day. If I had a ‘digital’ locker – someplace to hold what I spend my money on to see so I can view it later (more than 24hrs later), that might sway me to use that service ALL THE TIME.
A Train Wreck Indeed!
April 27th, 2011 § Leave a Comment
How do you f’up the pay-per-view business? You don’t. No need to – it has been one train wreck since 1984. (Full disclosure: In 1984, I started a nationwide satellite delivered ‘A’ title Movie service called’ The People’s Choice’ alongside of Jeff Reiss’s ‘RequestTelevision’ and Scott Kurnit’s ‘Viewers Choice’). When I was in this business, Bill Mechanic (ex-CEO, Chairman of Fox, Disney, green lit ‘Titanic’) and Barry Diller were at Paramount, Jamie Kellner ( Orion Pictures who went on to run ‘The WB Network’), Hal Richardson ( President at Paramount) was at Disney/Dreamworks, Eric Frankel (President for 26yrs) and Stanley Solson along with Eddie Blier were at Warner Bros. ( close to the Steve Ross reign whom I knew well from High School days), Mike Medavoy at Tri-Star, Ned Nalle at Universal and Andy Kaplan at Sony. Most all of these people now still are around and are running their own ship BECAUSE back then, they had a some foresight and moxie. They DID agree to let the PPV at least try and get off the ground by granting PPV rights to a few nascent, early entrants in the business. At that time, there were only a few addressable homes to see the films.
Since the inception of PPV on the cable landscape, its always been a ‘promise’ business at best. Nothing really ever took off or was unbelievably successful (and I am referring to MOVIES, not the WWF, Boxing or the Adult business). Many a business and consulting firm was built around it, hardware made for it, ordering systems invented and manufactured and in the end, most went out of business. Most cable operators didn’t even understand it or what it was suppose to be, what ‘tier’ to put it on and how to promote it. Most felt it would cannibalize their existing cash cow, PAY TV.
It never cannibalized anything because it never got off the ground. No one could agree on a movie PPV ‘window’ (the timing of when a PPV movie should be allowed to be seen and ordered on PPV). Many a conference, discussion group, speech and convention sessions were had – all futile. Nothing was ever decided. The VCR’s were blamed as the culprit, then it was the movie studios, then it was theater owners, then it was Pay TV and the ‘exclusivity’ wars of the 90’s. Then the Internet crept upon us all and that was the new Darth Vadar. You can’t release a film on PPV too early because it could be copied easily and even easier become distributed by means of the internet all over the planet (meaning no more duplicating and bicycling cassettes as if my friends ever did this in mass to begin with). Now, using the Internet, movies would be all over the place, everywhere. Everyone would have a copy. Well? Do we ALL have copies of Avatar? Tootsie? As Good As It Gets? Dirty Harry? A good industry has got to know its limitations! And this one never did!
Now, theater owners are afraid of the 60 day release window. Pahleeese! Just read a few of the articles below.
Theater owners and the Hollywood creative community are livid about Premium VOD, which they perceive as paving the road to cannibalizing theatrical attendance which would in turn harm a movie’s overall economics, creating a dangerous downward spiral. In addition, there’s concern that if consumers switch to watching movies on the small screen then the creative license implicit in a big screen emphasis will get squeezed. While their concerns MAY be justified, the good news for them is that Premium VOD will be lucky to achieve even minimal success.
Why? The cost is one – $ 30.00 for a poor film or film that has not done well at the theater or is released directly to DVD (or what was once called DVD) is insane. Sorry, justification by babysitter fees and popcorn costs don’t cut it. These are niche films. Avatar and other BIG films will never see this light of day through this window. But ‘Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs ‘ will (and has already, sort of). Example – first film up is Just Go With It” starring Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston. Ho-hum. Good cast and a flop a the box office for the most part. I’d be pissed if I paid $30.00 for this AND CAN’T EVEN KEEP A COPY IN A DIGITAL LOCKER TO SEE WHEN I WANTED AGAIN? WTF? And frankly that could be one of the keys to making this viable. Give me the ability to KEEP it as if I bought the DVD ( keep it in a ‘cloud’ locker) and I’d might buy a few films – that would help at least justify the cost.
And, as Will Richmond from VideoNuze so aptly points out, “Studios seem to believe that making movies available sooner in the home will attract demand. But the problem is that there are already so many choices for watching movies in the home – pay-TV, Netflix, iTunes, Amazon, Vudu, etc. etc., that it will be very hard to break through the noise, solely with a “sooner” positioning, which is more than offset by a ridiculously high price point. Consumers are savvier than ever; they’ll quickly realize that they can get the same movie for $4-5, a sixth to a seventh the price of Premium VOD, just by waiting a couple more months for it to appear on pay-TV or online VOD.”
So, theater owners who vow to ‘go to war’ are wasting their time and efforts. I guarantee them that the Movie studios and cable operators and satellite delivery services will win the war for them. Somehow, these guys think that consumers are not too smart. When are they going to wake up and smell the coffee? When are they going to realize that all of us don’t rush to ‘steal’ digital copies of films for any number of reasons (i.e., they are 700megs of data AT LEAST, cumbersome to store, less than perfect copies that lack subtitles at times and extra’s.) They are not MP3’s! Music and movies may both have a digital base as a common denominator but ultimately I’ll listen to Hotel California many more times than I can watch Avatar in my lifetime. And the pirates don’t make a bit of difference except barely on the streets of lower Manhattan or Tokyo where poorly made copies sell for $5.00 until those vendors get caught that day. And they on sell about 30 movies at that point – no MASS market like that that would ruin a $250m box office in the theaters or in any ancillary market I know of.
Theater owners should rejoice that soon this whole business will be in Netflix’s (or some other digital distributors) capable hands and not the studios. (Apologies to those friends of mine at the studios now – its not your fault, it’s just the ‘economics’ to blame and perhaps a few at the top thinking we are still in the DVD/VCR age). Make the business consumer friendly – give us a copy of what we buy and allow us to watch it whenever we want for our money that we spent. After all, I can do this with new music released, why not new movies released?
Netflix vs. YouTube and TV on the Net.
April 13th, 2011 § Leave a Comment
Time to delve back into the world of video. Oh, and don’t forget to watch SharkTank on ABC this friday at 8pm/7pm 
..
It has taken some time but Netflix and Youtube have each taken their position in the video entertainment world and I get the feeling that Youtube is not too happy about it.
On Youtube you can maybe change the world. On Youtube you can be discovered and help discover the next Justin Bieber. On Youtube, if one of your videos goes viral, you can make tens of thousands of dollars, and if you can replicate the feat of popularity, you can make hundreds of thousands of dollars annually. Those are real commission dollars .
But wait, there is more good from Youtube. Any one around the world can get Youtube to subsidize the cost of hosting their family/wedding/team/business/class/personal videos. Hopefully perpetually. These are unique, honorable,impactful and expensive roles that Youtube has chosen to under take.
But if you want to veg out and watch a TV show or movie, the vast majority of people just turn on the TV. About 11mm people turn on Netflix..
The lines of division between Youtube, Netflix and traditional TV have become crystal clear.
Traditional TV is where you get entertainment in real time. Live major sports, the latest movies on VOD, original episodes of your favorite TV shows, all in the highest, no – buffering quality available to your TV. Plus they have smartly opened the door to TV EVerywhere and in home tablet streaming so that there is a pay once, watch anywhere opportunity for their content.
Netflix is where you get streaming access to a growing library of thousands of TV shows and movies, and soon, a smattering of original content as well. Netflix has done an extraordinary job of being available easily on any and every device known to the internet. 11mm (those streaming, not all netflix users) or so users have happily paid Netflix $7.99 per month for this service and it shows no signs of slowing down.
Youtube is the counter-balance to Netflix and Traditional TV. Youtube is where you know 99pct of what is on the site is pure junk that has no relevance to you. It’s like walking through the bargain bin at Walmart hoping to find something that might interest you, knowing the price is right. Youtube is Community Access Television for the world.
Remember back in the day when Cable had A and B sides of the set top box ? You got all the good channels on the A side, and all the community access stuff was on the B side ? Youtube is the aggregation of every B side of every cable system in the world. That is not a knock on Youtube. It just ain’t what it ain’t.
The B side of cable was community driven. The B side of cable was an open door for anyone with access to a video camera. The cable company would let you schedule shows and put them on their schedule . Like Youtube, back in the day, there were shows that would break out and create mainstream opportunities.
I can’t help but include this paragraph from the history of Public Access TV in Manhattan
“Public access has a fundamental PR problem, which one producer summed up with this rhetorical question: “If anybody can do it, who would want to?” I don’t think there is any particular personality type that is drawn to public access; as with anything, it attracts good, bad, and ugly. But these people (each of whom I met by chance through the help of someone else I interviewed) have some things in common. All are creative, and all seem to have a thick skin and a high threshold for frustration. None were paid for their shows. Most actually shelled out their own money for studio time. Three admitted to suffering career setbacks later as a result of appearing on public access. They approached their work in television with a level of intensity and passion that only exists in the realm of avocations and came away with uniquely philosophical perspectives on the nature of television.”
The same thing could easily be said about Youtube producers today. And that is a business problem and social opportunity for Youtube. They have become Community Access for the Internet. That is a brilliant opportunity if you are trying to change the world or create huge communities . That is a huge challenge if you are trying to maximize earnings per share for your parent corporation. People won’t pay a subscription fee for any of it and most of it will never pay for itself with advertising because most of it will never be seen. It is the B side of the content world.
Which is exactly why I believe Youtube is channeling 1998 and gearing up to do quite a bit of live streaming. They don’t like being the third entertainment option . They don’t like being the “b or c side of content””. They are hoping live streaming can change the standings.
Offering everyone in the world the opportunity to stream whatever they want, live to the rest of the world, could actually change the world. But it won’t change the content stratification challenge Youtube is facing now. It won’t change how people see Youtube relative to traditional TV and Netflix.
The reality is that both cable/telco/sat distributors on your TV and Netflix are moving faster in terms of the introduction of technology (TV Everywhere/Remote DVR/IPad and multi device suuport) and the introduction of new and original high value content than Youtube. I think Youtube is hoping that live streaming will change that. It will be interesting to see if it does.
Personally, I’m not optimistic. But hey Youtube, call me. I’ve been there , done that and I can help you out.
Guest post by Mark Cuban. 4.12.2011 via blogmaverick.com
It’s the pirates who are on the right side of history.
February 6th, 2011 § Leave a Comment
In Praise of Piracy – a well written article and one you might want to read, by Jon Evans.
http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/05/in-praise-of-piracy/
then visit this site: http://www.dontmakemesteal.com/ - a Digital Media Consumption Manifesto
b.
Cell phone minutes will become Bandwidth minutes soon…
December 18th, 2010 § Leave a Comment
Have you tried to make a call from your iPad lately? How about using your Droid cell with a fee Sip application (Sipdroid or pinger for the iPad or even GoogleVoice). It works really well – crystal clear calls most of the time. All of these have something in common. Eventually they will bypass your cell carrier using the internet and Voip. What does this mean for the Verizon’s, AT & T’s, etc. of the world? It means once an application like GoogleVoice (GV) becomes seamless and commonplace and as soon as 4G, Wimax etc. becomes the norm, people will begin to use free Voip and cut back on their cell usage in minutes.
cell phones get metered
The implications are big for these carriers. And I know they see it coming. They can’t prevent apps being developed and sold in the Android and Apple marketplace as they don’t do the gate keeping. How will they hold on to their revenue base when erosion begins due to these apps + access to the web? They will most likely follow in the footsteps of Time-Warner and the rest of the cable industry and monitor like a leaky faucet your bandwidth usage on your phone. They will trade minutes for bytes. Charge us by the amount of bandwidth consumed. So, enjoy the unlimited cell minutes some of you have on some cell plans today, because those days are numbered. Sure, there will be unlimited bandwidth usage, but my hunch is that at least initially like everything else that’s new, it will be costly.
The Day the Studios and Theaters Stood Still
October 3rd, 2010 § Leave a Comment
Sometime in the near future there will be an explosion heard only in the entertainment trades and whispered and talked about between studios, marketing executives, theater owners and DVD retailers. The FCC gave everyone permission to enter this pissing match and what a pissing match it will be.
If you ever go to the movies (and many of us do) with more than 1 person – so two people attend a film and you have a child where you needed to hire a sitter, you might not be going to the theater so quickly anymore. Well, maybe you still will. Time will tell this one. Soon, a mere 6 weeks AFTER any movie starts playing in a theater, you will be able to watch it at home in the comfort of your ‘Aunt Fay’s couch’ (nod to Steely Dan) on your nice large LCD flat panel TV. To help you To help you visualize what this means in numbers, there are about 115 million television households in the US. Approximately 100 million of them are currently cable, satellite or IPTV subscribers. Through these cable boxes (although not every one of them, only the ‘digital’ households that have a set-top box) you will be able to purchase the very same film that was JUST in the theaters 6 weeks ago on cable for $24.99 – called premium V.O.D. – video-on-demand. BUT, the movie studios will be able to activate a technology to prevent films sold through video-on-demand cable systems from being copied. This is the ruling that the FCC just allowed in May 2010 after a two year battle with the studios.
Right now, theaters get an exclusive period — 120 days (4 months vs. 6 weeks), on average — to serve up new movies. Then the releases appear on television video-on-demand services at a price of about $4.99. Now the studios want to offer us new movies on video-on-demand services about 45 days after they arrive in theaters. But, you can’t keep a copy or make a copy (your DVR, VHS or whatever won’t work). Just like a theater, once its over, its over.
So, if you are more than 2 people (+ a baby sitter), and unless you are dying to see the film on a BIG screen, I guess you might wait a few weeks.
So, what’s the big deal? For starters, the theater owners, have made it clear that releasing a movie early on video-on-demand services — thus cutting into their window — would be the equivalent of declaring war. They feel people will be more reluctant to buy movie tickets, at an average cost of almost $8, if they know they can catch the same film just a few weeks later in their living rooms, and for less money than it costs to haul the whole family to the theater. The average moviegoer spends more than $3 on popcorn and soda and the like, the cost of Friday night at the movies for a family of four can easily reach $45 – $60 — or much more in cities like New York and California. And theater owners say this doesn’t take into account second-run and discount theaters, and that there are big exceptions: “Inception,” for instance, was still raking in millions in theaters 10 weeks after its release.
Next up, DVD retailers are fuming – Best Buy and Wal-Mart have told the studios they will retaliate against anyone who tries early-release V.O.D. because of the threat it poses to DVD sales. Huh, what DVD sales? The DVD is going the way of the CD in case anyone hasn’t noticed. Blockbuster just filed for bankruptcy. DVD sales for the year are expected to total about $9.9 billion, down 30 percent from their peak in 2004 (about $13 billion), according to Adams Media Research.
Who is the big winner here? The Studios (or so they think) because as much as 80 percent of that early V.O.D. revenue goes to them, therefore movie executives see a new way to compensate for their dwindling DVD business. And the studios are aware that consumers are growing impatient about being unable to access all movies whenever and wherever they want. An early video-on-demand option might prevent some of those frustrated customers from turning to pirated copies.
So where’s the flaw in this plan? I have a couple of thoughts. First of all, the pay-per-view business has been an anemic business since its inception on cable in 1984 when Request TV, Viewers Choice and The People’s Choice (yes, this was my company back then). Part of the problems was with the windows given to PPV movies, part was the terrible job the cable operators did to market these films to us, part was the billing mechanism (it was archaic) and part was the fact that the VHS back then and soon the DVD was simply an easier option. Not to mention you could rent the same film on VHS/DVD so much earlier than on PPV and then buy a copy to own, to watch again and again. Second problem is that you can’t keep a copy of what you fork out $24.99 for. This just begs for pirates to hack the system (and it will happen and supposedly already has). So forget the studios argument that an early video-on-demand option might prevent some of those frustrated customers from turning to pirated copies. Maybe at first, but I have no doubt pirated copies will turn up on the streets all the same – now just earlier and better quality DVD copies.
The fact you can’t keep a copy is just self-defeating. Instead, what the studios SHOULD be doing is giving everyone a ‘cloud’ storage locker for say, $ 10.00-20.00 a year. Once you pay $24.99, the film goes straight to your locker. Then, its kept there to be watched as many times as you want for as long as you keep the locker subscription current each year. Sure, pirated copies will still happen but there is a much better chance that people will be more willing to pay the $24.99 IF they can watch it over again, anytime, and on any ‘authorized’ device you own (i.e. mobile phone, Galaxy ‘Tab’, iPad, etc). Apple does great job with ‘authorized’ devices and computers.
I’m sure a studio would say ‘well, then your friends can come over and see the same film without paying for it because its in your locker’. Well, its in YOUR locker, not theirs and they can come over anyway under the present scenario. And this is the same ridiculous argument studio exec’s made in the early years of the PPV business. It didn’t stop anyone back then and only help stifle the PPV business – a misjudgment they appear are doomed to repeat once again. Will they ever learn from past mistakes?
So, will you pay $24.99 to watch a film at home you can only see one time? You might if it’s a title you don’t really care to much to see in the theaters. Would you have seen Avatar that way? NOT ME!
Look Ma, No Wires: Browsing at the Speed of Sound
September 14th, 2010 § Leave a Comment
Imagine opening your laptop or your hand-held anywhere you happen to be and instantly showing five full bars of muscular Wi-Fi service? Nirvana.
There would be no need to find a Starbucks, or a McDonalds, or any other place with a Wi-Fi hotspot. You’d be in a Wi-Fi hot-zone.
Current Wi-Fi technology is designed for very short-range use such as in your home, office or at the local coffee shop. Signals at the lower-end of the “white space” spectrum, or 700 megahertz, can travel long distances, muscle their way through walls and create a much larger Wi-Fi-type hot spot. It’s like bringing Wi-Fi over an entire community or city. You can skip the expensive cabling and go wireless.
A proposed Order implementing open access to the vacant TV channels in every media market nationwide will be voted on at the Federal Communication Commission’s September 23 Open Meeting. It will address the next step in its plans for unlicensed use of the TV whitespace (the portions of the TV band that are not used in a particular location to carry TV signals). It has been called ‘wi-fi on steroids’.
The regulatory move, generally supported by all five commissioners, could help alleviate pressure on mobile networks that have frustrated some smartphone users who deal with dropped calls and slow Web connections. Think AT & T in NYC.
Ironically, it was the switch from analog to digital signals by television that freed up the extra “white space.”
“TV white spaces“– the radio spectrum vacated when analog television broadcasting ceased last year operates at lower frequencies and higher power than Wi-Fi, so the signals reach much wider areas than your typical wireless Internet router. New devices would be capable of transmitting the Wi-Fi signal over a potential range of several miles, rather than just hundreds of feet, would not be interrupted by walls and other obstructions, and would be as fast as today’s broadband and DSL connections.
Some benefits will provide dynamic management of the air interface, adaptations for vehicular use, computing mesh operation, inter-working with cellular systems, and peer-to-peer link establishment.
Calling the communications technology “super WiFi,” FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said that private carriers are increasingly relying on WiFi hot spots in urban areas to pick up data traffic where their own networks are overburdened.
Genachowski’s proposal would reserve two television channels in each local market for wireless microphones. This is not sitting well with some high-tech companies that argue that priority for wireless microphones subtracts from precious airwaves that could be used for a new wave of mobile broadband devices and uses.
And the new the move faces some opposition from broadcasters, Broadway performers and ministers. Huh? What did you say?? Those critics, who have filed suit against the FCC to prevent the release of white spaces, say users of that spectrum could interfere with television channels and would throw off wireless microphones that operate on those frequencies. News and sports broadcasters, church ministers and singer Dolly Parton have argued to the FCC that they need some spectrum reserved for their wireless microphones. (Dolly, say it ain’t so?)
Operators are likely to experiment with different pricing models as they try to better manage the use of their networks. And some are doing that already with AT&T — often criticized for struggling to keep up with the demands of iPhone users — were one of the first to do away with an unlimited data plan.
“Bandwidth as an end-user service is hard to sell; it’s hard to monetize,” said Wim Sweldens, president of Alcatel-Lucent‘s wireless division. “If you go to a person and say, ‘I’ll sell you a megabyte of mobile bandwidth, how much are you willing to pay?’ nobody can answer that.”
Instead, if users are asked to buy a book or game or sporting experience on their mobile phone or an app for the iPhone or android, they understand the value, he said.
Google, Microsoft and Dell have long lobbied to use white spaces. They want to use the waves to connect entire universities to the Web with wireless links that use fewer bay stations. And my hunch is that Google would love to have use of this for when they release the Chrome OS licensed to many builders of a portable tablet, due up shortly to compete with the iPad.
Dell envisions that white spaces will spawn innovations for the home. Consumers could rely on refrigerators that automatically signal the home tablet computer when food is running low, and place an order with the neighborhood grocery. Microsoft hopes to connect more of its devices to information stored on its clusters of data centers – known as cloud computing – to allow access from anywhere to applications such as its Office suite of software.
Currently, we have over 1 billion WiFi chips in every laptop in circulation, chipmakers need to develop chips that are compatible with the spectrum qualities. Then, device makers have to update their iPhones and Kindles to allow users to switch to white-space networks.
I simply want faster wireless speeds anywhere I go. I am tired of being ‘tethered’ to a broadband cable. I say, let it happen.
Is Pandora’s Box About to be Opened? TV of The Present and Near Future – 4 Possible Scenarios
September 11th, 2010 § 2 Comments
1. Slingbox + iPad or gPad (this is the quickest way to get your TV experience at home with ALL your channels – a ‘bridge’ solution at best as it omits the web
2. gPad or PC Tablets running android (and Googles upcoming OS, Chrome) with a receiver chip built in for wireless broadcasts (including youtube for movies , via PPV) – this can be any number of announced tablets ( Dell, etc.)
3. AppleTV + iPads with special chips + iTunes for movies and TV shows (this assumes an updated iPad version).
4. 3rd party hardware/software boxes: Logitechs Revue box (coming soon), Roku (here now), Boxee Box (coming soon), and others require you to connect these to your TV (and whatever else is there, like a DVR, cable TV box, etc). The average person will have some reluctance to doing this. And that’s most of us. They don’t call TV BROADcast for nothing – its for the masses, not just the technophiles.
All of the above solutions or alternatives will give you ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox + movies on an on-demand basis. Some will let you access Netflix or Hulu if you have an account and subscribe (read: an additional cost).
WHAT’S MISSING: your very own DVR Cloud for shows you watch and want to keep which you have purchased.
Despite Steve Jobs stating that consumers “don’t want a computer on their TV,” consumers DO want TV on their computers or more specifically on their mobile and wireless connected devices (iPads, tablets, etc.) and especially on the go. Business customers, more than consumers, especially need any of their purchases to do double-duty to make fiscal sense.
Some GPad TV reasons to exist:
Google has released an informational guide for would-be developers to create more applications specifically for Google TV. While many apps will probably be useless or purely for entertainment, there will likely be some useful programs for business consumers in the near future.
Some things worth noting are Google’s forthcoming Chrome OS: Android will be picking up Street View services in Google Maps, as well as voice-powered search so users can speak search queries rather than typing them into a keyboard or using a mouse.
Google TV will be built right in to new TVs from Sony, available on separate set-top boxes from Logitech (Revue), and those are just launch partners, with many more to come. Google has announced plans to roll out Google TV in the United States this fall, with a worldwide launch following in 2011. Google TV aims to fuse traditional television programming with Internet browsing and interactive capabilities.
Google TV will run on Intel’s Atom processor – the same chip powering virtually every netbook on the market. This enables it the additional horsepower to pump up full 1080p video, rather than 720p as the Apple TV maxes out at, it should leave room for additional upgrades, and maybe even the possibility of hacking the software to run other desktop apps (umm, now we shall see ‘jailbreaking your Google TV or gPads, I can virtually guarantee that one).
Google, meanwhile, has said nothing of opening a store for content. Every source will either come for free through the Web, from a cable box, or third-party providers. This might make the selection of popular shows smaller out of the box, but providers like Amazon on Demand, Vudu and Hulu Plus will line up to jump aboard Google TV, and it means that Google TV will be providing more content than what Apple alone can deliver- although it doesn’t mean that those same providers won’t want into the iTunes storefront as well.
To Googles point and possible advantage, Movies and TV isn’t everything. Sometimes, you want to see photos from Picasa. Sometimes, you want to give directions to a friend using Google Maps. Maybe you want to want to read your favorite site without squinting on a mobile device or watch a YouTube video. Google TV will integrate a browser based on Chrome to do all the above.
Google claims that existing Android apps should eventually be able to run on Google TV, as long as they don’t use smartphone-only features. Meaning it will be damn difficult to tilt your TV to play skillball or bowling using an app.
Dell is releasing later this year a Dell ‘Looking Glass tablet’. With larger screen Android phones and tablets coming to market in the second half of the year it only makes sense that content services will be supplying the increasing demand to watch content on these new screens and devices.
The Looking Glass is actually the big brother of the Dell Streak 5 and it comes with a 7 inch WVGA display. The tablet will run Android 2.1 on a 1 GHz nVidia T20 processor. The nVidia Tegra 2 is impressive because it is based on an ARM Cortex-A9 multicore processor design. Other spec highlights include 1.3 megapixel front-facing camera, 512 MB ROM and 512 MB RAM, and 802.11n WiFi. Optional accessories for the Looking Glass include a 3G modem (mini card type) and a digital TV module. Expect the Looking Glass to launch in Q4 2010 on AT&T. Early renders for the device show U-Verse integration, which is AT&T’s fiber optic network.
Apple TV Reasons:
Apple recently redesigned the Apple TV to run on the same A4 processor powering the iPhone and iPad. Essentially, it’s a smartphone, without a screen, in a box.
Apple TV conveniently puts its storefront for iTunes in the middle of your living room, allowing you to buy Apple content from Apple. And hey, you can watch Netflix this year, too, YouTube and Flickr. Apple has proven to make this closed shopping experience feel cozy and convenient as in the past it has done with all of its devices and media offerings. Being a proven solution is a BIG advantage here. And Apple is so far the only ones that can say this.
Apple has got it down and has sold millions of iPhones, iTouch’s, iPads and other connected devices AND content for years now. This is not an easy trick – as it not only requires the hardware to be stupidly simple and easy to use for the masses, but its software must be self-healing and not require the ‘patches’ and the many problems we have all had with things like syncing your Outlook to a Palm or Crackberry and maintaining ALL of your information. How many of us have had problems doing this because we were running one of the many Microsoft operating system versions or incompatible updates for our MS Outlook or office.
Apple is also easing restrictions on the use of third-party development tools to create iOS app—a move that might clear the way for developers to create apps for the iPhone using Adobe Flash CS5. (Note this is not the same as letting Flash run on the iPhone.)
When Apple debuted iOS4 back in April (then called iPhone OS 4), it unveiled restrictive terms in its developer program license that prohibited developers from using third-party application development tools or middleware to create iOS applications. In an open letter later that month, Apple CEO Steve Jobs said Apple did not want the iOS platform to be “at the mercy” of third party development tools. Apple has not changed those provisions to permit the use of third-party development tools, so long as the applications do not download code to iOS devices. “This should give developers the flexibility they want, while preserving the security we need,” Apple wrote.
Slingbox Reasons:
For the uninitiated, Slingbox is a “places shifting device.” Connect it to a video source (cable or satellite box, DVR, TV antenna, and so forth), and the Slingbox digitizes the video output for access on a wide variety of PCs and smartphones and iPhones–essentially allowing access to your home TV anywhere you can access the Internet. People prefer the benefit of mobility and they will accept just about anything – even frequently dropped calls – for the ability to have a media session (voice call, video chat, whatever) while they are wherever they are.
If you can watch whatever is on your home DVR, TV or better yet live HDTV on your iPad, wherever you are, then the broadcasting companies have lost total control of advertising as it relates to geography. This is an interesting notion (Nielsen please take note). This has huge implications. One example is sports blackouts. Often local TV stations will not carry a local team game to force local people to go to the game to see it, or a particular company owns the rights to the broadcasting and will not allow it to be shown in that area. The entire concept of locality is gone.
There are buckets of content that come through cable still unavailable from the Web. Google TV and third party hardware/software boxes connecting to cable boxes and other hardware can and does cause setup nightmares that negate all of its potential capabilities and benefits. After all – a home theater PC can already do pretty much everything Google TV will – but how many people do you know with computers under their TV sets?
All in all, its going to get very interesting in the very near future. For now, I’ll take my simple basic cable set-up, throw a slingbox in my house, download the iPhone app on my iPhone or iPad and I’m good to go anywhere. Keep it simple.
Can cable TV keep its ‘teflon’ coat afloat?
August 30th, 2010 § Leave a Comment
Cable TV. Its been resilient during the recession. Almost like Teflon. Will online video providers emerge as direct competitors or complements to the $69.8 billion U.S. TV subscription market? If over 88% of all the full-length TV program episodes available in the $10/mo subscription service are already freely accessible on Hulu.com. For clips, it’s almost 98%, then why would I buy a subscription to Hulu +? “Online video is not a substitute” for multichannel video programming, Comcast recently wrote in a filing to the FCC responding to complaints from competitors this month. “In addition, several impediments – technological, pricing related, and rights related – make it highly unlikely that online video will become a substitute” for such service “in the foreseeable future,” it continued.
So is cable really safe? Today, Google announced that it will jump into the pay-per-view market, via YouTube. Newer film titles would cost about $5–a bit more than the $.99 to $3.99 YouTube charges for the older films currently available in its fledgling pay-per-view catalog. Presumably, there will be some sort of integration with Google’s forthcoming Google TV platform, though details are scant. If the company does manage to roll such a service out, we’ll soon see YouTube going head-to-head with Apple’s (AAPL) iTunes, Netflix (NFLX) and Hulu–and in a big way.
Yes, Google’s got reach and numbers. Yes, they could market this probably better than most. But the cable TV business has been in this market for years. And they are terrible at marketing the service and always have been. Part of the problem has been a rights issue with Hollywood (the old ‘day and date’ issue with DVD releases). Day and date issue won’t go away either, in part because Red Box is putting too much $$ into the studios pockets and it a hedge against Netflix. However, Netflix is also putting a lot of $$ in the same pockets. And, most of us still prefer the large flat screen TV over a laptop screen any day. But one of the most fervent and least discussed impediments happens to be pay TV. The likes of HBO and they swing a very big stick. HBO gets rights to movies, and BIG titles, for many, many years. Its the ‘pay-tv’ window that keeps coming back and back and back. You see HBO has 41+ million, HBO and Cinemax U.S. subscribers (as of December 31, 2009). At an average subscription fee of $12.00 per month, that $492,000,000 million dollars PER MONTH in subscription fees. Yes, part of that goes to the cable ops for carriage, but thats still a BIG number. So, when HBO goes shopping for films and locks up movies, it does so for years. AND, those rights prevent many forms of PPV exposure, both online and terrestrial.
Which bring me back to cable TV as a whole. I recently disconnected 3 out of 4 HD boxes in my home and got rid of my last ‘extra’ tier. I have kids in the home, so luckily Nick Jr. and Disney for Kids is carried on plain the old basic tier (are you listening cable operators?). Had those two channels been on a tier that I would have to pay for, guess what? I would be buying that tier. Other than that, ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox are the most valuable channels to me. Why? I can’t rent tonight’s Network Television programs. I might be able to see some of them online but I’m back to my computer screen for that. The Emmy’s, Football, Baseball, The Academy Awards, local news and network news and other programs of this sort we all get for free – today. And its all delivered over cable TV.
Until I am able to transmit an online URL to my flat screen TV, Hulu +, Netflix, Google TV, Apple TV and the rest are not compelling enough to pay…$5.00 a movie or $ 10.00 a month on top of my basic cable subscription. So, yes, cable TV is fairly resistant to the recession and ‘online’ competition today. My guess is that Steve Jobs will announce a ‘rental’ service for Apple TV. And yes, others will come. But for today, cable is king.
And please don’t move Disney for Kids and Nick Jr. to another tier!
Hollywood to sell movies online – Monday, April 3, 2006
August 30th, 2010 § Leave a Comment
It is 4 years and 4 months later and look where we are now. CinemaNow, Movielink and other services have all failed. What’s a studio to do? Blockbuster will be filing for Bankruptcy shortly and they plan to re-emerge from Bankruptcy to do what? Put kiosks into stores next to other kiosks? I feel for the debt holders who have lost quite a bit of money. I wonder if Blockbuster ever paid attention to what happened in the music business? Apple certainly did. Maybe Steve Jobs will have a partial answer comes September 1st. And now Google will be offering pay-per-view movies.
Hollywood to sell movies online
Monday, April 3, 2006; Posted: 5:38 a.m. EDT (09:38 GMT)
“Brokeback Mountain” will be one of the first films available to download.
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Hollywood studios will start selling digital versions of films such as “Brokeback Mountain” and “King Kong” on the Internet this week, the first time major movies have been available online to own.The films can’t be burned onto a disc for viewing on a DVD player. Still, the move is seen as a step toward full digital distribution of movies over the Internet. Six studios said they would announce Monday that sales will begin through the download Web site Movielink. The site is jointly owned by five of the seven major studios. Warner Bros., Universal Pictures, Sony Pictures, Paramount Pictures, Twentieth Century Fox and MGM will offer some first-run and older titles on Movielink. New films will be priced similar to DVDs — between $20 and $30 — while older titles will sell for $10 to $20. In a separate announcement, Sony and Lionsgate said they will sell films through the CinemaNow site. Only films from The Walt Disney Co. will not be available, although both services say talks are ongoing.
“Digital delivery hasn’t arrived until the major studios allow home ownership, and now they have and now digital delivery is very real,” said Jim Ramo, Movielink’s chief executive.
Studios will sell some new films online the same day they become available on DVD. Most films will be made available within 45 days. Studios began renting films online several years ago as a way to combat illegal downloading. Movies have been available through the Internet 30 to 45 days after hitting video stores, with rentals lasting just 24 hours for viewing primarily on computer screens.
Digital delivery of video grew rapidly after Apple Computer Inc. began selling episodes of TV shows through its iTunes online store last October. This year, devices powered by new Intel computer chips and TV service delivered over the Internet will allow more consumers to watch Web video on their TVs instead of their computer screens, a key factor in downloading to own, analysts said. Studios are being cautious about selling films online in part because DVD sales produce more profit than box office receipts.
But studios are also preparing for the day when major retailers such as Wal-Mart and Amazon.combegin offering their own movie download services.
“The important thing is to embrace the future, respect the economics of DVD but move forward into digital delivery,” said Ben Feingold, president of Worldwide Home Entertainment at Sony Pictures. The films available on Movielink can be stored indefinitely on a computer hard drive or transferred to as many as two other computers. The movies can be played on a TV if the computer is part of a home network. A copy can be burned to a DVD as a backup. Discs can be played on up three PCs authorized by Movielink but cannot be viewed on a standard DVD player because of special security coding.
Consumers will not be able to transfer the films from a PC or laptop to a handheld portable viewing device. But that capability should be available sometime within the next year, Ramo said. Films on CinemaNow will be playable on just one computer. The company said it eventually expects studios to allow consumers to burn movies on DVD and transfer them to portable devices.
- Blockbuster tells Hollywood studios it’s preparing for mid-September bankruptcy (latimesblogs.latimes.com)
- Google Jumps on the Hollywood Bandwagon (fool.com)
