Peter Kafka

Recent Posts by Peter Kafka

Absolutely, Positively Not a Netflix-Killer: AT&T Launches Its Own Video Subscription Service

Does the world need another streaming video subscription service? It is getting one, regardless: Here comes U-Verse Screen Pack, a $5-a-month offer from AT&T.

No need to ask whether this one is a Netflix-killer, because it clearly isn’t.

Instead, it’s comparable to Comcast’s Streampix, which is also priced at $5 month, and which doesn’t attempt to rival the large Netflix catalog of movies and TV shows.

Instead, AT&T digital video service is primarily stocked with titles from Sony and MGM. But if you’re looking for anything remotely new, you’re going to be disappointed.

I asked AT&T PR for an example of the stuff they’re going to offer, and got this response: “American Teacher, Assassin’s Code, Charlie’s Angels, Summer in Genoa, Lars and the Real Girl, Rudy, The Wedding Planner, Hotel Rwanda, Legends of the Fall, Snatch and more.”

So there you go.

Like Comcast, AT&T has the ability to sell its service nationwide, but for now is only marketing it to its existing pay-TV customers. Hard to see many folks shelling out for this, but presumably AT&T will use it as a retention device, and give it away for free while telling people they’re getting a $5-a-month value.

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I think the NSA has a job to do and we need the NSA. But as (physicist) Robert Oppenheimer said, “When you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and argue about what to do about it only after you’ve had your technical success. That is the way it was with the atomic bomb.”

— Phil Zimmerman, PGP inventor and Silent Circle co-founder, in an interview with Om Malik