Verizon is planning to launch a standalone video streaming service for 2012 that would offer movies and TV shows via the Web, according to several people close to the plan.
“The phone company is talking with prospective programming partners about the service, which would be introduced outside of markets where it currently offers its broadband and TV package, known as FiOS, these people said,” reports Reuters. “That would make it available to some 85 million U.S. households.”
Verizon may be concerned about cord cutters and competition from Netflix, Amazon and Google.
“Verizon has been back and forth with programmers over the last two years exploring the possibility,” suggests the article. “While a lot of the discussion has been around fees, the programmers have also been concerned about the possibility of hurting their existing — and lucrative — relationships with the cable operators.”
Having its own streaming service would allow Verizon to grow its customer base and thereby lower its programming costs.
“News of the service will have added controversy in the wake of sister company Verizon Wireless’s plans to resell cable TV service for Comcast Corp, Time Warner Cable Inc and Bright House Networks,” points out Reuters. “Under that deal, announced last week, Verizon Wireless will pay $3.6 billion for valuable spectrum from the cable companies.”
Sony announced it has updated firmware for its Bravia LCD TV sets, enabling viewers to get tweets, post on Facebook and watch hi-def videos via YouTube HD.
Bravias have also added compatibility with a version of the Remote Keyboard application, previously available only on Vaio PCs and Xperia smartphones.
“Finally, you can now get live Twitter updates along the bottom of your screen and even use a Shazam like feature called Track ID to determine the names of songs, or their artists, that are played during your shows or commercials,” reports Engadget.
The press release emphasizes keyboard compatibility: “You can already use your smartphone or Vaio keyboard to control your TV and surf the Web — and now you can use other laptops too. From typing a Web address to searching for information about the latest movies, it makes entering text on-screen even easier than using your TV remote.”
The free update is currently available for those with compatible Bravia TVs.
In this opinion piece published on CNET, freelance writer Steve Guttenberg predicts that iPads and other tablet devices will eventually make having a large screen TV a thing of the past.
“By 2020 younger people who will have grown up with tablets won’t see a need to ever buy a big display, which will by then seem as obtrusive as a pair of 4-foot-tall tower speakers do to most buyers nowadays,” he suggests.
For the naysayers, Guttenberg cites audio technology as an example. Twenty years ago, it was hard to imagine that most consumers would be less concerned about a set of quality speakers and more interested in portability or personalization. Yet that’s where we’ve landed.
“With music, everyone except for a handful of audiophiles, listens in their cars, computer, or on iPod,” he writes. “A home hi-fi of any quality now seems irrelevant; the same fate is in the cards for TVs. They will start to look too big, too imposing for the room’s decor.”
This is interesting to consider now, as tablet sales are taking off in the consumer market. Will mobile devices such as the tablet kill TV?
Guttenberg believes we are heading in that direction: “There will always be a market for big TVs, just as there is for great audio, but big-screen sales will continue to shrink over time. Most people will be perfectly content to watch movies and sports on their iPads.”
Netflix subscriptions could end up costing consumers $28 a month instead of $8 if cable companies decide to add charges for Web streaming.
“U.S. providers like Time Warner Cable have weighed usage-based plans for years as a way to squeeze more profit from Web access, and to counter slowing growth and rising program costs in the TV business,” reports Bloomberg. “While customer complaints hampered earlier attempts, pay TV companies are testing usage caps and price structures that point to the advent of permanent fees.”
As online video streaming increases in popularity, Web data usage soars. Some companies have penalties in place for customers that exceed their monthly gigabyte allowance, while others do not.
Adding charges will not only help cable companies’ Internet revenue, but also possibly boost pay TV service by disincentivizing online services like Netflix and Hulu.
A Netflix spokesman told Bloomberg, “[The practice] is not in the consumer’s best interest as consumers deserve unfettered access to a robust Internet at reasonable rates.”
The Connected TV Marketing Association (CTVMA) launched this week in New York, London, and Melbourne, Australia — in addition to 47 other chapters worldwide — to organize the fast-growing Connected TV industry, which is projected to account for 90 percent of the global TV market by 2014.
“I will be serving as an advisor and co-chair in North America of events and networking,” writes Natan Edelsburg of Sawhorse Media. “The implications for connected TVs with social is obvious. The more Internet enabled your TV becomes the more opportunities there will be to bridge apps and social platforms.”
Co-founder Zach Weiner told Lost Remote in an interview: “Our core reason for existence is help navigate the ways that the marketing, technology and device community can all come together to achieve potential. We hope to help educate, inform and provide oversight for the industry at large.”
“We believe that social TV is one of the core elements that truly enlivens Connected TV and makes it relevant,” adds Weiner. “Television with an endemic connection to the Internet allows for watching behaviors to be socialized in amazingly new and novel ways. New TV apps that are being created and app branding vehicles will all be highly social. EPGs and even programming itself will all have social graphs at their core.”
YouTube is redesigning its homepage and channel pages to incorporate “better personalized video discovery and viewing, with a notable emphasis on social features,” reports TechCrunch.
A new default Subscriptions feed on the homepage offers users content based on what videos they watch and which channels they subscribe to (the feed can also be filtered). Users can share videos using Google+ or by opting-in on Facebook, both located on the navigation bar.
Channel pages have four new templates that come with a Feed tab showing the channel owner’s activity (highlighting features such as commenting on a video and subscribing to a channel).
“These additions, which are more analogous to template options in Tumblr or MySpace rather than Facebook’s one-size-fits-all style, let producers promote their works in the most natural style for what they offer,” suggests the post.
The homepage and channel changes are the first significant updates, but TechCrunch adds that YouTube is “also introducing a site-wide design upgrade to all the elements — typography, iconography, etc. It’s separately adding new versions of its Xbox and Google TV applications, that feature magazine-style tile interfaces showing various channels. Finally, the company is touting the success of its advertising platform, saying that it’s seeing strong demand for its new cost-per-click style of video ads.”
Verizon has announced a new feature and related promotion that suggests it is “taking a much more active interest in video games for both distribution and new customers,” reports Mashable.
“FiOS customers who subscribe to both FiOS TV and FiOS Internet and are Xbox LIVE Gold members can use their Xbox consoles to watch select live FiOS TV channels. No extra hardware,” explains a post in the Verizon Forum. “Plus, for the first time, Kinect for Xbox 360 will be integrated into the TV experience, allowing customers to use voice and gesture commands to control their TV viewing.”
Initially, only 26 channels will be available starting in December.
For $89.99, you can get triple-play service, a limited Xbox LIVE Gold membership and a sponsor spot for Machinima’s Gamers’ Choice Award.
Chairseven and App Creation Network recently announced the beta availability of Cinefy, “a mobile video editing and effects platform for iPhone where users create and share videos mixed with high quality visual effects,” according to the press release. “Cinefy empowers users with no editing skills to quickly insert footage, add music and apply visually stunning effects with its intuitive and simple interface.”
The app offers branded effects packs which opens a marketing opportunity for TV and game studios to promote in an engaging way and possibly draw “massive viral exposure.”
Users can export their videos to their device’s camera roll in addition to Facebook, YouTube and Vimeo. Cinefy will eventually be available for iPads and Android devices.
To help create soundtracks, Friendly Music has teamed up to provide a catalog of songs, “offering 100 percent legal and all rights-cleared music for personal and custom online media creations.”
According to the DisplaySearch unit of The NPD Group, 6.6 million 3D TV sets were shipped in the third quarter of 2011, up 27 percent from the previous quarter.
The research firm expects shipments to increase 30 percent this quarter, for a total of 21.5 million units in 2011.
However, DisplaySearch suggests a “lack of 3D content and services” means buyers are mostly watching 2D video.
Additionally, Nielsen released a study last year suggesting consumers were reluctant to wear 3D glasses and nearly 90 percent said that viewing 3D TV would get in the way of checking e-mail or Web surfing while watching television.
The article suggests that marketing and aggressive pricing has made the difference. “Television vendors have been pushing 3D sets on customers all year,” reports CNET. “In fact, companies such as Samsung, Vizio, and Panasonic, among others, have made 3D a key component in a large number of their televisions, making it harder and harder to find sets that don’t come with 3D support.”
The ever-evolving Viera Connect IPTV system is now available on many of the company’s plasma TVs, LCD TVs and BD players. At a recent press event, the company provided details including updates to the number of available apps.
The Viera Connect Market of interactive apps includes 120 offerings with expectations of growing two to three times that amount by the end of next year, explained Merwan Mereby, Panasonic interactive content and services VP. According to TWICE: “The connected TV trend is on an explosive course, with estimates for worldwide connected TV shipments expected to surpass those of PCs by the end of 2013, he offered.”
The article cites recent additions including a Social TV app, an AccuWeather tracking app and a new 3D car racing game from GameLoft.
“To keep up with the challenge, Panasonic has been actively recruiting app development, and is offering a JavaScript app to help third-party developers create programs for the Viera Connect platform,” indicates the article.
Add the following news to the growing collection of Apple rumors we’ve heard in the last month…
Mashable reports: “Apple’s relationship with Samsung has deteriorated, and the Cupertino giant may be working with Sharp on the next generation displays for upcoming devices such as the iPad 3, iPhone 5 and a little something called iTV, claims Jefferies analyst Peter Misek.”
According to Misek, the mythical Apple smart TV, which has been a popular subject of recent speculation, is not just a rumor. “Sharp is working on modified amorphous TFT LCD panels for the device,” indicates the post.
Misek places commercial production as early as February with a mid-2012 release date. The new HDTV will reportedly feature some use of Siri, Apple’s voice-activation feature.
While Apple has not made an official announcement yet, competitors are scrambling to prepare for another player in the market, suggests a related BGR post.
Sony PlayStation 3 users will be able to stream movies and TV shows and enjoy them with friends from multiple locations with an updated version of Crackle.
Instead of accessing Crackle via the console’s Internet browser, users can enter a virtual movie theater with custom PS3 controller navigation. “Fire up PlayStation Home — if you’re a free member, that is — and navigate over to the LOOT EOD Theater, the Hollywood Hills House, or the Sunset Yacht areas,” reports PCMag.com.
The streaming service allows users to create avatars and use them to interact with up to 11 friends (or 60 strangers) in a virtual movie theater with access to hundreds of movies and more than 1,000 TV episodes. “Think of it as an opportunity to have a giant recreation of ‘Mystery Science Theater 3000’ with strangers,” suggests the post.
“We are very excited to bring familiar social experiences from the real world into a virtual environment, so people around the globe can connect and communicate with each other while sharing their favorite movie, show, music, or event,” said Sony DADC VP David Sterling. “This is the next big step in social networking and it will transform the way people consume media.”
Sony is also planning PlayStation Home support for Ustream content and streaming radio service RadioIO later this year.
At a recent CES Unveiled event in London, Shawn DuBravac, director of research for the CEA, predicted that a large number of ultrabooks will debut at the 2012 CES conference in January. “We expect to see 30 to 50 new ultrabooks launch at CES,” said DuBravac. TechCrunch responded with, “That’s a whole lot of MacBook Air clones.”
Each year, there seems to be a single prominent device showcased at the annual confab. “iPad killers were out in force at 2011′s show. 2010 was all about 3D TVs while netbooks was the popular product in 2009,” suggests the post. “It seems that ultrabooks might be 2012′s hot product. But can they break the dreaded CES curse that plagued the previous hot products?”
TechCrunch describes how Android tablets failed to challenge the iPad and how 3D TVs and netbooks failed to achieve significant adoption. If ultrabooks dominate the 2012 event, will they face the same fate?
“Ultrabooks are supposed to be the answer to Apple’s increasingly popular MacBook Air. Intel designed the computing platform to be as thin as possible while keeping the price low. The first batch of ultabooks start at $899 and offer competitive performance. But they’re still not built as well as the MacBook Air.”
Boxee is augmenting its broadband box for cord-cutters with a USB dongle that provides users access to broadcast TV.
According to paidContent: “Boxee, which has been working mightily to get people to cut their cable cords with its own broadband box for five years, is preparing a new add-on product in January that will let users pull out the cable cord and plug a USB device into their cable box, giving them access to broadcast TV channels like ABC, CBS, FOX, and NBC for free.”
“If you live and die by ESPN, then yes, you have to stay on cable. But we believe there are plenty of people who just want access to regular broadcast channels,” says Avner Ronen, CEO and co-founder of Boxee.
However, Ronen believes there are consumers interested in basic broadcast content that would benefit from this approach. “The problem with canceling your cable subscription and relying just on the Internet has been the lack of live sports, a presidential address, local news, special events and live TV shows,” he told paidContent. “But these things are all available on broadcast TV channels…for free, over the air in HD.”
The Live TV stick will be available for $49, as an add-on to the $180 Boxee Box.
Cisco recently launched a wireless IPTV service with AT&T U-verse that features new wireless receivers and wireless access points (WAPs).
“Consumers can now rely on wireless technology to deliver high-quality video services throughout the home without the need for cables or wires,” explains the press release. “TV content is sent from the Cisco wireless access point via in-home Wi-Fi to the Ciscowireless receiver next to the TV.”
Based on the 802.11n standard, the wireless solution can deliver SD and HD programming to multiple receivers with integrated Wi-Fi, provide interactive services and function as an HD DVR.
In addition to enabling consumers to view television anywhere they choose in the home, the “wireless TV solution offers service providers the means for faster service activations and consumer self-installation with easy-to-use Wi-Fi kits…The integrated Wi-Fi receiver also offers service providers the ability to monitor the device’s performance via the network, as the receiver comes equipped with remote diagnostics.”
