AllThingsD » streaming

Apple Secures Warner Music Streaming Rights

Hannah Karp — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 00:02:52 +0000

Apple is inching closer to a new streaming music service for iTunes, according to people familiar with the matter.

On Sunday Apple inked a licensing deal with Warner Music Group for the rights to its recorded music and music publishing, agreeing to terms on the publishing side that other major music publishers have been seeking, according to people familiar with the matter.

Under the deal, Apple will give Warner Music Group’s publishing arm 10 percent of ad revenue — more than twice what Internet radio giant Pandora Media — pays major music publishers. Warner’s terms with Apple could pave the way for other major publishing deals to follow.

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Twitch App for Xbox 360 Will Let You Watch (But Not Stream) Game Videos

Eric Johnson — Tue, 14 May 2013 13:01:58 +0000

Videogame video-streaming service Twitch is getting an Xbox 360 app, the company announced today. The app will let owners of Microsoft’s console watch any of the site’s top 300 live channels, though it will not let them make their own videos, one of the features Sony has promised for its upcoming PlayStation 4. However, a Twitch spokesperson said Microsoft will show off the app in more detail shortly after its next-generation console event, “Xbox Revealed,” next week.

LivingSocial, Netflix and the Galaxy S 4 Reviewed -- 10 Things You Need to See on AllThingsD This Week

Eric Johnson — Sat, 27 Apr 2013 17:38:28 +0000

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

Daily-deals site LivingSocial was hacked, compromising the names, emails, birthdates and encrypted passwords of 50 million users.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
For the first time, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer publicly commented on the controversy created after Yahoo banned its employees from working from home.
Speaking of Mayer, she’s officially joined the board of wireless gadget maker Jawbone, and it’s likely to be a good fit.
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.

Price Discrimination and Data Caps Are Not the Same Thing

Michael Weinberg — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 22:26:45 +0000

Image copyright Laralova

In a recent op-ed on this site, Professor Daniel Lyons identified Internet pricing as “the next policy frontier.” He is largely correct on that front. As Internet service providers (ISPs) roll out their attempts to shift consumers toward data-based pricing, they will raise a number of policy questions. But the piece didn’t accurately identify the actual policy questions involved.

Professor Lyons’s fundamental mistake was to conflate opposition to data caps with opposition to price discrimination more generally. Price discrimination in broadband pricing is a positive phenomenon. It allows ISPs to create different pricing packages that appeal to different types of customers — from those heavy gamers to the grandmother who only checks her email. My organization, Public Knowledge, does not oppose the idea of price discrimination, and I am not aware of any of our allies that do either. But price discrimination does not require using data caps. And the alternative to data caps is not one price for everyone.

How can I be so sure? Because ISPs impose price discrimination today using speed tiers. And it turns out that speed tiers have a number of positive attributes that data caps lack.

Most people understand speed. While they may not know how many megabytes are in a gigabyte, even the emailing grandma knows that a page that does not load very quickly or a video that constantly buffers is because of a slow Internet connection.

Furthermore, customers realize that their connection is too slow while they are using the Internet. When the video buffers or the page is slow they can ponder, at that very moment, if the delay is annoying enough to justify paying for a faster tier. With monthly caps, a user gets an alert and then needs to reconstruct days, weeks, or even a month’s worth of usage to try to determine what they were doing to get them close to the cap. Then they need to decide if it is worth paying extra to be able to do it again in the future.

Finally, speed tiers are a “gentle” signal to consumers. If your Internet connection is not fast enough, the worst thing that happens is that things happen a bit too slowly for your liking. Go over your data cap and you could be on the hook for significant overage fees.

The gentle nature of speed-based tiers fuel a virtuous cycle. Exploration leads to discovery, which leads to decisions to purchase faster tiers. These purchases provide capital to invest in the network, which in turn brings faster service for everyone. This increased speed fuels even more exploration, which starts the cycle all over again.

In contrast, data-based tiers incentivize sticking to what you know, avoiding trying new things that could cost you overage fees. This is a recipe for stagnation.

But what about the idea that caps are set so high that only those crazy early adopters would ever hit them? History tells us that today’s early adopters are tomorrow’s average user. There was a time when all sorts of today’s common Internet activities — VOIP phone calls, streaming videos, uploading and sharing images — were on the cutting edge. There is no clear mechanism that would force caps to increase over time. That means that caps that appear high today will become problems tomorrow. Unless, of course, people are so worried about their cap that they never try anything new.

And this avoidance of new things highlights real competitive concerns. A 300GB cap may sound like a lot (assuming you are the type of person who even knows what a GB is, and what you could do with 300 of them) until you think about making use of it. Using Comcast’s own assumptions, we have calculated that switching from Comcast cable to an all-HD online video competitor would require 648GB per month. And that’s before you use your Internet connection for anything else. When viewed in that context, these caps are not just about targeting individual competitors. Instead, they target competition itself.

Of course, antitrust law has a role in instances where incumbents are using data caps on the Internet service they offer in order to protect their cable service. But it is not the only answer. Antitrust law does a great job when there is evidence of collusion and price fixing, but less of a good job when incumbents take steps to exclude new competitors. And antitrust alone does not have tools to address situations where incumbents move to adopt a pricing strategy that confuses consumers and slows innovation in the wider economy.

Forcing us to decide between data caps and a one-price-fits-all, dilapidated broadband network is a false strategy. There are ways to create a sustainable broadband price structure that fuels network investment and larger innovation in our economy without resorting to a model that encourages consumers to over-buy and under-use data. If Internet pricing really is the next policy frontier, our first step should be to make sure we understand what we are actually debating.

Michael Weinberg is the vice president at Public Knowledge. Michael primarily focuses on copyright, issues before the FCC and emerging technologies like 3-D printing.

HP's Future, ESPN's March Madness and Jerry Yang Strikes Back: The AllThingsD Week in Review 3/17/13 — 3/23/13

Eric Johnson — Sat, 23 Mar 2013 19:00:13 +0000

Aspen Photo / Shutterstock.com

Another week is over, but AllThingsD doesn’t stop. Here’s a sampling of our top stories from the week of March 18:

1.) ESPN’s Cunning Plan to Stream March Madness: Head to Bill Simmons’s House

2.) Foursquare’s Yelp Problem

3.) BlackBerry CEO Says iPhone Is Passé

4.) Seven Questions for the Man Shaking Up HP’s Operations, John Hinshaw

5.) Samsung Galaxy S4: Bigger Display and Bolder Software — But Is It Better Enough?

6.) Hey, Remember How Awesome the iPhone Is?

7.) Looking East to Predict the Next Billion-Dollar Mobile Company

8.) Jerry Yang Is Back (And Investing More Than Ever)

9.) Global Platform Head Carroll Departs Yahoo for Go Daddy, While Yahoo News Head Leaves for NBC

10.) Mossberg on Apple’s Rivalry With Samsung and Why the iPhone Is Like Switzerland

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

Blocked! March Madness Heads Farther Behind the Cable Pay Wall.

Peter Kafka — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 16:37:08 +0000

Aspen Photo / Shutterstock.com

Heads up, cord-cutters: If you want to watch March Madness next year, you’re going to have to pay up.

The last two rounds of next year’s college basketball tournament, including the championship game, are likely to be broadcast on one of Time Warner’s Turner network channels — TBS or TNT — instead of CBS, according to Sports Business Daily and the New York Times.

CBS and Turner share coverage of the tournament, and the switch for the final games was already scheduled for 2016. No one has explained why the two companies are moving the date up by two years, but it fits a pattern we’ve seen for several years: Big-time sports events migrating from free TV to pay TV.

In 2006, Monday Night Football moved from ABC to Disney’s ESPN. If you wanted to watch much of last summer’s Olympics, you needed a pay TV subscription that gave you access to NBC Universal’s cable channels. And as SBJ’s John Ourand notes, the BCS college championships, the NBA conference finals and some baseball playoff games have all moved over to cable, as well.

The free-to-pay move serves the interests of the TV Industrial Complex in several ways: The cable networks, flush with cash from subscriber fees, can afford to pay big bucks for the rights to what is must-see TV for many people. And because it’s must-see TV for many people, it helps raise the overall value of the cable networks (Rupert Murdoch used the same strategy to turn Fox into a legitimate broadcast operation two decades ago).

And moving big-time sports to pay TV helps pay TV, period. Nielsen figures there are five million cord-cutters, or cord-nevers, and that number would presumably be much bigger if you could get sports online without paying for TV.

Which is why I’ve been waiting for Google, or Apple, or Intel, or some other TV outsider to pony up for the rights to a slate of NFL games, or some other sports franchise that millions of people have to watch, no matter where they are. Hasn’t happened yet.

(Note that if Aereo, which distributes broadcast TV over the Web without paying programmers a penny, wins its court case, then expect just about every big broadcast show — not just sports, but everything — to move from broadcast to cable networks owned by the broadcasters. Big if, though.)

Meantime, if you’re serious about college hoops and you’re serious about not paying for TV, you might still have a legal option next year.

Last year, CBS and Turner offered a $4 package that let you watch the games live on Android and iOS devices, and that option has gone away this year. This time around, you can only stream the Turner games if you’re an “authenticated” pay TV subscriber, though you can still stream the CBS games to your PC without registration.

But Turner/CBS are offering app users a free four-hour “preview” this time around. So if you’re willing to do a little planning — and if the option is still available — you could save up your preview time for the championship game, and at least watch that one for free.

That sounds like a lot of work, right? That’s what the pay TV guys are hoping you think …

Aspen Photo / Shutterstock.com

Roku 3: Easier Streaming and Remote Headphones

Walter S. Mossberg — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 02:04:38 +0000

[ See post to watch video ]

While cable and satellite still dominate American television viewing, the hardware and services for streaming TV shows, movies and other video from the Internet to a TV get better and better. The latest improvement is a new $100 streaming set-top box from Roku, called the Roku 3.

The Roku 3, which replaces the former Roku 2 XS this week as the top-of-the-line offering in the company’s four-model lineup, introduces several new features. One is a revamped, easier-to-use interface for juggling the 750 online services, or “channels” in Roku’s parlance, that the device can stream to a TV.

The Roku 3 is a palm-sized, square black box that practically disappears next to a big television.

The other is a new remote, which has a cool feature: A headphone jack and earbuds that can be used when you want to watch TV without disturbing others in the house. There are improvements under the hood, like a faster processor and more robust Wi-Fi, that will allow the new model to add features down the road.

The new user interface will be made available to existing Roku boxes as a free software update, but the new remote and the improved innards will only work with the Roku 3.

I’ve been testing the Roku 3 on my HDTV. I watched many hours of TV on it while my cable box lay idle. It’s an evolutionary, not revolutionary, advance, but the Roku 3 performed as advertised and I enjoyed using it.

Roku, which comes from a private California company of the same name, is the second-most popular dedicated streaming player behind Apple’s Apple TV, which comes in a single model for $99. About five million Roku players have sold since the device launched in 2008. Apple TV, while a tiny part of the company’s business, has recently seen an acceleration of sales and Apple says about 10 million Apple TVs have been sold just since October 2010. It won’t provide a total sales figure since the product’s launch in 2007.

The remote now has a headphone jack that controls the volume on earbuds so others aren’t disturbed.

Both boxes offer highly popular video-streaming services such as Netflix and Hulu Plus, plus photo services like Flickr and streamed games from MLB, the NBA and the NHL. Apple TV also offers its parent’s own hugely popular iTunes service and Google’s popular YouTube. Roku lacks those two giants, but has Amazon Instant Video, Pandora, HBO GO, and over 700 lesser-known and lesser-watched services, compared with just a handful of third-party services on Apple’s box.

Two other popular devices for streaming Internet video are the two big gaming consoles, Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and Sony’s PlayStation 3. But while nongaming entertainment is now a core function of these boxes, they are much larger and cost $200 or more. Plus, in the case of the Xbox, you have to pay $60 a year for a Microsoft service before you can even use entertainment offerings like Netflix, which then charge their own fees.

Like the less-powerful models in Roku’s line, which start at $50, the Roku 3 is a palm-sized, square black box that practically disappears next to a big TV. Yet it can fetch high-definition programming from the Internet and play it back in very good quality on your TV. It also can play back Internet-based photos, music and some simple games like Angry Birds. And you can plug in a USB flash drive with your own videos, photos or music.

My Channels in the new Roku interface shows the services a user has selected.

The new user interface is simple and versatile. To the left is a list of four options. One is My Channels — the services you’ve selected. Then, there’s the Channel Store, where you can get more services, a universal Search and Settings. To the right are large, colorful tiles showing your collection of channels, and beyond that grid is a big ad you can choose to ignore. One nice touch: When you get to the end of any of the lists of items, the lists circle back to the beginning.

This replaces a one-line carousel of channels and other options that could get overwhelming as you added more and more services.

The remote’s headphone jack was a real plus in my tests. It automatically mutes the TV speakers and allows you to control the volume on the earbuds or any other headphones you choose. I used it to crank up the audio while I was working out on a noisy treadmill, so I didn’t disturb my wife, who was working on her computer in the same room and wanted to ignore the TV.

The big upside of the Roku 3 — and all Rokus — is that it offers a vast variety of services, some free and some paid, which you select from a Channel Store. On Roku, you can go well beyond Netflix to services like Pandora Radio, Spotify, some games and much more obscure channels focused on such things as UFOs, horoscopes, European horror films, language learning, autism and diabetes.

The biggest downside, besides the lack of YouTube and iTunes, is that, unlike Apple TV, it lacks the built-in ability to wirelessly stream video to the TV from mobile devices. Apple’s version of this, called AirPlay, works effortlessly from its iPhones, iPads, iPod touch players and Macs. I suspect AirPlay is one big reason Apple TV sales have risen sharply.

By contrast, Roku’s mobile app can only stream photos and music. There are several apps available on Roku that can stream video from other devices or from cloud services, but in my tests, they required too much setup, worked inconsistently and would likely appeal mainly to techies. Roku says the new chips in its Roku 3 will allow such wireless streaming later this year using an emerging Wi-Fi standard called Miracast. But it won’t work on the lesser models.

If you want to get into the world of streaming video on your TV, with minimal cost and hassle, the Roku 3 is a good choice.

Email Walt at mossberg@wsj.com.

Next Sony PlayStation to Stream Games

Ian Sherr and Daisuke Wakabayashi — Sat, 16 Feb 2013 15:25:29 +0000

Sony is planning to offer technology to stream games to its next videogame console, people familiar with the company’s plans say, alongside other enhancements to bolster its position in the market.

The new technology, to be unveiled Wednesday along with the new console, will allow users to play games delivered over the Internet, these people said. The streaming service, they added, is designed to use current PlayStation 3 titles on the new console; the new device is also expected to play new games stored on optical discs.

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HBO's Berkes Restructures Digital Team (Memo)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thank you-

— Otto —

Netflix, Redbox and More: What You Need to Know

Lauren Goode — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 14:00:42 +0000

Thousands of titles available, for just $8 a month! Content from major movie studios! If you listen to the marketing behind most subscription video services on the Web, you might think you’d never run out of interesting things to watch.

But before you commit to a subscription, you might want to consider whether the titles available are actually new and relevant, and how you’ll be able to access them.

I’ve had the enviable task of testing four of these streaming video services: Amazon Prime Instant Video, Hulu Plus, Netflix, and the newly announced Redbox Instant by Verizon, which is still in beta mode and is expected to launch sometime in the next couple months.

Other Web video services might come to mind — including Apple’s iTunes and Google Play — but I focused on these four because they’re all subscription models.

[ See post to watch video ]

Below is a guide to how they stack up against one another in the U.S., but, in short: Netflix is still my go-to streaming service for newer TV shows, some new movies and a bunch of old movies (despite company stumbles and lapsed content deals that made me pause my subscription for a while last year).

Hulu Plus is better for TV shows than movies, although Hulu Plus runs ads, and newer TV shows tend to be only from ABC, Fox and NBC. Amazon’s Prime Instant Video service can be less compelling than it’s a la carte service, Amazon Instant Video; its biggest benefit is that if you’re already an Amazon Prime shipping subscriber, you can stream the Prime video for free. And Redbox Instant is the newest entrant, with the smallest number of titles. It doesn’t currently offer any TV content.

Pricing

Netflix charges $8 a month for unlimited movies and TV shows streamed through the Web. You can also get DVD mail-in service (one rental at a time) for an additional $8 a month.

Hulu Plus, the subscription-based version of Hulu, charges $8 a month for unlimited streaming.

Amazon and Redbox Instant offer both subscription video services and individual purchase options. Amazon’s subscription-based streaming video service is tied to Amazon Prime, the company’s two-day shipping service, which costs $79 a year.

So, if you’re a Prime member, you have unlimited access to the Prime Instant Video catalog at no additional cost. If you’re not a member, and you want to rent or buy one digital download, you do that through the Amazon Instant Video Store. Rentals are usually $4 or $5, and most movie purchases range from $8 (“The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo,” for instance) to $15 (“Snow White and the Huntsman”).

Redbox Instant offers unlimited streaming for $8 per month. That also includes four DVD rental credits to redeem at any of the 42,000 Redbox kiosks across the U.S. Additionally, some of the titles can be digitally purchased and stored in your Redbox account. For example, I purchased “Eat Pray Love” for $12 through Redbox Instant.

**Popular TV Shows, Available Through Instant Streaming**
	Netflix	Amazon Prime Video	Hulu Plus	Redbox Instant
“Modern Family”	No	No	Yes	No
“30 Rock”	Yes	No	Yes	No
“Homeland”	No	No	No	No
“Breaking Bad”	Yes	No	No	No
“Glee”	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
“Downton Abbey”	Yes	Yes	Yes	No

**New (And Old) Movies, Available Through Instant Streaming**
	Netflix	Amazon Prime Video	Hulu Plus	Redbox Instant
“The Hunger Games”	No	No	No	No
“Bridesmaids”	No	No	No	No
“Moneyball”	No	No	No	No
“Lost in Translation”	Yes	No	No	No
“Titanic”	No	No	No	No
“One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest	No	No	No	No

Titles

Netflix won’t specify exactly how many movies and TV episodes can be streamed, except to say that it has “hundreds of thousands” of titles available through both DVDs and instant streaming. Hulu Plus subscribers can stream more than 63,000 TV episodes and 3,700 movie titles. Amazon Prime members can access around 33,000 movies and TV episodes through the subscription, with 140,000 episodes available through the entire Instant Video service. Right now, Redbox Instant only streams around 8,000 movie titles and, again, it doesn’t offer TV episodes.

Often you’ll hear things from these services like, “We carry Epix movie titles,” or “The streaming content will be available 28 days after the DVD is available.” That’s great. But what does this mean?

Some of the Netflix titles I’ve watched or browsed through recently include: “30 Rock,” “Arrested Development” and “The West Wing” and, on the movie side, “Tiny Furniture,” “Lost in Translation,” “Louis C.K.: Chewed Up,” and “Blue Valentine.” Netflix’s assortment of romantic comedies is probably enough to satisfy any Nora Ephron fan.

On Hulu Plus, you can currently watch episodes of “Modern Family,” “The Daily Show,” “Downton Abbey,” “Glee,” and many more TV shows. But Hulu Plus’s movie selection is lacking. When I clicked on the Drama genre, a bunch of skin-filled movie covers came up, like “The Wild Reporter,” which didn’t look like it was about investigative reporting.

Amazon Prime’s movie offerings were so-so. I’ve already seen “Morning Glory” and “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days” more times than I should admit. Amazon Prime’s appealing TV offerings were mostly early seasons of newer shows, like “Downton Abbey,” “Arrested Development,” “The Closer” and “Parks and Recreation.” I also saw a fair amount of kids’ titles.

But Amazon’s non-Prime, or a la carte, offerings seemed much more inclusive than its Prime subscription service (“Men in Black 3,” “The Bourne Legacy” and “The Hunger Games” were a few newer titles).

At this early stage, Redbox Instant isn’t up to par. Again, there was “Morning Glory.” There were also a few award winners from last year, like “True Grit” and “Winter’s Bone.” Frankly, there were a lot of movies I liked 10 or 15 years ago, like “Steel Magnolias,” “Snatch” and “Flatliners.”

Quality

When it comes to online video, 1080p HD isn’t a priority for me. I’ll gladly watch old standard-definition episodes of “The West Wing” on Netflix. But, for some consumers — especially those who have spent good money on fancy TVs — the quality matters.

Netflix and Hulu Plus stream full HD (1080p) content when it’s available, whereas Redbox Instant and Amazon Prime Instant Video top off at 720p.

Mobile Apps and Devices

Streaming video is no longer just about the PC. Some of the devices you can access these services from include new “smart” TVs and Blu-ray players, Roku boxes, Apple TV, Sony PlayStation 3, Nintendo Wii and Microsoft Xbox 360, to name a bunch.

Redbox Instant will be available on LG Electronics Blu-ray players and smart TVs, as well as Google TV devices, but the company hasn’t confirmed yet whether it will be on gaming consoles, Apple TV or Roku.

All of these services have iOS and Android apps optimized for mobile video watching — with the exception of Prime Instant Video, which has an iOS app but not an Android version. (You can, however, watch Amazon’s instant video offerings on the Kindle Fire tablet, technically an Android tablet.)

Most of my mobile streaming experiences have been good. I’ve watched several episodes of “30 Rock” through Netflix mobile, and parts of “Into the Wild” through Amazon Prime on mobile, without interruption. In fact, I like the look and feel of the Amazon video mobile app (as well as the TV app) a lot more than I like the desktop experience.

All four services also offer the ability to stop and start videos from one device to another. So, for example, I started watching “Stand By Me” through Redbox Instant on my PC, then picked it up where I left off on my iPhone, then went back to watching on my PC.

It’s important to keep in mind that these offerings are constantly changing, too, as content deals are made (or lapse), and as more platforms, like new mobile devices and “smart” TV set-ups, become available.

Roku Adds More TV Partners, Looks Beyond the Set-Top Box

Lauren Goode — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 08:01:50 +0000

Last year, when Roku first announced plans for its Streaming Stick — which compresses the features of a Roku Web TV box into a thumb-drive-sized, wireless dongle — it came with a major catch: The MHL-compatible device didn’t work with many TV sets.

Roku can finally add a few more to the list. At CES the startup is showing off six “Roku Ready” TV partners, including Coby, Harmon Kardon and Westinghouse Digital. Basically, “smart TVs” from these manufacturers are certified to work with the Roku Streaming Stick, joining Roku’s existing partners, including Hitachi and Best Buy’s Insignia brand.

But even as Roku is arranging more hardware partners, it’s looking beyond the boxes and the stick.

“It’s part of a bigger strategy to integrate Roku into more hardware, and in many cases it will be the stick bundled with a smart TV,” Anthony Wood, Roku’s founder and CEO, said in an interview. “We could get to the point where Roku is integrated directly into TVs.”

Roku sees itself as not just as a set-top box maker, but as the content platform provider for a wide range of smart TVs — which is why its app offerings, or “channels,” as Roku calls them — are just as important as its hardware partners.

The company just added TWC TV, the Time Warner Cable authentication app — the first time that TWC TV is coming to a streaming device — Dish TV, Vevo, iHeart Radio, Amazon Cloud Player and Spotify to its list of 700-plus channels that already include Netflix, Amazon Instant Video, Hulu Plus, MLB.TV and Pandora. (But still no YouTube!)

Roku has also added a few more casual games to its roster. Newer Roku devices, the 2 XS and the Streaming Stick, already come with Angry Birds built in and have a motion sensor remote for these games.

Wood claims that Roku streamed more than a billion hours of video last year, making Roku the No. 1 set-top box for apps like Netflix and Hulu.

To be clear, when it comes to non-gaming set-top boxes, Apple’s “hobby” has the edge. Roku likes to point out that it splits the market 50/50 with Apple TV, but Roku has sold just under five million units, while on Apple’s last earnings call, CEO Tim Cook said the company had sold 1.3 million units in the fourth quarter, and five million for the 2012 fiscal year.

Also, Roku has put itself in a kind of awkward phase by going with the MHL standard for the Streaming Stick, an interim device that could well serve those looking for cheap TV upgrades. More MHL-certified TVs will hit the market this year. And the technology does allow for: a) wire-free charging; and b) a universal remote, two excellent features. But until this standard spreads further, the market is limited for the nifty stick.

Lastly, Roku faces another competitor on the OEM side: Google. The search giant made some embarrassing missteps in its early attempts at Google TV hardware, but it keeps throwing different devices at the wall to see what sticks, and it is working with electronics companies to have the Google TV platform installed right inside TVs — beating Roku to the punch, at least for now.

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Last Year's Tax Rate May Not Survive in 2013, but Your Cable Service Probably Will

Ashwin Navin — Sat, 05 Jan 2013 17:41:26 +0000

Image copyright Vicki France

Now that the fiscal cliff has collapsed, we can be pretty certain our tax bills are going up unfortunately. And a Reuters report in August suggested that cable/satellite TV subscribers are dropping like flies, with the industry losing 400,000 customers in just seven months. But as Peter Kafka aptly countered, these numbers are based on quarterly results not annual. And when you look at all of the data in the market, it is clear that paid TV is hardly dying.

In spite of a soft economy, with about 14.5 million unemployed Americans and 8.2 million under-employed, people are still holding onto paid television, and actually consuming more video than ever before. Netflix has crossed over 30 million subscribers in the U.S., Hulu is approaching three million, but only 2.65 million people in the country “cut the cord” from traditional paid TV service. In fact, Americans are still spending about 33 hours a week watching traditional TV (that’s 4.5 hours a day!), compared to 27 minutes a week of streaming video. So where is this TV revolution the pundits have been blogging about??

Maybe we need to stop thinking of cable TV the way we think of phone service. It’s easy for technologists to predict that streaming video will do to cable companies what Skype did to the telcos, but I propose a new lens to filter TV technologies: an App that replaces broadcast television is like saying Yelp should replace Taco Bell.

My contention is that a “TV revolution,” as some are calling it, is not in the cards. Instead, I see a “transformation” of TV taking place, and while transformations are far less sexy to blog about than revolutions, I think this one could be pretty fun and pretty lucrative for tech companies that get it right. First, let’s clarify “transformation” versus “revolution,” in the context of Web services and Internet Apps:

Revolutionary apps fundamentally overthrow an analog provider with a digital alternative. Examples: Skype is a substitute for your landline. iTunes is a substitute for Virgin Megastore. LinkedIn is a substitute for schmoozing. Match.com is a substitute for my pushy (but well-intentioned) auntie in India.
Transformative Apps make analog providers a more pleasing or user-friendly experience. Examples: Fandango makes going to movies easy and predictable. Foodspotting makes finding the perfect entree a delightful experience. Mint makes banking more manageable and transparent. Driving from San Francisco to a cabin in Tahoe is a breeze thanks to Google Maps. None of these technologies replace the desired outcome, but they greatly enhance the experience to achieve it.

All evidence and viewership data suggests that YouTube, Hulu or Netflix isn’t a substitute for the experience of gathering around a big-screen to watch the Super Bowl or the latest episode of American Idol. Apps that make the offline experience of watching traditional television better, more fun and more social will be far more successful than those that try to overthrow TV. The Twitter app on my phone, for example, is the perfect TV companion and primary beneficiary of this phenomenon.

There is no question that on-demand, instant access to great shows on the iPad or laptop is one of the coolest things ever, but this is proving to be additive and incremental to traditional TV viewership at the moment. Most consumers still love the experience of watching TV on the TV.

In 2012, the Olympics provided the perfect case study for the transformation that’s taking place. Between the live streams on NBC.com, real-time access to event scoring and the medal count, we have never had this much access to the Olympics in history. Nearly every major event was available online, and usage was tremendous. But what pundits failed to point out this past summer is that we did not give up big screen, traditional television. NBC’s primetime broadcast, which was all taped coverage, averaged 31.1 million viewers per night, which was up 12 percent from the Beijing Olympics in 2008! According to NBC, many people who watched events, streaming live to a Web browser, also watched them again on television.

We have 70 years of consumer behavior patterns established and burned into the American psyche. And on top of that, television is big business. It exists on $65 billion of advertising spending and $60 billion of subscription revenue, and that’s 125 billion reasons why the industry will resist this revolution. In stark contrast to my friends in Silicon Valley who have said that they want to “destroy television,” I strongly believe that television should be transformed. And those of us inspired by the opportunity to innovate in the TV industry should be thinking about the opportunity in a transformational way if we hope to succeed.

Ashwin Navin is the CEO and co-founder of Flingo, the largest publisher of Smart TV software including apps from FOX, A+E Networks, Showtime, the WB, Transworld and TMZ.

Netflix Hit by Outage, Blames Amazon

Greg Bensinger — Tue, 25 Dec 2012 18:26:53 +0000

Netflix Inc. said its streaming video service was hit by an outage as a result of problems at Web service provider Amazon.com Inc.

“Netflix is down for some customers this Christmas Eve, thanks to an outage of some of Amazon’s cloud infrastructure,” the company said on its Twitter account.

A Netflix spokesman added that the outage stretched “across the Americas.”

Read the rest of this post on the original site

The More Pandora Sells, the More It Loses

Ethan Smith and John Letzing — Thu, 06 Dec 2012 13:30:46 +0000

A tenth of a cent might not sound like a lot of money. But Pandora Media Inc.’s 18 percent stock drop Wednesday is a sobering reminder that those fractions add up — especially when advertising sales don’t keep pace.

Pandora’s music royalty costs, typically paid in tenths of a cent, are skyrocketing. At the same time, the more people who listen to Pandora via mobile devices, such as on smartphones, tablets or through car dashboards, the less advertisers pay to reach those listeners, compared to the ones listening on desktop or laptop computers.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

Watching Netflix on a Big Screen? You're Probably on a PS3.

Peter Kafka — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 17:56:08 +0000

Netflix has some 30 million people watching its streaming video service. One of the reasons the company has been able to get those numbers is that you can watch Netflix on just about every gadget imaginable.

But it turns out that people who want to watch Netflix on their TV end up using one device more than any other: Sony’s PS3.

Netflix announced today that the gaming console is its “largest TV-connected platform in terms of Netflix viewing.” And, via a press release, CEO Reed Hastings says that “this year, at times,” the PS3 was delivering more hours of video to subscribers than regular computers, “to become our No. 1 platform overall.”

Not earth-shaking news, but still interesting — particularly because Sony rival Microsoft has been much more vocal about its plans to use its Xbox 360 game machine as a home-video hub. And earlier this year, video ad company FreeWheel claimed that the Xbox 360 was getting more video traffic than any other single gadget, including Apple’s iOS devices and Google’s Android phones.

Roku Adds Handy Search Tool to TV Set-Top Devices

Lauren Goode — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 20:27:50 +0000

Searching for movies and music on your Roku box just got a little less painful: The California-based maker of set-top boxes that stream Web content to TVs just added a search tool to its platform. Roku users can now search for movies, shows, actors and directors on apps for Netflix, Amazon Instant Video, Hulu Plus, Crackle, VUDU and HBO GO. The new search tool works with Roku 2, Roku LT, new Roku HD players and the Roku Streaming Stick, and works with compatible mobile apps, as well.

Netflix Says Amazon Is Gaining and HBO Is Coming

Peter Kafka — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 20:50:10 +0000

Another earnings report, another wild swing in share price for Netflix: The stock is down double digits this afternoon, even though the company’s earnings of 11 cents a share handily beat the Street’s 4 cents consensus.

The culprit for the dyspeptic reaction: The company’s Q3 domestic subscription numbers — as well as its guidance for Q4 — fell below investors’ expectations.

But if things are tough for Netflix how, they’re only going to get tougher.

The company used to have the Web home video market more or less to itself, and now it doesn’t. It’s facing competition from Amazon, Hulu and the cable companies, and is about to start fighting a joint venture between Redbox and Verizon.

That’s not a new observation, of course. But in this quarter’s letter to shareholders, Hastings spells out the strengths and weaknesses of many of his competitors, and it makes for very interesting reading. The two biggest takeaways I found on my first scan:

For the first time, Amazon appears to be making headway against Netflix with its digital offering.
Netflix doesn’t believe HBO and Time Warner executives when they say they’re not going to sell a Web-only offering. They expect to compete directly with the pay channel, via an a la carte Web offering, in the U.S.

The breakdown: Jeff Bezos and company have been building up a digital streaming service that they’ve been bundling with their Prime service for a couple years now. And for a couple years, Netflix — as well as the studios that sell Amazon their programming — has said that consumers don’t seem to be using Amazon’s service very much.

If I’m interpreting Hastings’ comments correctly, that’s changing. Here’s what Hastings said about Amazon last quarter, which echoes comments he has made for several quarters: “We have yet to see Hulu Plus or Amazon Prime gain meaningful traction relative to our viewing hours.”

But here’s Hastings today: “Our estimate is that viewing of Amazon Prime Instant Video has yet to pass that of Hulu.” Perhaps I’m misreading Hastings’ comments here, but he chooses his words pretty carefully (and I’m told he does write these things himself). And to me, there’s a real difference there — one that reads as if Bezos is coming up in Hasting’s rear-view mirror.

As far as HBO goes, no interpretation needed here. While everyone from Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes on down says that HBO needs to be tied to the pay cable business in the U.S., Hastings says that’s going to change: “We think it will make strategic sense eventually for HBO to go direct-to-consumer in the U.S., and become more of a competitor to Netflix; so, that is our operating assumption …”

It’s possible that Hastings is wrong here — I’m quite sure Bewkes isn’t bringing him in for confidential strategy discussions.

But if he’s right, that’s great news for the “I want ‘Game of Thrones’ and I don’t want to pay for cable” crowd. And a real serious challenge for Hastings and his shareholders.

Apple Streaming iPad Event on Web, iOS, Apple TV

Peter Kafka — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 13:20:52 +0000

You don’t have to go to San Jose to see Apple’s product launch today, as long as you have Apple hardware and a broadband connection: The company is streaming the event on its Web site (via Safari only), on iOS devices, and on Apple TV. And if you like text and pictures, AllThingsD will have that, too, beginning around 12:30 pm ET.

Roku's New Streaming Stick for TVs Lets You Ditch the Set-Top Box

Lauren Goode — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 13:00:46 +0000

According to Forrester Research, more than 32 million U.S. consumers are now using an assortment of devices to watch Web video on their TV sets, from gaming consoles to set-top boxes like Apple TV, Roku and Google TV. These are often considered interim devices, while “smart” TVs –- ones that are always Internet-connected –- ease their way onto the market and into living rooms.

But adding these boxes to your TV setup means factoring in more wires and easy-to-lose remote controls. And finding the right input for the device through the TV remote can leave even the smartest people feeling dumbfounded.

Roku, the California-based company that makes set-top boxes of the same name, has come up with a new solution to this: A wireless stick, not much bigger than a thumb drive, that plugs directly into the back of your TV to stream HD video from the Web — turning your “dumb” TV into a smart one, with minimal gadgetry.

[ See post to watch video ]

The $100 Roku Streaming Stick, available through Roku.com or Amazon.com, offers the same Web apps and the same powerful processor as Roku’s top-of-the-line set-top box, the Roku XS 2 (also $100). This means that all of that streaming goodness is packed into a small stick.

The Roku Streaming Stick also responds to the same remote used for your TV, as well as to a remote control app for iPhone and Android smartphones — eliminating the need for at least one extra remote.

But there’s one major catch with the Roku Streaming Stick: It only works with a certain type of TV set, one that includes an MHL (Mobile High-Definition Link) port.

While Roku’s CEO Anthony Wood says that the company expects to see more of these TVs on the market within the next year, there are currently around 50 sets and displays sold in the U.S. that are MHL-equipped. And, of those, Roku has certified only a few brands that work really well with the device: Insignia, Apex and Hitachi.

In order to test the stick, I had to shift my regular TV set to the floor and set up a television that Roku delivered to me: A 55-inch, HD Insignia TV that costs $900. Normally, I wouldn’t replace my existing TV with another one just because I wanted to attach a $100 gadget to it, and I’m guessing a lot of consumers would feel the same.

But the plug-and-play stick is convenient. It’s a few inches long and weighs just three ounces. It’s bright purple, and plugs directly into a color-coded MHL port on the backside of MHL TV sets.

It has no wires, and one of the benefits of this technology is that the MHL port actually charges the product while it’s plugged in, so there’s no need to charge the stick at any point. The set-up took all of 10 minutes: I plugged the stick into the TV, authenticated the device and registered with Roku on the Web.

Roku says it has more than 500 apps, which it calls “channels,” on its platform, including popular apps like Netflix, MLB.tv, Hulu Plus, Amazon Instant Video, Vudu and Facebook. Both the Roku XS 2 box and the stick come with Angry Birds, which can be played using Roku’s motion-sensor remote.

Over the past week, I’ve watched a lot of shows and movies through the Roku Streaming Stick, mostly through Netflix, Amazon and Vudu (the last two charge per movie rental or download, unlike Netflix’s monthly subscription). I also listened to NPR radio, streamed music through Pandora and logged into Roku’s bare-bones Facebook app, which lets users view photos and videos, but doesn’t allow for status updates.

The media-streaming quality was very good. Occasionally, HD movies would pause to buffer, but never for longer than a few seconds. Only one movie channel I checked out, Sony’s Crackle channel, paused consistently, to play short ads. This was annoying, but then again, the Crackle movies were free.

One app missing from Roku’s offerings is YouTube. I’ve spent more hours than I care to admit using Apple TV to watch YouTube videos with friends. Roku also doesn’t have a Web browser. And this might seem obvious, but you can’t watch media you’ve purchased through iTunes or the Google app store on Roku’s device, either.

Lastly, cable-authentication apps that require a user to have a cable subscrition — like HBOGo or Epix — will only work on Roku with some cable providers. For example, DirectTV and Comcast do not support HBOGo on Roku. Time Warner Cable, however, does.

As with other set-top boxes, text input is clumsy: You use the arrow keys on the remote to select individual letters of the alphabet. But you don’t actually need the Roku Streaming Stick’s own remote unless you want to play Angry Birds or other games that use motion control. The Stick is compatible with the MHL TV’s remote, so I could access and navigate Roku by pressing the “Home” button on the Insignia TV’s remote and using those arrow buttons.

Being able to just press “Home” to get to the Roku stick was joyfully simple compared to the usual process of searching my TV inputs for different devices I’ve connected to it.

Roku also offers new iOS and Android apps that control the Roku Streaming Stick. Much like Apple’s AirPlay feature, I could use the Roku mobile app to stream the many photos stored on my iPhone directly to the TV set, provided that both devices were connected to the same Wi-Fi network.

The Roku Streaming Stick successfully compresses the experience of a Web video box into a tiny, convenient device, but it comes with a lot of “ifs.” Even Roku says that its Stick may eventually be sold as a bundle rather than as a singular gadget. If you prefer Roku’s channel offerings over other set-top boxes, if you have an MHL-compatible television set and if you’re not planning on upgrading to a high-end smart TV with built-in Internet capabilities anytime soon, it’s a great device. Otherwise, right now it’s a niche product.

Yahoo's Media Products Head Departs to Run Games Unit for CBS Interactive

Kara Swisher — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 21:07:51 +0000

Another big media departure from Yahoo: David Rice, VP of media properties, has left the Silicon Valley Internet giant to take over as SVP and GM of CBS Interactive Games, according to sources close to the situation.

Rice left Yahoo Monday and starts at CBS on Monday, sources said.

Earlier this week, the head of Yahoo’s Omg! and Yahoo TV, Liz Coughlin, left to run business operations at next-gen digital content site Young Hollywood.

The media properties at Yahoo have always been its most successful and powerful units, including powerhouse sites such as Yahoo Finance and Yahoo Sports.

Which is why Rice is a great get for CBS. Hired in 2010 as part of the crew brought in by former Chief Product Officer Blake Irving, the former Microsoft exec was the key media product manager in charge of strategy and execution of Yahoo’s home page, news, sports, finance, entertainment, lifestyle, games and more.

CBS Interactive Games is a big digital division at the company, with more than $50 million in annual revenue, 32 million unique monthly visitors and one billion page views a month, according to comScore. GameSpot is its flagship site, along with GameFAQs, Metacritic, ComicVine and a variety of video streaming and eSports offerings.

Rice will be in charge of all operations at CBS Interactive Games — at Yahoo, he had only media product duties, although the many properties are all huge.

In a related move this past week, new CEO Marissa Mayer hired former Google sales exec Henrique De Castro to become COO at Yahoo. Mayer also told staff that all media units would report to him.

At Least the Internet Turned Out to Be a Good Government Investment -- Millions Watched Debate Online

Eric Johnson — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 21:56:42 +0000

Who won the first Presidential debate last night? According to the cable news pundits, the winner was Republican candidate Gov. Mitt Romney. The other winner, according to Twitter’s peanut gallery, was Sesame Street’s Big Bird, who came up in Romney’s pitch for cutting PBS funding.

But the other other winner was video streaming. This year, you definitely didn’t need an old-fangled television to watch the debates, with online offerings ranging from simple videos to live fact-checking and commentary.

YouTube’s politics channel carried videos from multiple sources, including the New York Times and Univision. And a YouTube spokesperson said they had “millions of live streamed views of the debates, and one of the highest number of concurrent streams ever for a YouTube live stream.”

(Updated 4:59 p.m. PT): Ustream has added their numbers to the fray, reporting 3.5 million total video streams of the debate and debate-related videos yesterday. However, bear in mind that that number covers both live and recorded video views, not just live streaming.

Meanwhile, CNN reported that their debate videos were at least started nearly five million times, with 1.2 million people watching live worldwide. A network spokesperson added that yesterday was one of CNN’s best for live video this year — second only to Whitney Houston’s funeral, which attracted 700,000 more viewers.

By contrast, Nielsen reported that 67 million people who did have those old-fangled television contraptions tuned in to watch the debates that way.

Other online offerings included video and interactive features on AOL’s network of Patch, AOL.com and the Huffington Post, which brought in 400,000 streaming viewers. And The Wall Street Journal’s various video streams across sites like YouTube, Hulu and UStream, as well as on WSJ.com and TV set-top devices like Roku, brought in more than 100,000 viewers.

Hulu also offered video from ABC News and Fox News, but a site spokesperson declined to share numbers about their performance.

Aereo, which also did not share statistics about their video performance, offered New Yorkers two hours of free access to their online live TV streaming service in order to watch the debate.

Oops! New Slingboxes Show Up on Best Buy Shelves Ahead of Launch Date.

Lauren Goode — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 16:13:58 +0000

Two new Slingboxes — the 350 and the 500 — have appeared at a Best Buy in Virginia, about two weeks ahead of the products’ official launch. The devices, which a Sling Media representative said are still receiving firmware and software updates and are currently unusable, were first spotted by digital media Web site Zatz Not Funny. There were no prices listed for the new boxes, which will be the first new Slingbox hardware since the Slingbox Pro HD came to market in 2008.

Exclusive: Twitter Eyeing Media Bigs, Including Hollywood Mogul Peter Chernin, for Board Seats

Kara Swisher and Mike Isaac — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 03:07:10 +0000

Twitter is now interviewing a series of well-known media players for its board, as the San Francisco online social communications service seeks to increase its ties to the entertainment industry, according to sources close to the situation.

And one of the top director candidates is well-regarded Hollywood exec Peter Chernin, said several sources.

He is an obvious choice, having been a top exec at News Corp. for many years. Since he left in mid-2009, Chernin has forged a successful film and television career, producing such hits as “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” and “New Girl.”

But, unlike many media execs, he has also focused on garnering much deeper digital experience.

Chernin was key to the formation of the Hulu premium online service, for example, and is also a board member of the Pandora streaming music service. He has also been making digital and media investments in Asia.

(And, interestingly, although apropos of nothing, Chernin’s former boss, Rupert Murdoch, has become an avid tweeter, too.)

Sources said Chernin has not decided if he even wants such a board seat, and Twitter management is still only in the early stages of its board effort, presumably to replace Flipboard’s Mike McCue.

The entrepreneur left the board earlier this year, after it was clear that his social media app and Twitter were on a collision course (or an acquisition one, depending how you looked at it).

But the addition of a media-savvy director — or even two — also makes sense in the context of the past year of Twitter’s evolution.

The brainchild of Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams and Biz Stone, Twitter first began as a microblogging social network.

While it did attract a lot of attention due to its celebrity tweeters — such as actor Ashton Kutcher and famebot Kim Kardashian — the management and board of Twitter is largely tech-centric in experience.

But, more recently, the service has taken its shape as a consumption-based media company, where some 40 percent of its user base read and consume content rather than create it. That is to say, they watch, but they don’t tweet.

Such a strategic direction is a natural extension for bringing in more advertising spending from outside partners, especially big media companies that have both the eyeballs and dollars that the company is hoping to attract.

Twitter is now commonly used throughout the media space in a variety of roles, from branding to audience-gauging, and also sometimes even as a plot device.

(That said, you won’t catch CEO Dick Costolo outright admitting Twitter’s media-company status; he still wants the Silicon Valley cred of being valued as a technology giant first.)

A Twitter spokesman declined to comment on any effort to bring in new directors; Chernin has not yet responded to a query for comment.

Roku to Launch Streaming Stick in October -- And Then Wait for Consumers to Catch Up to New TV Standard

Lauren Goode — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 07:00:42 +0000

If there’s one thing that can be said about Roku devices — set-top boxes that stream Internet video to TV sets — it’s that they’re easy to use.

Which is why it’s surprising that Roku is complicating its newest device by attaching it to a technical standard that’s not yet widely adopted.

You might have heard of the Roku Streaming Stick: We’ve covered it (here and here) before. Essentially, it’s Roku’s top-of-the-line 2 XS box compressed into a tiny dongle, one not much bigger than a thumb drive. The dongle plugs into a port on the back of your TV to offer you the same streaming video apps you’d get from the bigger box. Like magic, it transforms your “dumb,” or non-Internet-connected TV, into a “smart TV.”

The Streaming Stick, which Roku has been teasing since this year’s Consumer Electronics Show in January, is finally coming to market in mid to late October, the company said yesterday in an interview. It costs $99 and comes with a remote. Even better, it has dual-band Wi-Fi, for faster, higher-quality HD streaming, and has double the onboard memory of the Roku box.

But don’t throw your Roku box out the window just yet, because there’s a catch: The Streaming Stick works only with MHL-equipped TV sets. MHL is a relatively new technical standard set by a consortium of electronics makers in December 2010. So far, about ~~100~~ 160 manufacturers worldwide are deploying MHL smartphones and TVs. The MHL estimates that more than 200 million MHL-enabled products will have shipped worldwide by the end of 2012, and Roku believes consumers can expect to see more MHL devices coming out of next year’s CES.

But, in the case of the Streaming Stick, Roku says there are currently only two MHL-friendly Insignia TVs — Best Buy’s in-house brand — available on the market. In the coming weeks, seven MHL-equipped Hitachi TVs will become available, followed by four Apex TVs.

The Streaming Stick can also work with select Blu-ray players, but Roku hasn’t announced any compatible models yet.

So, why would Roku go with the MHL standard? Well, the California-based start-up has a few compelling reasons. While the MHL port looks the same, physically, as an HDMI port, the MHL port channels power from the host device to keep the connected device running. So, the TV will juice the Roku Streaming Stick, which means there are no wires attached to this device. If the area behind your TV looks like mine, with its spaghetti-like pile of wires, a wire-free device is welcome.

The Roku Streaming Stick’s remote also controls the volume and other functions on MHL-equipped TVs, so, theoretically, you could pare down your stockpile of remotes and maybe use just one (or two). And when you first plug in the Stick, it fires up the Roku app on the TV without forcing you to switch inputs. The same goes for when you’re watching live TV and want to switch to Roku. Users can hit the “Home” button on the Roku remote — or their standard MHL TV remote — and Roku launches.

Lastly, Roku is making the argument that even if you invest in a new, expensive, smart TV, it will become outdated in just a few years, whereas the Roku Streaming Stick offers an inexpensive upgrade option, provided that the company continues to upgrade its device and its app platform.

Roku currently streams content from Netflix, Hulu Plus, Amazon Instant Video and MLB.tv — and Vudu, its newest partner — to name a few. Today, the company also introduced a new mobile app that works like Apple’s AirPlay, controlling and streaming content from your iPhone or iPad to the Roku app on your TV set.

While Roku certainly has a nifty idea with the Streaming Stick — one that sets it apart a bit from the existing set-top boxes on the market — it’s hard to say how quickly this will catch on when relatively few consumers have the TV sets to support it.

Update: An earlier version of this article stated that 100 electronics manufacturers are currently shipping MHL-equipped devices; The MHL consortium says it has more than 160 licensed manufacturers supporting the MHL standard.

Stream Heat

Voices — Fri, 14 Sep 2012 06:59:37 +0000

Streaming or downloading 12 tracks, without compression, just 27 times by one user would, in energy terms, equate to the production and shipping of one physical 12-track CD album.

–Dagfinn Bach, in a Music Tank study on digital music consumption