AllThingsD » HBO Go

Why Microsoft's Xbox One Won't Kick the Cable Guy Out of Your House

Peter Kafka — Wed, 22 May 2013 10:00:42 +0000

Like everyone else, Microsoft wants to control your living room.

The problem with that plan: The cable guy already controls your living room. He’s not leaving anytime soon.

So, despite what you may have read yesterday, the new Xbox One isn’t TV’s future, today.

If you squint at it, you can imagine that Xbox One can help Microsoft dislodge the cable guy one day. But, for now, Microsoft is simply trying to take up a little more space. More precisely: Its box won’t let you watch live TV unless you have a pay TV subscription.

This shouldn’t be a surprise, as Microsoft has already signaled for some time that it wants to work with the pay TV guys, not boot them out.

Its previous forays into moving TV to the Xbox, via deals with programmers like ESPN and HBO, have only worked for customers who already had pay TV. And while Microsoft has previously mulled creating its own TV service, it has shelved the idea, and insists that it doesn’t want to build a pay TV competitor.

Related: With the exception of Intel, every big outsider that has approached the TV Industrial Complex has reached the same conclusion. Which is why Google Fiber TV looks just like regular cable TV, and why Apple TV has yet to do much more than play Netflix and iTunes.

And Microsoft will be literally tied to cable. In order to get the TV part of Xbox One to work, you’ll end up plugging it into your existing cable box, and performing what the industry calls an “HDMI pass-through.”

[CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story incorrectly reported that Xbox One owners would need an additional piece of hardware to connect their machines with their set-top boxes.]

In essence, Xbox One is acting as a sort of custom remote for your cable box, which will let you change the channel; it is also creating its own programming guide so you can see what’s on TV.

But note that Xbox One won’t give you full control of the set-top box — you won’t have access to the DVR your cable company provides, or any video-on-demand features they offer. If you want to do any of that, you’ll have to switch inputs, and go back to the cable guy’s system.

[UPDATE: As All Things D reader "Taz" notes, Comcast, the country's biggest pay TV company, already provides Xbox 360 users to their video on demand service via an app, and suggests that the company could do the same with the Xbox One. That's true, but so far the two companies don't have an agreement in place.]

And beyond the technical arrangements, Microsoft is being as explicit as it can about the goodwill it has toward the cable guys. While the company’s marketing says its box can do everything, Microsoft’s official communications and fine print make it clear that it can’t do squat — TV-wise — without the TV Industrial Complex.

Here, for instance, is a response I got from a Microsoft PR rep when I asked about the Xbox One’s program guide, and whether they needed permission from the cable guys to build it:

“Information that appears in the OneGuide has been created and licensed by Xbox, and works in conjunction with video services that consumers subscribe to from cable and satellite companies. We value our partnerships with MVPDs (pay TV operators), and our vision is for Xbox One to work in tandem with MVPDs’ services and offer a unique and interactive experience on top of your favorite entertainment.”

Got that? “In conjunction” … “in tandem” … “on top of.” Pretty clear.

What is interesting is that, as far as I can tell, Microsoft hasn’t gotten the explicit blessing from all of the pay TV services to launch the Xbox One. It seems to have told some, but not all, of the TV guys about it in advance, but in any case doesn’t think it needs their permission.

In an interview with my colleague Eric Johnson on Tuesday, Microsoft entertainment boss Yusuf Mehdi said Microsoft would be reaching out to the TV guys to get additional features, like DVR recording and playback. And if Microsoft continues with that kind of tight partnership, then the cable guys won’t be leaving your house for a long time.

That said, if Xbox One really does become the primary way you watch video programming — not just live TV but video, period — then it’s possible to imagine a scenario where Microsoft, with an improved bargaining position, starts trying to push the cable guys closer to the door.

Don’t count on it happening any time soon, though. Those dudes are hard to move.

Netflix Still Eats a Third of the Web Every Night; Amazon, HBO and Hulu Trail Behind

Peter Kafka — Tue, 14 May 2013 11:00:00 +0000

For the last three years, Netflix has accounted for a third of the Internet traffic zipping into North American homes every night.

But Web video competitors like Amazon, HBO and Hulu all say they’re seeing significant growth. So is anyone cutting into Netflix’s lead?

Not really, said Sandvine, the broadband service company that tracks Internet usage.

A Sandvine report out this morning pegs Netflix’s share of prime-time “downstream” traffic delivered over “fixed networks” — that is, wires and pipes — at 32.3 percent. That’s just a hair down from the 33 percent estimate it provided last November.

Meanwhile, Sandvine said Amazon and HBO have seen their share of traffic hold steady, as well. Sandvine said Amazon dropped from 1.75 percent to 1.31 percent, and that HBO dropped from 0.5 percent to 0.34 percent. But that’s not a lot of movement either way.

The one service that did leap a bit is Hulu, which is up from 1.1 percent to 2.41 percent.*

Bear in mind that these numbers do include data transmitted from a home network, via Wi-Fi, to iPads, iPhones, Android tablets, etc. And that Sandvine said this kind of “home roaming” accounts for a whopping 20 percent of traffic now, up from 9 percent a year ago.

But Sandvine also tracks streaming traffic to mobile devices over wireless networks. And here it said that Netflix has made a move from 2.2 percent of downstream traffic to 4 percent in the last 12 months. YouTube, though, is still dominant: If you’re on the go, and you’re watching a moving image, there’s a very good chance you’re seeing something hosted by the world’s biggest video site.

So what does any of that mean? Short answer: Netflix is streaming more video than ever — it added at least two million American users between measurements, and likely many more — but so are its competitors. So its lead is staying more or less the same. Sandvine said the average Internet household uses about 18 gigabytes of broadband a month — up from 10GB a year ago.

Still here? If so, you’ve probably read Ashlee Vance’s excellent Bloomberg Businessweek piece on the engineering that lets Netflix move all those bits into your house. If not, you should definitely read it now.

* Sandvine researcher Dan Deeth notes that the numbers his company provided last fall were collected in the first two weeks of September, which means that Hulu wouldn’t have had access to a batch of new TV shows from its broadcaster partner/owners. The numbers in today’s report were collected in the first two weeks of March, which means Hulu would benefit from new programming that ran during February sweeps; Netflix would have also benefited from any surge in “House of Cards” viewers.

Sorry, Cord-Cutters! Still No "Game of Thrones" for You.

Peter Kafka — Wed, 01 May 2013 19:47:07 +0000

Nope. You’re still not getting “Game of Thrones” — at least not the current season, at least not legally — without paying for cable.

At least not in the U.S.

Time Warner keeps getting asked about this, and they keep saying the same thing. Even though lots of you say you’d love to buy HBO but don’t want to get a pay-TV subscription, and it’s the future, and it’s inevitable, and Time Warner is stupid for not seeing it your way.

The only wrinkle in the call-and-response came last month, when HBO head Richard Plepler floated the notion of paying for HBO as a broadband-only service — but which would be sold by the broadband guys, who are also the pay-TV guys.

That would be an interesting incremental move, but even that’s not going to happen anytime soon. As soon as Plepler’s comments hit the press, Time Warner officials were walking it back in private.

Today, CEO Jeff Bewkes did the same thing in public, while trying to suggest that Plepler didn’t really mean what he said, anyway. Yes, he told analysts on an earnings call, HBO does sell a broadband-only service in Scandinavia. But the U.S. isn’t Sweden:

HBO’s got 40 million HBO/cinemax subs here. We are vigorously offering HBO Go through all our distributors. If you then go and say, “well should we add it as a broadband-only service?”, which we could do through facilities-based providers, or you could do it through non-facilities based providers, which I think was the discussion Richard was having — we have the rights to do it.

And we would do it if we thought it was in our economic best interest. At this point we don’t think it makes sense. We don’t think the target market is sufficiently large to be attractive at this point. So what we’re doing, and we think this is working pretty well — we’re working with the [pay TV operators] to increase the penetration of HBO Go in a mutually benefical way.

We’re always going to keep evaluating it, depending on the country. And i think that was what Richard was talking about. And I think he’s right to say it that way.

So to sum up: If you think we’re going to do anything to upset the TV Industrial Complex that is now the core of our business, you’re nuts. We need the cable guys to sell our stuff, and we’re not going to bail on that until we have to.

I don’t know what Plepler, a former PR guy who is as savvy as they come, was trying to accomplish by trying to suggest otherwise. Some people I talked to argued that he was trying to send a message to the cable guys about a different discussion, but I can’t really figure that one out, either.

I do know, though, that the cable guys weren’t happy to hear his comments. One top cable executive told me that he was on the phone with Time Warner shortly after Plepler made his comments, to express his great displeasure at the idea.

Which is precisely why it’s not happening anytime soon.

Whose HBO Go Account Do You Use?

Voices — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 06:59:17 +0000

College roommate’s boyfriend’s dad. (he knows)

– No. 18 on a list of 32 answers to an informal survey of whose HBO Go accounts people in the BuzzFeed office use

HBO Explains Why It's Not Going A La Carte Anytime Soon

Peter Kafka — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 13:36:01 +0000

Buy HBO without paying for cable TV? To a bunch of you, that sounds very exciting. But it’s not happening anytime soon.

On Wednesday, HBO CEO Richard Plepler floated the notion of letting broadband providers — the same people who sell you cable TV — sell HBO as a standalone add-on to your Internet bill.

It’s not the first time the HBO guys have talked about how that might work. But the pay TV company isn’t actually talking to the cable/broadband guys about doing that, according to people at HBO and at its parent company Time Warner.

So, could it happen one day? Sure, I guess. But not for a long time, because right now the current system — where HBO (and Showtime) are only available to pay TV customers who also buy a lot of other TV channels — works well for the guys who own the shows, and the guys who own the pipes.

But even if we do get to a world where HBO lets you buy HBO without paying for other cable networks, it’s important to note that it’s still not talking about a direct-to-consumer, Netflix-style proposition. Instead, it wants the pipe guys to handle all of the retailing, including the marketing that Time Warner Cable is doing for HBO right now (and was doing for Showtime a few months ago):

If you want a longer explanation of why HBO likes the wholesale/retail set up, watch this interview with HBO COO Eric Kessler from our D: Dive Into Media conference last month. He goes into extensive detail about HBO’s rationale for the status quo, starting around the four-minute mark.

Note that, like Plepler, he leaves the door open for a broadband-only option one day — but argues that the market is “too small” to contemplate breaking up the bundle today. (And if you keep watching, you’ll see why he thinks Netflix-style “binge viewing” is overstated).

[ See post to watch video ]

HBO's Berkes Restructures Digital Team (Memo)

Kara Swisher — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 18:00:33 +0000

About two weeks ago, I heard about a restructuring under HBO SVP of consumer technology Otto Berkes, who also takes over the job of CTO in March from longtime vet Bob Zitter. The former Microsoft exec and Xbox co-founder was named the top tech figure at the premium cable network at the end of last year, after being the primary developer of its popular HBO Go and MAX Go streaming video offerings.

As part of the changes, the memo of the Time Warner unit said, product strategy and development exec Hans Deutmeyer is leaving HBO.

HBO has been very active in the digital space, increasingly offering its shows on a variety of mobile devices. Earlier this week, at our D: Dive Into Media conference, HBO said its subscribers will be able to stream programming from an Apple iPhone or iPad onto their television via AirPlay.

All the various details are below, in a memo HBO sent to its employees at the end of January:

HBO GO has established HBO as a company that understands the value of technology as a tool for delivering great content and experiences to consumers, and HBO.com has become a primary means of driving broad consumer engagement and awareness of our offerings. We are proud of these achievements and also recognize that we have more ahead of us to accomplish. Over the course of the next several years, our mission is to build best-in-class technology execution capabilities. That mission is central to ensuring that HBO has the tools available to support our business through the ongoing technology-based disruption of media and to support new areas of growth. Like other leading Internet-based video service providers, we will design, build, and deploy scalable products with global reach.

Achieving these goals will require focus and a disciplined approach. Roles and responsibilities must be clear and well-defined to ensure efficient distribution of work and smooth collaboration between groups and people. In order to provide the organizational framework needed to achieve our goals, I am restructuring Digital Products around four functional groups (listed alphabetically):

1. Infrastructure Operations & QA,
2. Program Management,
3. Software Engineering,
4. User Experience & Product Design.

Each of these groups will have responsibilities for both HBO GO and HBO.com as appropriate for the functional areas of each group. This will enable more efficient end-to-end integration and coordination of our design, platform architecture, and infrastructure development.

The attached “Digital Products Organizational Pillars” slide illustrates the roles and responsibilities of each of these four functional groups in greater detail. The leaders of these groups will report directly to me and will continue to do so after my transition to the CTO role.

Donna Stalworth will continue to head up the infrastructure operations and QA efforts in Digital Products. She will also add build and release management to her responsibilities.

Rebekah Calabrese will be stepping into the role of VP of Program Management for Digital Products. She and her team will be responsible for cross-group coordination, project management, budget management, technology vendor relationships, and overall status communication for Digital Products. Rebekah will also continue to provide contract support for Digital Products as well as the other technology groups. Her team will consist of the existing Digital Products program and project management staff and her current reports.

Drew Angeloff will lead all of Digital Products’ software engineering activities in New York as well as in Seattle. Centralizing consumer software engineering in one group under one leader will maximize coordination and the flow of information, and will help ensure a consistent and robust software architecture. This is especially important given geographic distance between the New York and Seattle teams. The engineering staff working on device application development and the GO service currently on Rob Caruso’s team will now report to Drew.

Rob Caruso and the workflow team led by Jason Kui will transition to Diane Tryneski’s organization; Rob will report to Diane. Rob’s new charter is to build software engineering capabilities to optimize digital asset creation, management, and security, and to create technologies that unlock the full potential of software in the digital content area. Rob and his team will collaborate closely with Digital Products to ensure that our digital content technologies and our consumer-facing products inform each other to enable unique and innovative content-driven user experiences. This new role and group will be critical to achieving end-to-end software technology excellence.

Dina Juliano will lead the User Experience & Product Design organization. Her team’s responsibilities will include HBO GO, HBO.com, and HBO On Demand. Dina’s team will conceive, design, and realize new digital experiences in partnership with key stakeholders across HBO. She and her team will incorporate consumer and market insights to create a coherent product vision and roadmap that engages our users. Dina’s team will consist of her existing team and the groups formerly in Hans Deutmeyer’s organization.

Hans has decided to leave HBO to pursue opportunities that better align with his future interests. Hans has been a part of the HBO GO story since its genesis and has played a key role in bringing it to the market successfully. Given the new organizational direction, he has decided that this is the right time for him to pursue other opportunities. I want to thank Hans for his contributions and wish him success in his new endeavors.

Please welcome Donna, Rebekah, Drew, Rob, and Dina in their new roles. The changes in their teams and roles are effective immediately.

I am very excited about the new organization and am confident that we have the right the structure, leadership, passion, talent, and creativity needed to deliver best-in-class digital products to our users.

Please let your manager or me know if you have any questions.

Thank you-

— Otto —

For HBO, a la Carte Programming Is Still a Ways Off, Says Eric Kessler

John Paczkowski — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 21:34:31 +0000

Eric Kessler has worked at HBO for more than two decades in various capacities, overseeing everything from program licensing to digital strategy and marketing. He’s been in the business a long time, seen the pay-TV programming evolution firsthand, and played a role in it, as well.

Put it this way, he’s the guy who came up with the slogan “It’s Not TV. It’s HBO.” — after a decade, it remains part of the cable TV vernacular. Today, he’s got his hands full mapping out a viable digital strategy while remaining tethered to the cable-TV cash cow and fending off new rivals like Netflix and Amazon that are mounting assaults on its business.

As the first order of business at today’s D: Dive Into Media interview, Kessler confirmed that HBO’s HBO Go App is now compatible with Apple’s AirPlay, and HBO subscribers who have been pining to stream HBO shows from their iOS devices to Apple TV can now do so. “Our long-term plan for Go is to be across all devices, and effective today, we will be enabling AirPlay,” Kessler said, adding that Apple TV support will follow “at some point.”

At some point.

And when that day comes, might it be accompanied by a la carte programming? At some point. But Kessler argued that the time for that is still quite a ways off. The economics simply aren’t there.

“In marketing HBO, we are targeting the people who most love TV,” Kessler said. “There are 70 million households that love television. And the average HBO household watches far more TV than the average TV household. So we are targeting the people who are most likely to buy our product.”

Makes sense, but why not also target the fast-growing audience that wants HBO untethered from the TV? Simple. It’s too expensive.

“Is there a broadband segment that wants HBO?” said Kessler. “Yes, of course. But when you look at penetration rates, at disconnect rates, at infrastructure and marketing costs, the economics are just not particularly compelling … That doesn’t mean that’s not going to change at some point, though.”

So, for now, HBO Go will remain largely as it is today: You’ve got to be a subscriber to use it. That might seem unnecessarily limiting, but Kessler said HBO still gets a lot out of it, even if it’s not bringing in money as a cord-cutter subscription service. It serves an important marketing function. People who watch HBO programs on HBO Go are generally more apt to talk about it online (obviously). “HBO Go usage seems to engage people in social conversation about these shows,” Kessler said. “‘Girls’ viewership increases as more people talk about it on Twitter and Facebook.”

What about other emerging schemes for building viewership? Netflix has recently been in the news quite a bit for its “House of Cards” series, which the company released as a 13-episode bundle. That’s a strategy HBO has embraced for its archival programming, as well, and with a great deal of success. Viewers can use it to catch up on old seasons of their favorite series — obviously, there’s a great deal of value for some in binge-viewing five seasons of “The Wire” back to back.

“When we launched the browser version of HBO Go, we only had about 400 hours of content,” Kessler said. “When we launched the app, we decided to put every episode of every season up there. And what we have seen over the last two years is that the people who use the app will binge-view. They’ll watch stuff to catch up. But that’s the edge case.”

So, is it wise to give a brand-new series like “House of Cards” that stuff-yourself-silly treatment? Kessler seemed dubious. Serializing shows in the old-school TV way plays a big role in building buzz, he explained. If you offer a series in its entirety when it debuts, you forfeit that “Who Shot J.R.?” anticipation. Just think about that final, infamous episode of “The Sopranos.”

“The finale of ‘The Sopranos’ was one of the most talked-about finales in the history of television,” Kessler said. “That show was on the cover of newspapers the next day. It was being talked about on morning radio and TV. If we had distributed the season all at once, we would have lost that.”

[ See post to watch video ]

HBO to Finally Let Subscribers Stream HBO Go to TV Over AirPlay

Ina Fried — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 20:33:49 +0000

HBO said on Tuesday that, at long last, its subscribers will be able to stream programming from an iPhone or iPad onto their television via AirPlay.

Speaking at our D: Dive Into Media conference on Tuesday, HBO’s Eric Kessler said, “effective today, we will be enabling AirPlay” for HBO Go.

The feature is being added today as an update to the HBO Go iOS app and for Cinemax’s MAX Go App.

“Our long-term goal for Go is to be on all devices and all platforms,” Kessler said. It’s already on Xbox, Roku and other devices.

As for why the company doesn’t just get directly on Apple TV, Kessler said, “We will get on Apple TV, as we’ve said all along.”

HBO Go Is Coming to Apple TV. Why Isn't Everything Coming to Apple TV?

Peter Kafka — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 01:23:22 +0000

As Bloomberg reports, sometime this year, Apple TV users will be able to watch HBO shows — if they’re already subscribing to HBO via a pay-cable provider.

In other words, HBO will port its popular HBO Go app to Apple TV, just like it has already done with Roku and Microsoft’s Xbox.

For the record, no comment from Apple. And here’s a non-comment comment from HBO: “We’ve said we would like HBO GO accessible on all preferred platforms so we are always having discussions with a variety of companies.”

Anyway, when it does come, it will be a nice extra for HBO subscribers. Because HBO Go has a much deeper catalog than you can get from the HBO on-demand service you get via cable and satellite.

But that’s about it.*

And if you want to start imagining that this is a precursor to HBO actually selling itself over the Web on an a la carte basis, well, I can’t stop you. But you’re wrong: HBO isn’t ditching the pay-TV bundle anytime soon, because it thinks that bundle works really well. And so does HBO’s owner, Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes.

You can have a lot of fun arguing with the HBO guys about why they think that, when so many of us Internet geniuses are convinced they’re wrong. And that’s certainly going to come up when we talk to HBO president Eric Kessler next month at our Dive Into Media conference.

But here’s another question: Why isn’t everyone on Apple TV right now? Or more precisely, why doesn’t Apple open its box to outside developers, the same way Roku has?

Opening up the platform to the rest of the world sure seemed to work well for the iPhone (recall that the App Store didn’t show up until the iPhone had been in the market for a year). But, right now, Apple TV has a grand total of nine outside apps (one of which comes from The Wall Street Journal, which, like this site, is owned by News Corp.).

Why hasn’t Apple let a thousand TV apps bloom? Dunno. I get the sense that Tim Cook and company are very particular about the way Apple TV apps look and work, down to the pixel. But you can be very serious about quality control and still manage to get more than nine apps on your box, if you want to.

So there has to be another reason. But maybe not a permanent one. If I had to bet, I’d say we’ll see Apple open up its TV box a whole lot sooner than HBO goes a la carte.

*Apple TV is pretty portable, so, depending on the way that HBO and the pay-TV guys handle their login/passwords, I can imagine a scenario where you bring your box to someone’s house who doesn’t have HBO, and set it up so you can watch “Girls” on their big screen. That would be nice, too.**

**It will be interesting to compare and contrast the video quality that HBO Go/Apple TV/broadband delivers versus an HD cable picture. On the cheapo set + Time Warner Cable set-up that I’ve got at home, I’ve noticed that “The Daily Show” on Hulu/Apple TV is good, but notably a bit more “computery” than the picture I get via Comedy Central’s HD feed.

Sunday's Super Bowl Means Lena Dunham Today

Peter Kafka — Mon, 28 Jan 2013 21:43:27 +0000

Attention, fans of Colin Kaepernick and Lena Dunham!*

Now you don’t have to fret on Sunday, when the Super Bowl and the newest episode of “Girls” were set to collide: A clever stunt from HBO will let you watch Dunham’s sitcom in advance, starting today.

HBO is letting subscribers watch the next episode of “Girls” right now, via its on-demand cable service and its HBO Go online service. And if negotiating either of those options is too much for you, the pay network will air the new episode Saturday night, a day before the show would normally run. The same goes for “Enlightened,” the Laura Dern sort-of-sitcom.

That’s a smart promotional move, which primarily highlights the benefits of HBO’s watch-when-you-like features. And it gives people like me a chance to write about “Girls,” which is a win-win-win.

But what about the plight of “Downton Abbey” fans, who face the same scheduling dilemma? Slightly less good news for them: They’ll also be able to watch Sunday’s show in advance, if they’ve paid up for an iTunes season pass.

*And yes, we’re assuming there’s someone who falls into that Venn diagram.

All I Want for Christmas Is My Apple TV

Jeremy Allaire — Mon, 17 Dec 2012 14:00:40 +0000

Coming into 2012, with rumors and theories running wild, we all hoped for a new Apple TV in time for Christmas. While we did get spades of new tablets from Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Samsung and others, all Apple had for us was an upgraded iPhone and a handful of new iPad updates and sizes. The contents of our pockets may have changed, but Apple has left our living rooms largely untouched.

Myriad issues have held back the new Apple TV, from complex dealings and integration with established broadcast cable providers, to hardware design and supply issues, to the necessary evolution of iOS SDKs — but we won’t be kept waiting forever. There’s every reason to expect the new product to launch in 2013. When it does, we’re likely to see massive disruption of the broadcast and gaming industries, the rise of an age of TV apps, and an even stronger leadership role for Apple in software, media, communications and consumer devices.

What will the coming Apple TV look like, and what will it mean for our industry? There’s plenty of information available to guide our speculation. Let’s imagine Christmas 2013, and the new line of Apple TV products I hope to find under my tree.

Apple TV under the Christmas tree

What will the new Apple TV be?
The new Apple TV will be defined by three key values for consumers:

The best way to consume broadcast TV and any online video. A seamless touch- and TV-based interface makes it simple to consume your existing cable and broadcast content, including video-on-demand (VOD) libraries and DVR features. Via iTunes, you also get instant access to mega-libraries and subscriptions from iTunes, Netflix, Hulu, not to mention YouTube. Naturally, you can also access any AirPlay-enabled videos on the Web, as well as TV apps updated with the new iOS 7 SDK.
The ultimate game console. The new Apple TV will be a direct assault on the game console industry, with a living-room platform that should leave Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony running scared. With a single launch, Apple will extend the iOS gaming distribution ecosystem into the living room, and invent new categories of gaming through the interaction of iOS devices with Apple TV.
The best way to experience all of your apps. Crucially, the new Apple TV will extend nearly every existing iOS app into being a TV app that brings the power and richness of large display surfaces to consumer computing — a task that nearly every industry titan has attempted and failed. The combination of touch and TV will ignite a new era in dual-screen software application design and development, in which it will become hard to believe that Internet software was once based solely on PCs, phones and tablets.

Fulfilling the Apple product design fetish
Everyone wants to know what the new Apple TV will look like, what it will include inside, and how it will connect all of Apple’s existing consumer and developer offerings. As usual, product packaging and design are fundamental components of Apple’s go-to-market strategy, complemented by their unique ability to leverage their existing app, content and device ecosystem.

Apple already has an ecosystem of nearly one million apps, the world’s best library of a la carte media, and hundreds of millions of device customers. In an ideal world, Apple would like to sell the majority of these customers a new device for TV. The company also needs to find new $30 billion+/year businesses to keep up its pace of growth and value creation. The key is to introduce a product franchise that defines the consumer experience, owns the extension of the app platform into the TV, and captures as many users as possible, as quickly as possible — while taking enormous share from an established, multi-hundred-billion dollar/year industry.

To do this, Apple needs a two-pronged strategy:

A new companion device for TV that starts at $149, attaches to nearly any existing TV, and does not require customers to buy an expensive new monitor. This is crucial for quickly establishing and maintaining platform dominance quickly, and even standalone could be a $5 billion to $10 billion opportunity.
A new family of ultra-thin TV monitors that bundles all of the capabilities of the companion device and includes beefed up computing power. These large-screen monitors will be a direct assault on the global TV monitor industry, a market worth hundreds of billions annually, albeit with slightly slower replacement cycles of four years versus two years for smartphones and tablets. This gives Apple that additional $30 billion+ revenue stream it needs.

Combined, these new products will radically transform the computing, media and electronics industry, and more deeply cement Apple’s role as the de facto platform for content and apps.

Let’s take a closer look at each of these products:

The new Apple TV companion
Designed with a new A7 quad-core CPU, the device will provide enough horsepower to deliver 1080p HD video and the most demanding gaming graphics; built-in front-facing sensors and camera; and enough storage for loads of games, apps, content, and recorded live TV.

The device will offer HDMI and digital audio output, a gigabit Ethernet port and built-in WiFi, as well as two Lightning ports — one for power, another for the included “co-ax dongle,” which will connect directly to most existing cable TV hookups to replace your existing cable set-top box. More on that later.

As we’ve come to expect from Apple, the product will be offered in a sleek and slim form factor that sits easily on top of or under any existing TV. I suspect a thin horizontal bar, such as we’ve rendered here:

Apple TV Companion

Apple TV companion device specs

This design will put the device truly at the center of the living room, a compact porthole into the entire digital economy. Developers will be able to leverage the front-facing sensors and camera in the same way they build on existing iOS APIs; in fact, the new platform launch will likely include iOS 7 with support for new TV apps and Apple TV SDKs.

For existing iPhone and iPad users who already own a flat-screen TV, this new TV companion device will be a great bargain that also radically expands the value of their existing devices. This will also be a highly popular form factor for multi-monitor households, offices and even retail establishments.

The new ultra-thin Apple TV monitor
Likely coming in 46″ and 60″ models with a solid glass front and aluminum back, and stand and rear-mounting options, this ultra-thin monitor will mirror the design aesthetic of the latest iPhone and iPad.

Apple TV basic form factor

Apple TV specs

Apple TV stand options

The full capabilities of the companion device will be complemented with additional audio, video and lightning ports, storage of up to three terabytes, and, of course, gorgeous display quality (probably 4K resolution) and exceptional design for a modern environment.

How TV works on Apple TV
While Apple TV will support voice- and motion-based input for global menus and navigation, the preferred control method for basic everyday use will be either the bundled simple remote — or, more likely — new iOS 7 apps from Apple that let you control Apple TV with your iPhone and iPad.

Apple TV app and Apple TV

Apple TV app closeup

Channel surfing with the Apple TV app

Apple TV app detail and TV

With the iPhone, Apple created a simple “phone” application on top of existing telephony carrier infrastructure, improving the consumer’s user experience and creating an additional product sales opportunity for carriers. The company will take a similar approach to existing broadcast cable TV and, in so doing, put one or two major U.S. cable operators in the same privileged position that AT&T enjoyed following the iPhone launch. Around the world, cable TV distributors will battle for national sales and marketing rights for the Apple TV.

To accomplish this, Apple has likely created a new API for interacting with the IP-based cable broadcast infrastructure that providers such as Comcast, AT&T, Verizon and Time Warner Cable have been moving to for a number of years. This will enable Apple to present a consistent user experience worldwide for accessing live broadcast channels and recording content for later consumption. With program guide data, VOD metadata, and the ability to use network or local DVR APIs, the new TV app for iOS will become the simplest form we’ve ever had for watching broadcast television.

Cable companies may initially resist supporting this offering, viewing their ability to cross-promote offerings in their guide and VOD menus, and the customer relationship in general, as their provenance. This would be as misguided as the mobile carriers were who thought they could control and customize the home screens, operating systems and bundled apps of mobile phones as a strategic advantage. Smart operators will understand their role as broadband and infrastructure providers, and will continue — for now — to be the primary packagers of broadcast content with its lucrative tolls for subscription programming. For all of the hope that Apple would help to blow up existing cable packaging, for now, the company’s priority is to navigate and establish global partnerships with multi-system operators (MSOs) and multi-channel video programming distributors (MVPDs) to sell their new TV and TV companion devices.

With natural hooks into the iTunes a la carte content library, Apple will be able to combine premium cable subscription content with their on-demand library to offer users the broadest choice for video content.

Apple’s TV app in iOS 7 is also likely to take ownership of the core second-screen category for companion content to broadcast shows. Apple can easily provide rich, contextual meta-data about shows, characters and social chatter, while providing new APIs that broadcasters can use as a launching point into show- and channel-specific iOS apps. These apps will give broadcasters the greater brand control and direct consumer relationships they’ve wanted, with the added benefit of cross-promotion from within Apple’s own TV app. Because Apple TV users will be linked to a cable provider just as your iPhone is linked to a mobile operator, broadcasters will also gain a simple and seamless way to authenticate consumers into apps that offer their full slate of catch-up TV programming.

It also seems likely that AirPlay updates will include streaming from an Apple TV to your iPhone and iPad (e.g. the inverse of current AirPlay use-cases), allowing you to access and stream content from your Apple TV via your iPhone and iPad, including live television and DVR content — like the original innovation from Sling. This is presuming Apple’s deals with MSOs will include wireless streaming rights, which seems to be increasingly becoming the market standard.

Viacom Nick/Nickelodeon dual screen TV App

Nick app close-up

As with iPhones and iPads, the new devices will come with many preinstalled Apple and third-party apps; in this case likely including leading online video services like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon VoD, and YouTube, as well as TV Everywhere apps such as HBO Go. More importantly, any developer will be able to build content and apps for Apple TV. Just as nearly every app you download for your iPhone is also available in a version that fits the iPad display, new iOS 7 Universal Apps will include code for deployment on Apple TV.

Apple continues its disruption of the gaming industry
Putting all of this together — the new hardware, the new APIs, the new input capabilities — adds up to nothing less than a full-frontal assault on the game console market, as Apple and iTunes become the distributor of choice for everything from casual to hardcore 3-D gaming.

While the large installed bases of industry incumbents provide some advantage, it pales in comparison to Apple’s hundreds of millions of touch-device users, millions of apps, and unparalleled catalog of a la carte media. It’s hard to imagine a scenario where Microsoft, Sony or Nintendo can win.

Apple’s iOS is already the world’s most important gaming platform in terms of new game content creation and the velocity and scale of consumer usage. With new gaming-friendly APIs for controllers and user input, complemented with local CPU, graphics and storage horsepower on the device itself, the new Apple TV is a deeply significant threat to Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft in the console market. The same is true for the multibillion dollar businesses built by Amazon, Wal-Mart, Target, Toys “R” Us, and GameStop around selling game CDs; Apple TV will be a download-only install medium, as we reach the tipping point in storage and bandwidth where it no longer makes sense to distribute games on physical media.

Some have argued that Apple and iOS aren’t for hardcore gamers — but tell that to the teenage boys playing Assassin’s Creed and Call of Duty on their iPhones and iPads. By owning the TV run-time, Apple TV will provide amazing development opportunities for the technical and creative elite and will bring a flood of innovative content creation from major game studios. For the launch of the first iPod with video, Apple brought Disney on stage to announce the availability of “Lost” and “Desperate Housewives” for download, heralding the age of a la carte television. For the Apple TV launch, Apple will stand alongside the world’s top game developers to showcase the ultimate gaming platform.

To achieve this, iOS 7 will likely support APIs for interacting with and connecting to third-party game controllers via Bluetooth and possibly RF — as well classic gaming handhelds, steering wheels, guns and any other devices that suit the needs of gameplay.

Multi-user gameplay scenario (Call of Duty) with iPads and a traditional handheld controller

The use cases for gaming are mind-boggling, especially when you bring together geographically dispersed users for collaborative games like massive multiplayer online games. Imagine playing Call of Duty Massive with a gorgeous 60-inch display: &ou’re using a standard controller for first-person shooter play, a friend next to you manages ops from the iPad controller, and a few more friends watch along from their iPhones while they’re riding the bus. Another friend receives a push notification alerting them to a crisis that could use their help — they look away from what they’re watching on TV and jump into the game from their tablet. If killing games aren’t your cup of tea, other options span “edutainment” games, basic single-user games, and even the mundane but always enjoyable family game of Monopoly, with the board rendered with real-time updates on the TV rather than the coffee table.

Which leads us to the third and key value proposition of the new Apple TV:

It’s all about the apps
While Apple TV makes a strong case with its broadcast TV and gaming capabilities, its ultimate killer app will be, appropriately, the app ecosystem it will offer, as millions of iOS apps extend onto the television display surface. I’ve written about this more extensively elsewhere, but the basic idea is that we’re moving into a software world where more and more applications combine a touch device with a TV display surface. That’s a huge reason why consumers will cheer for Apple TV — they’re already embedded in the Apple ecosystem, and so are all of their favorite apps and content. Bringing the familiarity and integration of these platforms together will give Apple a red carpet into the living room, and again revolutionize the world of software to offer value far beyond the consumer experiences of today.

Consider an important (and often expensive) task that we all face many times in our lives — buying a car. How can the Apple TV platform and its broader platforms help make buying a car a better experience? Let’s use BMW — always an innovator in the customer experience — as an example. You find and download the BMW app from the App Store to your iPad (while in the background, the same app is installed on your iPhone). When you open the app, it detects that you have an Apple TV, and asks your permission to display views onto your TV.

BMW dual-screen TV app experience

You begin with a quick view of models, and narrow down to the latest midsize sedans, watch the marketing video on your TV, then decide to take the car configurator for a spin. As you’re taken through each area of customization, your TV updates with visual displays of your choices in that section; if you want to learn more about a feature, a quick touch invokes an HD video on your TV. As you make choices on your iPad, the car you’re building takes shape in a picture-perfect rendition on the TV screen in front of you. Once you’re done, you can have the app geolocate your nearest dealer and schedule a test drive. On arrival at the dealership, your geolocation triggers a push notification to a sales associate who greets you by name before handing you the keys to the car.

Every app in our lives will benefit from the connection of phone, tablet and TV, and for this reason Apple TV will become an essential consumer platform. The critical point to understand is that Apple TV is not just about television and games — it’s about us all figuring out how to make the best use of the large displays in our lives.

Technically, there are still a number of key problems Apple needs to solve in iOS 7 regarding how apps discover and get user permission to AirPlay on Apple TV, but these are the kinds of user experience problems that Apple is renowned for addressing. Expect an overhaul of AirPlay protocols and user experience in iOS 7, not to mention many of the new APIs and capabilities that I’ve described above.

The new Apple TV offer for consumers and developers
We look forward to the day that Apple’s new product and developer pages look something like these:

Apple.com product marketing pages

Apple.com developer SDK pages

This is already the direction in which things seem to be moving. For brands, media publishers and app developers, it’s never too early to reenvision their apps and consumer user experiences for Apple’s latest revolution in the way we live.

You can watch and explore all of the images and more in this New Apple TV image gallery.

Jeremy Allaire is the founder, chairman and CEO of Brightcove, a leading provider of cloud platforms for distributing media and apps, with a suite of platform APIs, SDKs and Web services aimed at Web and app developers and the businesses they help to drive.

Netflix Has Plenty of Competitors, and None of Them Are Close

Peter Kafka — Wed, 07 Nov 2012 12:00:26 +0000

Netflix has plenty of competitors selling streaming video on the Web.

So far, none of them are remotely close to challenging Reed Hastings and company.

That’s a reasonable conclusion to draw from a new report out from Sandvine, the broadband service company that tracks Internet usage.

Sandvine says that during the Web’s primetime hours, Netflix accounts for 33 percent of “downstream” traffic in North America — much more than any other single site or service.

That’s the same number Netflix posted last spring, when Sandvine predicted that the service’s usage had peaked. And it’s higher than it was in the spring of 2011, before Netflix raised its prices and lost some of its best-known movies.

YouTube accounts for 15 percent of Web use, but that site is almost entirely free. Netflix’s paid competitors generate much smaller numbers: Amazon is at 1.8 percent, Hulu is at 1.1 percent and HBO Go comes in at 0.5 percent.

You can add plenty of caveats to those numbers — they only count home use, for instance, and don’t track wireless usage at all. But if you believe they’re at least directionally accurate, they give Hastings plenty of distance between his service and his newish competitors.

That tracks with anecdotal reports I’ve heard from content providers that sell stuff to both Netflix and Amazon — they tell me that Amazon is buying lots of content for its “Prime Instant Video” service, but that not many people are watching it. And it runs counter to the conclusion I drew from Hastings’s most recent shareholder letter, which I interpreted as a warning that Amazon was making headway.

But if you want to spin this more positively for Amazon, you can do that, too.

Sandvine CEO Dave Caputo says that, until recently, Amazon’s usage numbers were too small to register at all. Now it’s the leader of Netflix’s direct competitors. Hulu, meanwhile, has stayed in place since the last time it showed up in Sandvine’s reports, in the spring of 2011.

Bear in mind that Sandvine is tracking the flow of data via broadband pipes, which means it is tracking usage — and file size – instead of reach. Netflix, for instance, has about 25 million subscribers worldwide, while YouTube boasts some 800 million monthly visitors.

Top HBO Digital Exec Alison Moore Hired to Run NBCU's DailyCandy

Kara Swisher — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 14:00:31 +0000

NBCUniversal’s digital unit has hired well-regarded HBO exec Alison Moore to be EVP and GM for its women-focused online property DailyCandy.

The move is an interesting one for Moore, who has been a key player in the premium cable channel’s aggressive efforts in digital, including its much-praised HBO Go offering. Moore, a longtime HBO exec, has most recently been the Time Warner unit’s SVP of digital products.

At DailyCandy, the longtime online newsletter and Web site focused on fashion, food and lifestyle, she will report to Nick Lehman, president of digital for NBCU’s Entertainment & Digital Networks and Integrated Media group. (NBCU is owned by Comcast.)

Moore’s job will be to turbocharge DailyCandy’s efforts on a range of platforms, and expand its user base of six million women, especially its video offerings.

She also will be working on various multiplatform programming partnerships with NBCU’s many television and digital assets, such as the Style Network.

Moore has worked for HBO since 1995, although at two different times. She left in 1999 to work on two Internet start-ups — Flooz.com and DatSat — and also at Cablevision. She returned to HBO in 2003.

“From my end, it is a huge opportunity to do something new and run a business,” said Moore in an interview yesterday. “At the same time, the user base is passionate and engaged, so it is not unlike HBO in that way.”

Moore said mobile was obviously a top priority, along with more app development and experiments with geolocation. DailyCandy already serves up a wide range of consumer information to women from cities across the U.S., including San Francisco and New York.

“I think the trick to any successful product is how do you create something with an authentic voice that consumers see value in,” said Moore. “This area is ripe for explosion, because great content is king.”

Speaking of great content, here’s a video interview I did with the charming Moore at an HBO event in San Francisco in the spring:

[ See post to watch video ]

Exclusive: Synacor to Offer TV Everywhere Authentication Via Social IDs

Kara Swisher — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 12:02:57 +0000

Synacor, the behind-the-scenes tech company that provides authentication services to television companies, will be launching a new identification platform for pay-TV services that will allow users to use social IDs rather than passwords across multiple devices.

While it is common for consumers to do so for a range of Web services, Synacor Cloud ID will be the first to allow customers to use social logins from Facebook, Twitter and Google+ for cable TV authorization.

The Buffalo-based Synacor is a leader in white-label authentication services for many “TV Everywhere” events, including 2012 March Madness, the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics and, most recently, the 2012 London Summer Olympics.

To do so, the company has worked with many pay-TV providers, as well as channels, including Dish Network, Charter, HBO Go, CNN and the Cartoon Network.

It has not announced any done deals as yet, said a spokesman, but the goal is obviously to work with the big ones, such as Comcast, Dish and Time Warner Cable.

Such a move is an important one, as Peter Kafka wrote recently:

“That’s one of the fundamental precepts of the ‘TV Everywhere’ plan that the cable guys are using to hold off disruption, and in practice it’s a hassle. It requires digging up your cable bill so you can find your account number, and starting up yet another online account and password. Not rocket science, but certainly not one-click easy.”

Here’s the full press Synacor release:

Pay-TV Industry First: “Social Login with TVE Authorization” — Consumers Login Using Their Favorite Social Account and Simultaneously Authorize with Their Pay-TV Billing Account

BUFFALO, NY (PRWEB — September 6, 2012) — Synacor, Inc. (NASDAQ: SYNC), leading provider of next-gen startpages, TV Everywhere solutions and cloud-based services, today announced an expanded Cloud Identity Management platform, broadening its cloud-based services suite for consumer electronics companies, wireless carriers, programmers and app developers in addition to Pay-TV providers. Synacor’s Cloud ID works whenever and wherever consumers must be authenticated, authorized and/or registered, and on any device.

Synacor’s Cloud ID offering features an industry first: Social Login with Pay-TV Authorization. To authenticate for access to online Pay-TV content, consumers can now login with their favorite social account like Facebook, Twitter or Google, while simultaneously authorizing with their pay-TV provider or billing account. Synacor Cloud ID brings the convenience of social login to TV Everywhere consumers with the trust of entitlement verification for TV authorization.

“Synacor’s experience and scale providing web authentication and identity integrations is a strategic advantage over other cloud identity providers,” said Michael Bishara, Synacor GM for TV Everywhere. “Synacor successfully provided authentication for NBC Universal’s TV Everywhere 2012 Summer Olympics on behalf of nearly 40 pay-TV customers, spanning all 50 states, reaching 25 million subscribers — the largest TVE Olympics footprint. Synacor is now leveraging our experience to provide cloud identity services for additional customer verticals that require registration, authentication and authorization capabilities.”

Synacor’s Cloud ID Management Platform already provides authentication services for TV Everywhere, Messaging and Value Added Services, but has been expanded to provide a full suite of Identity Management Services. These expanded capabilities will enable consumer electronics companies, app developers and programmers to provide a Secure and Trusted Identity Management solution to their end-consumers.

“Synacor provides end-consumers a seamless authentication, authorization and registration experience while providing our customers all their administrative needs such as Account Management, Auditing and Reporting,” said Synacor co-founder and EVP George Chamoun. “As identity management moves from the enterprise to a distributed model, companies such as pay-TV, consumer electronics and app developers need a trusted and tested partner to serve as their conduit for ID services. With more than a decade behind us, innumerable integrations and millions of authentications across hundreds of devices, Synacor is that Cloud ID partner.”

Synacor Cloud ID spans the entire ecosystem, offering an end-to-end or distributed component solution, and existing in Synacor’s cloud or the customer’s. Synacor’s key advantages include the following:

Scale — Delivering millions of authentications, including authentication for Synacor’s pay-TV customers’ 25 million subscriber footprint for the 2012 Summer Olympics and on an ongoing basis for TV Everywhere, Synacor is the scale player in Cloud ID management.

Gateway — Synacor is the bridge connecting hundreds of identity systems for authentication, authorization and user profile information while leveraging industry-standard technologies such as SAML, OAuth, OpenID, and Social IDs, creating a multipronged gateway that both identifies as well as entitles based on a consumer’s rights profile, and integrated with the preferred ID technologies of Synacor’s customers.

Social Login — An industry first. Synacor’s Social Login feature creates a trusted connection among content providers and pay-TV providers, allowing consumers to bind their pay-TV credentials to their favorite and frequented social media accounts like Facebook, Twitter and Google, allowing for a seamless sign-on process, and using the credentials most consumers remember.

Multi-Platform and Multi-Language — Synacor Cloud ID is accessible on desktop, mobile, tablet and across a range of connected devices, as well as being fully localized for user interfaces in multiple languages.

Trusted Framework — With a decade of success, Synacor is a tested and trusted connection in the distributed, cloud-based model of Identity Management and Services. Synacor’s fraud prevention technology monitors for suspicious account activity across multiple devices, streams and providers. Synacor delivers its solution from three data centers in the United States and in Europe. Synacor customers are in full control over their data, yet can leverage Synacor’s experience.

Synacor has provided authentication services for key TV Everywhere events including 2012 March Madness, 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics and most recently the 2012 London Summer Olympics. Synacor has completed integrations with numerous pay-TV providers, as well as many pay-TV channels. Pay-TV providers include DISH Network, Charter, CenturyLink, Mediacom, Suddenlink and WOW! among others. Integrations include HBO GO, Max GO, CNN, TBS, TNT, tru TV, Cartoon Network, Adult Swim, Epix, Comcast Entertainment Group (E!, Style, G4), Fox, Speed2, BigTen and a number of other TV channels.

For more information on Synacor’s cloud-based services including Cloud ID, TV Everywhere and Cloud Messaging Services, please visit synacor.com or email sales@synacor.com. Synacor reaches over 23 million households, tallying a monthly average of 20 million unique visitors and 3.7 billion ad impressions.

Why You Can't Watch the Best Show on HBO on HBO Go

Peter Kafka — Wed, 15 Aug 2012 16:26:21 +0000

“Hard Knocks” doesn’t have dwarves or dragons or naked (female) breasts. But it’s one of HBO’s best shows: If you love football, you know this already. If you don’t, you may be surprised to learn it’s a super-compelling, five-episode reality show that is also about the Miami Dolphins’ training camp.*

If that sales pitch convinces you, the HBO subscriber, to fire up HBO Go and check it out for yourself, then my apologies. You can’t see the show on HBO’s excellent digital service, because HBO doesn’t have the rights to show it there.

That’s because unlike nearly every original show HBO airs, “Hard Knocks” isn’t actually an HBO show.

It’s a co-production with NFL Films, and NFL Films owns the show’s digital rights, including mobile rights. And HBO Go, for the purposes of rights deals, is considered a mobile service.**

So that’s annoying. On the positive side, “Hard Knocks” appears to be the only glaring hole in the HBO Go lineup. So its absence makes you appreciate just how comprehensive the HBO digital catalog is. Digital media in general has been plagued by rights gaps, but they’re getting smaller all the time.

More good news: Even if you don’t pay for HBO, you can see the show’s first episode, online, for free. (But that’s a one-off sample, HBO confirms — you’ll need to subscribe and watch the show on a television set if you want to see the rest of the season.)

And if you’re willing to poke around YouTube, you can watch a good chunk of the series, too. Here’s the highlight of last night’s show — and perhaps the entire series: Former star receiver/current Twitter celebrity Chad Johnson getting cut, following his domestic battery arrest.

*Alternate description, via Bloomberg’s Keenan Mayo: “The best business show on TV.” I’m not sure about that. But it is pretty great.

** Calling HBO Go a mobile service makes sense, of course, because it works on iOS and Android devices. But it also works on any machine with a laptop, which points out, yet again, how the legal definition of “mobile” is becoming less and less useful.

HBO Ignores Internet Geniuses, Sells More HBO

Peter Kafka — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 15:41:35 +0000

We all agree that it would be awesome if HBO would let us subscribe to the pay-TV service without paying for TV, via the Web.

And many of us agree that HBO will eventually do that, one day. Maybe.

For now, though, the only way you can get HBO is if you already get some kind of pay-TV service. And that model seems to be working just fine.

Today, parent company Time Warner said HBO and its sister channel Cinemax added more than seven million subscribers in the last six months. At the end of last year, the two channels had 92.9 million subs, and today Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes said the total was more than 100 million; Bewkes wouldn’t break out HBO-specific numbers, but said HBO would end 2012 with more domestic subscribers than it had in 2011. [Just to spell this out clearly: The 100 million-plus number is an international total. It's possible that much of the growth comes from outside the U.S., but Bewkes made a point of noting domestic growth as well. Thanks to Phillip Swann for the gentle nudge.]

Time Warner said the HBO boost helped push subscription revenue at its TV networks by 6 percent, to $2.17 billion, in the last quarter.

Even if HBO revenues were relatively flat, you’re not going to see the company break down and offer Web-only, a la carte access to “Game of Thrones” and the rest of its programming anytime soon. Because Bewkes has built his entire business strategy around pay TV, and thinks cord-cutting is basically a myth — or at least not an idea he wants to engage with.

Here he is today, addressing the notion of a Web-only “HBO Go” service (for translation purposes, “multichannel TV” = “pay TV, via cable, satellite or telcos”):

The mistake everybody makes when they think about this, is that there aren’t that many homes with broadband and multichannel TV … it’s not that people want to not have multichannel TV and have HBO. Most people have multichannel TV.

There are 10s of millions of homes with multichannel TV. And they will keep multichannel TV. And they aren’t currently subscribing to HBO. That’s the opportunity.

And that gets into a question of all those people are hooked up to our distributors, and it’s a question of how to have that distribution plan market HBO in a more attractive way. So it’s easier for people to hook up, and they don’t have to, for example, buy things that they don’t want to buy.

But the whole idea that there’s a lot of people out there that want to drop multichannel TV, and just have a Netflix or an HBO — that’s not right. Look for the data, you won’t find them.

That doesn’t mean that Time Warner won’t work with nontraditional pay TV providers, though. Bewkes told analysts on his call that “you ought to be optimistic” that his cable channels will get a deal done with Google Fiber’s TV product. That sounds right to me.

Reed Hastings Goes After Comcast, Again, on Facebook. Again.

Peter Kafka — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 00:03:37 +0000

Two weeks after Reed Hastings called out Comcast, using his personal Facebook account to vent at the cable company, the Netflix CEO is at it again.

Today’s blast is similar to last month’s in both form and content.

Hastings is once again accusing Comcast of violating “Net neutrality” principles by favoring its own Web video service over those from Netflix, HBO and Hulu, when it comes to data usage. (Last month Hastings also complained that he couldn’t watch HBO GO on his Xbox, but that’s been resolved.)

Here’s the text (you can also see a screenshot, below):

Comcast no longer following net neutrality principles.
Comcast should apply caps equally, or not at all.
I spent the weekend enjoying four good internet video apps on my Xbox: Netflix, HBO GO, Xfinity, and Hulu.
When I watch video on my Xbox from three of these four apps, it counts against my Comcast internet cap. When I watch through Comcast’s Xfinity app, however, it does not count against my Comcast internet cap.
For example, if I watch last night’s SNL episode on my Xbox through the Hulu app, it eats up about one gigabyte of my cap, but if I watch that same episode through the Xfinity Xbox app, it doesn’t use up my cap at all.
The same device, the same IP address, the same wifi, the same internet connection, but totally different cap treatment.
In what way is this neutral?

Reminder: Hastings has all sorts of ways to complain/lobby Comcast and/or regulators (see, for instance, the new Netflix PAC). I continue to find it fascinating that he’s taken to posting on Facebook for this stuff. (Another reminder: Hastings is a Facebook board member).

Last month, I asked Hastings and Netflix PR if they wanted to expand on his comments, but never heard back. I’ll let you know if that changes.

Reed Hastings Is Just Like You -- He Complains About the Cable Guys on Facebook

Peter Kafka — Sat, 31 Mar 2012 00:13:07 +0000

Last fall, Reed Hastings took to Facebook to field his customers’ complaints. Now he’s using Facebook to complain to Comcast.

Here’s a screenshot of the Netflix CEO’s most recent post, where he gripes that Comcast won’t let its subscribers watch HBO Go — the pay channel’s “TV Everywhere” app — via an Xbox 360, and goes on to talk about the way the cable provider enforces its broadband usage cap.

Both of these complaints are the kind of thing that most people don’t care about, but vex a certain kind of technically savvy user. They are important, though, because they underscore some of the tensions between programmers and providers that have made “TV Everywhere” more conceptual than it ought to be, nearly three years after Time Warner and Comcast announced a grand launch plan.

Still, this is one of those stories where the form matters more than the content — it’s just interesting to see the head of a public company handling company business on Facebook. Then again, Hastings happens to be on Facebook’s board of directors.

Also note that Hastings doesn’t just gripe about Comcast on Facebook. Here he is a couple days ago, praising the company’s new Xbox app, and complimenting/wooing Comcast executive Sam Schwartz. And then he gripes, just a tiny bit, about Streampix, Comcast’s sorta-kinda Netflix-killer.

Xbox Users Clocking More Hours Gobbling Media Than Gaming Online

Tricia Duryee — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 20:33:14 +0000

Microsoft’s Xbox is no longer just for hardcore gamers, but rather is beginning to attract a more general audience looking to consume movies, TV and music online.

The Redmond, Wash.-based company said today that for the first time, Xbox Live users are now watching more movies and TV and listening to music than gamers are using it to play online games.

The recent shift is worth noting given the mind-boggling number of hours gamers are willing to spend online destroying opponents on the battlefield or football field.

Microsoft declined to break down the number of hours spent, but as an example, 3.3 million players logged seven million hours on Xbox Live on the first day alone that Activision’s Call of Duty was available back in November.

What’s more, the growth of entertainment is not at the expense of gaming. Online gaming on the Xbox is up over the past year, too. In fact, Xbox Live usage — spanning gaming and entertainment — is up 30 percent year-over-year.

The shift toward entertainment is not completely unexpected, since Microsoft has been investing heavily in turning the console into a more general entertainment device for the living room. Sony’s PlayStation has a similar emphasis and Nintendo’s upcoming console, the Wii U, is expected to support entertainment applications.

In December, Microsoft rolled out a massive software update to the Xbox that allowed users to control the console using the Kinect. As part of the update, it also began to add more than 40 content providers to the console to increase the catalog of live and streamed TV, movies and music.

As previously announced, Xbox today launched voice-controlled TV apps from Comcast and HBO Go in the U.S., and MLB.TV throughout North America. To access these apps, you must be a subscriber, meaning it is not meant as a cable subscription substitute.

HBO Digital Head Alison Moore Talks About HBO Go and More! (Video)

Kara Swisher — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 17:26:23 +0000

Earlier this week, HBO co-Presidents Eric Kessler and Richard Plepler hosted a cocktail party in San Francisco, along with a screening of HBO’s latest original film, “Game Change.”

The idea of the event was to get the Time Warner-owned premium cable channel some much-needed cred among the tech press in Silicon Valley, as well as to talk up its slick and well-done streaming service, HBO Go.

Kessler said that HBO would soon be adding Microsoft’s Xbox 360 to the many connected devices to which HBO Go now distributes the channel’s content. So far, the HBO Go app has been downloaded six million times and is available via cable operators.

Alison Moore, SVP of digital platforms at HBO, talked about that and more in this video interview I did here:

[ See post to watch video ]

Roku Plays Nice With Cable Guys

Lauren Goode — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 16:36:38 +0000

Roku is one of the cord-cutter’s favorite tools, because its devices make it easier to get video on your TV without paying for a cable subscription. But as Roku plans to more than double the current number of apps on its platform, it is putting a particular focus on cable apps — ones that will still require users to keep those cable subscriptions.

Roku’s founder and chief executive officer, Anthony Wood, has said that Roku users can expect to see more cable apps from providers like Comcast, Verizon, and others working on the platform, as the Saratoga, Calif.-based company ups the number of apps running on its devices from 400 to around a thousand by the end of the year.

Currently, content from HBO GO and Epix plays on Roku boxes — provided that the user is paying for and can authenticate the apps through cable services like AT&T U-verse, Charter, Cox, RCN and Verizon FiOS.

And on the cable side, providers like Comcast and Verizon have introduced their own apps, which, as my AllThingsD colleague Peter Kafka has pointed out, allow subscribers to stream channels to their iPads while they’re in the home — and not too far away from that cable box.

You’ve probably heard a lot about cord-cutting in recent years — though the data on this trend is still somewhat contradictory. With cable companies launching streaming apps, and streaming device makers looking to cable content, both sides of the TV-content coin are acknowledging the same thing: We’re not entirely sure yet that cord-cutting is a real phenomenon, there’s evidence that consumers want both cable TV and Internet streaming options, and the industry could stand to experiment a little bit while it all shakes out.

But for Roku, which brought the first Netflix-centric device to the market and has since sold around two and a half million boxes, it also means trying to take a greater stake on the hardware side. Basically, Wood said, his idea is that users will be able to get most if not all of their cable needs through a Roku product.

Roku also recently announced a cordless “streaming stick,” which is meant to enable Internet video streaming on a non-connected television set. Despite predictions that “smart,” Internet-connected TVs are set to take off over the next couple years, Wood is taking a long-term view with the streaming stick, targeting the consumers who initially won’t be looking to buy new smart TVs. He has also said that the stick, a flash-drive-sized device that plugs into the back of a TV set, will allow for easier, regular software updates to TV apps.

“While we can’t necessarily compete with gaming consoles, we see it as less likely that a family would have an Xbox paired with every TV in the house. But they might have a Roku device with every TV in the house,” Wood said, referring to Roku’s relatively low cost structure.

Wood’s assertions arrive as the Federal Communications Commission is considering a rule change that would require consumers that patch into low-tier or basic cable channels to use some sort of cable set-top box to do so, rather than access cable wires directly (and for free). One start-up, Boxee — which makes the video-streaming Boxee Box and just threw its efforts behind a Live TV stick that’s meant to provide users with basic cable channels — has openly opposed the potential change, saying that it would harm innovation in the set-top box space.

It’s unclear if or when this ruling will come to pass, though VentureBeat reports that it could come within a few weeks.

But Roku’s strategy to bring more cable apps aboard its platform is a different tack than the one Boxee is taking, since Boxee has marketed itself explicitly as a cord-cutting tool, whereas Roku is eyeing the idea of a holistic TV-watching solution.

HBO Go Is Finally Going to Be on Time Warner Cable

Peter Kafka — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 02:02:02 +0000

It took a while, but it’s finally a done deal: Time Warner Cable subscribers who also subscribe to Time Warner’s HBO will soon be able to get HBO Go, the pay channel’s Web and mobile service.

The two companies say the service will go into a “brief beta trial” and will then be available to all Time Warner Cable subscribers (again, as long as they’re also HBO customers), “in the next month.”

Depending on how you look at it, the agreement either extends the reach of Time Warner’s “TV Everywhere” program, or fills an embarrassing hole. Time Warner and Time Warner Cable are two separate companies that split up in 2009, so programming deals between the two aren’t automatic, by any means.

But that explanation didn’t do much to appease Time Warner Cable customers who wanted the service. The cable company has 14 million subscribers, making it the country’s second-biggest cable provider after Comcast.

Time Warner rolled out HBO Go this summer to very positive reviews; Time Warner says users have downloaded five million apps for Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android devices. Earlier this month, Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes said that HBO Go users watch up to 50 percent more of the channel’s programming.

HBO + iPad = More HBO-Watching, "Steady" HBO Subscribers

Peter Kafka — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 19:12:58 +0000

A move to let people who subscribe to HBO watch the pay channel’s shows on iPads and other gadgets has increased total viewership. But it hasn’t moved the Time Warner unit’s subscriber figures.

HBO Go users, who can watch shows like “Game of Thrones” on their iPad, iPhones, and Android devices, watch 30 percent to 50 percent more than non-users*, Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes said today at the UBS media conference.

But Bewkes said that the pay channel’s subscriber count had been “stable” in the past year, which would mean it still has about 28 million paying customers.

That makes sense, given that the “TV Everywhere” strategy Bewkes has been pushing isn’t focused on attracting more customers but in keeping the ones he has — especially those tempted to seek out video entertainment via the Web, or services like Netflix.

Meanwhile, Bewkes was careful to note that those viewership bumps may not continue, given that HBO Go is still primarily in the hands of early adopters, though that’s still a decent-sized number. Last month Time Warner announced that the HBO Go app had hit the 5 million download mark for Android and iOS users.

Speaking of Netflix — just in case you didn’t get the message via this weekend’s interview with the Financial Times — Bewkes reiterated his position on the service. He’s happy to sell them stuff he can’t sell anymore. Services like Netflix and Hulu “can definitely add value to all of us, if you’re trying to get that obscure movie that you haven’t seen yet,” he said.

That kind of faint praise may explain why Bewkes’s initial assessment of Reed Hastings’s company today — “Netflix is our friend” — drew laughs from the audience.

*Bewkes didn’t specify whether that 30 to 50 percent increase was for TV viewing, or an aggregate number that includes TV + devices. I’m assuming the latter, but have asked Time Warner reps to clarify. UPDATE: Yup, aggregate.

Microsoft Shows Off Its New Video/Xbox Service

Peter Kafka — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 17:30:29 +0000

So here you go: As I reported last night, Microsoft has added several more video providers to its Xbox video service, and has deals with Comcast, Verizon and Time Warner’s HBO, among others.

The video below gives you the gist: You can control some of this directly on your Xbox via voice control, motion control and a Windows smartphone. Again, the key point here is that you won’t get any of this stuff on your machine unless you’re already paying for it through a cable subscription.

This is incremental stuff but it’s still interesting. A source who’s played with the new service says it’s genuinely cool. Just as important, given that Microsoft has sold some 50 million compatible machines, it has (potential) leverage to do some really interesting stuff.

This is where Google TV would like to be, and it’s why Google is out pitching content guys for a relaunch this fall.

Why Time Warner's "TV Everywhere" Means "Except For Time Warner Cable"

Peter Kafka — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 17:54:17 +0000

Starting today, you can stream CNN’s TV broadcast right to your iPad or iPhone, in real time. It’s part of parent company Time Warner’s “TV Everywhere” campaign, which gives Web users the ability to watch TV shows for free, as long as they’re cable subscribers.

Unless they’re Time Warner Cable subscribers.

That company’s 14 million customers don’t get access to the digitized CNN feed, even though just about every other big pay TV provider – AT&T, Comcast, Cox, DISH Network, Verizon — has signed on.

This isn’t the first time that Time Warner Cable subscribers have been shut out of a Time Warner TV Everywhere service. Earlier this year, Time Warner’s HBO released HBO Go, a very good iPad app, for customers of just about every big cable provider — except Time Warner Cable.

What gives? The short answer is that Time Warner and Time Warner Cable are two entirely separate companies that share a name but nothing else. The two formally split up in 2009, part of a decade-long corporate slim down on the part of Time Warner (also jettisoned: Warner Music Group, AOL, and not nearly as much of Time Inc. as many had predicted).

OK. But what really gives? Here I don’t have a good answer.

Some wags suggest that Time Warner Cable has some sort of theological/business strategy problem with TV Everywhere products that allow people to stream video outside of the home, because Time Warner Cable only sells broadband access to the living room. That is, if you’re streaming HBO Go on your iPad in an airport, using AT&T’s bandwidth, then Time Warner Cable doesn’t really get a chance to participate: It wants you to consume most of your broadband through its pipes, so it can charge you for it.

But that seems a bit of a stretch, particularly since Time Warner Cable subscribers can use some TV Everywhere products — just not the ones from Time Warner. Time Warner Cable customers can use ESPN’s excellent ESPN Watch app, for instance, and stream live sports anywhere they can tote an iPhone, no matter whose bandwidth they’re consuming.

Another theory: Time Warner and Time Warner Cable’s executives simply don’t like each other, a residue of the divorce proceedings. That also seems a bit of a stretch — in the cable business, nobody really likes each other. They just tolerate each other because they spend all their time negotiating incredibly complicated, expensive carriage deals, that ultimately let both sides make a bunch of money.

Still, if anyone can shed any light, I’m all ears: Neither Time Warner Cable nor Time Warner wanted to comment for this one.