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

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

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

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

So there you go.

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

But the Netflix CEO says Jeff Bezos will have to spend a lot of money before that happens: Hastings says Amazon is losing between $500 million and a $1 billion a year as it acquires streaming video content rights.

Hastings says he generated those numbers based on the value of the content deals that Amazon won when the two companies competed head to head. He says he thinks Amazon’s costs are split evenly between its U.S. operations and Europe, where it operates the Lovefilm streaming service.

Last month, Netflix said it was on track to spend $2.1 billion on content over the next year.

In the U.S., Amazon rents and sells digital movies and TV shows on a one-off basis via its Amazon Instant Video service. It also offers a large catalog of titles for free to customers who pay $79 a year for its Prime shipping service, and recently began testing an option that lets customers pay $8 a month for Prime; Hastings’s estimate is based on acquisition costs for the Prime/video bundle.

Netflix charges $8 a month for its streaming service.

Hastings made his comments during an interview with Dow Jones editors in New York. Amazon hasn’t responded to a request for comment. Update: Here’s Amazon spokesman Andrew Herdener, via email: “We don’t comment on our individual investments but it’s correct that Prime Instant Video is an amazing value for customers. Not only do Prime members get unlimited streaming video, but they also get free 2-day shipping and the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library as well.”

Last week, a report from broadband service company Sandvine pegged Netflix’s share of Internet traffic at 33 percent, with Amazon at 1.8 percent. But Hastings says he takes the newcomer seriously: “Amazon is the best competitor we’ve ever faced.”

Many people, including Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, expect Amazon to eventually detach its library from Prime and offer it as a standalone subscription.

And some content owners I’ve talked to say they like the idea so much that they’ll compel Jeff Bezos to do it whether he wants to or not.

Not so fast, says Bezos. Here’s his take on the subject, from Tricia Duryee’s extended Q&A with the Amazon CEO.

Duryee: We are also hearing that studios would like you to decouple video from Prime and have you sell it as a standalone service, like Netflix.

Bezos: There are a lot of studios, and they are not all like-minded. We have very good relationships with studios, and we just did a big deal with Epix a couple of days ago, so, yeah, I like our approach.

But could they make you change your approach?

Bezos: Well, it’s their content, so they can license it however they like, but they aren’t all like-minded. We are trying to offer people a service they like, so I’m very confident that we can find content for them.

The company is pulling back the covers (a bit) on its plans to produce kids’ shows and sitcoms via its “Amazon Studios” unit, which has already been dipping a toe into the movie business. Word of the new push leaked out earlier this year, via hiring notices — such a useful way to track a secretive company! — and now Amazon is ’fessing up.

A bit. Amazon Studios head Roy Price won’t discuss his budget, or the number of shows he intends to make, or a timeline for getting them on the Web. But he is willing to sketch out a couple of notions:

• Like the movie effort, Amazon is soliciting scripts for new productions via the Web, and will pay out modest fees — $10,000 for an option, $55,000 if a show gets produced, plus possible royalties — for stuff it likes.
• The big difference between his TV effort and his movie effort is that Amazon intends (with some exceptions) to actually make the shows, and distribute them via its own “Amazon Instant Video” offering. (For the movie effort, Amazon is feeding scripts it likes to Warner Bros., which will decide what to do with them.)
• Price says the shows he does make should look and feel like “real” TV shows, with commensurate production budgets.

Lots of wiggle room in all of this. So the big news is that Amazon is formally declaring that it’s in the original video business — just like Google, Hulu, Netflix, Yahoo and lots of other tech guys.

Not surprisingly, Price doesn’t want to talk about Amazon’s place in that newly formed constellation. But he does point out that this isn’t the first time the company has started making its own media. Amazon has already launched its own book-publishing business, and has started poaching “real” authors for that effort, and that has traditional book publishers terrified.

Hard to see Hollywood freaking out about this right now — particularly when they’re making a ton of money selling Amazon their old shows. But if this ever takes off, that could change.

But if Comcast wants to, it can change that overnight, as The Wall Street Journal’s Sam Schechner reported yesterday. The cable giant’s new content deals allow it to sell its stuff nationally, to anyone with an Internet connection, if it wants to.

Comcast insists publicly that it has no interest in doing that. Privately, its executives say the same thing. They say they can’t figure out how to market and support a $5-a-month digital subscription service to noncustomers and still make money.

What if they added more content and sold it for $8 a month, like Netflix does? “That still wouldn’t work for us,” one of them told me yesterday. “We can’t figure out how it works for Netflix, either.”

So if things don’t change, then Streampix will work primarily as an anti-churn tool for Comcast — a carrot they’ll dangle to keep current subscribers happy. And it may also keep a few of them from signing up for Netflix, or renewing the subscription they already have.

Which means it will join the growing number of Netflix killers that aren’t really Netflix killers, because they don’t have the same breadth of content, or are only available to a certain number of customers.

Over the last couple of years, Amazon, Hulu and Dish/Blockbuster have all launched Web video subscription services that offer Netflix-like services. But, so far, none of them have really gone head to head with Reed Hastings.

Later this year, though, Verizon and Redbox will begin selling their own Web video service, and the companies have been very clear that that one won’t be limited to Verizon customers.

And it will definitely feel like a competitive service. There’s a good chance, for instance, that movies from the Viacom-backed Epix pay-TV channel, which currently run on Netflix, will appear on the Verizon service, too.

So that’s one full-fledged (potential) Netflix killer launching this year. And another one that might turn into one, with a flip of the switch. That ought to keep the Netflix executives, and investors, occupied for a bit.

Streaming is the future. We’re focused on it. DVD will do whatever it’s going to do. We’re not — we’re going to try to not hurt it, but we’re not putting a lot of time and energy into doing anything particular around it and then we’re focused on, how do we take advantage of this incredible global streaming opportunity.

Now, with that context in mind, consider this news: Netflix announced last night that customers could sign up directly for a $7.99-a-month DVD-only plan by visiting dvd.netflix.com.

Some of my fellow typers believe that this is a sign that Netflix has re-embraced the DVD business, which has much better margins than the streaming business, but is dropping away, quarter by quarter.

That would be a good narrative, but I don’t think it’s true.

Consider:

• This is the same $7.99 DVD-only plan that Netflix introduced last July.
• It’s the same URL that Netflix introduced last July. Apparently, it must have gone away at some point between then and now, but the fact that no one seems to have noticed its disappearance is telling.
• New customers who head to the Netflix home page will have no way of knowing that Netflix offers a DVD-only plan. If they click around a bit, they’ll find a note telling them they can add DVDs to a streaming-video subscription plan, but no word of the disc-only option.
• It remains nearly impossible to give someone a Netflix gift subscription that includes DVDs.

This doesn’t sound like a newfound appreciation for the DVD business to me. It sounds like Netflix is continuing to “not put a lot of time and energy into doing anything particular around it.”

So why bother with the new/old URL at all? I asked Netflix PR for comment; if they find the time or energy to respond, I’ll update here.

Hulu said Sunday that it will roll out two new shows between now and summer, while bringing back a third it debuted last year. The new shows include a half-hour scripted comedy about a dysfunctional Senate campaign, dubbed “Battleground,” beginning in February, and a travelogue show from director Richard Linklater.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

Streaming is the future. We’re focused on it. DVD will do whatever it’s going to do. We’re not — we’re going to try to not hurt it, but we’re not putting a lot of time and energy into doing anything particular around it and then we’re focused on, how do we take advantage of this incredible global streaming opportunity.

That was Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, at the UBS media conference earlier this month, reiterating the point that Netflix has been making over and over again for some time: They want out of the DVD business, even though it is generating more than $1 billion a year for them.

Hastings and his team are convinced that even though consumers say that discs are important to them, their usage data shows that few people … use them. “Old fogey discs,” Hastings calls them.

Netflix tried very hard to accelerate the decline of DVDs with the Qwikster fiasco. Since then, Netflix has been careful to tell its subscribers who are still paying for DVDs that it is happy to have them around.

New subscribers are a different story, though. Netflix exclusively pushes its $8-a-month unlimited-streaming option, on its site and in its promotional materials. You have to work very hard to discover that the company still rents DVDs, and that’s by design.

Same deal for former subscribers that Netflix is trying to woo back: Even if you used to get both DVDs and streaming videos from Netflix, the company will only tell you about its streaming plan in its “come back!” emails. (See the screenshot of an email my colleague Tricia Duryee, who quit her hybrid plan this fall, got recently, at the bottom of this post.)

But the message is most clear for people who want to give someone a Netflix subscription as a present: The company no longer allows you to gift a subscription that includes a DVD plan, period.

Go ahead and see for yourself — there’s no way to give Reed Hastings and company an extra $8 a month for a service they’re still providing to some 11 million subscribers.

The one tiny workaround that the company offers (if you look very, very hard — or do what I did, and call up Netflix PR and ask) is the ability to let current subscribers extend their current deal. So, for instance, if you’re currently getting the equivalent of a $16-a-month hybrid disc-and-streaming option, and someone gives you a year-long $8-a-month streaming gift, you can convert that into a six-month hybrid plan.

But, boy, that’s complicated. Easier to just give someone a year of streaming, and then send them a check so they can add the DVD portion on their own. Which is what we just did this morning, here at the AllThingsD Brooklyn outpost.

So to repeat: If you work very, very hard, Netflix will let you give it money, and will let you rent DVDs in return. But it would really prefer that you didn’t.

Because both companies are now offering something very similar, but not very compatible: Lightweight media consumption devices*, where the consumers will be expected to store the bulk of their media on someone else’s server.

Apple is moving quickly toward this model, with its new iTunes in the Cloud service, which will let you access music, TV shows and eventually movies you’ve purchased on any Apple machine with a Web connection. And the Kindle Fire will be there from the get-go — the device will only offer eight gigs of storage, which means it will just about require users to pull stuff down from the cloud.**

It will probably be possible, depending on DRM restrictions, to store media on multiple clouds. But clearly both companies are trying to create an environment that effectively locks you into their players, their devices, and their storage systems. Once you’ve moved, say, your music collection to Apple’s cloud, or Amazon’s, will you want to keep updating two content libraries?

So what about the Web? Won’t that let users skate around the lock-in?

In theory, both the iPad and the Fire will let users watch, read, or listen to whatever they want, via their browsers (and unlike the iPad, the Fire will support Adobe’s Flash). But both machines are geared toward apps and discrete chunks of media that you’ve bought at their stores.

I went back and forth on this with several of the Amazon executives at the Fire launch event today — yes, it’s possible to import media and apps that you bought somewhere else, like a rival Android app store, they said. But they don’t think most people will behave that way. And while you could theoretically watch Netflix streaming movies via the browser, the company thinks you’re going to end up using an Amazon-approved Netflix app instead.

Here’s a representative conversation I had with Kindle content boss Russ Grandinetti. (Note to media companies like Time Warner — see his answer about retail pricing.)

*Some of you will make the argument that the iPad is a work device, too. That’s fine, but my gut — and some polling — suggests that most people are using their iPads to watch, listen and play. Meanwhile, Amazon barely pretends that the Fire will be used for any other purpose.

** Google wants to go this way too, but while the Kindle Fire is built on Android, make no mistake, this is Amazon’s platform. If Google wants to get consumers storing media on its clouds, its going to have to come up with a credible tablet of its own.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110928/pick-a-cloud-apple-or-amazon/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110727/netflix-is-for-movies-hulu-is-for-tv-shows-neither-is-for-your-ipad-or-your-iphone/ http://allthingsd.com/20110727/netflix-is-for-movies-hulu-is-for-tv-shows-neither-is-for-your-ipad-or-your-iphone/#comments Wed, 27 Jul 2011 20:39:38 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=103360 Lots of you are using your phones to watch YouTube. But Netflix and Hulu? Not so much.

That’s one of the takeaways from a new Nielsen report about viewing habits on the two online video services. Just three percent of Netflix users say they watch the service on a mobile phone or an iPad (Netflix on Android tablets has just barely moved beyond the theoretical stage). Hulu’s numbers are even smaller.

That’s not a huge surprise for a couple reasons:

• Netflix CEO Reed Hastings has downplayed the effect that mobile phones and the iPad have had on his business. What’s most important to his company, he’s said, are ways that his customers can get their video onto TVs, whether it’s via game consoles like Microsoft’s Xbox 360 or via Internet-connected TVs.
• Meanwhile, the only way Hulu users can watch on a phone or an iPad is by paying for the Hulu Plus subscription service. And while that service may have a million or so customers, that’s a small fraction of the free site’s overall user base. (Nielsen says it didn’t distinguish between free and paid Hulu users in its most recent survey).

Still, the data is worth pointing out, as video makers and distributors are trying to get their heads around the way people consume their stuff on the go. Of course, even “on the go” can mean different things to different users — yesterday we noted that much of a music video site’s “mobile” usage was actually taking place in bedrooms and living rooms.

Nielsen also reports, not surprisingly, that Hulu viewers are primarily using the service to watch TV shows. And that while Netflix users watch more movies than TV shows, they’re watching a lot of both. That also makes sense, given the increasing importance that Netflix has placed on getting its hands on shows like “Mad Men.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110727/netflix-is-for-movies-hulu-is-for-tv-shows-neither-is-for-your-ipad-or-your-iphone/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110215/hulu-plus-gets-an-art-house-upgrade-with-criterion-collection/ http://allthingsd.com/20110215/hulu-plus-gets-an-art-house-upgrade-with-criterion-collection/#comments Tue, 15 Feb 2011 12:29:00 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=29836 Hulu’s primary appeal is for people who want to watch TV shows on the Web, but the joint video venture does offer a selection of movies, too. Now that selection just got a bit bigger, and more appealing to cinephiles: The Hulu Plus pay service is adding some of the Criterion Collection’s art-house movies to its catalog.

Criterion specializes in classic movies from the canon of great directors–Ingmar Bergman, Jean-Luc Godard, Federico Fellini, etc.–and has about 800 titles digitized so far, many of which are also available via Hulu competitor Netflix. [UPDATE: I'm told that this will be an exclusive deal, and that the Criterion titles that Netflix does offer will expire this year].

Hulu Plus subscribers will initially get access to 150 Criterion films, including “The 400 Blows,” “Rashomon” and “Breathless.” Hulu says the movies will run without ad interruptions, but may feature ads before the films start; the free Hulu.com service will offer a handful of Criterion titles, which will run with ads.

Hulu, owned by Comcast’s NBC, Disney’s ABC and News. Corp.’s Fox (News Corp. also owns this Web site), introduced the Hulu Plus pay service last year. Hulu CEO Jason Kilar says the $7.99-per-month offering is on track to reach one million subscribers in 2011.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110215/hulu-plus-gets-an-art-house-upgrade-with-criterion-collection/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20110201/web-video-doubter-mark-cuban-invests-in-web-video-studio-revision3/ http://allthingsd.com/20110201/web-video-doubter-mark-cuban-invests-in-web-video-studio-revision3/#comments Tue, 01 Feb 2011 13:01:37 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=28945 Mark Cuban, Web video skeptic? Meet Mark Cuban, Web video investor.

The voluble entrepreneur and investor, who made his fortune off Web video during the first Internet boom, is dabbling in it again: He has put money into Revision3, the Web video studio/network best known as the home of Diggnation.

The investment was part of a small round of funding Revision3 raised last year, which it hasn’t disclosed until now.

That wouldn’t be that noteworthy, except that Cuban, again and again, has argued that ever-rising expectations for Web video were overblown, and that the technology wouldn’t displace TV. Which happens to be where Cuban is betting heavily, via his HDNet network.

A very brief summary of his argument:  Internet infrastructure can’t support TV-scale viewing; Web advertising can’t support TV-scale programming; people like TV.

And some representative blog posts where he make his case: The Great Internet Video Lie; Why Do Internet People Think Content People Are Stupid?;  The Future of TV Is…TV.

And here’s a representative counter-argument: Cable TV Is Screwd. It was written two years ago, by Cuban’s new partner, Revision3 CEO Jim Louderback.

So what gives? Is Cuban finally backing down? Not at all, the billionaire says. He’s merely investing in a potential source of content for his TV network.

The dollars he’s putting into Revision3 will give him what amounts to a first look on the video site’s programming, and the chance to turn some of it into TV shows.

“I think Jim can make some money from this. I don’t throw money away,” Cuban says via email. “But this investment really confirms my position on web video. While Revision3 will make some money on the web, the real money is [in] TV. And I wanted HDNet to have the option to be that outlet.”

Louderback, for his part, seems fine with a less than total endorsement of his industry–he’s the one highlighting Cuban’s investment. “I like to think that we’re doing some pretty innovative stuff, and [the investment] gives him a broader visibility into that space”, he says.

And since Revision3 won’t say how much money Cuban invested in the company, or the total size of the round–Louderback will only say that it was “relatively immaterial” for his company–it’s impossible to gauge what any of this really means from the outside.

In related can’t-really-judge-what-this-means news: Revision3 says its revenue, which it won’t disclose, grew 80 percent last year, and that the company turned a profit in Q4 of 2010. Louderback defines profitable in this instance as “EBIDTA-profitable,” and says his company should be “solidly in the black” by the middle of this year.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110201/web-video-doubter-mark-cuban-invests-in-web-video-studio-revision3/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20110110/cable-rewards-cord-non-cutters-with-a-bigger-bill/ http://allthingsd.com/20110110/cable-rewards-cord-non-cutters-with-a-bigger-bill/#comments Mon, 10 Jan 2011 16:44:01 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=27896 Even if cord-cutting is real, very few of you are actually going to do it. Your reward from the cable guys? A bigger bill in 2011.

That’s because the cable guys always raise their prices, year after year after year. It’s what they do. And the notion that some tech-savvy customers may be dropping their subscriptions in favor of some sort of Hulu/iTunes/Netflix broadband combo isn’t scaring them off.

The slightly less bad news is that it seems as if the price hike will be smaller than previous years’. But it will still be a hike. Bernstein Research’s Craig Moffett shows you how much more you can expect to pay depending on which company sells you your TV shows.

There are some caveats here. Because Moffett’s sample size is relatively small for Comcast and Time Warner Cable, those numbers could end up moving around. And the Dish Network hike looks a little bit outsized because the company has promised it will freeze rates for the two following years.

But the main takeaway doesn’t change: None of this looks like an industry convinced its customers are really heading out the door, or are about to in the next few years.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110110/cable-rewards-cord-non-cutters-with-a-bigger-bill/feed/ 5 http://allthingsd.com/20110107/ultraviolet-backers-see-content-in-the-cloud/ http://allthingsd.com/20110107/ultraviolet-backers-see-content-in-the-cloud/#comments Fri, 07 Jan 2011 08:00:57 +0000 Don Clark http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=34959 There’s a new logo in the future of video lovers. Or at least that’s what many heavy hitters from the content, hardware and retailing worlds hope.

That would be UltraViolet, the name for a new format that is designed to break through what backers say are some key obstacles that are slowing down purchases of digital movies and TV shows. One of the biggest fears among consumers, they say, is that a movie they download or buy on disk will someday become lost or hard to access–because their computer or other hardware might crash, formats might change or other issues.

A consortium called the Digital Entertainment Content System, or DECE, has been working on a solution for some time now. They plan to offer a scheme under which consumers, instead of buying just a disk or a digital file, essentially buy a perpetual right to a piece of content. If they lose the original copy, there will always be one they can access in the cloud, as people in Silicon Valley like to put it.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110107/ultraviolet-backers-see-content-in-the-cloud/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20101221/not-a-hobby-anymore-new-apple-tv-sales-hit-one-million/ http://allthingsd.com/20101221/not-a-hobby-anymore-new-apple-tv-sales-hit-one-million/#comments Tue, 21 Dec 2010 14:42:23 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=27273 Apple says sales of its new, cheaper Apple TVs will hit one million this week, less than four months after Steve Jobs introduced the new version.

I don’t think that qualifies as a surprise, given that Apple knocked the price of the gadget down to $99. And it seems that Apple’s foray into your living room has gotten further than Google’s, given the latter’s disappointing reviews and pre-CES pullback.

But I’m not sure it’s a runaway success, either. Some context: Apple sold nine million iPods during the third quarter of this year. And it took the company just 28 days to sell a million iPads after its April launch. On the other hand, it took Apple nearly two years to sell its first million iPods, way back in 2003.

Apple also says its customers are now renting 400,000 TV shows and more than 150,000 movies per day from iTunes. Bear in mind that those are being watched on all of Apple’s devices, not just Apple TV. But if you’re a studio with product to push, that shouldn’t matter–a sale is a sale.

Or at least that’s Apple’s argument to the studios, which have yet to give it all the product it wants, and the prices it wants. So far only Disney and News Corp.’s Fox (News Corp. also owns this Web site) have agreed to let Apple rent TV shows for 99 cents.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101221/not-a-hobby-anymore-new-apple-tv-sales-hit-one-million/feed/ 5 http://allthingsd.com/20101201/apple-tv-2010-review/ http://allthingsd.com/20101201/apple-tv-2010-review/#comments Thu, 02 Dec 2010 02:02:15 +0000 Walter S. Mossberg http://ptech.allthingsd.com/?p=1649 Of all the set-top boxes designed to bring online and computer content to your TV, perhaps the best known is Apple TV. But, unlike its maker’s other products, Apple TV hasn’t caught on in a big way. In fact, Apple CEO Steve Jobs calls it a “hobby.”

Still, the company isn’t giving up. This fall it brought out a radically revamped Apple TV at a much lower price—$99, down from $229—and with a different philosophy. While earlier versions contained a hard disk and allowed you to purchase and store movies, music and TV shows, the new Apple TV is all about streaming and renting. It can’t store content, although, like its predecessors, it can transmit to your TV screen content stored on your networked home computers.

Perhaps the coolest feature of the new Apple TV is that it allows you to wirelessly beam video and audio from an iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch to the TV screen. A new feature called AirPlay in the latest software on these portable devices makes this possible. So, if you have a video or photos on, say, an iPad, you can just tap an icon on its screen to view them on a TV via Apple TV instead of on the device’s smaller screen. (AirPlay also works wirelessly from the free iTunes software on PCs and Macs.)

Apple’s Steve Jobs announcing the new release of Apple TV earlier this fall.

I’ve been testing the new Apple TV, including trying out AirPlay using various devices, and found that it performs as advertised. It has a clean, easy interface, does a great job of streaming content from your own computers, and it allows you to rent TV shows at just 99 cents an episode. It’s even almost invisible next to your TV—a 4-inch-square black box less than an inch tall. And setup is easy.

But it has some significant downsides. The most important of these is a very limited selection of Internet video sources. If you want a set-top box that allows you to watch a wide range of video from the Web, Apple TV isn’t it.

Apple TV is now essentially a modestly priced adapter that streams video, audio and photos to your HDTV from three main sources: your own computers, Apple’s iTunes service plus a few other online sources, and content on your portable Apple devices using AirPlay.

It’s the polar opposite of the new Google TV, which tries to encompass the entire Internet but is too complicated for mainstream users and costs hundreds of dollars. Apple is offering much less variety in content sources, but with a much simpler interface and a tiny remote with just seven buttons, versus the keyboard or minikeyboard used with Google TV.

Apple TV is still tied heavily to the company’s own iTunes service. The new model now also offers Netflix, which is nicely integrated into Apple’s user interface, but is very common on other set-top boxes, including the less expensive Roku models. YouTube is accessible from the new device, though it was present on the older model as well. The device can’t deliver other video services, nor is it designed to bring up Web pages on your TV.

And, even within Apple’s own iTunes service, which is Apple TV’s source for a la carte rental of TV shows and movies, the content is limited. For its 99-cent TV show rentals, the device mainly offers programs from ABC, Disney, Fox, PBS and the BBC. If your favorite show is on NBC, CBS or many other networks, you can’t rent it on Apple TV, nor can you get to the Web to view it. Alas, even within those networks, some of the programs are old and I couldn’t find some popular shows, like “Modern Family” on ABC or “American Idol” on Fox. (Fox, like The Wall Street Journal, is owned by News Corp.)

You can still buy TV shows from the excluded networks, or shows unavailable for rental, on your computers and stream them to the TV via Apple TV, but that is a more complicated process.

The Apple TV set-top box with TV showing 99-cent TV show rentals from iTunes.

Apple claims the largest selection of high-definition movies online, and says many are available the same day they appear on DVD. Movie rentals start at $2.99 for standard-definition versions and $3.99 for high definition, though many are $4.99. Both movies and TV shows can be kept for 30 days, but, once you start playing them, the clock starts on a short window before they expire. In the case of movies, the window is 24 hours; for TV shows, it’s 48 hours. You can pause and resume, or watch them repeatedly, within those windows.

In my tests, video and audio quality were excellent. Programs started rapidly, and I never saw any stuttering or buffering delays. Like the older Apple TV models, the new one did a very good job of streaming to the TV content from both PCs and Macs running iTunes on my home network. In fact, the process of setting this up has been made simpler. Watching slideshows of family photos was simple and rewarding.

Searching for a TV show or movie was tedious, because it requires you to peck out letters from an onscreen keyboard with the little remote. (This is why Google uses a keyboard, but that isn’t a welcome device in many living rooms.) However, there’s an alternative. Apple offers a free iPhone and iPad app that can control the Apple TV, and it has a built in virtual keyboard for much faster searching.

AirPlay worked well in my tests. I tried it on both an iPad and an iPhone, and was easily able to switch a video or song from the device itself to the Apple TV, and thus, to the TV screen and speakers. This requires merely clicking on an icon that looks like a wide-screen TV with an arrow beneath it, and then selecting “Apple TV” as a destination.

I also tried AirPlay on both a Mac and Windows laptop using the latest version of iTunes, and it worked fine. On all the AirPlay-equipped devices, you can also multitask. Once you’ve started beaming a video to the Apple TV, you can do other things on the originating device without interrupting the video. For instance, as I write this paragraph in Microsoft Word, I am watching a video beamed to my TV via AirPlay from iTunes on my laptop.

But AirPlay has some limitations. On the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch it will only beam video to the Apple TV from Apple’s own Video, iPod and Photos apps, plus the YouTube app. On computers, it only works with iTunes. Some third-party apps on the hand-held devices can use it with audio, though not video.

Also, switching the video stream to the Apple TV can take a few seconds, during which the video keeps playing, so you often have to rewind.

Overall, Apple TV is a reasonably priced, well-designed device. It is especially attractive for viewing videos and photos from your computers, and Apple devices, on your TV. But it doesn’t deliver most Internet video sources, or even all online network programs.

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

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101201/apple-tv-2010-review/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20101123/hollywoods-big-hope-google-shows-up-with-suitcase-full-of-money-it-could-happen/ http://allthingsd.com/20101123/hollywoods-big-hope-google-shows-up-with-suitcase-full-of-money-it-could-happen/#comments Tue, 23 Nov 2010 15:46:17 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=26255 Here’s a script Hollywood has been pitching for some time: Google comes to town with a checkbook in hand.

It hasn’t happened yet, but the longer the company struggles to break into the market for “premium full-length content”–movies and TV shows–the more you hear studio types talking it up. And maybe Google is listening!

The New York Post reports that the search giant is in talks to buy the digital rights to Miramax’s movies; Disney is about to sell the studio off to Filmyard Holdings.

The supposed deal makes plenty of sense on paper: Google finally gets its hands on movies people want to see–”No Country for Old Men,” “Pulp Fiction,” a lot of very earnest indie films from the mid-’90s, etc.–and Filmyard gets an instant cash infusion to help defray the cost of its acquisition.

To date, Google has struggled to get the big studios to let it put their content up–for free or for rent–which is why many Hollywood types have suggested that the company simply purchase a “Google window,” by buying a studio or a piece of a studio.

You can see why Hollywood would be pushing for a deep-pocketed suitor to show up. And you can see why Google has been resistant to that idea: If it starts writing checks to Hollywood, then every content player, everywhere, will expect the same thing. And Google has always insisted that it’s not in the content business, period.

But that’s getting harder and harder to believe, as the company spends more and more time trying to beef up its media offerings (see, for instance: Google Music, if it shows up).

Meanwhile, the ability and willingess to write big checks is directly connected to the Netflix Web success story: So far Reed Hastings and company have racked up a billion-dollar-plus bill for digital content rights, and that number is going to keep climbing.

Which is why it’s significant that Google hired Netflix executive Robert Kyncl to hammer out Hollywood content deals earlier this year. A big-dollar Miramax deal would indicate that he’s working from the same playbook he used at his last gig.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101123/hollywoods-big-hope-google-shows-up-with-suitcase-full-of-money-it-could-happen/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20101027/those-bits-arent-free-netflix-could-be-racking-up-a-2-billion-content-tab/ http://allthingsd.com/20101027/those-bits-arent-free-netflix-could-be-racking-up-a-2-billion-content-tab/#comments Wed, 27 Oct 2010 12:00:04 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=25091 Investors are cheering on Netflix, as it moves from DVDs to streaming video and keeps adding customers along the way. But “digital” doesn’t equal “cheap” for Reed Hastings’s company. In fact, the online move has cost Netflix at least $1.2 billion.

That’s the amount Netflix has committed to paying Hollywood studios for the rights to stream their movies and TV shows. And it’s up from $229 million three months ago, the company disclosed in an SEC filing yesterday.

Most of that leap comes from a five-year deal that Netflix previously announced with the Epix pay channel, which is thought to be in the $900 million to $1 billion range. But that number could jump again within the next year, when Netflix’s deal with the Starz pay channel expires.

The Starz deal gives Netflix access to Sony and Disney titles, so it’s crucial that Reed Hastings hangs on to it. And that will make a new Starz deal about as expensive as the Epix deal, says Barclays analyst Douglas Anmuth: He figures Netflix will have a total streaming commitment of $2 billion by the end of 2011.

The magic of the Netflix Web model, though, is that as people consume more on the Web, they cut back on discs –”You’re
replacing the postal cost with content cost,” in Hastings’s words.

For more details on Netlix’s streaming plans and costs, I highly recommend nerding out with this transcript from its Q3 earnings call (PDF). It’s a fascinating peek into a company on the leading edge of the digital transition.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101027/those-bits-arent-free-netflix-could-be-racking-up-a-2-billion-content-tab/feed/ 3 http://allthingsd.com/20101021/hulu-plus-take-two-hows-4-95-a-month/ http://allthingsd.com/20101021/hulu-plus-take-two-hows-4-95-a-month/#comments Thu, 21 Oct 2010 20:47:45 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=24979 Hulu is considering cutting the price of Hulu Plus, the subscription service it began testing in June, sources tell me. I’m told the video site is talking about slashing its $9.95 per-month fee in half, to $4.95.

Hulu Plus was supposed to be the video site’s strategy to generate a second revenue stream to complement the free, ad-supported site that launched in 2008.

The idea is that paying subscribers get access to a deeper catalog of TV shows and movies than what the free service offers, as well as the ability to watch Hulu on devices like Apple’s iPhone and iPad, Microsoft’s Xbox 360 game machine and Internet-connected TVs from Samsung and Sony.

But a price cut would indicate that consumers haven’t bought in to the pitch. That shouldn’t be a shock, considering the other video options that consumers have, and the limits that Hulu’s content providers have placed on the service.

At $8.99 a month, for instance, Netflix subscribers get access to a very deep catalog of movies and TV shows delivered on DVD, and a growing number of titles delivered to their PCs, phones or iPads.

But Hulu Plus is limited primarily to current  broadcast shows from its three owners–Disney’s ABC, GE’s NBC and News Corp.’s Fox–as well as other shows that have stopped running on TV. (News Corp. also owns Dow Jones, which owns this site.)

And tensions between programmers and cable providers mean that Hulu won’t give subscribers access to current cable shows from those same partners–even though some of them are (barely) available on conventional Hulu. “It’s a broadcast-focused service,” in the words of CEO Jason Kilar.

Hulu declined to comment about the service, which is still officially in beta mode.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101021/hulu-plus-take-two-hows-4-95-a-month/feed/ 21 http://allthingsd.com/20100928/indie-radio-god-nic-harcourt-gets-a-new-gig-picking-videos-for-the-live-buzz/ http://allthingsd.com/20100928/indie-radio-god-nic-harcourt-gets-a-new-gig-picking-videos-for-the-live-buzz/#comments Tue, 28 Sep 2010 12:00:13 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=23984 For a certain kind of music fan,  Nic Harcourt is a rock star. Even though he doesn’t play any instruments.

From 1998 through 2008, Harcourt was the driving force at KCRW, the super-influential public radio station broadcasting from Santa Monica, Calif.: Even if you’ve never heard of him or the station, you’ve heard music and bands he helped make famous via airplay.

I don’t know if his Wikipedia entry is technically accurate (crowdsourcing!), but the list of musicians he’s credited with breaking in the U.S. should give a sense of his vibe, regardless: Coldplay, Norah Jones, Pete Yorn, Franz Ferdinand, etc. Awesome headline of a 2005 New York Times Magazine profile: “The Star Maker of the Semipopular.”

But outside of his work picking music for TV shows and movies, Harcourt hasn’t had a forum for the past two years.

Now he does: Blog network Buzzmedia is putting him in charge of “Live Buzz,” a new site that focuses on music videos.

There are plenty of those, so what’s different? Harcourt says it’s the emphasis on live tapings recorded specifically for the site. But there are plenty of those, too (check out “From the Basement,” which does a really good job).

So what Buzzmedia is really banking on here is that Harcourt’s brand will be enough to attract surfers and keep them coming back. That’s why the site’s homepage announces that it is “Curated by Nic Harcourt” right at the top.

Certainly worth a visit. Here are a couple examples of what you’ll find there. I’m particularly fond of the acoustic Jay-Z:

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