In a Wednesday morning session at the HPA Tech Retreat in Palm Desert, Netflix’s Rohit Puri, engineering manager of the Cloud Media Systems team took attendees on a tour of the Netflix Media Database. The Netflix service experience, he explained, is made up of a seamless user interface, personalized content recommendation, efficient media streaming and curated content catalog. Other assets that “go a long way in helping users find content,” added Puri, include promotional artwork and video. Read more

Google has selected Equinix for its Los Angeles cable landing station that will support the Curie subsea cable system to Chile. The high-capacity subsea cable, expected to go live this year, will connect in El Segundo, California at the Equinix LA4 International Business Exchange data center. “With the significant increase in global data traffic, we see corporations running global businesses demanding access to high-capacity, low-latency networks capable of connecting them to data centers across oceans with stringent levels of reliability,” said Equinix VP of business development Jim Poole. Read more

The Entertainment Technology Center’s team of journalists and analysts reported live from CES 2019 in Las Vegas last month. Our extensive post show analysis — which includes video reports, keynote and panel overviews, and coverage of trends regarding products and services that will impact media & entertainment — is now available online. This year’s report examines key areas such as 5G technology, emergence of the Data Age, introduction of commercial quantum computing, advances in cloud computing, artificial intelligence, machine learning, AR/VR, smart homes, digital assistants, robotics, and an array of CE products and services related to these growing sectors. Read more

At the HPA Tech Retreat in Palm Desert this week, Sony chief technology officer Don Eklund described how Sony has been using artificial intelligence as a toolset to create applications specific to its needs. “I was aware of AI but didn’t pay attention,” he said. “It’s now become pervasive.” He brought together three companies — Adobe, Rival Theory and Video Gorillas — that are researching and developing AI-enabled solutions over many years. Some of these tools are commercially available or will be soon. Read more

According to sources, Amazon executives are rethinking the decision to build a New York City campus, which would create 25,000 jobs in Long Island City and $2.5 billion in investment. That’s heated up the conflict between government officials who support the project and local officials who have been vocally opposed to giving the company tax incentives worth billions. Should Amazon abandon its plan, it would also be a dramatic upset of its very public search for a second headquarters over a year’s time. Read more