The Gillmor Gang — Danny Sullivan, Doc Searls, John Taschek, Kevin Marks, and Steve Gillmor — endured technical glitches and a dissection of the disruption formerly known as TV before settling into a debate about privacy. I know, sounds like the usual nonsense, but this show was high quality nonsense. I forget who brought up the famous iPhone/Android hidden recording file crisis, but things quickly got out of hand when one of us suggested that was a feature not a problem.
It turns out that not that many people are aware that when we are on the Internet, everything is recorded. For those who seem surprised by this, all those free apps are actually there to harvest our clicks, searches, and other gestures of our intent. As Doc Searls pointed out, how else does Google make money except by random clicks on Adsense adding up to billions. It’s only when we can’t figure out how to delete our wanderings that people get upset. Me — I count on being surreptitiously tracked so I can go back and figure out where I was last week. → Read More
Apple’s secret quest for living room domination is off to a good start, that is if an analyst’s report is to believed. Ming-Chi Kuo of Concord Securities surveyed Apple supplies and found that the latest generation Apple TV managed to maintain steady sales since its October 2010 launch. He claims that Apple sold just over 1 million units before Christmas and around 820k since the start of January. Of course these are all estimates, but Apple might confirm them in Wednesday’s earning conference call. Apple famously called the Apple TV a hobby but it seems to be turning into a profitable hobby. If true, this cements the latest generation Apple TV as more than just a side project. It’s an important piece in Apple’s ecosytem. → Read More
I hit a nerve. I seriously believe cord cutting is all about alternative services and not the hardware. Clearly others think different. My last post concerning the movement focused on three main areas with hardware only one small portion of the overall post. Why? All roads lead to Netflix and DLNA servers anyway. Nearly every box can run Netflix along with at least a dozen of other streaming services. I featured my favorites — the do-it-all Boxee Box and the dead-simple Roku — in the last post, but as so many commentors pointed out, there are a lots of other options.
I agree! There’s more than a few ways to cut the cord. So here we go, the six best devices listed in order of relevance that will help cut your household’s dependence on pay TV. → Read More
Buried today in the iOS 4.3 release is an unmentioned, but very interesting update for the Apple TV: access to both MLB.tv and NBA League Pass. Yes, the live sports are coming to the Apple TV!
That’s great news for Apple TV owners, but such functionality has actually been available for some time on the rival boxes by Roku. Still, the ramifications of this are potentially huge because the lack of sports content has been the one point used over and over again in arguments against these new wave of Internet-powered set-top boxes killing cable. Between this, Roku, and Xbox Live getting ESPN content, we’re definitely getting closer to a full-on cable revolt. → Read More
With the latest GreenPois0n release, we are now able to jailbreak the latest iOS update, iOS 4.2.1. All iDevices including the Verizon iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch and now Apple TV 2, can undergo untethered jailbreaking. The latest GreenPois0n, RC6, can be applied over RC5 and will fix general bugs with the emulators. → Read More
Apple seems to be taking over everything these days — they’ve done a remarkable job so far — however, there is one major lacking from their lineup: console games. There is a great opportunity for media delivery by way of the TV, and Apple certainly knows this. PS3, Xbox, streaming boxes and even Google TV have been making moves in this area for awhile; if Apple wants to make long-term success of the iTunes Stores, they need people buying into Apple TV. The gaming consoles have had a 1-up on the Apple TV for a while, just by offering games. Now, it appears that there are traces of gaming on Apple TV in the latest release of the iOS 4.3 beta. Could Apple be coming out with a gaming system and controller? → Read More
Netflix is interesting because it is the first service to follow the disruptive arc of the iPad. Every time the iPad is analyzed, the projections are anywhere from just plain wrong to what amounts to a niche. Doesn’t run applications… now there’s an AppStore. Doesn’t run Flash… now there’s a Flash converter app. Apps don’t support a magazine subscription model… Tuesday they will. Won’t be accepted by IT… 80% penetration. Will be overwhelmed by Android tablets… Apple will Verizon them with iPad 2.
What is reminiscent of iPadnomics is the speed with which the disruption is underestimated, the naiveté with which the backlash is orchestrated, and the resultant vaulting of the service into a near-incumbent position before the deposed incumbents can retrench from the initial mistaken counterattack. Netflix is already at the stage where iTunes was when the music cartel tried to cap it. While Amazon may be a cheaper service without so-called DRM, there’s no device comparable to Apple TV at the end of the value chain. → Read More
Here’s more evidence that regular people have zero time for things like Google TV, Boxee, and Roku, if only because they’re too complicated for their own good. Hill Holiday, a “caffeine-fueled ad agency,” asked five Boston-area families to participate in a cord-cutting experiment. For one week each family was asked to forgo traditional cable TV in favor of one of the following devices: Apple TV, Google TV, Boxee Box, Xbox 360, and Roku. These devices, of course, are the premier devices for people looking to break free of their cable company while still being able to enjoy television. And how did it turn out for these five families? → Read More
Week One of the Age of iPad was barely weekended when Keith Olbermann was removed from his position at NBC/Comcast. I missed his final show, mostly because I stopped watching it and all the cable news channels once the election was over. But then I remembered we are now in the Age of iPad, and guess what I found when I turned on Apple TV. There it was right in the podcasts section, ready to stream.
Parsing the language I heard the same thing we heard earlier when Steve Ballmer fired Bob Muglia, when Eric Schmidt was kicked “upstairs,” when I was asked to leave along with my wife and a friend from the Crunchies because the room was too full. In the last case, I refused to move, waiting until the venue manager moved on to people more her size. I wonder what would have happened if Muglia just said, no, Steve. I’m not going anywhere.
We’ll get back to Eric and the boys in a minute, but in the Age of iPad, all is not as it seems. Take Olbermann for instance: firing him seems like exactly what NBC doesn’t want. It dredges up the recent Leno fiasco in a visceral way, suggesting that even if Conan’s new show might as well be emanating from Siberia, at least he suffered no bad will for telling NBC where they should get off. By contrast, I wouldn’t touch NBC at 11:30 with someone else’s hard disk. → Read More
Seas0nPass is an Apple TV jailbreak app that allows for a quick, painless jailbreak on most systems, thereby allowing you to install “extra” apps including XBox Media Center, Boxee, and Plex. You can download the application here and instructions for use appear here. It is OS X-only right now although future versions should run on Windows. What does jailbreaking really get you? Sadly, very little right now except a slightly buggy version of media streamer Plex and SSH access to the box. With the hard drive removed, there is precious little space on the Apple TV and, whereas previous jailbreaks allowed you to upload non-iTunes video the the device, the new homebrew apps allow only for the streaming of previously unavailable files. → Read More
God bless 2010 as the year when everybody, including Twitter, caught up to Twitter. Now that we know the importance of streaming realtime, what are we going to do with it? I’ve been doing some thinking as I recover from a pinched nerve that has made it agony to do anything other than feel sorry for myself. Thanks to painkillers, acupuncture, and the iPad, I’m slowly regaining most everything but my sense of humor.
Luckily, the world continues to provide comedy (Rose Parade announcer Bob Eubanks tagging a marching band version of I Want to Hold Your Hand by hoping Stevie Wonder was listening) as we struggle to graft new technologies onto old memories and habits. Twitter provided a running commentary on this effort, from the 3D version of the Yuletime burning logs channel to Yoko suggesting John would have loved Twitter and Facebook. It certainly would have shortened the Lost Weekend. Imagine (cough) his tweet stream: Crawled off to sleep in the bath, isn’t it good @NorwegianWood. → Read More
Say you’re buying a TV – any TV, really – and you’re not quite sure what you’re doing. Say you’re in a store and the sales guy says “Well, you want this to be a Smart TV, right?” and you, not knowing any better, agree. Then he upsells this dumb LG box that simply adds LG’s Smart TV offerings including LG’s apps and some DLNA support. And you go home and realize that it’s just a dumbed-down Roku, Western Digital, or Seagate box. Heck, it’s even worse than Apple TV and the new one, barring the obvious hacked value, is pretty boring and is still better than this. You’ve been played. → Read More
Apple just issued a release announcing that it expects to sell one million units of its newly released Apple TV later this week. Apple also announced that iTunes users are now renting and purchasing over 400,000 TV episodes and over 150,000 movies per day.
As of mid-October, Apple has sold around 250,000 new Apple TVs, which were released to the public in late September. During Apple’s third quarter earnings call, Apple CEO Steve Jobs commented on the new version of Apple TV, “It’s a great product and its $99 price point is very enticing.” → Read More
I wonder if we might be getting a little causation mixed in with our correlation here. Roku’s CEO has noted that when the Apple TV launched at the beginning of September, Roku sales saw a jump. I mean, not like day-of (though maybe a little, since we gave the little box a big plug at the time), but since that time, sales have actually doubled. → Read More
Editor’s note: Online video is going through many changes as people begin to connect their TVs to the Internet and social sharing over Facebook and Twitter influence what people watch as much as search. In this guest post, Jeremy Allaire, founder and CEO of online video platform Brightcove, gives his view of where online video is going next year. Allaire’s last guest post for us was on the standards war in mobile video formats.
Web video is just getting started, and 2011 promises to be yet another year of transformation in the online video landscape. The stage is set for mainstream connected TVs, Over-the-top adoption, and even more videos watched directly streamed from website. Here are the five biggest trends in online video that will play out in significant ways for end-users and publishers alike.
1. Connected TV Platform Wars
The past year saw the definitive emergence of platform wars in the handheld computing landscape. This year will see those wars expand into new territory, the Connected TV platform market. Input 1 on the TV is the new homepage or start screen. We should expect that the battles will look incredibly similar to the market that emerged for smartphones over the past several years, but with some other entrenched players. Google vs. Apple vs. the dominant TV brands. In fact, these platforms will largely be based on a similar architecture, offering app and content publishers a common model for creating device-oriented applications and Web experiences.
Apple will ship an iOS-based Apple TV display and will open up Apple TV to third-party apps beyond Netflix. Developers will have a common model for building apps across the phone, tablet and TV, as well as a suite of new APIs for phone and tablet apps to interact with TV apps (think remote control type activities, gestures for games, etc.). Its platform will also support HTML5 with a set of design standards for TV Web 10-foot experiences. → Read More
Comcast doesn’t care about the iPad but that’s because they are acquiring NBC which is paid by Microsoft to not care. They released an iPad app that lets me control my DVRs but doesn’t let me watch them. I can get NBC shows on my iPad by renting them from iTunes, so I don’t blame NBC, just Comcast. The FCC is toothless, Barnes & Noble gives me no reason whatsoever to leave them even a pity tip as I go to the Kindle and iBooks stores to download iPad product, and Adobe…. Ooyala will fix the problem, but Adobe is the problem.
As the guy said in the old movie, what we have here is a failure to communicate. What part of yes fails to penetrate the minds of those who see video as the next bubble? Yes, we want video, we want it streamed, we want access to it even if we never stream it because then we can delete it off of our iTunes server to free up enough OS space to upgrade to the next version of the infrastructure. The Chicken Littles announcing that this streaming thing is gonna use up all the Cloud’s free space have always and continue to be wrong. → Read More
Apple TV users are reporting massive slow downs in video rentals and streaming over HDMI, resulting in “3,000 minute” waits for some media. In related news, the new Apple TV is currently jailbroken and you can basically knock out the Apple TV iOS software and run Plex, instead. → Read More
Navigating Apple TV and its various peeks into the presumed future has been a valuable waste of time. For $100 plus an HDMI cable I get to sample various media dead ends including NetFlix, iTunes rental, buy, and streaming options, YouTube, and other stuff I can’t remember right now. In the past, I would have spent more time testing the work arounds for adding podcasts and ripped music to broaden the choices, but something about the device suggests we’re in such a rapid shakeout it might be easier to wait.
But for what? Google TV seems caught in little brother mode behind the next loser tablet wave. What ultimate value is there in trading Apple’s dead ends for another set of second rate dead ends? The idea that we can replace the aggregate value of the Hollywood studio system with some loose coalition of rag tag revolutionary product ignores the tendency for the avant-garde to go mainstream. At some point, having everything work from one device is the best way of killing any possible interest in what’s available. → Read More
Google TV is a mess. Apple TV is a joke. Using a Roku is about as exciting as cleaning my gutters. I like the Boxee Box, but my wife doesn’t understand why; she doesn’t get it and that says something. Downloading torrents or NZBs is time consuming and only a small portion of the population actually has the know-how and hardware to do it. Sorry. Cord cutting is a lost cause.
Listen, I’m all for canceling Comcast and joining the ranks of the cord cutters. I hate Comcast so much. If Comcast had a large, fluffy mascot, I would punch it in the face. That’s saying something if you know me. But the fact remains that there is simply no way to replicate Comcast’s or any other cable provider’s service right now. If you want to watch TV, you have to pay for it — but you can still complain along the way.
Cable is damn expensive and so through various media streamers, game systems, and services, I’ve tried just about everything to replace it, but nothing gives you the same experience and service as *shock* cable — or satellite — TV. → Read More
The original Apple TV was loved by many. It was hackable, fun and functional. But then Apple went and crashed the party with the new model. It lacks a lot of the selling points of the original like local storage, legecy outputs, and 3rd party support. So yeah, you may want to opt for the older model if you’re the type that’s never satisfied with out-of-the box features. CE Pro points out that it just dropped in price from $230 to $150. Good deal? I think so. → Read More
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