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.

We can at least agree on this, though: HBO and Netflix are both very interested in figuring out the best way to deliver TV-quality video over the Internet, and both have around 30 million subscribers in the U.S.

Which gives this personnel move a little bit of zing: Rob Caruso, an HBO engineer who had been working on the cable channel’s HBO Go service, has taken a job at Netflix.

No word on what Caruso’s new title or job description will be; his LinkedIn profile describes his HBO post as “Vice President, Digital Products.”

HBO confirmed Caruso’s move but didn’t offer any other comment; no comment from Netflix.

Earlier this year, HBO began re-orging its technical team, and longtime strategy and development exec Hans Deutmeyer headed out. In a memo announcing the changes, new tech head Otto Berkes also announced that Caruso would be moving around:

“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.”

Last month, in his own memo laying out his vision for video’s future, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said his company was spending $350 million a year improving its core service and app, not counting content spending.

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.

But here’s the guy to ask: Bill Carr, who heads up Amazon’s digital music and digital video groups, which now include Amazon Studios, the unit that is going to make original movies and TV shows for the e-commerce giant.

Carr doesn’t talk much, but last week I got the chance to sit down with him at Amazon’s Seattle headquarters. Amazon is as tight-lipped as Apple when it comes to new product discussions — or lots of other stuff you and I would like hear about — so I didn’t even bother asking him about Amazon’s new TV box. (Still: Count on it.)

But if you read between the lines, you should at least be able to get a sense of what Amazon is thinking as it contemplates beefing up its music offerings, and as it goes head to head with Netflix (and everyone else) in digital video. Here’s an edited version of our chat:

Peter Kafka: A couple years ago, Amazon and Google and Apple were all racing to develop music-locker services. But we don’t hear much about them anymore. How is Amazon’s locker working?

Bill Carr: The fundamental things about cloud music storage that works for all consumers is that it backs up everything, it’s in a safe place. I can access it from all of my devices, it’s simple. I don’t have to think about it. People don’t want to manage their music, they want to enjoy their music. Every consumer likes that.

What may have more limited appeal is how many consumers want to pay $25 a year to do that for all of their music.

Are you surprised about the take-up rates for the $25 a year option?

No. I don’t find that surprising.

The locker services seem like part of a larger trend where big platform companies like you, Apple, Google, are trying to get people to move their media into your own clouds, and end up committing to one ecosystem or another.

It may be that other companies think about it that way, because their goal is that you only use their devices. But that’s not our goal. Our goal is to free you up to use whatever device you want. Which is why we support any kind of PC, any kind of Mac, iOS devices, Android.

Our goal is to be ubiquitous on any device people might want to use. It’s a big investment for us to make all those apps avilable. But our goal is not to lock you into any one ecosystem.

Do you think you can keep doing that? It seems like we’re moving back toward a walled-garden world.

I can’t speak to other people, and what decisions they may make that may prohibit us from enabling our app. But we’ll work very hard on behalf of our customers to make sure our app is available on the devices they use.

You first started selling MP3s in 2007, and for a while it seemed like you weren’t making any headway against iTunes, which dominates the business. But now, at least according to NPD, you have 22 percent of the download market. What changed?

We don’t release any details about where we stand. But what I can say is that we have seen customer growth in our service every year. We have year-over-year growth in sales and in customers. And the way we’ve accomplished that is by building more solutions for customers.

Is your locker service helping sell more music? Are Kindle Fires helping you sell more music?

There’s no doubt that with the trend toward connected devices, mobile devices, our customers are realizing that it is super convenient to buy once and play it anywhere, and make it available on any of their devices. That’s working, and driving more sales.

Now it seems like there’s a move away from music sales and toward access — either from subscription services like Spotify, or free Internet radio like Pandora. You guys don’t offer anything like either one of those, but there are reports you are considering them. Should we expect an Amazon version?

We don’t speculate on what we might do in the future. But we’re also listening to our customers about other ways they’d like to enjoy their music. We’ll always look for the next innovation.

But you’re not philosophically opposed to subscription or ad-supported music?

Not at all. As a company, if we constrained ourselves to certain definitions, then we wouldn’t have gone nearly as far for our customers.

What about the idea of bundling music into Amazon Prime, like you do with video? Right now, there’s no connection between Amazon Prime and music.

We’re always thinking about distinctive experiences — how can we provide something for our customers that’s going to solve important problems for them? We’re always thinking about those things.

When it comes to video and Prime, it seems like your approach to your subscription service has changed. From the outside, it looked like, initially, you simply wanted to build up a catalog, and you weren’t very picky. More recently, it looks like you’re focusing on specific titles and catalogs.

The part I would disagree with is that we’ve never been thoughtful, or cared about the content. We have reams of data, based on years of being in both the transaction video business and the DVD/Blu-ray business, to know what our customers want to watch. And we’ve used that information to help bring them the right videos.

I think what has changed is — yeah, obviously, we have been increasing our investment over the last two years that we’ve been in this business. And I think it’s fair to say that increasingly you’ll see more and more content on Amazon that’s exclusive.

Why does exclusivity matter?

I think it’s very important for our customers. In some cases, it’s the only way to get some of the best shows. If we want those shows, in many cases the way that business shakes out is you can either have it exclusively, or not have it. More importantly, we are looking at what our customers like, and we want to have a set of movies and TV shows that are only on Amazon.

Why does that matter?

For the same reason that you can only see “30 Rock” on NBC, or “House of Cards” on Netflix, or “Girls” on HBO. It gives users a reason to tune in and try our service.

Are people watching many videos via Prime? Again, from the outside, it seems like there’s not a lot of use. There was a Sandvine study that showed Amazon very far behind Netflix last fall, and people I talk to who sell you programming don’t think you have a a lot of viewers.

We don’t disclose the details. But I would say we’ve seen strong triple-digit growth in terms of rate of use. We’re very pleased.

In the investor letter he published last week, Reed Hastings set up Netflix as a direct competitor with HBO. Do you also think Amazon is competing with them?

HBO’s a wonderful company, and has been a great partner to us. Our customers love HBO programming. I can’t speak to Reed’s strategy. But we’re building … I don’t think there is a another service like ours. It’s not like HBO. There’s at least three, four different ways to get movies and TV shows that you want on Amazon.

Hastings said he’s competing with HBO for customers’ time and money, but also now for content. Are you seeing that conflict coming with Amazon?

My ambition is to make sure that we create something that is its own service, that is not like HBO, Netflix or any other service, with its own unique value proposition. A lot of companies have a competitor focus. We have a customer focus.

Like Netflix, you are producing your own original programming. Earlier this month, you put up 14 TV pilots and asked people to vote on them. Why are you getting into originals, and why are you doing it that way?

The primary reason is because we’re committed to the idea of reinvention, and that we think that there’s great value for our customers if we get this right. And the reinvention is, “How do we get a lot more feedback from our customers early in the process? How do we remove gatekeepers from the process, so that great ideas can come from anywhere in the world, and get made into movies and TV shows? And how do we create a collaborative environment, where different creators can work in an open environment, to produce more exciting ideas and exciting stories that customers want to hear?”

So you think there’s video out there that could be made, and should be made, but isn’t, because of the way the existing production process works?

A simple example of that is what we’ve done in books, where we’ve created an open platform for any author to submit their books, through Kindle Direct Publishing. That removes gatekeepers from the process, and opens up all kinds of possibilities for people to become authors. So, why can’t there be great possibilities for people who have great stories to tell, whether it’s a script or screenplay?

It’s a journey for us. We’re flexible on the tactics of how we get there, but firm on the strategy.

If you look at the pilots you put out this month, it seems you’ve used a fairly traditional approach, and are working with lots of established talent. Only one of the 14 pilots — “Those Who Can’t” — came in over the transom. And even in that case, those guys were fairly established. Will that change?

Just the fact that that show came in from an online submission — I would consider that to be remarkable. That possiblity doesn’t exist in the traditional system today. And the idea that we’ve put all 14 pilots out for free, for anyone to watch, with the explicit ask for customers to give us feedback — I think both of those things are remarkable.

Are you surprised by any of the feedback you’re getting on the shows so far?

The point isn’t what I think about it. I didn’t spend a lot of time forming my opinions about it. I have shows that I prefer, but my views don’t represent the views of all of my customers. It really isn’t what I think about the shows, it’s what my customers think.

Do you think the comments you’re getting on the shows will be useful?

I think we’re getting really insightful information on all of the shows. How accurate it is is something we’ll discover over time. Because there has to be a feedback loop, and you have to see what happens in the real world.

This is a multiyear process. If you’re focused on reinvention, it requires you to experiment and collect data. And then try new experiments.

In case you missed anything, here’s a quick weekend roundup of the news that powered AllThingsD.com this week:

1. Daily-deals site LivingSocial was hacked, compromising the names, emails, birthdates and encrypted passwords of 50 million users.
2. In an essay, Reed Hastings laid out his predictions for the future of streaming video, which includes not just his company, Netflix, but also HBO, ESPN and anyone else transitioning from a channel to an app.
3. Walt Mossberg reviewed the Galaxy S 4, Samsung’s new flagship smartphone, and concluded that “while I admire some of its features, overall, it isn’t a game-changer.”
4. What are Google’s plans for its high-speed Internet project, Google Fiber? Theories abound, but good luck divining an answer from CEO Larry Page’s words.
5. According to multiple sources, Twitter is testing local discovery features that will help you better understand what’s happening not just around the world, but also down the block.
6. Android’s seemingly inexorable ascension over the iPhone may not be inexorable, after all. A new report says customer loyalty will let Apple overtake Google in smartphone market share by 2015.
7. On the 10-year anniversary of its sale to Google, Applied Semantics co-founder Eytan Elbaz explained what he and his partners learned from starting up and getting acquired.
8. For the first time, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer publicly commented on the controversy created after Yahoo banned its employees from working from home.
9. Speaking of Mayer, she’s officially joined the board of wireless gadget maker Jawbone, and it’s likely to be a good fit.
10. Apple needs some new hit products to drive growth, and CEO Tim Cook says they’re on the way… just not until this fall.

To stay on top of the latest, follow AllThingsD.com on Twitter and Facebook, and subscribe to our daily email newsletter.

A lot to say: The Netflix CEO has written an 11-page essay that lays out his vision for the future of streaming video.

If you’re looking for news, you won’t find much here — nearly everything in the document, published on Netflix’s investor website, is a repeat of things Hastings has said or written in recent years.

But if you’re at all interested in the way Hastings thinks things are going to play out in the battle for video eyeballs, and why he thinks Netflix will win many millions of them, it’s well worth a read.

I’ve embedded the document below so you can scan it at your leisure. If you’re in a hurry, some bullet points:

• The one new nugget here is a Hastings prediction, held by many other people, that we’re moving to a world where “apps replace channels.” Hastings mentions apps nearly 3 dozen times in his essay, and makes it clear that he sees Netflix first and foremost as an app provider.
• Hastings figures that lots of other video services will figure the same thing out. And he goes out of his way to mention others that are already there or close to it, citing ESPN, HBO and the BBC.
• But those who don’t get it are screwed, he says: “Existing networks, such as ESPN and HBO, that offer amazing apps will get more viewing than in the past, and be more valuable. Existing networks that fail to develop first-class apps will lose viewing and revenue.”
• In the past, Netflix has tacked back and forth on whether it is competing head to head with HBO. Now Hastings is back in “we’re coming for you” mode: “The network that we think likely to be our biggest long-term competitor-for-content is HBO … They have global reach and strengthening technology capacity.”
• But while Netflix now has as many U.S. subscribers as HBO — and while Hastings thinks he can eventually double or triple his current 30 million — he figures it will take him a while to truly compete with HBO. “While we are passing HBO in domestic members in 2013, it will be several years before we are peers with them in terms of Original programming, Emmy awards, and international members. It wouldn’t be surprising to us if HBO does their best work and achieves their highest growth
  over the next decade, spurred on by the Netflix competition and the Internet TV opportunity.”
• But Hastings also reiterates his argument that there’s room for lots of streaming video services, just like there are lots of cable channels today. Translation: Don’t worry, Jeff Bewkes: Just because we’re coming for you doesn’t mean we’ll crush you. Also, please keep selling us Time Warner’s content! Thanks!
• Hastings also continues to offer olive branches to the entrenched cable guys, especially those that also sell broadband: “At times we have worried about the strategic motivations of ISPs that are also MVPDs, but the absence of cord-cutting has mitigated this concern. … Internet video services like Netflix, MLB.tv, iTunes and YouTube are not currently a material strategic problem for companies that are both an ISP and an MVPD.” Translation: Hey Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Verizon! It would be pretty cool if we figured out a way for you guys to bundle us along with your other video services! Let’s (continue to) talk!

Lots more below. Well worth your time.

Netflix Ir Letter

The much-hyped miniseries had a big budget, big names in front of the camera and behind it, and a Big Idea — binge viewing! — that generated even more buzz for the launch.

Today, the company releases its Q1 numbers, so lots of investors are going to be wondering what all that meant. They will have questions for Reed Hastings and company along the lines of:

• How many people watched the series?
• How many people signed up with Netflix to watch the series?
• How many people who signed up with Netflix kept subscribing after they watched it?
• What has happened to “House of Cards” numbers since the initial burst of buzz?

They are likely to be very disappointed: Netflix has already announced, over and over, that it won’t release anything like ratings numbers for the show. That should also apply to any kind of discussion about the show’s impact on subscriber numbers.

And even if Netflix did want to talk up numbers for the series, doing so would highlight the bind the company has when it comes to discussing any particular show or content deal. Netflix wants to brag to consumers and investors about the content wins it gets, but it doesn’t want to suggest that it’s overly dependent on any one show, studio deal or even a genre — because if it does, it becomes vulnerable if that stuff goes away (See Sony, Disney circa 2011.)

For what it’s worth, my uneducated gut guess is that even though you don’t hear people buzzing much about “House of Cards” anymore — my Twitter stream is full of chatter about “Game of Thrones” and “Mad Men,” and it spikes every Sunday, when a new episode comes out — Netflix should still be very happy with the splash it made with the show.

It most likely can’t and won’t spend anything like that on its other original programs — note the comparatively silent launch for “Hemlock Grove” this month — but getting a lot of people to spend a lot of attention on anything is a very hard task in 2013, and Netflix pulled that off. That may be worth $100 million in programming costs alone.

Now, on to today’s numbers: Wall Street is expecting Netflix to report just over a billion in revenue today, and earnings of 18 cents a share or 19 cents a share, depending on who you ask. But investors will likely focus more intently on subscriber numbers and guidance for future quarters.

Most analysts are expecting to see Netflix post more than 29 million streaming-only U.S. subscribers. And here’s a useful chart from Bernstein’s Carlos Kirjner to evaluate the Q2 guidance you’ll see today:

But you can see what Jeff Bezos has in store for his viewers, right now, over at Amazon.com.

And he wants to know what you think.

As promised, Amazon has put up 14 pilot episodes for shows it is considering producing for its first foray into original programming — eight comedies and six kids’ shows. It wants viewers to rate them, and says it will use their input as it figures out which ones to actually order.

Right now you have to navigate over to Amazon’s video section to find the shows, but I imagine that Amazon will make a much bigger deal of them fairly soon. (Perhaps after a breaking news story resolves itself.)

Amazon isn’t promising that viewer voting alone will make or break a show. But their feedback will be “very influential” as Amazon makes it decisions in the next couple months, says Roy Price, who is heading up Amazon’s original video program.

After Price and his group make their calls, the shows will eventually be available only for Amazon Prime members, just like other videos in its on-demand subscription service. But anyone can watch the pilots, and anyone can vote.

In other words: This is sort of a novelty, designed to generate attention for Amazon’s programming, and a counterpoint to the way Netflix has gone about its original marketing, where it has preordered up full seasons of shows like “House of Cards” before ever showing them to the outside world.

And it’s also indicative of the way Amazon would like to go about making programming decisions down the road — some of it will come from old-fashioned gut calls about what might be good, and some of it will take advantage of the data that a Web player can aggregate and create.

So, what about the videos themselves? Take a look for yourself.

I previewed several of them, and found the standout to be “Alpha House,” a Washington comedy starring John Goodman, created by Doonesbury’s Garry Trudeau. It’s the one that seems most TV-like in terms of production value and star power (look for a Bill Murray cameo). And I get the sense that it’s the one Amazon is most excited about, as well.

Other videos don’t seem nearly as polished as the stuff you’d see at a conventional TV “upfront” presentation — most of the animated shows, for starters, are unfinished. But it’s also important to remember that the TV guys have years of experience making their stuff look incredibly compelling — and the overwhelming majority of the shows they promote in the spring are canceled within a year.

That’s very cool, and that’s a reason to cheer on Google as it starts to expand its Fiber project outside of Kansas City — if Google really does prompt other pipe guys to improve their product to compete, you can’t ask for more.

But again, a reminder: When it comes to the TV part of Fiber, Google is acting just like any other pay TV company — you give it a bunch of money, and it gives you a bunch of channels, no matter which ones you actually watch.

That’s the bundle concept that ties together the entire TV Industrial Complex, and while lots of people are always talking about breaking the bundle, no one’s done it yet. And Google doesn’t seem interested in trying to do it here.

Google is annoyingly vague about the TV channels it will have in Austin (and any other details about its offering). But it’s reasonable to assume that it’s going to look a lot* like the ones it offers in Kansas City.

At least some of the programmers it works with in Kansas City have deals that will allow Google to roll over the same offering into new territories, industry executives say. (See, Google? Not that hard.)

And there’s no reason for the channels not to support the move. Google gives the cable programmers what they want, which means deals to take all of their networks, at rates that are as least as high as the ones they negotiated with AT&T and Verizon, the last two big guys to enter the pay TV world.

Note that when Google announced its Kansas City rollout, it didn’t have programming deals with all of the big programmers nailed down. But since then, News Corp., Disney and Time Warner’s Turner channels have all signed on; the only real glaring holes are AMC’s networks, including AMC and IFC, and Time Warner’s HBO premium channel.

*One Austin channel Google is bragging about today that should be available is ESPN’s Longhorn Network, a must-have for University of Texas football fans. (Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that Longhorn was not available via Google Fiber in Kansas City.)

“I probably shouldn’t be saying this, but it is a compliment of sorts … [Piracy is] something that comes along with having a wildly successful show on a subscription network.”

– HBO programming president Michael Lombardo , talking to Entertainment Weekly about the “rampant” piracy of HBO’s “Game of Thrones”

Last week, at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco, premium cable powerhouse HBO debuted the third season of its hit series “Game of Thrones” for a huge audience of Silicon Valley geeks, VCs, entrepreneurs and people who like to wear furs, leather, metalwork and body paint.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that, of course.

As part of the night’s festivities, which also included an after-screening party with numerous cast members in attendance, Walt Mossberg and I interviewed George R.R. Martin, the fascinating author of the fantasy novel series, as well as the television show’s creators, D.B. Weiss and David Benioff.

When we asked Martin, who has a bone-dry wit, about how digital he was in terms of social media, he noted: “I would still prefer to tie messages to the legs of ravens.”

So would we.

Here’s the video of that interview:

(Photo credit: James Joaquin)

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130321/calling-all-ravens-the-house-of-atd-takes-on-the-game-of-thrones-author-and-hbo-show-creators-video/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130318/winter-and-geeks-are-coming-hbo-premieres-new-season-of-game-of-thrones-in-sf-this-week/ http://allthingsd.com/20130318/winter-and-geeks-are-coming-hbo-premieres-new-season-of-game-of-thrones-in-sf-this-week/#comments Mon, 18 Mar 2013 19:02:58 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=304473

It’s no secret in Silicon Valley that the HBO series “Game of Thrones” is a big favorite among the geek set — including Facebook CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg — what with its dungeons-and-dragons tone and fur-and-leather outfits.

Which is why Time Warner’s premium cable network decided to do one of its three red-carpet premieres for the third season of the hit fantasy show with a splashy event on Wednesday in San Francisco that will be teeming with digerati.

“We all thought it would be fun for the creators and the cast to come here and feel the enormous enthusiasm this community and our partners have for ‘Thrones,’” said HBO CEO Richard Plepler.

Eight cast members of “Thrones” will be attending, as will Plepler, HBO COO Eric Kessler, creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss and … drumroll … author George R.R. Martin.

The show is an adaptation of “A Song of Ice and Fire,” Martin’s series of popular fantasy novels, the first of which is titled “A Game of Thrones.”

No surprise — there is much swordplay in the epic. And that’s where AllThingsD comes in, since Walt Mossberg and I will be doing an onstage Q&A with Martin, Benioff and Weiss right after the first show of the new season is aired.

It’s on, or, as Martin wrote: “When you play the game of thrones, it’s either you win or you die.” Or enjoy a lovely party after.

We’ll have video of the interviews later, but here are two trailers for the third season, which begins airing March 31:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130318/winter-and-geeks-are-coming-hbo-premieres-new-season-of-game-of-thrones-in-sf-this-week/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130310/attention-sxsw-hipsters-watch-this-video-and-get-some-much-needed-help/ http://allthingsd.com/20130310/attention-sxsw-hipsters-watch-this-video-and-get-some-much-needed-help/#comments Sun, 10 Mar 2013 18:49:31 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=302066

I have loved this video since it appeared on YouTube a few weeks ago, and now I have a chance to post it in context, as I recover from Day #1 at the SXSW interactive festival in Austin, Texas.

As I wrote in a broader cultural post about the annual event for Vanity Fair this week:

“No matter how young you are, you’re too old for SXSW. I already feel about 136 or so getting on the plane headed to Austin from San Francisco. It’s loaded down with fresh-faced hipsters, all eager to make a splash at the interactive part of the annual festival, with the enthusiasm of out-of-control puppies headed for the park, pulling on their leashes.”

That’s a perfect segue into this video, which asks the important question: “Are you ironic? Do you have a beard? You may be suffering from HIPSTER. Luckily, there’s a cure.”

By the way, from the looks of things at SXSW, where I always feel as if I am in some endless indie loop of “Girls” on HBO, this really will help:

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• People of South by Southwest — Please, Free Grumpy Cat
• MakerBot Unveils Desktop Scanner Prototype for Amateur 3-D Printing
• Ready, Set, Collaboratively Design a 3-D Printed Rocket
• This Year at SXSW, the Next Killer App … Maybe Isn’t
• Artificial Intelligence, Al Gore, Modern Blogging and More: Where to Find ATD at SXSW

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130310/attention-sxsw-hipsters-watch-this-video-and-get-some-much-needed-help/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130306/tv-is-changing-before-our-eyes/ http://allthingsd.com/20130306/tv-is-changing-before-our-eyes/#comments Wed, 06 Mar 2013 16:26:09 +0000 David Pakman http://allthingsd.com/?p=300912

TV image copyright antpkr

It’s finally happening. The Internet is taking over TV. It’s just happening differently than many of us imagined. There are two major transformations under way:

• The Rise of the Internet Distributors. Led by Netflix, the group of new distributors includes Amazon and Microsoft now, but maybe Apple and Google later. They are largely distributing traditional TV shows in a nontraditional way. All the content is delivered over IP, and usually as part of a paid subscription or per-episode EST (electronic sell-through). Important to note that all of this content contains no advertising and is available entirely on demand. This content falls into the “non-substitutional” content bucket. To watch it, you don’t need to be a cable TV subscriber.
• The Rise of Alternative Content Producers. Thanks to YouTube’s Channel strategy and investment in hundreds of content providers, new producers of content are emerging and offering nontraditional programming, usually in shorter form. This content is marked by dramatically different production economics than traditional TV content, taking advantage of an expanded labor pool and low-cost cameras and computer editing. This alternative content is chipping away at long- and mid-tail viewership on traditional networks (the “filler” and “nice-to-see” buckets).

Both of these transformations are successful to date, and will only become more so. Rich Greenfield has a nice summary of why the TV industry suddenly loves Netflix. (Disclosure: I’ve been a NFLX shareholder for some time.) The first transformation takes advantage of the massive pressure MVPDs place on traditional cable nets to not offer their programming direct to consumers. In this case, the HBOs and AMCs requirement that you authenticate your existing cable subscription in order to watch their programming over IP successfully persuades the cord-nevers to just avoid the programming on those networks until the hit shows are offered through Netflix or EST. Netflix, once again, looks like the hero. Those empty threats by Jeff Bewkes that he will never work with Netflix turned out to be, well, empty. The second transformation will take longer to fully prove out, but I believe it will happen. As more of our viewership takes place over IP, we lose our allegiance to networks as the point of distribution and allow new distributors to guide us toward content choice.

There is a third budding area of transformation, but I don’t yet see evidence that a business exists: Trying to repackage cable TV bundles and sell them over IP. Companies like Aereo and Nimble TV offer versions of this. I believe we live in a show-based world. Consumers aren’t looking for networks (with the exception of ESPN and regional sports nets) so much as they are looking for shows. Shows delivered over IP allow for the slow unbundling of television. One of the many challenges about this model for traditional broadcasters is that there is no advertising in this world. The traditional cable-net business model enjoys two great revenue streams — affiliate fees and ad dollars. In IP-delivered shows, there are no ads.

Who are the winners and losers in this model? Well, show creators continue to flourish. The new distributors enjoy great success. Of course, ISPs, who are often the same companies as the MVPDs, do fine in the ISP business, but I believe the decline in total cable subs will continue. In a world where shows do not contain advertising, why do we need Nielsen? They have been a measurement standard for decades, largely because advertisers needed a third-party validator of viewership. You can see why they have a vested interest in insisting TV ad viewership is not on the decline (despite everyone’s experience to the contrary). I don’t think cable nets are in immediate trouble. They enjoy a great business model now, and also get to reap EST or licensing benefits after the shows air. But the Netflix “House of Cards” effort shows that consumers will now expect to be able to watch shows whenever they want, and not be bothered by inconvenient broadcast schedules. The day is coming when the cable nets will have to respond.

For startups, one of the wide-open spaces seems to be in cross-provider discovery. Now that my shows are spread among Netflix, Amazon, YouTube and on my DVR, I would prefer one interface to reach them all. Companies like Dijit’s NextGuide, Peel, Squrl and Telly are taking cracks at this important space.

David Pakman is a partner at Venrock, focusing on ad tech, social/mobile media, consumer services, Web services, e-commerce, big data, SaaS and anything else hugely exciting and disruptive. This post is also live on his blog.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130306/tv-is-changing-before-our-eyes/feed/ 12 http://allthingsd.com/20130301/big-data-soft-sell-netflix-pitches-a-hands-off-approach-to-hollywood/ http://allthingsd.com/20130301/big-data-soft-sell-netflix-pitches-a-hands-off-approach-to-hollywood/#comments Fri, 01 Mar 2013 18:48:11 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=299728

Here’s a narrative lots of people like right now: In the old days, the movie and TV guys had to guess about what kind of stuff you wanted to see. But Netflix doesn’t need to guess: It knows so much about your viewing habits that it knows exactly what you want, so it picks films and shows accordingly.

And now it’s using all of that Big Data to create stuff you want to see, using its analytics to shape the original videos it is funding.

Take that, William Goldman!

But if you’re a Hollywood creative person, that narrative wouldn’t sound nearly as appealing: You’re already used to getting tons of input and edicts from suits. Now Netflix is promising to up the ante by using computers, too?

Which is why Netflix is not selling that pitch to writers, directors and actors.

Instead, it is promising a hands-off — or mostly hands-off — approach: We’ll give you a bunch of money to go make something, and you go make it. And maybe we’ll offer some suggestions. (Which is the same approach, by the way, that networks like HBO and Showtime used to coax Hollywood talent for their originals for a long time.)

No need to take my word for it, though. You can hear it straight from the folks who are working with Netflix on the new stuff.

At our D: Dive Into Media conference last month, we had Mitch Hurwitz and Will Arnett, creator and star, respectively, of “Arrested Development,” onstage with Ted Sarandos, the Netflix executive who paid them to make a new season of the show. The whole segment is a bunch of fun, but if you want to hear about the input Sarandos did and didn’t have on “Arrested Development,” skip ahead to the 30:30 mark:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130301/big-data-soft-sell-netflix-pitches-a-hands-off-approach-to-hollywood/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130216/office-for-ipad-hbo-comes-to-airplay-bill-gates-on-reddit-and-more-the-allthingsd-week-in-review-21013-21613/ http://allthingsd.com/20130216/office-for-ipad-hbo-comes-to-airplay-bill-gates-on-reddit-and-more-the-allthingsd-week-in-review-21013-21613/#comments Sat, 16 Feb 2013 20:00:15 +0000 Eric Johnson http://allthingsd.com/?p=295756 Hello, and happy Almond Day! If you already knew that today was Almond Day without checking a bizarre-holiday calendar, you might be a little nuts. Here are our Top 10 stories from the week of Feb. 11:

1.) Salesforce CEO Benioff Invites Laid Off Yammer Employees to Work for Him

2.) Microsoft Could Make Billions From Office for iPad

3.) Apple Working on Fix for iOS 6.1 Passcode Hack

4.) American Express Cardholders Can Now Tweet to Buy

5.) HBO to Finally Let Subscribers Stream HBO Go to TV Over AirPlay

6.) A Big Year for Apple’s iPhone in India

7.) Bill Gates on Philanthropy, Steve Jobs and the Microsoft Product That Never Was

8.) Yes, Intel Is Building a Web TV Service (A Box, Too)

9.) The Cloud’s Dirty Little Secret

10.) Apple MacBook Pros With Retina Display Get Faster, Cheaper

For more of the week in review, you should follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130216/office-for-ipad-hbo-comes-to-airplay-bill-gates-on-reddit-and-more-the-allthingsd-week-in-review-21013-21613/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20130215/hbos-berkes-restructures-digital-team-memo/ http://allthingsd.com/20130215/hbos-berkes-restructures-digital-team-memo/#comments Fri, 15 Feb 2013 18:00:33 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=295530

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 —

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130215/hbos-berkes-restructures-digital-team-memo/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130213/day-two-at-d-dive-into-media-2013-in-pictures-and-tweets/ http://allthingsd.com/20130213/day-two-at-d-dive-into-media-2013-in-pictures-and-tweets/#comments Wed, 13 Feb 2013 11:30:45 +0000 Eric Johnson http://allthingsd.com/?p=294835 After Monday’s kickoff with Nancy Tellem, Yusuf Mehdi, Anomaly Productions, David Eun and Charlie Ergen, D: Dive Into Media 2013 already had plenty of star power and great moments in the bank.

Tuesday was a parade of still more great guests — 19 in all — and the discussion online was vibrant. Here’s a sampling of what our attendees saw at Day Two of #DMedia:

You can also get the overview of the day’s events via Storify.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130213/day-two-at-d-dive-into-media-2013-in-pictures-and-tweets/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130212/netflix-house-of-cards-its-most-watched-program/ http://allthingsd.com/20130212/netflix-house-of-cards-its-most-watched-program/#comments Tue, 12 Feb 2013 22:39:27 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=294636 Taking a page from Amazon’s Kindle playbook, Netflix says its homegrown series “House of Cards” is its most-watched title, but declined to give any numbers.

“I don’t want to give ratings, because it is a real apples-to-oranges comparison with network ratings,” Netflix Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos said, speaking at our D: Dive Into Media conference. “We’re thrilled.”

Sarandos said that, the way he looks at it, the question is, did Netflix get more for its millions by creating the show than it would have by spending that money elsewhere? The answer to that, he said, is yes.

In another positive sign, nearly all of the early viewers who watched the first episode watched multiple episodes, Sarandos said. And, of course, Netflix has already ponied up $100 million for two seasons of the show.

Sarandos was asked what levels of viewership it would take for him to give details.

“I honestly have no motivation” to talk numbers, he said, noting that there are no advertisers.

In another break from TV tradition, the service is offering the whole 13-episode first season at once. It also streamed the first episode for free.

Sarandos said the company will do more original programming, but insisted that “we’re not trying to dismantle television.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130212/netflix-house-of-cards-its-most-watched-program/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130212/for-hbo-a-la-carte-programming-is-still-a-ways-off-says-eric-kessler/ http://allthingsd.com/20130212/for-hbo-a-la-carte-programming-is-still-a-ways-off-says-eric-kessler/#comments Tue, 12 Feb 2013 21:34:31 +0000 John Paczkowski http://allthingsd.com/?p=294076 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.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130212/for-hbo-a-la-carte-programming-is-still-a-ways-off-says-eric-kessler/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130212/ok-well-let-you-stream-hbo-go-to-your-tv/ http://allthingsd.com/20130212/ok-well-let-you-stream-hbo-go-to-your-tv/#comments Tue, 12 Feb 2013 20:33:49 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=294409 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.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130212/ok-well-let-you-stream-hbo-go-to-your-tv/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130205/waiting-is-dead/ http://allthingsd.com/20130205/waiting-is-dead/#comments Tue, 05 Feb 2013 08:01:45 +0000 Voices http://allthingsd.com/?p=291532

The goal is to become HBO faster than HBO can become us.

– Ted Sarandos, Netflix’s chief content officer

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130205/waiting-is-dead/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130202/blackberry-hacking-vine-porn-and-more-the-allthingsd-week-in-review-12713-20213/ http://allthingsd.com/20130202/blackberry-hacking-vine-porn-and-more-the-allthingsd-week-in-review-12713-20213/#comments Sun, 03 Feb 2013 00:49:53 +0000 Eric Johnson http://allthingsd.com/?p=290984

Happy Super Bowl weekend! In case you missed them and are bored waiting for the kickoff, here are the top 10 stories on AllThingsD from the week of 1/28:

1.) Twitter Hacked; 250,000 User Accounts Potentially Compromised

2.) BlackBerry Reinvents Itself to Compete With All-Touch Smartphones

3.) HBO Go Is Coming to Apple TV. Why Isn’t Everything Coming to Apple TV?

4.) PSA: Unlocking Phones Without Carrier Permission Becomes Illegal on Saturday

5.) Time Inc. Braces for Layoffs This Week [Update: They happened -- here's the memo too]

6.) Twitter’s Vine App Doesn’t Have a Porn Problem. It Has a Porn Discovery Problem.

7.) iPhone Users Rack Up the Highest Carrier Bills

8.) Sales Talks Fell Through, So Ad Exchange AdBrite Shuts Down

9.) The Next Step for Computing: The Storage Fabric

10.) Apple Announces iPad Maxi

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130202/blackberry-hacking-vine-porn-and-more-the-allthingsd-week-in-review-12713-20213/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20130131/hbo-go-is-coming-to-apple-tv-why-isnt-everything-coming-to-apple-tv/ http://allthingsd.com/20130131/hbo-go-is-coming-to-apple-tv-why-isnt-everything-coming-to-apple-tv/#comments Fri, 01 Feb 2013 01:23:22 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=290674 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.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130131/hbo-go-is-coming-to-apple-tv-why-isnt-everything-coming-to-apple-tv/feed/ 0