Cable and satellite TV companies are opposing any move by the FCC to redefine online video distributors as multichannel video programming distributors.
“In a public comment period that ends in the coming weeks, the commission is asking whether the rules of multichannel distributors — like the right to carry certain popular channels and the responsibility to carry some less popular ones — should apply to new online distributors like Hulu and YouTube,” reports The New York Times.
“If it decides that they should, then more companies could stream TV shows to computers and smartphones, hastening an industry-wide shift to the Internet,” adds the article.
A simple change to the definition of multichannel distributor could have far-reaching effects, including a change to the way companies acquire programming, a shift in bundling practices that could potentially alter the cable model significantly, holding online services to traditional rules of retransmission consent, and more.
“We’re barely into the second inning of how video distribution will ultimately work,” said Will Richmond, editor of VideoNuze. “Broadband delivery is leveling the playing field for new, deep-pocketed, over-the-top entrants to disrupt the traditional pay TV model.”
One of the legal complaints filed by broadcasters claiming that the Aereo video service represents unfair competition has been dismissed by a federal judge in Manhattan. However, the copyright infringement claim will be heard next week.
“Aereo, whose backers include media mogul Barry Diller, in March began streaming local broadcast TV signals over the Internet to New York residents for $12 a month,” reports the Wall Street Journal. “Major broadcasters sued to shut the service down, claiming copyright infringement and unfair competition.”
U.S. District Judge Alison Nathan, who ruled against the unfair competition claim, will hear arguments regarding broadcasters’ complaint that Aereo, which is not paying to license broadcast content, is doing so illegally.
“It’s disappointing. But we look forward to our day in court to prove that Aereo’s unauthorized streaming of our content constitutes copyright infringement,” said a Fox representative, a plaintiff in the lawsuit.
There’s been a decision in the Oracle v. Google trial. It’s been determined that Android does not infringe Oracle patents.
“Judge William Alsup of the U.S. District Court for Northern California exonerated the search giant following a trial that lasted three weeks, ruling that Google did not infringe on six claims in U.S. Patent RE38,104, along (with) two claims in U.S. Patent 6,061,520,” reports Engadget.
While the jury found that Android infringed copyrights with 37 Java APIs, a unanimous verdict was not reached in regards to whether it was covered under fair use. The jury also found that Google had infringed on one copyright count with the use of rangeCheck code. Judge Alsup is expected to rule on whether the SSO of the Java APIs can be copyrighted at all.
“Per the agreement that both teams struck last week, should Alsup find that the SSO is not covered under copyright law, Oracle will receive statutory damages from Google for the rangeCheck and test file usage, a maximum of $150,000 per infringement count,” reports The Verge in a related post. “Should he rule to the contrary, all three copyright infringement counts will be bundled together to be dealt with in a new trial or in an appeals court.”
Appeals are expected, based on the magnitude of the case. “Oracle presented overwhelming evidence at trial that Google knew it would fragment and damage Java. We plan to continue to defend and uphold Java’s core write once run anywhere principle and ensure it is protected for the nine million Java developers and the community that depend on Java compatibility,” according to Oracle’s statement following the verdict.
Google’s official statement: “Today’s jury verdict that Android does not infringe Oracle’s patents was a victory not just for Google but the entire Android ecosystem.”
Nvidia recently launched Kepler — the first GPU designed specifically for the cloud. Vendors such as HP, Dell, Cisco, and IBM will offer supporting products in the near future.
“The whole concept behind these servers is to serve up a desktop experience from the cloud,” reports Digital Trends. “Tremendously powerful new processors toiling away in the cloud could make it irrelevant what kind of screen you connect with, ushering in a new age of computing.”
“This means delivering games, applications, utilities, and media to any device that will run the client: iPads, iPods, Android tablets, smartphones, and even cars and smart TVs,” explains the article. “As this technology comes to market, it will increasingly not matter what you are using — you’ll be able to get your stuff on it as long as it is connected with decent bandwidth.”
The article cites demos from Nvidia’s recent GPU Technology Conference in San Jose that introduce some compelling ideas. Imagine if games, for example, were delivered like streamed movies and could go everywhere, regardless of platform.
“What if you could run Windows on a Mac, or an iPad, or anything that would host a tiny client?” asks Digital Trends, suggesting software could potentially be delivered like electricity. “If you like Apple hardware but hate the Apple platform, you can still run Windows. If you want to run Windows on your big smartphone or tablet in an emergency, you can do that, too.”
Lenovo claims that its upcoming ThinkPad models are thinner, lighter and moving toward the ultrabook category with features such as 3G wireless and Intel’s Ivy Bridge processors.
The China-based PC maker says its X1 Carbon Ultrabook, for example, will be among the world’s lightest 14-inch laptops (at three pounds).
The company is also highlighting its X230 ThinkPad that will hit shelves next month for $1,179. Weighing less than three pounds, the 12.5-inch X230 touts 24 hours of battery life and 4G/LTE mobile broadband access.
“If you’d rather have your X230 in tablet form, Lenovo has thought of that, too: The ThinkPad X230t has a rotating display that can be folded over to create an instant tablet. It is touchscreen enabled, comes with a stylus pen and also works with a ThinkPad laser mouse,” reports AllThingsD.
Lenovo’s new ThinkPad X, T, W, and L Series laptops include Intel processors, Dolby audio, and HD displays.
“The T430s is the ThinkPad line’s lightest 14-inch (non-ultrabook) laptop, while the T530 has a 15-inch full-HD display. But the most notable feature of these laptops is probably the addition of 4G/LTE broadband availability through Lenovo’s upcoming contract-free broadband service,” notes the article.
The laptops will be available in June, priced from $879 to $1,399.
Dolby has developed a way to improve the playback performance of soundtracks on Blu-ray discs. Using its TrueHD lossless audio technology, Dolby hopes to provide more of a surround-sound experience in home theaters.
“The company is incorporating Meridian-developed 96kHz upsampling technology into Dolby Media Producer, a post-production product that encodes Dolby TrueHD bitstreams for use on Blu-ray discs,” reports TWICE.
“The technology creates 96kHz Dolby TrueHD soundtracks from the 48kHz-PCM mixes that the movie industry creates for movie theaters, which use 48kHz playback equipment,” adds the article.
Dolby says authoring houses and sound-mixing facilities worldwide have upgraded to its Dolby TrueHD with advanced 96k upsampling in version 2 of the Dolby Media Producer Encoder.
Sony and Panasonic are reportedly in early talks to jointly develop and/or produce OLED TV sets, according to people familiar with the matter.
“The talks are still in the preliminary stages, and there is a chance that discussions might not reach a conclusion or that other potential partners might join the alliance,” reports the Wall Street Journal.
“OLED is considered a promising technology for next-generation television sets because it doesn’t require a backlight, making it thinner than existing liquid-crystal or plasma displays,” explains WSJ. “In the future, the technology is expected to enable curved or flexible screens.”
While OLED technology is making its way into the smaller screens of smartphones and tablets, it remains an expensive proposition for TV manufacturing.
“An alliance between Sony and Panasonic, the first of its kind between the two companies, would mark a watershed moment in the Japanese consumer-electronics industry as companies face difficult market conditions and shifting industry dynamics,” suggests the article.
Both Samsung and LG are planning to launch 55-inch OLED models this year, expected to be priced in the $8,000 range.
Netflix claims that approximately one-third of its new subscribers are actually former customers who are now returning to the service, after leaving last year in the wake of the price increases.
According to David Wells, Netflix’s chief financial officer, speaking at the J.P. Morgan Technology Media and Telecom conference: “…we’ve said before that the brand hit will take years to recover from and I think that’s still true, with the bulk of the recovery coming in the full year and I think we still feel that way.”
The company is approaching the first anniversary of its price increases, which were initially met with public and media criticism.
“In addition, Wells said Netflix is merchandising better and aiming to burn off ‘the negative PR swirl around the brand,'” reports CNET. “Wells added that he expects the public relations hit will ‘dissipate over time.'”
“Netflix compares the address and credit card data to match up new customers with former subscribers,” explains the post. “Netflix keeps old customer data for about a year.”
Wired reports that we’ll finally see some flexible displays produced this year, but warns we should curb our enthusiasm since production will be limited, early displays will not be as “bendy” as the technology aspires to be, and “they won’t appear in Apple hardware as some news outlets have recently speculated.”
Samsung, for example, has announced it will mass produce flexible OLED displays and has already been receiving orders. Samsung’s display is thin but rugged, and is basically unbreakable since it uses a plastic called polyamide rather than glass.
The article suggests we should expect to see gently curved screens in the future and bendable phones or tablets enabled by the technology. “But that’s probably not on the horizon — especially Apple’s horizon — anytime soon,” comments Wired.
“It’s completely impossible to see any Apple product with flexible AMOLED this year,” suggests Jennifer Colegrove, NPD DisplaySearch’s vice president of emerging display technology. “However, I do believe Apple display engineers are constantly looking into new technology to put into their products, and OLED is one of the technologies they are looking at.”
Apple is more concerned about functionality than making something curvy for the sake of being interesting. Colgrove doesn’t anticipate a flexible display in Apple products until at least the 2013-2014 time frame, “with truly bendy iDevices appearing in 2015 at the earliest,” indicates the article.
Disney Interactive Labs has introduced a new video portal that features clips, trailers and curated YouTube content for viewing online or via mobile devices.
“The new Disney Video site, located at video.disney.com, combines the best of Disney past and present, with a whole lot of content that might not be found anywhere else,” reports TechCrunch.
Last year Disney and YouTube made a deal to cross-promote content, and the YouTube section of the new Disney site is one offshoot of this deal. Disney will host some YouTube content on the new portal while YouTube will receive some Disney original kids programming.
The portal is organized by sections: “In the movies section, Disney Video features trailers, as well as behind-the-scenes footage and interviews with stars of upcoming and recent feature films like ‘Frankenweenie’ and ‘The Avengers.’ Its shows page puts the spotlight on popular clips from the Disney Channel and related cable networks. Collections organizes its video library into themes, like Disney Fairies, for instance, or content available from Disney Theme Parks,” explains the post.
Disney’s video content is formatted to work both on Web browsers (via Flash) and on mobile devices including iPhone, iPad, and Android devices. The company hopes this will help increase traffic as younger consumers continue to use more mobile devices.
Apple still doesn’t pay for product placement in entertainment media, yet its products appeared in more than 40 percent of last year’s top movies.
According to Brandchannel, that percentage represents almost twice the penetration of Dell, Chevrolet, and Ford — the brands most commonly used in Hollywood content.
“Apple has spent decades strengthening its subtle but powerful grip over Hollywood, and unlike many companies, says it never pays for its products to appear on television or in movies,” reports Businessweek. “The company’s gadgets were discussed or shown 891 times on TV in 2011, up from 613 in 2009, according to researcher Nielsen.”
Dominance in this arena comes at a transitional period for traditional marketing as consumers increasingly skip ads via their DVRs and are influenced more by social media.
Apple has proven successful in media content where devices are treated as objects of devotion or a certain hipness factor is required. “Producers and executives may make plot changes or write entire episodes merely because they love a brand or in exchange for freebies,” explains the article.
“Apple won’t pay to have their products featured, but they are more than willing to hand out an endless amount of computers, iPads, and iPhones,” says producer Gavin Polone. “It’s kind of a graft situation.”
Despite availability of pirated versions online, “The Avengers” had a record-breaking opening weekend at the U.S. box office.
About a week before the premiere, a camcorder version of the film appeared online. According to TorrentFreak, the pirated version was downloaded half a million times, and while that may be a high number for a “cam” movie, “it failed to exceed the download numbers of several other movies that were available in higher quality.”
The film, produced by Marvel and distributed by Disney, earned $200 million its opening weekend. With 20 percent of illegal downloads occurring in the U.S., TorrentFreak argues that if those same 100,000 Americans opted for a theater experience, the resulting box office revenue would only have been 0.5 percent higher (and there’s no way to determine whether or not the pirated version kept any of those viewers out of theaters).
“We don’t think that there are many movie fans who see a low quality camcorded version of a movie as a true alternative to watching a film in a movie theater,” comments TorrentFreak. “The two are totally different experiences, and not direct competition at all.”
“If anything, downloading a camcorded movie could be compared to downloading a low quality bootleg of a concert. People who download these are collectors, passionate fans, or just curious. But in no way do these bootlegs seriously hurt concert attendances,” adds the article.
TorrentFreak agrees that higher quality pirated copies may directly compete with international theatrical releases, DVD-aftermarket and VOD sales, but suggests that “in no way are camcorded copies killing the U.S. movie industry.”
Facebook launches its long-awaited initial public offering today, expected to be the biggest IPO for a U.S. tech firm.
Today’s offering will also mark history’s second largest for any industry: Visa’s 2008 IPO was $17.9 billion at $44 a share.
“While Facebook announced on Thursday that its initial public offering of common stock would be priced at $38 a share, raising $16 billion and valuing the company at $104 billion, the shares available for purchase by the public will likely be priced higher,” reports ABC News. “That’s causing many analysts to caution individual investors not to rush into making any risky investments.”
Some analysts suggest that there are long-term risks in a Facebook investment. Despite its immense user base, the social network will still have to find ways of matching revenue with stock valuation.
There are concerns that going public could potentially ruin Facebook by alienating its user base with changes to its advertising model, especially in the mobile space.
Analysts have also issued warnings to individual investors that institutions and “prestige clients” have already invested in what is viewed as sort of an elite lottery system.
“The elite have a chance to deliberate and evaluate the assets, and then the general public comes in later for the feeding frenzy,” said stock analyst Max Wolff, adding that chasing shares in the open market can be an expensive proposition.
In the wake of Facebook’s acquisition of photo-sharing service Instagram, the social network hired the seven-member team that runs competitor Lightbox on Tuesday.
The Lightbox mobile photo-sharing service plans to shut down as of June 15.
Co-founders Thai Tran and Nilesh Patel posted a farewell to their user community: “We started Lightbox because we were excited about creating new services built primarily for mobile, especially for the Android and HTML5 platforms, and we’re honored that millions of you have downloaded the Lightbox Photos app and shared your experiences with the Lightbox community.”
“Today, we’re happy to announce that the Lightbox team is joining Facebook, where we’ll have the opportunity to build amazing products for Facebook’s 500+ million mobile users,” added Tran and Patel.
The seven-member staff of London-based Lightbox will join Facebook, but the deal is not an acquisition of the company or its user data. “So it’s obviously another step toward figuring out mobile for Facebook,” reports AllThingsD. “The company realizes it needs mobile talent; Facebook acquired mobile discovery start-up Glancee last week, and of course bought Instagram last month for a whopping $1 billion.”
Lightbox has “promised to open source portions of the Lightbox code and post them in a Github repository” reports WebProNews. This will allow for the possibility of a Lightbox clone in the future.
Lilliputian Systems is developing a portable USB fuel cell capable of charging smartphones and other devices without the need for an electrical outlet.
The charger uses fuel cartridges about the size of a box of matches that are expected to cost between $3 to $5 each.
The device, targeted for release before the end of the year, will be in the $100-200 range. According to Lilliputian Systems, the device will be allowed as carry-on for air travel.
“Each fuel cell will be able to charge an iPhone 4 approximately 10 to 14 times over the life of the cartridge,” reports Digital Trends. “This device could be ideal for travelers heading overseas on short vacations as they could avoid having to purchase charging adapters. It would also be helpful for anyone using a power hungry portable gaming device like the PlayStation Vita.”
Cable and satellite TV companies are opposing any move by the FCC to redefine online video distributors as multichannel video programming distributors.
