The Broadband Revolution of the last 15 years was supposed to forever change our media consumption habits. The arrival of mobile or portable form-factors that facilitate viewing video was going to cement that. Broadband has penetrated more than half the population (54 percent of the population has an active mobile broadband subscription in the US, [...]
Archive of posts filed under the TV category.
Will Comcast be able to stop Online Movie downloading in its tracks
Amazon has the Amazon Unbox on Tivo service, and both Netflix and Apple recently announced online movie rental services, and eventually you will be able to see Joost and Babelgum programs on TV. All this point to a market crowded with new ways to get movies fast and cheap over the Internet Naturally, the incumbents [...]
Comcast to set blazing Internet speeds, but is it a double-edged sword?
Comcast in 2008 will offer High Speed Internet with speeds as fast as 160 megabits per second, which is a massive increase from its current maximum of 16 mbps. This is in many ways in response to competition from local telco’s such as AT&T and Verizon that are provide high speed Internet access over fiber [...]
FCC bans Exclusive Contracts for Cable TV
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) recently voted to ban exclusive contracts between cable TV providers and the owners of apartment buildings, condominiums and planned subdivisions. This is a good move by the FCC (see Ushering a New Era of Consumer Choice in Set-Top Boxes for another cabled related good move by the FCC), which is [...]
NewCo finally gets a crappy name
NewCo, the online video collaboration between NBC Universal and News Corporation that had no name, has finally got a name! and it’s hulu. The naming convention appears to be taking a page from the Internet company tradition of creating meaningless but cute-sounding company names. I don’t think the name has much ‘bang’ or ‘pizzazz’. Frankly, [...]
Crown Castle tunes out of Modeo mobile TV
Crown Castle International, the Tower operator is dumping its multimedia mobile TV service called Modeo that is based on the DVB-H standard that it tested successfully in New York City earlier this year. Crown Castle is now going to lease the U.S. nationwide 1670-1675 MHz spectrum it used for Modeo to Telcom Ventures, LLC and [...]
Tivo brings Amazon.com Internet movies to a TV near you
TiVo announces its customers can now rent or buy movies right from the TiVo box or from Amazon.com and view them on a TV, without requiring a computer. when this service was first announced in February, it required users to select the video on a PC. The “Amazon Unbox on TiVo” service is for customers [...]
Is there a future for Current.tv?
Current.tv, the TV network founded by Al Gore, is the first 24-hour TV network to put user generated videos on TV Channels. These videos, which Current.tv calls VC2 (Viewer-Created Content), are short programs of 3 to 7 minutes called “pods”. About 30% of Current.tv are VC2 pods. Here’s how it works: users upload pods to [...]
Ushering a New Era of Consumer Choice in Set-Top Boxes
Today, July 1, marks the day the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has mandated that set-top boxes are separated from the security mechanisms that determines which channels are descrambled. The security comes in the form of a CableCard that is inserted into the set-top box. Rather than cable TV providers renting you a set-top for [...]
TV Advertising will grow, but who will eat the cake?
According to the USA Today, a recent report published by PWC is forecasting that traditional TV advertising sales will grow 4.5% a year to $46.3 billion in 2011. When you consider product placement revenue and fees that cable, satellite and phone services pay to carry a channel, network TV revenues could grow of 6.5% a [...]
