Francie Bauer from Dish Network describes Dish Network devices that are enabled via Sling technology to allow consumers to watch their programming content from anywhere in the world via the Internet on computers and other mobile devices.
Interview by Todd Cochrane of Geek News Central.
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Tags: ces, Dish network, everywhere, Francie Bauer, Laptop, Media, Mobile, Sling, streaming, TV
Posted in ces, Dish Network, Info, internet, Interview, smartphone, Special Media, Streaming, TV
Today I received the new Netgear NeoTV which launched recently. This is the latest in Netgear’s living room strategy of products to allow users to view their picture and video, stored on any PC on the network, through their TV, and also listen to music fro any PC through their A/V receiver. This box holds a lot of potential from what I have read in the press releases, so it’s exciting to see if it lives up to the hype. While I will be spending several days putting the device through its paces and seeing what it can and can’t do I wanted to post some early photos of the unboxing so that you can see what is included. Enjoy the pics posted below.
Moovida launched a very cool media player at CES 2011, it essentially is a very intuitive menu interface that can work on your Mac or PC it catalogs the content you already have on your computer and allows you to find that content quickly. Designed for folks that have big libraries of content.
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I have decided to post the presentation I made at Blogworld to my entire audience. I hope you find it educational and gives you some back ground on why I am so excited about the over the top TV space.
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In the world of blogging, podcasting and social networking, much has been said about the so-called “long tail.” The concept of the “long tail” revolves around the idea that available content living on the Internet gets a lot of extra audience over a long period of time, as opposed to traditional print and broadcast content which has a much more limited lifespan.
As services such as Netflix gain popularity, yet another form of content is experiencing the benefits of the long tail – movies and TV shows that are available for long-term streaming. An excellent example of how the “long tail” benefits movies in particular are obscure documentaries that in the old pre-streaming days would have a limited initial audience and then end up on a shelf somewhere or be sold in consumer video release one at a time.
Now more obscure movies and TV shows that had a limited lifespan and limited impact are able to take a new lease-on life that used to simply not exist.
I am particularly enjoying streaming documentaries on Netflix. There are some real gems out there. One documentary I really enjoyed in particular that I’d never heard of before I found it on Netflix is called “Cowboy Del Amor.” It’s about a Texas matchmaker who specializes in matching up American men with Mexican women. If you haven’t seen this gem, I highly recommend it. “Cowboy Del Amor” is but one example of movies that have a very limited promotion budgets and therefore are unable to make much of a publicity splash when they are released, yet they can be absolutely fantastic movies to not only watch yourself but to share later with friends and family.
I dropped my Dish Network account in July 2010 and have not looked back. Streaming videos via services such as Netflix forces me to take a much more active role in selecting something good to watch. Having literally tens of thousands of movies and videos available for instant streaming on demand is a far superior way to find and consume commercial content.
Andrew Marr, formerly the BBC’s Political Editor, has written a series of articles on the changing face of news and journalism in an era of technological change.
In the first, End of the News Romantics, he comments how he always thought he’d be a true newspaper and newscast kind of guy but in fact he’s embracing the new technology of tablets and phones. He says, “A few years ago, I was shaking my head and saying I thought I’d had the best of times for journalism, and wouldn’t want my children to join the trade. No longer. I’d like to be 20 and starting out again right now.”
In the second, A New Journalism on the Horizon, he talks in a little bit more detail about the media revolution, where he discusses the future of journalism in the age of new media. He starts out from the recent revelations that (a) the estimated readership of the The Times Online has dropped by 90% since the introduction of the paywall and (b) e-books are outstripping hardbacks on Amazon, and how these facts seem to be contra-indications.
He puts forwards two points, the first being that the notion of not paying for news seems to be somewhat strange. People pay for DVDs, magazines, TV channels, mobile apps, e-books, so why not news? Although he’d be happy to pay, he wants to be able to pick and choose – politics but not fashion, business but not crime – so he feels the proposition will need to be refined.
The second point is that there will undoubtedly be consolidation in the market for general news or the news of the day. But he believes that underneath this will be specialist news organisations that deal in particular sectors of the market, such as automotive, enviromental, foreign countries. This will be where the real knowledge and understanding will be.
As ever, it’s hard to gaze into the crystal ball and predict the future. From my previous posts, you’ll know that I think we have to start paying for news if we want quality journalism to continue. As to the second point, of specialised news organisations, I think he’s right. Imagine CNN or the BBC no longer having a technology correspondent and outsourcing that to Engadget or Gizmodo. Or business news provided by the Economist. It’s not a hard stretch of the imagination to see that coming.
What do you think? Will the news organisations of today simply become aggregators?
The Performing Rights Society (PRS), the approximate equivalent of the US’s RIAA, recently published a paper outlining a proposed approach to the compensation of rights holders based on the level of unlicensed material passing through an ISP.
The paper, snappily titled Moving Digital Britain Forward Without Leaving Creative Britain Behind, was written by Will Page, Chief Economist, PRS for Music and David Touve, Assistant Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship at Washington & Lee University.
(I’m actually not sure that I can tell you about it, because if you follow the links from the press release, it says in bold letters, “It is provided for the information of the intended recipient only and should not be reproduced or disclosed to any other person without the consent of the PRS for Music PR department. So if it was mentioned in a publicly available RSS feed, does that make me an intended recepient or not?)
Moving on, the paper proposes the following argument, and I paraphrase, because there is unlicensed media, the level of unlicensed media within an ISPs network should be measured and remedial action taken.
The paper offers three possibilities for the “remedial action taken” against the ISP.
All of this is against the ISP rather than the individual user of the unlicensed media. Presumably they’ve given up going after the end user because it’s clear to everyone that there’s just too much filesharing going on and it’s going to be easier to go after the ISPs to get money.
However, to be fair, the last two pages of the paper discuss the pros and cons of the three options, none of which are perfect. One paragraph points out, “We want to make it clear that neither of the above-mentioned options could be considered without accepting that some sort of market failure has occurred and that in consequence some form of regulation is required, and that regulation should seek to put incentives and structures in place so that a market-based solution to the value of media on networks can evolve.”
I’m in a bit of a dilemma over this. On one hand, part of me has sympathy with the rights holders and believe that they should be compensated fairly (we’ll leave the arguments of whether the PRS and RIAA actually work for the rights holders out of this for now) but the other part of me, says that the success of digital music stores, such as iTunes and Amazon MP3, shows that if you offer fairly priced music and a slick user experience, then people will pay willingly.
Again, I would like to think that mature language and reasoned approach are about the music industry becoming a bit more grown-up and finding fair solutions, but actually it’s just fancy words about getting the ISPs to pay up one way or another. Those of us who don’t engage in illegal file sharing will simply end up paying for those that do.
Is this the way forwards? What do you think?
Obviously the name is a play on “radio”, but, they say they pronounce it “ar-dee-oh”. What I am talking about is the new service Rdio, which is in private beta right now.
My attempts to get into the beta program, so far, have failed, but I will tell you what I have been able to learn from “other sources”.
First, what is Rdio? In their words:
“Your music. Everywhere. Unlimited access to music from your computer and mobile phone, even when you’re offline.”
The first question is, what exactly does that mean? Well, it scans your current music library (either iTunes or Windows Media Player) and then builds your online database (from their source files). At that point your entire music library becomes available online from wherever you are, including your mobile phone, although, per their web site, it’s only iPhone and Blackberry at this point. But, it seems, Android was just added, although it’s not listed on on the Rdio site yet.
In addition, you can add any song or album on Rdio’s site to your playlist.
They have licenses in place with most major labels already, so there’s no problem getting the majority of most music collections. You may only miss a few indie bands.
The second question I had was about the “offline” part. And, how this works, is something I have not been able to confirm. But, I’ve heard reports that it actually does work.
The other big feature here, in addition to the music itself, is the social part. When you sign up you can follow other people. The site can even search your Twitter and Facebook lists and find people you follow there and add them to your Rdio friends list. You can then listen to your friends playlists as well as creating your own playlists to share.
Like I said, I haven’t used it yet, but it sounds good. It won’t replace Pandora, but it’s not out to do that. It’s a different kind of service. I am not sold on the social part. After all, I haven’t listened to any friends’ stations in Pandora since Facebook helpfully added them without my permission. But I am also not horrified by my musical tastes being shared, and in the long run, the service, as a whole, sounds like a glimpse into the future of where music is headed.
I was listening to a podcast where the hosts were chatting back and forth about the newly offered Hulu Plus, where for $10 dollars a month, you can get Hulu on a wide variety of devices including smart phones and over-the-top Internet TV boxes. Hulu is also offering a somewhat wider, but still incomplete back catalog archive of shows. One of the hosts was saying he wouldn’t pay for content, he wanted it “for free.”
Whether we realize it or not, we are all paying for content, either directly or indirectly. Even if we have only a TV antenna and watch only the local TV channels, we are still paying for content indirectly via advertising. When we buy consumer products of virtually any kind, part of what we pay goes for advertising, which pays for content creation.
If we are paying indirectly only, someone else is deciding for us as to the quality of the programming content. We can either consume that content or not, but we still pay as consumers buying products. We have very little indirect control over what gets put on the air. On the other hand, if we pay for content directly, then we have far greater control over the quality of the media we are consuming.
If Hulu can offer value for the money, then it will succeed What they have to do is figure out what people are willing to pay for. Perhaps that value revolves around putting highly-sought-after content on as many devices as possible. Perhaps it revolves around coming up with the absolute best back catalog of old TV shows. Imagine having instant streaming access to every TV show ever produced in every country in any language, and every movie ever produced anywhere in any language. Something like that would be well worth paying for. Imagine a site such as IMDB.Com that lists every movie and TV show ever made, except as a subscriber you could instantly stream it – now you’re talking. Hulu, anyone else out there – are you listening?
I personally would be willing to pay for a service such as Hulu, except for one small glitch. There are no back catalog shows on the site at the moment that really excite me. Network drama shows can sometimes be quite good, but my tastes are somewhat different.
When I had Dish Network, I was watching a few selected shows on only 3 channels – Discovery, TLC and History. I can get most of these shows if I really want them at some point via Netflix. To my way of thinking, Netflix is a much better value. Netflix has a far wider variety of content, plus they also offer the handy rental service of DVD’s and Blu-ray discs.
The verdict is currently out whether Hulu will be able to figure out what value it needs to best serve its customers. If people are paying Hulu money directly, then Hulu had better quickly figure out exactly what those customers want and do its best to deliver it to them.
Hey Hulu, here’s an idea to try. Offer first-run streaming movies, but do it the Hulu way. I would be willing to pay for a first run movie streaming for a nominal pay-per-view fee, say $5.99. Vudu is offering streaming first run movies, but you have to have a big fat Internet connection to be able to use Vudu. The Vudu service demands way more bandwidth than my Internet service can currently deliver.
Here’s yet another idea for Hulu – offer exclusive, Hulu-only content consisting of well-produced material revolving around the “Entertainment Tonight” type of concept. Do exclusive interviews of movie and TV stars. Do exclusive interviews of directors. Give people real value for their money. Make your customers want to not only see you succeed, but motivate them to help you succeed.
For those still looking for a set-top box, the Popbox is now slated for release on July 23rd. This is another promising release, coming on the heels of Roku, but well ahead of Boxee.
In terms of partners, it may be a little light. While pulling in some new and interesting ones, there are a few old faithfuls still missing (like Netflix). But, that and others, are promised later.
So, what is included at launch? Here’s a list:
That’s a long list, but it also contains only a few things that most of us have heard of. As I said, Netflix is missing. That’s a BIG one. Not to mention Hulu, who is now making these sorts of partnerships. Others, such as networks like Comedy Central and online content like Crackle are noticeably absent. As well as music sites like Pandora and Slacker.
The good news is that it’s upgradable. The bad news is the obviously meager partners available at launch.
For the $129.99 asking price on Amazon, it’s not a bad deal, but I also don’t think it’s a deal worth grabbing just yet. This one is a wait and see.
