According to sources close to the matter, “Apple is in talks with some of the biggest U.S. cable operators about letting consumers use an Apple device as a set-top box for live television and other content,” reports the Wall Street Journal.
As of yet, it doesn’t appear that Apple has made any deals, perhaps a sign of cable operators’ overall reluctance to allow Apple a solid foothold within the TV business.
According to WSJ, this move could indicate a shift in Apple’s approach to TV: “The talks illustrate that Apple is seeking a less radical path to expand in television than it has contemplated in the past, namely teaming up with existing service providers rather than licensing content to compete with them directly.”
As of now, Apple sell its $99 Apple TV, a box that allows for some Internet streaming onto TV sets, but not for live channels through cable operators. According to sources, this most recently discussed technology “could ultimately be embedded in a television.”
“For cable operators, the advantage of a deal with Apple is that it could allow them to reduce the money they spend buying set-top boxes, which are leased to customers for a monthly fee. It could also help them hang on to customers who can watch video through a growing array of Internet alternatives, as both traditional TV and Web video would be available through the same device,” suggests WSJ.
Businessweek spoke with Comcast CEO Brian Roberts about his company’s 2011 purchase of NBCUniversal and its future in an evolving business.
Speaking on the benefits of subscribing to Comcast rather than depending on a Netflix-type service, Roberts said: “We provide a breadth of live and catch-up content — what we define as this season’s content, none of which is available in the Netflix rerun world.”
“So from broadcast television to sports to news to the Grammys, the Olympics, this season’s episodes of ‘The Voice’ — all of those pieces of content and thousands of hours per month are not available on Netflix,” he notes. “So with all the press about cord-cutting, facts would say that [Netflix] has really been more additive. There are more multichannel video subscribers today than there were a year ago.”
Roberts believes “television will change more in the next five years than in the last 50. This will be really great for consumers,” he predicts, adding that “people want more control, more choice, and more personalization.”
He spoke on the $6 billion cost for the Olympics — and the $4 billion Comcast is expected to spend through 2020: “We paid a 1 percent increase over the prior Olympics for a decade of content and also received all media and technology rights to the Olympics for the next 10 years in the U.S. This means we have the rights to put Olympic content on all devices in and out of the home and even on devices that haven’t yet been invented.”
Roberts heralds Comcast for being ahead of the curve. “We were the first cable company or phone company to go all digital, and most of our customers now are digital… In each of the last seven quarters, we’ve added more new broadband subscribers than the previous quarter. So the pace of change at our company is accelerating, and there has never been a more exciting time to work here.”
Broadcast networks are now battling two streaming TV start-ups that transmit their content without permission.
“Alki David, the provocative media entrepreneur who recently launched an Aereo-like streaming TV service called BarryDriller.com, may have unintentionally just done broadcasters a huge favor in their fight to stop both online video services,” reports Adweek.
“That’s because instead of solely banking on a favorable legal outcome against Aereo in New York, broadcasters now have a second suit in a different jurisdiction,” explains the post.
This could potentially provide two routes for appeal to the Supreme Court if either lower court decides against them.
ABC, CBS and NBC have joined the FOX lawsuit against BarryDriller.com in a federal court in California. The networks are already seeking to stop the Barry Diller-backed Aereo service in a New York federal court.
“The problem the networks had in New York, they were trying to swim upstream to get away from the Cablevision decision,” notes David Wittenstein, partner and head of the communications practice for Dow Lohnes. “If you’re the networks, you go to another court in another part of the country. You start with a clean slate.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if the Supreme Court overturned the underpinnings of Cablevision,” comments Mary Rasenberger, partner with Cowan, DeBaets, Abrahams & Sheppard. “The Supreme Court has a more holistic view of copyright than the lower courts do.”
In a 2-1 ruling by the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, it was ruled that law enforcement “has the right to obtain location data from a cellphone in order to track a suspect without a warrant,” reports Ars Technica.
In the case, an accused drug trafficker named Melvin Skinner claimed that the government’s use of GPS location information retrieved from his phone was a “warrantless search in violation of the Fourth Amendment.”
“There is no Fourth Amendment violation because Skinner did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the data given off by his voluntarily procured pay-as-you-go cell phone,” wrote Judge John Rogers. “If a tool used to transport contraband gives off a signal that can be tracked for location, certainly the police can track the signal.”
Judge Rogers referenced the 2012 Jones v. United States case, in which it was decided by the Supreme Court that law enforcement could not warrantlessly place GPS tracking devices on a suspect’s vehicle. He made the distinction that in this case, “no such physical intrusion occurred.”
“Here, the monitoring of the location of the contraband-carrying vehicle as it crossed the country is no more of a comprehensively invasive search than if instead the car was identified in Arizona and then tracked visually and the search handed off from one local authority to another as the vehicles progressed,” Rogers wrote.
U.S. District Judge William Pauley III has ruled that law enforcement officials can access a suspect’s Facebook profile without a warrant if they do so with a friend’s permission.
“The decision, which is part of a New York City racketeering trial, comes as courts struggle to define privacy and civil liberties in the age of social media,” reports GigaOM. “Judge Pauley’s ruling is significant because it is the latest in a series of cases that defines how and when police can search social media.”
During the New York investigation, police used an informant’s Facebook account to access suspected gangster Melvin Colon’s Facebook account. After reading threatening messages, the police obtained a warrant to access the rest of his information.
The judge ruled that actions by the police do not violate the Fourth Amendment because Colon made his information known to friends on Facebook.
“Colon’s legitimate expectation of privacy ended when he disseminated posts to his ‘friends’ because those ‘friends’ were free to use the information however they wanted — including sharing it with the Government,” explained Judge Pauley in the Bronx case.
The judge likened the methods to when police legally listen to a phone call as long as one of the parties agrees to allow the tapping to occur.
A group of technologists, lawyers and other interested parties have come together to do what most people don’t want to: read those horribly long terms-of-service contracts to which most simply click “agree.”
Called ToS;DR for “Terms of Service; Didn’t Read,” the project creates grades — from “Class A” (the best) to “Class E” (the worst) — based on peer-reviewed summaries, enabling consumers to make more educated clicks.
“For example, if you’re uploading photos to TwitPic, you might want to reconsider,” explains The Atlantic. “They give the site their worst grade, a ‘Class E.’ Why? Well, they have an easy-to-understand summary… If you click on ‘Read the Details,’ you get an extended explanation of these warnings and can also link back (almost like a Wikipedia page) to the ToS;DR discussion that led to the thumbs-down.”
The Atlantic post includes a screen shot which shows simple bullet explanations for Twitpic’s grade, like “Twitpic takes credit for your content,” and “Deleted images are not really deleted.”
“‘I have read and agree to the Terms’ is the biggest lie on the Web,” according to the ToS;DR site. “We aim to fix that.”
“The project hatched about a year ago at the annual Chaos Communication Camp event in Berlin as an outgrowth of the Unhosted project, which is a system for building Web apps that leave users in control of their data,” notes TechCrunch in a related post.
The ratings are based on German energy efficiency ratings for appliances, according to TechCrunch, which reports the site plans to officially launch later this month.
A new online survey from The NPD Group, “Kids and Consumer Electronics: 2012 Edition,” shows that kids are now starting to reach for tablets much more than before, challenging the long-standing popularity of gaming consoles.
“Video game console usage rates for children ages 4-14 are still higher than tablets, but this past year saw a strong increase in tablet usage among that age group: with a 13 percent increase in usage rate in 2012 vs. only 3 percent in 2011,” Mashable reports.
“Kids are using tablets to game, watch movies and TV shows, read books and listen to music — even occasionally for taking pictures — so they have embraced the utility of these devices quite rapidly,” according to Russ Crupnick of The NPD Group.
“Older kids also use the tablets for social media and communication, which squarely places these devices at the center for discovery and evangelism of new services and applications, as well as for brands and entertainment of all sorts,” notes Crupnick.
The study recommends that tablet makers start developing new tablets targeted specifically for children.
As for marketing, “…gaming systems and portable entertainment devices topped the list of devices over which children will have the most influence on future device selection,” explains the post. “And when considering a new purchase, ‘the type of technology and features offered by a new device is nearly as important as low price and good value,’ the survey noted.”
While social networks create traffic for ecommerce sites, they aren’t as successful in driving actual sales and revenue as traditional search and email, according to a report from online marketing provider Montate.
“Email was the leader in conversions to sales in the second quarter of this year, with 4.25 percent, ahead of search at 2.49 percent and social at 0.59 percent. When you look at average order value, search comes out on top with $90.40, followed by email $82.72 with social trailing with $64.19,” reports GigaOM per Monetate’s findings.
Facebook, Twitter and other networks are useful for building customer relationships and promoting conversations around products. However, because most people aren’t necessarily looking to shop while they use social media, they won’t follow through with a purchase.
Around 73 percent of Facebook users will view one product detail page, but 45 percent will leave after one page. For those coming from Google searches, just 56 percent will view a detail page, but 26 percent leave after the first page.
“It doesn’t mean investing in social media isn’t worth it,” notes GigaOM. “Social can still drive a lot of new commerce that might not have come through other channels. And for some retailers who integrate social well, there’s still a lot of upside… But retailers should be aware of the current limitations of social in driving revenue.”
With 488 million users accessing Facebook on mobile devices, and with mobile ad click-through rates 14 times higher than desktop ads, the social network has potential in the mobile sphere. But it will need to revise its Wi-Fi strategy to stay relevant.
Moolah Media conducted a study across thousands of campaigns, finding ads served to users over Wi-Fi performed significantly worse than those delivered over wireless networks.
As Wi-Fi is expected to represent 51 percent of all Web traffic by 2016, this presents a problem for Facebook.
“A mobile user’s carrier reveals a lot about who they are and how they might interact with an ad — information that’s essential for an ad to reach its target audience and to ultimately be profitable,” AllThingsD explains.
“Wi-Fi is a growing barrier to the success of mobile ads,” suggest the article. “And Wi-Fi isn’t the only issue: third-party browsers also hide the device type, and since they use proxy IPs, they often conceal the country location of the user as well — which makes it impossible to accurately target relevant ads, and results in massive losses for mobile advertisers.”
Even so, Facebook has the ability to combat this issue with its expansive data voluntarily provided by users. “And in addition to information explicitly provided on Facebook, the social network recently announced that it will be looking at how mobile users interact with other apps in order to deliver ads more efficiently,” the article notes.
“Facebook has the power to create targeted market segments, ones that are significantly more focused than just carrier name. And the now-public social network also has the resources to focus on post-click actions and backend quality — the unseen aspects of mobile advertising that truly matter to advertisers and can generate real profits,” AllThingsD concludes.
In 2011, mobile and digital content accounted for 36 percent of the 11.3 billion euros spent on games in Europe, reports media analyst firm IHS Screen Digest. That number is expected to hit 44 percent this year and rise to over half of all shares by 2016.
For traditional game distributors, this growth begs the question of how games like “Call of Duty” can stand up to popular Zynga titles on Facebook.
At Europe’s biggest gaming fair, Gamescom, the traditional makers are considering the free-to-play model. Heralded by mobile developers, the model allows customers to try out games before putting money down while also allowing developers to test what gamers do and do not like before building out the whole game.
“We like this new model,” says Frank Gibeau of Electronic Arts. “It’s a lot more like a life operation that you continuously build. It’s a lot more like a service.”
“Although the gaming industry is usually fairly resilient in economic downturns, the free-to-play and online segment is actually helping it grow through the tough times,” Reuters adds.
However, there were two notable absences from the gaming fair. Of the top three console makers, only Sony — the maker of the PlayStation — has been present at Gamescom. “Microsoft and Nintendo, makers of the Xbox and Wii consoles, respectively, have decided to showcase their products later this year,” the article states.
Mobile gaming presents an extra challenge to console makers beyond just competitive, affordable games. “At the moment, it’s not only what you play that is important, but also where you play,” notes Jim Ryan, chief executive at Sony Computer Entertainment Europe.
Sony Computer Entertainment has announced that its PlayStation Mobile cross-platform gaming service will launch this fall, available on PlayStation Vita and Sony’s Xperia mobile devices.
“Previously branded the PlayStation Suite, it will provide a platform for third-party software developers and publishers to create new content like games for portable devices,” reports Reuters.
The new service will initially be made available in nine countries including Japan, Canada and the United States.
The Sony unit also says that Asustek Computer and Wikipad will participate in the PlayStation Certified licensing program, so users of mobile devices from those companies can access PlayStation Mobile content.
“Makers of iOS and Android devices depend on content to boost hardware sales and a community of developers to generate application software content,” explains the post. “Sony did not fully elaborate on its PlayStation Mobile plans in terms of costs and revenue projections, but it has pinned its long-term growth on mobile and gaming devices.”
Yesterday, ETCentric reported that top carriers including AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile have teamed to launch a task force in an effort to create a standardized mobile payment solution. Now, retailers are joining forces for a new mobile wallet solution.
Best Buy, Target and Walmart are among the top retailers who have jointly created Merchant Customer Exchange (MCX), a new mobile wallet solution aimed to rival Square and Google Wallet.
Merchant Customer Exchange promises “a versatile mobile-commerce experience that will combine the convenience of paying at the register with customizable offers,” reports The Verge.
“The mobile payment landscape has rapidly evolved in recent months,” notes the post. “Square entered into a major partnership with Starbucks, all four major U.S. carriers teamed up with ISIS and Google, and Google Wallet was completely overhauled — and that’s just in the last two weeks.”
Specifics have yet to be announced for the offering still in development, but the main advantage to MCX over Square or other mobile payment systems may be that the corporate partners can include special offers within the application.
The retailers have not announced a time frame for MCX’s release, but promise to release additional information within the next few months.
“While there’s a huge number of competing mobile payment services fighting to break out of the pack, the tremendous retail support behind MCX means it has at least as good a shot as any of the other options,” comments The Verge.
Forbes published an interesting guest post this week from Al Bunshaft, managing director North America for Dassault Systemes.
Bunshaft discusses the noteworthy trend toward 3D as a new standard for communication via manufacturing and design industries, and now through consumers.
“What’s fascinating about this recent trend is that it is being driven not by consumers’ need to disassociate themselves from their everyday lives, but rather the ability to interact with their own world in new ways,” he writes. “We’ve now entered the Age of 3D Experience.”
For the first time, 3D technology is accessible and affordable to all in an era of powerful, miniature processors. “You don’t need an engineering degree to design, interact or work with 3D objects; you just need an Internet connection,” suggests Bunshaft.
Gaming, movies and television are three forms of entertainment media that are pushing to create more lifelike experiences through advancements in 3D.
“Realism is critical to sustain consumers’ attention which is why 3D environments created using real, scientific data are becoming the communication standard of the world today,” writes Bunshaft, noting additional examples of 3D beyond entertainment such as archeology, trauma treatment, training in the oil and gas industry, virtual clinical trials and crash safety.
“Unique 3D experiences have pragmatic applications in our everyday lives. Similar to the Internet’s story arc, 3D is evolving from a solitary initiative to a community one,” writes Bunshaft.
“People are able to interact with lifelike 3D models and with people from around the world to flatten the world out just a little bit more. The basic human need to congregate with like-minded individuals is driving 3D to its next, fascinating iteration,” he concludes. “Personally, I can’t wait to see it.”
3D pioneer Gene Dolgoff (who invented the first LCD projector, helped develop HDTV, and is currently revolutionizing lenticular imaging technologies at 3-D Vision Inc.) has created a prototype box that he claims will convert any TV into a 3D set.
“Could this be the spark the long-promised 3D revolution needs?” asks Adam Rosenberg, writing for Digital Trends.
Dolgoff — who built his first stereoscopic CRT in 1963 — hopes to provide digital stereoscopic 3D to every viewer with a low-cost device that will convert any type of television into a 3D TV.
“He’s established a Fundable to get the project going — complete with a competition built around having a community-sourced design for the device — and he may well turn to Kickstarter for additional funding once the groundwork is established,” explains the post.
“I was immediately doubtful when I read the pitch,” writes Rosenberg. “After seeing it in person, my doubts were proven to be unfounded. This tech works. And it works exceptionally well.”
Working from his 3-D Vision lab on Long Island, Dolgoff demonstrated the bulky, noisy converter to Rosenberg on multiple displays using DVD, Blu-ray, PlayStation 3 and live television broadcasts.
Rosenberg reports the prototype’s results were impressive and notes that a mass-produced version would be much smaller, lighter, and presumably make less noise.
According to Dolgoff, the software does all the heavy lifting: “It takes the two-dimensional input video signal and it looks at two frames at a time. It looks at brightness, contrast, color saturation, sharpness, position in the frame, because as the depth goes back, all of these things decrease. When you have motion, the occlusion of background objects by foreground objects also gives a lot of information.”
“My whole initial thrust was [the knowledge] that we can’t get everyone to buy a new TV, that’s going to be a logjam. So let’s find a way to make everybody able to see 3D right away with whatever they have,” says Dolgoff. “Once we get it out there, it’s going to get a lot more people watching 3D on their 2D sets and a lot more people buying 3D sets. That’ll start increasing the installed base, which will then provide the incentive for more content to be made in 3D. And then the 3D consumer field will really take off.”
Apple was granted a patent this week for technology resembling a cable box that would allow users of its TV device to change channels via an onscreen menu that appears over the video display.
If the company acts on the patent, Apple TV “will upgrade to live TV, complete with regular and cable channels, and recording abilities,” reports CNET.
The original 2006 patent filing includes supporting images of TV shows from HBO, ABC, CBS and FOX — and indicates that search and browse tools would be integrated into the system.
“If Apple comes through on these designs, this could really boost the functionality — and popularity — of Apple TV, which has been limited by a dearth of native channels,” notes CNET. “Its greatest asset has been with connecting Apple devices for those who own many of them, but for everyone else, there has always been other choices to go to for TV programming.”
The post includes a copy of the full patent application.