Netgear will roll out its smart TV box, the $80 NeoTV Streaming Player, which provides streaming media from Netflix, Vudu, YouTube, Pandora, Napster, Picasa, blip.tv, Crunchyroll, Revision3 and others.
“Looks like Netgear is taking what it learned from licensing Roku’s tech last year and streamlining its connected TV offerings,” suggests Engadget.
The company’s press release indicates the device “opens up a world of Internet entertainment with streaming movies, TV shows, music, videos, news clips and games.” Users can also connect to friends through Facebook and Twitter channels.
“On the hardware side you’re looking at a glossy black box with a 300Mbps Wi-Fi radio, Ethernet, optical audio out and, of course, HDMI,” reports Engadget. The media player also includes a regular remote control for those who opt not to use the NeoTV Remote app via their smartphone.
The Roku 2 XS is currently the CNET pick for best media streaming solution under $100, but NeoTV may provide some competition.
Turner Broadcasting has begun airing a series of television commercials on TNT and TBS that lets viewers know they can watch TV episodes streamed online if they have a cable subscription.
The campaign is designed to educate consumers about the concept of TV Everywhere.
“Consumers have bought tens of millions of iPhones and iPads,” explains Steve Koonin, president of Turner Entertainment Networks. “Our vision is that TV Everywhere kind of becomes the consumer-enabling technology that allows them to unlock the potential of those devices.”
An instructional video is also posted on YouTube that goes into detail about how to download the app and login (for example, viewers should be aware that they will need to have their cable bill account number available during the process).
It is interesting to note that Nielsen is crediting the viewing in its ratings if the show is watched within three days of airing.
YouTube co-founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen are taking over Delicious from Yahoo and will attempt to breathe new life into the social bookmarking service.
“Created in 2003, Delicious lets people save links from around the Web and organize them using a simple tagging system, assigning keywords like ‘neuroscience’ or ‘recipes,'” reports the New York Times. “It was praised for the way it allowed easy sharing of those topical links. The site’s early popularity spurred Yahoo to snap it up in 2005 — but in the years after that Yahoo did little with it.”
The two men want to change that. “Twitter sees something like 200 million tweets a day, but I bet I can’t even read 1,000 a day,” explains Chen. “There’s a waterfall of content that you’re missing out on.”
“You’re Googling around and have eight to 10 browser tabs of results, links to forums and message boards, all related to your search,” he said. The new Delicious, he added, provides “a very easy way to save those links in a collection that someone else can browse.”
Despite the lack of attention from Yahoo, Delicious still draws about half a million visitors a month, according to comScore. Chen and Hurley plan to “invite the earliest users to test a version of the new site and solicit feedback about the designs and features,” indicates the article.
An upgraded iHeartRadio will be released by Clear Channel in a few weeks, to be kickstarted by a two-day music festival in Las Vegas.
The service is Clear Channel’s answer to Pandora, which now has more than 100 million users.
A key feature of the new iHeartRadio app will be playlist creation based on an “intelligence platform” from Echo Nest that will reportedly incorporate 5 billion pieces of information collected from 15,000 music blogs.
According to Echo Nest CEO Jim Lucchese, his company has processed 30 million songs in the past 12 months, while Pandora has categorized 800,000 tracks in the past 10 years.
“Echo Nest provides similar technology to MTV, The BBC, MOG and Rhapsody,” reports Radio Ink.
Dish is expected to introduce a streaming movie service under its Blockbuster brand next month. The move will introduce a competitor to Netflix and coincide with that company’s recently announced price increase.
When Dish acquired Blockbuster’s assets in April for $320 million, it received content rights that it has sought to beef up through discussions with the studios.
“This ought to begin changing the way investors think about Dish,” said Ryan Vineyard, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets. “It goes from being an old-school pay-TV company to launching what could be a really high-growth business.”
Dish currently ranks as the second largest U.S. satellite-TV provider behind DirecTV.
Netflix walked away from another deal with Starz after that company insisted on a tiered-pricing model similar to what they would get with a cable channel. Netflix did not want to tamper with the simplicity of its monthly fee model.
Netflix had reportedly offered Starz more than $300 million per year to renew their agreement.
With the demise of the Starz deal, Netflix customers may feel that they are paying more and getting less. Still, Netflix counters that their Starz content accounts for only 5-6 percent of domestic viewing.
Netflix will be challenged by competitors like Hulu, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft XBox Live. Moreover, cable companies are increasingly offering similar access to video through TV Anywhere services.
Starz may either sell its content to a Netflix competitor or try and create its own streaming brand like HBO.
As the bidding war for Hulu continues, Financial Times reports that Yahoo, Amazon and Dish Network are all expected to offer near 2 billion dollars for the company, its subscription service and the rights to exclusive content for at least two years.
However, Google is rumored to have proposed a significantly higher bid for an acquisition proposal on a larger scale. Details have not been released, but some speculate that Google may offer a couple billion dollars more in exchange for more content for a longer period of time. It is not clear if the Google proposal includes a longer deal for content or possibly something else — or if Hulu would even be interested in a new plan.
According to The Wall Street Journal: “Since that’s not what Hulu’s owners have put on the table, ‘normally we would have thrown people out if they’d said that,’ says an executive familiar with the sales process. But Google ‘indicated that there’s enough money’ involved so that Hulu’s owners are at least thinking about continuing the discussion.
The video site would fit nicely with Google’s YouTube, which has struggled in landing the type of long-form premium content that Hulu owns. And if rumors are accurate, Google is willing to pay.
But would the content owners agree to terms with Google, which is already the largest video website worldwide, when they were earlier holdouts on Google TV?
Rovi has announced DivX Plus Streaming that allows cloud-based movie services, such as Best Buy’s CinemaNow and other sites integrated with the Rovi Entertainment Store, to stream movies securely to DivX-compatible devices.
New features include being able to pause on one device and seamlessly resume on another, improved video quality, and support for multiple language tracks and subtitles.
“Other content-protection companies, such as Google’s Widevine subsidiary, offer some similar capabilities to service providers, so Rovi is playing catch-up to a degree. And not every Hollywood studio allows its movies to be distributed in the DivX format,” reports the Los Angeles Times. “Rovi executives insist, however, that they’ve leapfrogged the competition with some features, including the near-Blu-ray-quality images and the ability to support multiple alternate-language soundtracks and subtitles in the same stream.”
Although integration into specific products has yet to be announced, Rovi explained the technology will be available to many existing devices through a firmware update.
Yahoo will introduce a new lineup of original programming beginning in early October, reports Variety.
The eight short-form series will feature appearances from actors including Morgan Spurlock, Niecy Nash and Judy Greer.
Erin McPherson, VP and head of video at Yahoo, indicates this is the first phase in a planned increase for 2012 regarding originals hoping to “yield even bigger names, longer programs and maybe even scripted fare.”
“While Yahoo isn’t about to overtake Fox or CBS as those nets launch their fall schedules, the company will mix some traditional TV programming tactics with its own new-media savvy,” suggests the article.
Yahoo reportedly leveraged user metrics to determine what types of shows would sell and has plans to redesign its video platform to be more like Netflix and YouTube.
According to Variety: “Of the 47.3 million video streams Yahoo generated in July, its original series alone garnered 27 million — more than the 24.4 million Hulu scored in its entirety that month.”
Online video subscribers of Netflix and Amazon Prime paid almost $50 on average for video subscriptions during a recent six-month period.
According to new research from Parks Associates, subscribers spent less than half of that amount on a la carte video purchases.
The number of movie and TV show downloads declined 56 percent from 2009 to 2010, and movie rental downloads decreased 70 percent.
“Based on the reported usage of video download services by U.S. survey respondents in Q4, consumer spending on a la carte video during a six-month period ranged from $12 to $26,” reports Home Media Magazine. “Comparable spending on video services subscriptions during that same period reached at least $48 per household.”
“The all-you-can-eat-style subscription approach taken by Netflix has proven successful in the U.S. market,” Parks said in its report. “It has helped to drive up consumption — and spending — for online video.”
Netflix ended the most recent fiscal quarter with more than 25 million subscribers in North America.
In its first international venture, Hulu is launching its subscription service in Japan where it will offer hundreds of premium feature films and thousands of TV shows for $19.19/month.
The service will be accessible via select connected TVs and smartphones (Engadget reports that Panasonic Blu-ray players, Sony Blu-ray players and TVs, Xbox 360 and PS3 consoles and Android tablets are relegated to the “coming soon” list.)
Content will be provided from CBS, NBCUniversal, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Twentieth Century Fox, The Walt Disney Company and Warner Bros. Additional local market content will be added including Japanese-produced and other Asian content.
Hulu is also announcing an exclusive mobile marketing partnership with NTT Docomo. Details will be forthcoming.
A follow-up post from GigaOM yesterday outlines the differences between Hulu’s current U.S. offerings and its plans for the Japanese market, “that could give a hint at what Hulu might look like in the future.” So is there a “no ads, higher fees and more content suppliers” future for Hulu outside of Japan? If so, watch out Netflix!
In-flight entertainment provider Row 44 Inc. has announced a deal with MLB Advanced Media to provide live streams of more than 2,400 baseball games on Wi-Fi enabled devices on airlines.
The service will initially be made available to passengers on Southwest and Norwegian Air Shuttle flights.
“Southwest is currently in the process of wiring its entire fleet with Row 44’s in-flight broadband system,” reports the Los Angeles Times. “The carrier is offering the service for a introductory rate of $5.”
“The integration of live baseball games into Row 44’s in-flight broadband entertainment experience ensures our traveling fans won’t have to miss a pitch,” says Bob Bowman, chief executive of Major League Baseball Advanced Media.
Subscription online music service MOG has announced the availability of its new app for the Boxee Box by D-Link.
According to the press release: “MOG is the first on-demand music service providing unlimited music in high quality, 320 kbps, to be offered as a native app for Boxee. Listeners can now enjoy MOG’s HQ audio through this new living room offering, featuring a wireless remote keypad for quick searches of MOG’s 11.5-million song catalog on a user’s connected TV.”
You can test drive MOG free for 14 days, reports Engadget. After the trial period, you have a choice of the $4.99/month basic account or $9.99/month Primo account.
Apple’s iTunes Match went live to developers for testing this week and music “streaming” from the cloud is reportedly already up and running.
If the hype is accurate, the TechCrunch article header from Dennis Kuba’s story submission may prove telling: “With iTunes In The Cloud, Apple Under-Promises And Over-Delivers.”
Apple enthusiasts are excited to see what shakes out this fall with iOS 5 and iCloud. Yesterday, TechCrunch reported: “Tonight brought perhaps the biggest surprise revelation yet: iTunes in the Cloud will support streaming as well as downloading of music.”
There is also speculation that this announcement may lead to a possible “cloud iPhone.” Rumors are making the rounds that Apple might unveil a low-cost iPhone 4 (with minimal on-board storage) alongside its new iPhone 5 release. If iTunes has streaming functionality, the low-cost version of the iPhone could rely on the cloud for content.
Be sure to check out the iTunes Match videos included in the post.
TechCrunch recently added an update: “There’s some debate going on right now about whether or not this is technically streaming. Even Apple is avoiding the term, as Peter Kafka points out. There are two reasons for this — reasons Google follows as well with their service.”
Hollywood Suite is a new video-on-demand service with plans to launch in Canada this November.
Available via cable, the Internet and satellite TV, the service will offer 450 titles per month in HD from MGM, Warner Bros. and others.
The Toronto-based platform will also feature independent action, romance and relationship films.
According to Home Media Magazine: “Movie titles, subscription fees and rental programs, which are expected to rival rates charged by Netflix, will be announced closer to launch date, according to industry veteran Jay Switzer, co-founder of Hollywood Suite.”
“These channels are designed to meet the strong audience demand for movies across all platforms and support Canada’s television service providers,” Switzer said.
