Cox Logo

A confidential document got leaked out stating the Cox cable has decided to get out of the wireless business. Within 24 hours, Cox officially stated this was true – on March 30th, 2012, Cox will end their wireless service.

Back in 2008, Cox bought part of the 700 MHz spectrum to start Cox Wireless. Last year they launched the service, however, the plan didn’t pan out. Maybe part of it was because Stephen Bye left in March (he headed the wireless division).

“Cox is working to make this transition as seamless and easy as possible for our customers,” said Len Barlik, executive vice president of product development and management.  “We are proud of our employees’ dedication to delivering the excellent customer service that Cox is known for, and we will continue to keep our wireless customers’ satisfaction a top priority during this transition period.”

This affects customers in the  Hampton Roads, Roanoke and Northern Virginia; Orange County, San Diego and Santa Barbara, Calif.; Omaha, Nebraska; Oklahoma City and Tulsa, Okla.; and Rhode Island and Cox communities we serve in Connecticut and Cleveland, Ohio. This only affects wireless and 3G services. Cox will be giving a $150 credit to those who had the multi-service.

Boxee Live TV Dongle

If you run your Boxee through a computer monitor rather than a flat screen TV, or just don’t want to flip to the terrestrial line, well fret no more. Boxee has launched Live TV – a USB dongle that will connect to your cable or antenna so you can watch television straight from the box!

The Live TV stick is an HD antenna that provides Boxee Box owners with local channels like ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, CW and any other over-the-air channel you might get. The Live TV will be available in January 2012 for $49.

“Last year, 89 of the top 100 shows were on broadcast networks – they remain the most popular channels on cable.” says Boxee CEO Avner Ronen on the Boxee blog. ” The Superbowl, the World Series, the Oscars, the Grammys, presidential debates and addresses, the Olympics… they’re all on broadcast. Yes, there are hundreds of cable channels, but make a list of the stuff you actually watch. You will probably find that most are on broadcast and the rest are available on Vudu/Netflix/Network sites.”

For $49, you get the dongle. I would guess there is no need for a remote, like a regular TV to PC dongle, because it could be controlled via the Boxee software.

Boxee screen

Keep in mind, any over-the-air channel might not be in full HD. Primary HD channels could be in 1080p, 1080i, 720p or less. If a channel has a 2nd and 3rd sub-channel (ex: Channel 3.1 is the primary, Channel 3.2 and 3.3 are sub-channels), those would most likely run at 480i. If the Primary channel wants to run 1080p, it would have to turn off the sub-channels to do so.

Also keep in mind about the signals of over-the-air TV. The farther away from the antenna you are, the better chance of channel breakage you could get.

If you can get past that, this might be a great way to connect the TV to your… well, TV. Of course, if you haven’t cut the cable yet, you can also connect your cable to this and funnel those channels through your Boxee.

As the UK slowly moves towards turning off the analogue terrestrial TV signal and switching to digital transmissions, it’s been overtaken by consumer demand for high definition (HD) broadcasting. The satellite and cable providers, namely Sky and Virgin Media, have been quick to offer HD on their subscription services, but the terrestrial digital broadcast system, Freeview, has been somewhat slower to offer HD. Some regions of the UK, e.g. Northern Ireland, will not have HD terrestrial broadcasts until 2012. Consequently, there’s been a great deal of uncertainty and misinformation.

So it’s fortunate that ConsumerChoices has added Freeview HD coverage to its HD Coverage Checker. By putting in your postcode and your house number, you’ll be presented with all the HD options available to you, including satellite, cable and terrestrial. In addition, for Freeview (terrestrial), the website will tell you which transmitter to use, how far away it is and the likely signal strength. If Freeview HD is not yet available in the area, it will give the expected date for it to be turned on.

With Freeview decoders now available in a range of products including set-top boxes and HD TVs, there’s often a small price premium to pay for the HD decoder over the standard definition. By using the HD Coverage Checker, you can make informed decision whether to go HD and pay more, or stick with the standard definition decoder.

A few days ago I had a DirecTV HR23 box go belly-up.  I awoke one morning to the smell of melted plastic.  I didn’t open the box, so I don’t know what went wrong, but it was obviously something bad.  Despite having no LED lights on the front panel there was still power – although it wouldn’t even try to boot up.  But, as long as the power cord was plugged in, the smell and a chirping sound (which probably was from the hard drive) continued.

DirecTV has always had excellent customer service, at least in my experiences.  This was no exception – they were ready to send me a new HR23 via priority shipping.  The box arrived in two days, along with a paid label to send back the old DVR.

Setup is simple – just plug in the old connections that are already in place.  Of course, you need to call DirecTV to activale the box, but that isn’t a big deal either.  It’s after that step that you see where DirecTV, and every other DVR (as far as I know), are lacking.

What do these cable and satellite companies need to add?  Backing up all of your recorded shows would be nice, but we have seen how difficult a netwrked DVR has been for Cablevision.  What I noticed when re-setting-up my HR23 was a glaring lack for backup of personal settings.  I had to, once again, add all of my season passes, set my video preferences, re-enable my network settings, etc.

Is it too much to ask that all of these personal settings be backed up by the provider?  Or at east that they provide a path for backing them up locally to a networked PC?  After all, the HR23 has ethernet and shows up on our home network.  It seems like a simple update to add backup of personal settings.  More importnantly to the providers, it doesn’t seem like anything that would cause them to end up in court.

This seems like a minor addition to the software package of any TV provider.  Still, it doestn’t seem to be mentioned by anyone as an update that is on the roadmap.  I know that I would seriously consider moving to one that decides to add it.

In a press release today, Virgin Media announced that it was trialling 1.5Gb/s cable broadband connections with four media companies in London. Offering 1.5 Gb/s down and 150 Mb/s up, if successful it would be the world’s fastest cable broadband and about 240 times faster than the UK average connection speed.

The technology will use the same infrastructure as delivered to residential customers, so in theory, if it works in this trial it should work just about everywhere Virgin has a cable network. Virgin has already successfully trialled download speeds of 1Gb/s in its fibre network but currently offers 100Mb/s as the maximum speed. Virgin has connections to 12.6 million homes, mostly in urban areas, making them one of the largest residential broadband providers in the UK.

Jon James, executive director of broadband at Virgin Media, said: “Demand for greater bandwidth is growing rapidly as more devices are able to connect to the internet and as more people go online simultaneously. Our growing network provides a highly competitive alternative to the fastest fibre networks of the future and, with our ongoing investment plans, we can anticipate and meet demand as it develops over time, ensuring Virgin Media business and residential customers continue to enjoy world-class broadband.”

The four companies involved in the trial are all in “creative industries” working with on-line video, broadcasting and interactive applications. Sam Orams, co-founder of BespokeBanter.com, one of the companies testing Virgin Media’s 1.5Gb broadband, said: “While the average home might not need these speeds quite yet, we certainly will. The internet is critical to what we do and intrinsically linked to our future growth so it’s exciting to be working with Virgin Media at the forefront of broadband innovation in the UK.”

The Virgin Media network uses DOCSIS3 and can bond several channels together to provide the data speed bought by the customer. Consequently, there’s a choice of different speeds (10 Mb/s, 30 Mb/s, 50 Mb/s, 100 Mb/s). Virgin currently offers 100 Mb/s in cabled areas for £35 per month. Regrettably, I’m not in one of those cabled areas and I’m stuck at about 3 Mb/s. Bah!

Ah, my once-beloved Dish Network account – the thing I once thought I could never do without; the budget monster that consumed $100 per month, month after month, year after year. I agonized for months over the idea of simply killing it before finally pulling the plug.

It’s been the better part of a year since I put the budget-busting beast to rest and cancelled the account. Dish Network itself seemed to want to throw up as many roadblocks as possible to get me to change my mind. They wanted the LNB module off of my roof, in addition to the two receivers. I had 30 days to send the units back in the packing boxes they sent or they would make me pay full price for them.

I was able to talk the guy out of forcing me to climb up on my roof to retrieve the LNB, and I was able to get the two receivers sent back to them within the 30 days of cancellation. However, somehow they had in their billing system I had three receivers, not two. They sent return packaging for three units. I spent time on the phone with them to make sure this discrepancy was resolved, and they assured me it was.

Ooops, not so fast! A month or two later I got a letter from them stating I still owed them for a receiver and they intended to hit my bank account for the amount. A phone call to them resolved the issue and I haven’t heard a peep from them since.

How has life been without all of those channels? $ome part of me hate$ to admit it, but I haven’t missed it at all. I’ve got an Intel Mac Mini set up as a DVR for local over-the-air HD broadcasts, as well as a Netflix account and several other Internet-connected set top box viewing solutions.

Observations

A very large percentage of TV programming is marketing presented as content. Much of what passes for entertainment depicts multitudes of dysfunctional drama queens assaulting and insulting the people around them. The more dysfunctional they are, the more likely it is the marketing messages will seep into the mesmerized minds of the audience. Even if one isn’t watching commercials, product placement and even behavior placement abounds. Viewers are being programmed to buy certain products, as well as behave in certain ways.

Think you can’t do without cable or satellite TV? Think again. I was paying $1,200 dollars a year for Dish Network. Multiply that by just 5 years and that’s a whopping $6,000 dollars for the privilege of being shaped and influenced by marketing messages so I would spend even more money.

Let’s go one step further. For many people TV is an addiction. These people are crack dealers in disguise. How else could it be that they can continue to raise their prices and people continue to pay ever more?

Let’s be honest. The vast majority of cable TV programming is less than worthless. Could that $6,000 dollars been better spent on higher-quality programming? Of course it could.

I know many of us keep discussing unplugging cable/satellite and going with set-top boxes and Internet programming instead.  An article on Mashable by Christina Warren explains pretty well why most video media consumers won’t be switching from cable and satellite anytime soon.

The fact is, moving from passive pay television, where you can easily channel-surf your way through the lineup (or use the guide with the touch of a button), to a more active style of not only finding content, but viewing content, is just not going to happen for most people.  While the Boxee, Roku, AppleTV, and other devices enter the market, the ease of use hasn’t caught up.  Regular television provides an easy-to-access method for figuring out what you want to watch, and the rise of the DVR means you can also record what you don’t have time to watch at that moment.  There is very little physical or mental encumbrance in using passive television to fulfill a need for entertainment.

Ms. Warren goes on to point out that if set-top boxes are going to be a replacement for cable and satellite, then they need to actually provide what people are not only used to, but what they want.  No one wants to spend ten minutes picking through a menu to find what they want to watch.  They want to turn it on, flip through a few channels, and be ready to watch.  Most users of DVR’s are doing the same thing, albeit with recorded shows:  bring up the guide, pick what you recorded, push play.  There is instant playback, instant access.

The other piece of the puzzle is live television.  Live news, live sports events, breaking weather, all of these things are not being accommodated in the set-top box space.  They can’t be, by definition.  I just lived through three days of gloom and doom regarding a Midwest blizzard, and believe me, that live connection to information was critical in determining if we were going to make it to work, doctor’s appointments, etc., and also helped us decide if we needed to take extra emergency precautions to keep our homes and families safe.  I could have never gotten that information from my AppleTV.

When solutions can be found to these issues, and set-top boxes can act more like passive television viewing, we might just see more adoption in the market.  But as it stands, I don’t see anyone giving up cable/satellite for set-top boxes anytime soon.

One of the classic methods of marketing centers around the idea of bundling; i.e. getting people to pay for lower-quality merchandise by pushing sheer quantity over quality. This strategy isn’t always successful, but when it works it can work brilliantly.

When I was a teenager growing up in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, music was sold via vinyl records. The “hit” songs were played on the radio, thus creating artist familiarity and product demand. Radio stations of the day would sometimes play the “B” side of the record but most often they only played the “hits.” In other words, they weren’t playing the “misses” on the radio.

In a stroke of marketing genius, however, someone somewhere got the idea to bundle the musical misses and missteps on the “B” side of the vinyl records. When 33-RPM records came along, this trend was amplified because there was more room than ever. Make consumers think they were buying not only the artist’s latest hits, but throw that filler material in there too. Sometimes with certain artists the filler material could be brilliant too. However, most of the time it was just filler material.

This strategy mostly worked until digital recording and playback techniques, combined with the Internet, caused massive changes in the way people manufactured, discovered, marketed, and purchased music. For a variety of reasons, today people tend to only want to buy what they consider to be the very best “hits” from services such as iTunes, and there’s little to no market for the “filler” misses.

The same marketing concept has been used via bundling to get people to pay for “filler” cable TV channels. Want a “good” channel such as Discovery, TLC, or History? Sorry sir, that sandwich only comes with pickles, mustard and horse radish – take it or leave it.

What consumers often fail to realize is that substantial portions of their cable TV and/or satellite bills are paid directly to bundled channel providers that they probably never watch. Bundled mediocrity gets rewarded.

Why are you mindlessly paying good money for bundled channels you probably don’t know the names of? Stop rewarding bundled mediocrity. Turn off your cable or satellite subscription. I promise you – your heart won’t suddenly stop beating. The world won’t suddenly come to an end.

I have had a very productive trip here in Albuquerque but I am more than ready to head home. Lots of work to do in the studio and not a lot of time to do it. PLus my honey do list is a mile long. I expect to do a Saturday Morning Tech Show if the Studio is ready. Sunday we announce the Slate for 2010 Podcast Awards so it has to be ready. Have a great Thanks Giving and be Safe.

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TSA Alternative?
Energy Cost.
Net Neutrality coming in Dec?
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Show Links:
Kilts pose issue for TSA.
Simply amazing ISS Pictures.
Samsung and Google TV?
Google is Hiring.
Google Connect going after Microsoft Office Users Big Time.
Netflix Pricing change and New Service Offerings.
iOS 4.2 now on the Street.
600k Galaxy Tablets Sold.
150k down /35k Up = $200.00
Vudu coming to Panasonic.
GNC 24hr Podcast!
Amazon Album Sales.
Tivo iPad App.
Time Warner Lower Offering Sucks.
Autobot service for Car.
Brillant Jenga Pistol.
When will Point and Shoot Cameras get Smart?
Shorts for your trips to the Airport.
Discovery ready to go.
The final frontier.
Maybe the Big Bang was not so Big after all.
Shop smart these holidays.
Bogus TSA Info.
Use S3 for Hosting?
Twitter GAG.
Google TV ok to wait on.
Big Sat punched into Orbit.
Wi-Fi is killing Trees?
AT&T boast big Speed advantage.
FCC not Happy with Verizon on Net Neturality.
You wonder why we have Back Scatter Scanners?
911 Update Overdue.
Viacomm blocking Google TV.

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Getting in the Groove here with the show, have worked out all the bugs, the new tricaster arrives on Saturday so obviously excited about that for a myriad of reasons. I get scolded at the end of the show so you have that to enjoy . All is well and on track. Podcast Awards nominations start on November 7th be ready to nominate your favorite shows. Lot’s of great links from the Ohana, Thanks

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Cable Bleeding Customers.
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Stern’s Fate?
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Midi Support for iPad.
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Intel Light Peak coming Soon.
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American playing hard ball with Orbitz.
Facebook and Locations Services.
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Flash kills Mac Battery Faster.
Netflix to the Rescue of Net Speeds?
Xmarks Rescue.
Windows Phone Seven App Dev Promising.
Patch Tuesday.
Delorme and Spot.
Soviet Image Editing in 1987.
Car Loans on Firefox more Expensive.
College eBooks.
Dish Networks hates Hulu.
Should Gov’t Officials speeches be public?
Google Blurring Homes in Germany.

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OTT, short for “over-the-top-television” is an up-and-coming acronym that we are all likely going to become familiar with in the near future, provided someone doesn’t come up with a different marketing name. The concept is simple – it’s TV that comes “over the top” of traditional channels on a cable system via the Internet delivered in digital packets. It can either be live streaming video, on-demand streaming video, or in the form of a pre-recorded on-demand podcast.

There are many aspects of over-the-top TV that have yet to be shaken out. Specifically, here in the early stages there are some still-murky areas when it comes to details of how advertising is going to work.

Things that we know about how OTT works successfully so far:

People are willing to pay for bundled on-demand professionally created OTT content in the form of Netflix on-demand streaming of movies, TV shows, and other content. The bundled Netflix price for all-you-can-eat on-demand streaming OTT offers the consumer a real value. In most cases, a great deal of marketing money and effort has been spent promoting the majority of individual movies and other content that are available on Netflix, so the consumer has a fairly high degree of familiarity with much of the on-demand streaming content they offer. These are essentially repurposed movies that are already on the shelf.

People are willing to watch on-demand streaming OTT of professionally-created content with embedded ads as demonstrated by the ongoing success of Hulu.Com. The consumer is likely already familiar with a portion of the content, but Hulu also allows the consumer to discover and explore previously unknown TV show content in an on-demand stream with embedded ads. These are essentially repurposed TV shows, some movies, and other content.

Live streaming OTT of live content is still catching on. The most successful live OTT content as typified by what Leo Laporte and company are generating still offers an on-demand podcast version that can be downloaded later. Currently, on-demand, after-the-fact podcast versions of live OTT generated content end up with many more downloads than people watching via live streams. Both live streaming OTT and the on-demand podcast versions can contain ads. For the ads to be effective in this format, they need to be relevant to the audience’s needs and desires. The old “shotgun” advertising approach does not work in this format. This specific type of content is closely associated with word-of-mouth promotion.

There are a few questions that remain to be answered. Will consumers pay for on-demand streaming of TV drama-type content they are unfamiliar with — in other words, will consumers pay to watch an on-demand stream of a new TV show drama, documentary or reality show? Using myself as a gage, I wouldn’t pay for individual on-demand episodes of a TV show or movie I wasn’t fairly familiar with. Promotion and word-of-mouth still has to take place.

If consumers will pay-per-view for an unfamiliar on-demand TV show, can the content still contain ads? I think the answer to this depends on the content and its perceived value – i.e., how well it is promoted, and the resulting perceived value that is generated in the potential consumer.

Once “Lost” was a hit TV show, would the fanatic fans have paid for on-demand streams of new episodes? Probably they would have, if they could have gotten them, say a week or so in advance of the actual broadcasts. “Lost” fans would have also put up with ads in the advance on-demand stream. They might have grumbled about it, but if that were the only way it was available in advance, many of them would have opened-up their wallets and paid the price monetarily and with their attention to the embedded ads in order to satisfy their “Lost” habit. Clearly, the producers of “Lost” – ahem – “lost out” on a time-sensitive revenue stream opportunity.

Bottom line, I believe it all revolves around the content and the real and perceived values that the content delivers.

I liked last season’s remake of the old “V” television series. If I could be assured the production values remained just as high, I might pay to subscribe in some manner. If the “V” series is picked up again by ABC next season, I would also pay to subscribe if I could get episodes via on-demand streaming before they were broadcast.

In the meantime, we are still dealing with the death-throws of the old broadcast model with its old appointment based viewing schedule combined with the old shotgun advertising approach. ABC broadcast TV affiliates would have had a cow if “Lost” episodes had been made available as a paid on-demand OTT stream before the episodes were actually broadcast via the network.

The final destination of OTT and when it ends up at that destination depends on what is right for the time. Both delivery infrastructure capabilities and consumer demand will make that determination.

When it rains it pours someone has opened up the flood gate and I have been inundated with request for proposals from companies wanting to do advertising deals. So I have been burning the midnight oil and will likely pull some 18 hour days over the weekend to get everything pushed out. One more show here in Texas before I head back to Honolulu.

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Show Notes:
Apple Plugs Security Issues
Patch Tuesday on the Way
Danish ISP Fight back
Shuttle off to ISS
Google Challenge IT Administrators
Comcast Changes TOS
Podcast Fresh
Urban Outside
Progress to ISS
Google Traffic
Google Phone Demo
Internet is a Copy Machine
Nokia N82 is King
Wizzard goes on AMEX
Telephone Mania
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anySIM
iPhone Safari Exploit
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Best World Travel Laptop
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Openid Grows
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Perian Rules
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Road Show is in Indiana this week. I am in Bloomington today home of the Hoosiers. Fast paced show tonight. Submit show articles to show email.

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Show Notes:
Why Yahoo Should Say Yes to Microsoft
Conversation Network Pay to Play?
How big is the Net Really?
IFPI Goes after Pirate Bay through ISP Blocking
The Federation goes after UK users of Pirate Bay
Hamburgh’s Tunnel
DownLoad a Yale Lecture
FBI wants your eyeball scan!
Vista SP1 Released to Manufacture
Website Grader
HYmini Power Monitor
Microsoft Surfaces destined for home usage
Cable Cuts Conspiracy
Hellotxt Update Multiple Sites Twitter Facebook etc
Two Billion Transistors
Regional Bidding Passes 4.7 Billion
Shuttle Scheduled for Thursday Launch
Pennmachine Blogging and Podcasting Monetization
AT&T Raises Broadband Prices
MetaX for Video MP4 Files
Beattles Song Transmitted in Space
Comcast Secret Number

Earlier in the month I talked with a Clearwire representative about getting one of there modems to see if the signal reached my home. As you all know I have been plagued with intermittent upload speed issues where I live.

The cable provider here in Hawaii is Time Warner serviced through Oceanic Cable, while I live on Oahu my home is on Historic Ford Island, with my home less then 200 feet from the Utah Memorial.

Having received the demo unit I decided tonight to do a comparison of 3 services. The real kicker is this though the Clearwire representative could not guarantee service in my current location as I was supposedly out of range. I think you will be surprised at how well Clearwire stacked up against my cable provider.

I knew my Spring EVDO would not really have a chance, but because I rely on it so heavily during the day, and considering that the Sprint service is only 3G here in Hawaii I think they did pretty good in this comparison. I think the Sprint folks will be pretty happy with the results.

All three test were done on the same machine with all programs accessing the net turned off. The test site was www.speakeasy.net/speedtest

First up Oceanic Cable Broadband Service by Time Warner Price $44.95

Second Clearwire in an area where service is not guaranteed Price $36.99

Third Sprint EVDO on a 3G Network with Full Bar Signal Strength Price $79.99

In my humble opinion if services like clearwire work on increasing their speed they have a chance of putting a real hurt on the local cable company. I will be signing up for the service just to have some more flexibility.

What would really be awesome is if I could buy push speeds that equaled download speeds.

Verizon Communications has doubled the speed of consumer DSL service is a dozen east coast states. If the market reacts well, the remaining states will receive the same faster DSL alternative. The additional bandwidth is a reaction to Comcast’s doubling the speed of its cable broadband service, earlier this year. The extra bandwidth will be a big hit with online gamers and professionals who work from home.

For about $40 a month, the new DSL bandwidth will be 3 Mbps, downstream, and 768 Kbps, upstream. For cost-conscious customers who only send and receive e-mail and surf occasionally, a half-speed option will be available for $30 a month.

Dave’s Opinion
Just over half of online Americans have broadband service at home: 63 million or 51 percent. There’s always a use for more bandwidth, even by those who don’t consider themselves technically sophisticated or have flexibility in their personal schedules. When it comes to network connectivity, faster is always better.

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References
Verizon

Metropolitan-wide broadband services may soon be coming from overhead. Sanswire Networks, LLC hopes to bring broadband to entire metropolitan areas via tiny airships. Atlanta, Georgia may be the first city to benefit from this interesting digital communication service, starting as early as next week.

Ground-based wireless equipment will coordinate signal dissemination using a Stratellite floating high over the city.The Stratellites are similar to satellites; however, the new devices are stationed in the stratosphere rather than being in space orbit.

According to Sanswire Networks, a Stratellite is a high-altitude airship that when in place in the stratosphere will provide a stationary platform for transmitting various types of wireless communications services currently transmitted from cell towers and satellites. It is not a balloon or a blimp. It is a high-altitude airship made of Spectra and powered by solar powered electrical engines, each Stratellite will reach its final altitude by utilizing a helium and nitrogen filled double envelope. Once in place at 65,000 feet each Stratellite will remain in one Global Positioning System (GPS) coordinate, providing the ideal wireless transmission platform. Each Stratellite has a payload capacity of several thousand pounds and clear line-of-site to approximately 300,000 square miles, an area roughly the size of Texas. However, the Company’s initial plan is to use one Stratellite for each major metropolitan area.

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References
Sanswire Networks, LLC

According to Nielsen/NetRatings, as of this summer almost 40 million U.S. Internet users connect via broadband at home. That’s almost 13 percent of all Americans. This number is up 49 percent, compared to only a year ago. Commensurately, dial-up users have declined.

While broadband use has seen a recent surge, there are still twice as many narrowband users, providing a significant near-term market for local and national dial-up service providers, although the handwriting may be on the wall, because last year the ratio was 3:1 in favor of narrowband usage.

Dave’s Opinion
I love my broadband connection. I don’t want to think what life would be like without it. I love going to the beach on vacation, but I sure don’t look forward to the comparatively slower dial-up connection I have while I’m there. Teaching class through a dial-up connection isn’t just time consuming, it’s painful.

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References
Nielsen/NetRatings
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