Continuing Surge of Mobile, Tablet, and Smart Device Sales & Streaming
With the frenzied holiday season, consumers are purchasing the latest and greatest smart devices in record numbers and at lightning speed. According to Gartner, sales of tablets and smartphones are estimated to reach 821 million units for 2012, and predicted to increase close to 50 percent next year, with a forecast of 1.2 billion units sold in 2013. The influx of smart devices has provided a new level of consumer empowerment, and will continue to make it more convenient for audiences to consume streaming content exactly when, where and how they choose. Part of the device owner’s everyday usage will include catching up on shows, watching their favorite sports team live during their commutes, while they are waiting for appointments, and in bed before they go to sleep or start their mornings — this will become more of an expected activity instead of a luxury. We will continue to see stream counts increase across the board and shift from PCs to more accessible smart devices, consoles and IPTV boxes.

With the explosion of new devices, though, there is further fragmentation around the support of content by various service providers. How far away are we from a viewer being able to pick up his or her preferred device and simply search for the content he wants to watch, make any required transactions and immediately begin to enjoy the content? When will a robust Streaming TV Guide be available that simply encompasses all available content? Today’s experience has much to be improved — as a user must first determine if the desired content is even available for streaming, find the service it’s available through, determine if that service has an app for their device, sign up for the service on their PC, and then download the aforementioned app and log in to start enjoying the content.

Next-Generation Content Queuing
2013 and beyond will also up the ante when it comes to queues and watch lists. These are still at the proverbial tip of the iceberg, and the evolution will continue this coming year. Today, there are services that keep track of what you’ve watched, what you’re currently watching, and provide a concierge-type level of service that includes ratings and friend recommendations. A few of these services even allow you to continue watching where you’ve left off across devices (i.e., a user can start watching a program or movie in his/her living room on his console, set-top box or smart TV, resume where they left off on their bus commute via their phone, and finally, finish the episode on their work PC during lunch).

The coming year will also unfold opportunities for you to leverage your social graph more extensively to provide more relevance and personalization, and to curate personal media experiences to be enjoyed with less manual input, ratings and followings. We can look forward to full premium linear channels personally tailored to each viewer that will deliver an experience of the viewer’s favorite content, intertwined with introductions to new content to embrace (think Pandora 2.0 for video).

In order for this to happen, these future channels (and their platforms) will need to span and intermix the premium content currently locked in today’s platform silos (Hulu, Amazon, Netflix, HBO, NBA League Pass, etc). As premium channels start to become decoupled from existing content bundles of traditional cable/satellite packages and subscribed to on an a la carte basis, this vision will get closer to a reality. In the interim, as technology continues to innovate at a much faster rate than media, will services be developed to address the problem by connecting and delivering your subscribed premium content across all of your separate subscriptions from competing platforms? It will be exciting to see who how these services are developed among competitors.

Streaming Content Across Borders
The traditional licensing model of TV broadcast and home video is changing drastically every year, as demonstrated by a flurry of activity in 2012 involving master licensors decoupling rights and increasing availability of content to new markets. This is done by licensing streaming rights to an ever-increasing number of countries and territories, in order to reach a deeper breadth of viewers in an increasingly globalized viewing market.

This practice reaches new audiences across country lines much more efficiently than the required TV and DVD deals which had historically been done show by show and market by market. As the majority of monetization for content is typically made within the home market, licensors are more flexible with new technologies and content strategies outside of these guarded markets. Ironically, international audiences may have better access and viewing experiences than home audiences. With the dramatic growth of broadband penetration and deep vertical content services (which hold international streaming rights), we will also see 2013 hasten major growth and interest internationally while driving incremental revenue, as increasingly demanding audiences connect and leverage their new broadband connections.

In contrast with the old established practice of major services slowly opening up new markets one by one (Hulu in Japan, Netflix in Brazil) or through the acquisition of complementary services in targeted markets (Amazon purchasing LoveFilm), premium deep vertical services will attract paying premium global customers from their beginnings and with each new title release.

For an idea of the enormous opportunity for streaming content globally, connect to a BitTorrent tracker of any premium video content (Homeland, UFC, Breaking Bad, etc.) and look at the vast breadth and depth of international IP addresses demanding the content. This kind of accessibility has arguably helped to produce a huge fan base for the shows, and demand is evident. The challenge, though, lies in how best to window the content and collect payments for premium content on a country-by-country basis.

With the irony of content owners being more progressive and flexible with their content internationally, will major shifts and evolutions of streaming content come here from overseas, as opposed to the other way around?

Brady McCollum is EVP and COO of Crunchyroll Inc., the leading global video network for Japanese anime and Asian media. Through its secure video platform for simulcasts and multilanguage content distribution, Crunchyroll delivers officially licensed content from leading Asian media producers directly to consumers.

“Not gonna happen,” comes the response from the TV guys, over and over. “Not anytime soon, at least.”

That’s particularly true for premium pay channels like HBO and Showtime, which make almost all their money from subscription sales, and rely heavily on pay-TV providers to handle their marketing, as well as all of their customer service, billing, etc.

Yes, there are a bunch of people who would pay to watch episodes of “Game of Thrones,” but don’t want to get HBO. And there also a bunch of people who say they would be happy to subscribe to HBO, but not pay for cable. But HBO and Showtime executives figure that the upside of pleasing those people doesn’t outweigh the downside of angering the cable, telco and satellite guys, who give them a ton of dough.

You can go around and around on this one, but it’s easier to show instead of tell. So take a look at this ad, which millions of you have already seen this fall:

To sum up: That’s a classic twofer, promoting both the hottest show on cable TV and the company that will bring it to you.

But I’m told that the financing for this one is pretty one-sided, with Time Warner Cable footing almost all of the bill. People familiar with the ad tell me that Showtime took care of the six-figure bill for Claire Danes’s participation, but everything else is on the cable guys, who will end up spending more than $20 million on the campaign.

Clearly, big TV campaigns promoting their network and their hit show aren’t the only thing keeping Showtime tethered to the pay-TV model. If CBS wanted to run its own marketing push for Homeland, it could do so.

But the ad does speak to the tight, profitable symbiosis between the network and the guys who run the pipes. The Internet isn’t going to break that up anytime soon.

That will be “House of Cards,” a Washington, D.C.-based drama from director David Fincher, starring Kevin Spacey.

Here’s the first trailer for it:

Not much to go on here, though the preview does seem a little flatter than the kind that HBO traditionally puts out for its stuff. And Netflix is very clearly trying to compete with Time Warner’s pay channel with this series (industry executives say both HBO and Showtime got a chance to buy the series before Netflix did).

Then again, lots of HBO series with great previews end up being duds, too. So, who knows.

We will get a chance to see for ourselves when Netflix debuts the show next February and makes every episode of the first season available at the same time.

Here’s the trailer for Hulu’s latest original content offering about a very unusual matchmaker.

That’s irksome “Paul, the Male Matchmaker,” a 10-episode spoof series from Warner Bros. Television Group’s Studio 2.0, which will debut on the premium video service on Feb. 13.

Get it? The day before Valentine’s Day.

It’s got the same tone as Lisa Kudrow’s successful (and now on cable television’s Showtime) “Web Therapy,” with lots of well-known guest stars.

I kind of like it from the teaser here, but we’ll see:

• Showing TV shows the day after they air, like Hulu does.
• Renting TV shows and movies one at a time, on demand, like Amazon, Apple, Walmart and many others do.
• Renting video games, like GameFly does.
• Getting more people to sign up for its DVD rental service, which is what Netflix used to do.

So what is Reed Hastings trying to do? He explained it again during his company’s conference call Wednesday night, but it’s the same message he’s been delivering for some time: He’s trying to create the Web version of HBO or Showtime.

That is: A premium cable channel that gives subscribers lots of viewing choices — including some stuff they can’t see anywhere else —  but not unlimited choices.

That may disappoint some customers, investors and even reporters. Because the idea of a maverick Internet video service that could upend all of Hollywood and the TV industry sounds pretty exciting. People are still hoping for one, perhaps in the form of a “virtual” cable service – perhaps from Google or Apple – though yesterday Hastings said he doesn’t believe that’s happening, either.

But Hastings’s more modest ambitions are popular enough: He now has 23.5 million Web video subscribers worldwide, which is more than CBS’s Showtime has. And he is creeping up on Time Warner’s HBO, which has around 28 million subs. [UPDATE: Let's make this an apples-to-apples comparison: Netflix has 21.7 million Web video subs in the U.S.; that 28 million number for HBO is US-only, too.]

Still, Hastings will need to keep reiterating his plan for some time in order for everyone to get it.

That’s partly his fault, because he hasn’t always been consistent. Last summer, for instance, he said the company would start marketing its DVD-only business again, but the company has since canceled those plans (and now rarely acknowledges DVDs exist, even though they are a huge business for Netflix). Last fall, Netflix also said it would get into the videogame rental business, but those plans have been scrapped, too.

“We are just another network competing for viewing time with, and licensing content from, other networks,” Hastings wrote in his letter to shareholders yesterday. That’s not quite as compelling as “All the movies and TV you’ll ever need, for $8 a month,” but it’s the truth, and it seems to work for lots of people.

I bought it Saturday night, watched it on the plane Sunday, and laughed out loud, a bunch. You should do it, and there’s a good chance you have — techland loved this story this weekend. Also, again: It’s very funny.

But What Does It All Mean? Not a ton. It’s an evolutionary step, relevant to a select group of people who make entertainment. With one interesting twist.

The part that isn’t new here is Louis C.K. using the Web and doing it on his own. We’ve seen a bunch of that over the years, mostly from entertainers who have already become famous (or at least semi-famous) with the help of mainstream media. Prince and Radiohead sold their own music only after they sold lots of songs for big music labels. Adam Carolla leapt/got pushed from TV and radio gigs into podcasting.

The new twist here is the way his experiment changes video “windows” — which determine when shows and movies show up on different outlets. By going direct-to-fan first, C.K. doesn’t shut off his chance to end up working the Big Media Companies he says he doesn’t want to work with. He’s just making them wait. So the people who really love him can get it right away, and he can capture almost all of that value in the transaction.

We’ll call it the Louis C.K. Window.

It can run for a week, or a month, or however long he’d like to be the sole outlet for his show. But then, if he wants to get more money for his product and reach a different audience, C.K. can sell the program to HBO or Showtime or Netflix for a “pay-TV window.” And then, eventually, to the likes of Comedy Central or FX. At some point, he can retail discs and downloads via Amazon and iTunes, etc.

The Louis C.K. Window is the most gratifying, because it’s cool, and because he’ll keep almost every penny his fans spend to see him. But it’s also likely to expose him to the smallest number of people.

Let’s say, for argument’s sake, that a million people pony up for the concert — basically, that is, everyone who watches his (great) show on News Corp.’s FX channel. (News Corp. owns this site, too.)

That’s a wildly optimistic estimate, and it will still be a fraction of the people that HBO, which has some 28 million subscribers, can reach. You can fault Big Media for a lot of things, but it remains pretty good at rounding up Big Audiences.

But that’s the great thing about the Louis C.K. Window. It lets Louis C.K. — and a relatively small group of people with big ambitions, and ardent fans — have it both ways.

We can call this the “cord shaving” argument, and if I could remember where I first saw the term, I’d be happy to give them credit. (My hunch is that it was BTIG Research’s Rich Greenfield. Or maybe digital-media-executive-turned-aggregator Jason Hirschhorn. Or maybe Video Nuze, etc.).

This one has a nice ring of logic to it: You’d have to be a very committed non-cable watcher to dump your entire service and make do with the Web stuff. But depending on your viewing habits, it might be quite easy to substitute, say, Netflix for HBO.

It would be cheaper, too–you’d just have to wait a while to see “Boardwalk Empire” or “Game of Thrones.” (Though I’d still pay a premium to see Kenny Powers.)*

And that may be what we’re starting to see now.

Here, for instance, is a new study from Accenture that draws a connection between Web video watchers and a drop in premium cable: It figures the Internet is responsible for an eight percent drop in subscriptions.

Alas, just as with the cord-cutting debate, we may be stuck, for a while, with competing sets of data.

Market researcher SNL Kagan, for instance, says that in the last quarter of 2010, subscriptions shot up for CBS’ Showtime and Liberty’s Starz, while Time Warner’s HBO stayed steady.

These are apples and oranges data points: The Accenture numbers are taken worldwide, while the Kagan numbers are U.S.-only. And they cover different time periods, too. Etc.

Still, there’s a reason why Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes has been so forceful about bashing Netflix publicly. Investors, at least, are concerned that the Web service (and perhaps Web video in general) will indeed cut into HBO’s business. So this won’t be the last we hear about this one.

And here’s one of the least unsafe-for-work Kenny Powers clips I could find. But it is still not going to be safe for some workplaces. It is awesome, though:

* For the concerned reader who inquired: No, you can’t get anything HBO shows via Netflix’ streaming service. But if you’re patient enough, and you subscribe to the DVD tier of the service, you’ll be able to get the shows and movies that way.

Showtime says shows it is still airing, like Dexter and Californication, will no longer be available on Netflix. The move comes a few days after Netflix announced it would pay for first-run rights to House Of Cards — the kind of show you’d normally expect to see on Showtime or Time Warner’s HBO.

UPDATE: You could argue, if you were so inclined, that Showtime’s pronouncement is a negotiating position, and not a finalized deal point, because the two companies are still negotiating a deal, and that it’s possible that shows like “Dexter” will still be available when negotiations conclude.

Which is more or less what Netflix is saying.

Here’s Netflix spokesman Steve Swasey’s statement in response to the LAT piece:

We’re really not sure what they’re saying, because Netflix and CBS announced a licensing deal, which included “The Tudors” and “Sleepercell.” “Californiacation” and “Dexter” are currently available to watch instantly streaming from Netflix as they are part of a separate licensing deal with Showtime. Netflix has a good relationship with CBS Corp. and we are in the process of renewing and adding shows from their many programming channels, including Showtime.

Now Flipboard, a social news-reading app based around Twitter and Facebook, is adding publisher feeds.

One thing’s clear: There’s a lot of excitement and energy going into how the iPad can re-create content consumption.

Flipboard is launching a beta test with eight publishers, including, full disclosure, All Things Digital.

The other publishers are ABC News, Bon Appétit, Lonely Planet, SB Nation, SFGate, Uncrate and the Washington Post Magazine.

Participating advertisers, through a partnership with OMD, include Pepsi, Gatorade, Infiniti, the CW Television Network, Showtime, Levi’s, Dockers, Hilton Worldwide, GE, Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau, Project (RED), Standup2cancer.org and Charity: Water.

They are contributing full-page ads that are inserted into longer-form articles.

During the beta period, no money will change hands between any of these parties, including our site, according to Flipboard CEO Mike McCue.

Later, McCue said he expects to add many more publishers to the Flipboard app, and perhaps help publishers create their own “iPadified” content experiences to distribute themselves.

Instead of prompting users to go to the iPad’s Safari browser to read full versions of articles, as it has done to date, Flipboard will now import partner publisher content and lay it out automatically. For these stories, Flipboard formats images, divides them into pages and offers different layouts for portrait and landscape modes.

McCue said Flipboard users’ No. 1 most requested feature is the ability to add content through RSS feeds.

But he’s not giving them that with this update. Users can still only subscribe to publishers through Twitter accounts and lists. The reason, according to McCue, is Flipboard is dedicated to the social aspect and beautiful design of content, and RSS contains neither of these things.

McCue speaks of scrolling through Web pages with advertising units and side bars as a relic of the early Web and crappy Internet connections, saying Flipboard represents a return to the pagination and image emphasis of print.

Unlike print, though, Flipboard doesn’t work offline; that’s a future feature, said McCue. He also said his team is still singularly devoted to developing for iPad, and will divert focus to Android tablets only after they have an established user base.

By the way–more full disclosure–seeing ATD content get iPadified in McCue’s demo wasn’t as fun and glossy as you might imagine, especially given our small images.

And in what might be a problem for other content publishers like us, the quick blog posts we often write are not as easily transferable to this layout, given Flipboard does not yet differentiate between short stories and longer articles.

The cable shows are particularly noteworthy, since those programs are generally not available on Netflix rival Hulu–which is co-owned by NBC, along with Disney’s (DIS) ABC and News Corp.’s (NWS) Fox.

In fact, while Netflix makes a point of not advertising access to any particular show or movie on its service, it does consistently well with cable programming, at least compared with Hulu. For instance: Episodes of “Dexter,” from CBS’s Showtime pay channel, do particularly well on Netflix–but CBS has no Hulu deal at all.

And it’s also worth noting that, going forward, all new episodes of “Saturday Night Live”–one of Hulu’s best assets–will be available the day after they air. Just like they are on Hulu.

Showtime’s newest original series, “The Big C”–starring the superb Laura Linney, a tightly wound woman who reacts to a cancer diagnosis by living it up–premiered on the pay cable channel this week with almost 1.58 million viewers.

That makes it a hit for a program on cable television, but what’s interesting to BoomTown is that the first episode’s online version, which has been available for weeks to gin up interest, has grabbed about that many views, too.

In fact, that’s where I watched it–on YouTube, although it is available in several locations online–and where I am guessing many more than ever will too, if more shows get posted.

We’ll see about that, but until then here’s the video of the “The Big C” trailer, as well as the entire premiere show below it:

The LAT says Netflix (NFLX) and Epix are talking about a five-year-deal that would pay Epix “close to” $1 billion over the course of the contract.

Epix declined to comment, and Netflix spokesman Steve Swasey offered this extended no comment (or, in other words, a non-denial): “Netflix has about 80 people in its Beverly Hills office who show up to work every day to acquire content for the Netflix service. We regularly meet with studios, networks, filmmakers and others for this purpose. However, we do not comment on any specific negotiations that may or may not be under way.”

But industry sources I’ve talked to this afternoon say the report sounds plausible. They tell me that the two companies have been rumored to have been chatting for close to a year, and that some thought a deal was supposed to have been announced last week. And they tell me that Netflix has been approaching other big rights holders, including CBS’ (CBS) Showtime, with similar big-money offers.

On the face of it, this seems like a ground-shifting deal that signals Netflix’s arrival as a true cable competitor. Why sign up for HBO or Showtime–why sign up for Comcast (CMCSA) or Time Warner Cable (TWC), for that matter–when Netflix will stream you a lifetime of movies and TV shows for $9 a month?

That’s the course Netflix has been on for some time, and the company’s deal with Relativity Media last month hinted at the direction it was headed. And unlike Relativity, Epix has movies lots of people want to see, from Paramount, Lionsgate (LGF) and MGM. Stuff like “Iron Man 2″ and the “Saw” films, etc.

So if it goes through, it will be significant for Netflix, which currently has a catalog of more than 100,000 movies and TV shows on DVD, but only about 17,000 titles in its streaming catalog. And it would be nice for Epix, which has struggled to get traditional cable operators to pick up the pay channel (which makes it more likely to do a deal like this).

But let’s see some of the details before we reach any truly grand conclusions.

As the LAT notes, the deal is unlikely to bust open Hollywood’s “windowing” system, where consumers aren’t allowed to watch movies online until they been on DVD for a certain amount of time. Epix’s studio owners may be happy to get money for their online rights, but they want to keep wringing dollars from discs as long as they can.

Meanwhile, pay channel competitors Showtime and Time Warner’s HBO have been busy for some time explaining to competitors why this kind of deal doesn’t threaten them–they’re in the original programming business, not the movie business.

You don’t subscribe to HBO because it’s airing “Public Enemies,” the argument goes–you get it because it will have “Boardwalk Empire” this fall. Showtime says the same thing about “Dexter” and “Weeds,” etc. True? Or wishful thinking? We may find out soon.

But the deal could also give Les Moonves and company the ability to strike less conventional distribution deals, too. Now that Comcast is out of the way, CBS could move forward with a Hulu deal, and perhaps the likes of an Apple TV product as well.

Make no mistake: The real focus of today’s deal is the money Comcast will fork over for the right to distribute CBS’ broadcast programming to its cable subscribers’ TV sets. Comcast and other cable guys have resisted paying the so-called retransmission fee for TV that’s available free over the airwaves. But one by one, they’re conceding and paying up, which means their customers will, too.

Barclays analyst Anthony DiClemente guesses Comcast’s CBS fee will start at 50 cents a month per subscriber and move well past $1 by the end of the deal, though I’ve heard grunts and murmurs from Black Rock that those numbers are low. Perhaps we’ll hear more during tomorrow’s earnings call.

And while the release announcing the deal notes that Comcast (CMCSA) gets online rights as part of the pact, the near-term impact for Web viewers will be very limited.

Specifically, if you’re a Comcast cable subscriber who pays for Showtime and/or The Movie Channel, you’ll soon be able to watch programming from those channels online, too. Good news for “Weeds” and “Dexter” fans, but that’s about it.

That said, down the road, CBS may start moving to a model where it pulls more of its broadcast TV shows like “CSI” off of the free Web and makes them available only to “authenticated” customers–Comcast subscribers and anyone else whose pipe provider has a deal with the broadcaster.

And that, in turn, gives the network the go-ahead to move forward with Hulu, Apple and every other player who also wants to sell online access to TV programming.

CBS had previously chatted with other outlets like Apple and Hulu–in part because it was interested, and in part because it was good for Comcast to know that it was interested. But now it has a framework for those deals: Comcast is paying us this much money for this much access to our shows. You’ll need to pay that amount or more.

So it shouldn’t be a surprise to see Moonves acknowledge his interest today in joining Hulu’s paid subscription service, which would mean patching things up with former online rivals News Corp.’s (NWS) Fox, Disney’s (DIS) ABC and GE’s (GE) NBC.

And I wouldn’t be shocked to see him murmur positive things about supplying online programming to Apple (AAPL), or Google (GOOG) for that matter, during tomorrow’s call. Stay tuned.

The pact, which covers the namesake CBS and other networks that the company operates, includes the full suite of shows from CBS unit Showtime Networks, Comcast’s launch of the Smithsonian Channel in 2011, and expanded distribution of CBS college sports.

CBS and Comcast representatives both declined to provide financial terms of the deal, though a CBS spokesman said that because the agreement includes online and on-demand material it would be difficult to break the figures down on a per-subscriber basis.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

One of the channels, tentatively called Sony Pictures Movies HD, would be the company’s first wholly owned cable channel in the U.S. devoted to movies. The channel is expected to debut October 1; it would be a basic cable service, and not compete in the pay TV market with HBO and Showtime.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

The tactic, by “Weeds” producer Lions Gate Entertainment Corp., is the part of a more aggressive effort Hollywood is taking to boost online sales of digital movies.

Studios have become bolder in how they push their shows and movies over digital channels. Earlier this month, Sony Corp.’s (SNE) Sony Pictures started making online rentals of its hit movie “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs” available for owners of some Sony TVs and other devices, well before the film’s Jan. 5 release on DVD.

A Sony spokesman declined to say how many consumers were taking the offer.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

But television manufacturers are sick and tired of sharing your attention with another device. So this week, Samsung Electronics introduced a television with truly integrated Internet smarts: the $3,000 Samsung LED TV 7000 with the Yahoo Widget Engine. It lets people watch TV and access the Web on the same big screen at the same time, with special on-screen applications that appear on a strip at the bottom of the screen and fetch online content. By this summer, Sony (SNE) and LG Electronics also will offer TVs with the Yahoo Widget Engine, and Vizio will offer models soon thereafter.

I’ve been testing the Yahoo Widget Engine on a 46-inch Samsung TV, and I found it to be a lot of fun to use. It’s easy to navigate, thanks to special color-coded shortcuts on the TV’s remote control, and I didn’t have to abandon the show I was watching to look up a few things online. Widgets, which are small, easily downloadable computer applications, typically expand to a semitranslucent, overlaying panel on the left, or your program can be resized so you don’t lose any of the picture. The one major downside was that it uses a virtual keyboard rather than a physical keyboard for text entry. (You use the remote control to select text from an on-screen keyboard.) A good keyboard is essential for social networking widgets like Twitter, allowing quickly typed reactions to shows as you’re watching them. Samsung is planning to introduce a remote-control-based input method for next-generation TVs.

Samsung’s LED TV 7000 uses the Yahoo Widget Engine to access Web content, like Flickr.

If you’re reading this and thinking that Internet on the TV has been tried before with limited success, you’re right. For years, companies have designed external boxes that bring some form of the Web to your TV. These include Microsoft Corp.’s (MSFT) Xbox, Apple Inc.’s (AAPL) Apple TV and some features of TiVo (TIVO). But the Yahoo Widget Engine differs from these boxes in two ways. First, Yahoo’s widget system works simultaneously with your TV programming, so you don’t have to turn off the college basketball game to pull up a news story about a star player. Second, it will include widgets with video content that directly competes with live programming.

This second point is noteworthy because television manufacturers in the past have quashed applications with Web video content for fear of these programs competing with live shows. Yahoo (YHOO) says it won’t block widgets from its Widget Engine, so you could, say, run a Showtime widget that plays an episode of “The Tudors” instead of watching a live show.

The Yahoo Widget Engine comes preloaded on TVs with four basic widgets to start: Flickr (Yahoo’s photo service), Yahoo News, Weather and Finance. When prompted, these widgets appear in a horizontal dock along the bottom edge of the TV screen, along with Widget Gallery and Profile. (If you just want to watch TV, you can hide the widget dock easily.) Yahoo expects to offer 20 to 30 widgets within two months, and estimates that it will offer around 100 by the end of the year.

Samsung lent me an LED TV 7000 loaded with the four basic widgets and some extras that will be available in the Widget Gallery by early April: Twitter, Yahoo Video, USA Today Sports and three games (Sudoku, Texas Hold’em and QuizzMaster).

The Yahoo Widget Engine follows a model that encourages developers — even Yahoo’s competitors — to make widgets for its store-like Widget Gallery, where they will be available to download free directly on the TV. The system is similar to Apple’s highly successful App Store for the iPhone, and, like iPhone apps, these widgets will take seconds to download and are fun to try. The Yahoo widgets will work across all enabled televisions, regardless of manufacturer.

Yahoo Widget Engine displays tidbits of information on a TV, like news and weather, without interrupting programming.

Samsung and Yahoo each have their own sub-stores of widgets within Widget Gallery. But users most likely won’t know or care which widgets are coming from what source because they’re all grouped into categories like Latest Widgets, Community and Messaging. Other TV manufacturers will be able to follow this model with their own stores, as well.

The Samsung LED TV 7000 connects to the Web via a wired connection or by using a wireless USB device, which Samsung sells for $80. Currently, Samsung offers four models with built-in Web access, which it calls Internet@TV. By June, the company plans to offer a total of 17 models with Internet@TV. All TVs with the Widget Engine will have remote-control shortcut buttons to pull up widgets.

With a local news station on in the background, I used the Yahoo Widget Engine to pull up Flickr in a left-side panel. After using the painfully slow virtual keyboard to sign into my Flickr account, I quickly skimmed through categories like Your Photos, Your Groups and Explore. I browsed photos from one of my Flickr groups, both in the side panel only and in full-screen slideshow mode, and tagging favorites with a yellow button on my remote control.

With a few steps, snippets of information, or shortcuts, can be created for certain widgets, like Yahoo Weather and Finance, to save you from opening the widget to see more details in a left-side panel. I created a Yahoo Finance snippet for McDonald’s (MCD) stock so I could see this stock’s status at the bottom of my screen without opening the Finance widget. People who have Yahoo accounts can synchronize their account settings with the TV, such as stocks saved in Yahoo Finance.

The Twitter widget automatically refreshes its content roughly once a minute, so you can see new tweets (updates) from the people you follow right in the horizontal dock. You also can see a list of the most popular phrases on Twitter, search Twitter and save searches.

Individual Widget Engine profiles can be created for up to eight people so that a 16-year-old doesn’t have to see his dad’s stock-market news in his profile. Widgets can be moved around in the horizontal dock so you can line them up according to your personal preferences.

The Yahoo Widget Engine is still in its early stages, and there are plenty of changes and widgets to come, not to mention televisions from manufacturers other than Samsung. But it’s easy to navigate and its remote-controls buttons — especially those with color coding — bring the Internet to your TV screen with just one click. If you want a smarter TV, the Yahoo Widget Engine will do the trick.

Edited By Walter S. Mossberg

• Email us at mossbergsolution@wsj.com. Find this and other columns and videos online free at the All Things Digital Web site: http://solution.allthingsd.com

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090324/yahoo-widgets-lend-brains-to-boob-tube/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20080813/sony-and-roku-try-to-join-tv-to-web-but-no-merger-yet/ http://allthingsd.com/20080813/sony-and-roku-try-to-join-tv-to-web-but-no-merger-yet/#comments Thu, 14 Aug 2008 01:06:44 +0000 Walter S. Mossberg http://ptech.allthingsd.com/20080813/sony-and-roku-try-to-join-tv-to-web-but-no-merger-yet/ Perhaps the biggest disconnect in the digital landscape today is between the Internet and the TV set. Consumers have been buying big, new high-definition TVs in large numbers and, separately, are watching more and more video from online sources like YouTube, Hulu and iTunes. But the two trends have yet to merge. Despite the efforts of big names like Microsoft (MSFT), Apple (AAPL) and TiVo (TIVO), relatively few people are watching Internet video on their shiny new sets.

Now, two more set-top boxes have been launched to try to marry the Internet and the TV. Both adapters, from Sony (SNE) and Roku, worked well in my tests, but each has limitations. The problem is that one of the boxes supplies content from a wide range of Internet video sources, but only works on selected models of one brand of TV set; the other works on a wide variety of TVs, but only provides a single source of content.

Sony’s adapter is the Bravia Internet Video Link. This is a $300 module that attaches to certain Sony HDTV models. It can either be set up beside the TV or snapped onto the back of the set. Once it’s connected to your TV and to your home network for Internet access, a new menu appears on the TV allowing you a choice of videos from numerous online sources, including YouTube, Yahoo (YHOO), Blip. TV, Sports Illustrated, AOL, Wired, and the Web sites of CBS (CBS), Showtime and more.

Setting up the Bravia Internet Video Link was straightforward, even though it involved a welter of cables. There is no built-in Wi-Fi — you need either a cable or an add-on wireless adapter to connect to the Internet. The primary hookup to the TV is via a modern type of cable called HDMI, for High Definition Multimedia Interface.

I tested the Sony Link using the company’s most unusual HDTV set — a tiny, very costly model that uses a very thin, very vivid new screen technology called OLED, for Organic Light-Emitting Diode. This TV provided a spectacular picture, but it isn’t required to use the Sony module. The Link works on many larger, more common Sony sets with more common screens. It just doesn’t work on non-Sony TV sets.

Sony’s Bravia Internet Video Link adapter

The Sony module doesn’t have its own remote control. It uses the one that came with the TV. This makes for an awkward experience, because there are no standard play and pause buttons, and various other buttons on the remote meant to do one thing on the TV may do another when watching Internet video via the Link module.

Also, I found some of the Internet content to be disappointing. Many of the items labeled “movies” on various Internet channels were really just trailers, and some content was stale. For instance, some baseball news videos on Yahoo were weeks old.

However, Sony plans to make one of its feature films, “Hancock,” available through the Link module before it’s released on DVD. More important, it will be adding access to Amazon’s (AMZN) forthcoming video-streaming service, which promises to contain a wealth of full-length content.

The Netflix Player by Roku is much simpler. In fact, it was the simplest set-top box I have ever tested. It costs just $100 and does just one thing: It allows Netflix (NFLX) subscribers to view its movies and TV shows via the Internet on a television set instead of on a computer. It can’t get you any other video content from the Internet.

The Netflix player is a small, plain black box that works with most TVs, not just digital or high-definition models. It connects using both old-fashioned cables, like the kind used by many VCRs and older DVD players, or an HDMI cable.

Unlike the Sony, the Roku box includes both wireless and wired Internet connectivity, and has its own remote. While the box is capable of displaying high-definition content, the Netflix service isn’t currently streaming movies and TV shows in high definition, so you get varying quality, depending on your TV and Internet speed, up to DVD-type levels.

There’s no added monthly fee required to use the Roku box, but you must be a Netflix subscriber. The box merely displays the movies or TV shows you have placed in your Instant Queue on Netflix. You have to do this on your computer before viewing the videos on the Roku box. You can choose from around 12,000 streaming movies and TV shows, far fewer than the 100,000 titles Netflix makes available via DVD, but a sizable collection.

In my tests, the Roku box set up quickly and easily, the interface and remote were simple and effective, and the movies and TV shows I tested streamed quickly and without hesitation over my fast home Internet connection.

Both products are meant to promote sales of other things — Sony TVs and the Netflix movie-rental service. They do these tasks well, but neither is the breakthrough solution that will connect most TVs to most Internet video content.

Find all of Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos online, free, at the All Things Digital Web site, walt.allthingsd.com. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20080813/sony-and-roku-try-to-join-tv-to-web-but-no-merger-yet/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20080411/blogs-and-kisses/ http://allthingsd.com/20080411/blogs-and-kisses/#comments Fri, 11 Apr 2008 07:01:04 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/20080411/blogs-and-kisses/ Here is a clip from my favorite new television show, “Tracey Ullman’s State of the Union,” which recently debuted on Showtime.

The British comedian does spot-on impressions of average people and the errant celebrity too, including a pitch-perfect one (right down to yelling for her sister Agape) of blogger Arianna Huffington with the signature line: Blogs and Kisses!

And in this video, accepting an award at the Bloggies, the hysterical moment when Ullman/Huffington tells a competing right-wing blogger to have her “YouTubes tied.”

Here’s the video and also the promotional one for the show that is pretty funny too:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20080411/blogs-and-kisses/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20080107/ddv20080107/ http://allthingsd.com/20080107/ddv20080107/#comments Mon, 07 Jan 2008 19:00:23 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/20080107/ddv20080107/

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20080107/ddv20080107/feed/ 0