Maybe cable programmers will bring out interactive TV features sans set-tops.
Disney Channel is kicking around a concept that would let viewers interact with each other using a device most already use dozens of times a day: their mobile phones.
I met today with Larry Shapiro, general manager of mobile and EVP of business development and operations for Walt Disney Internet Group (soon to be renamed Disney Interactive Media Group).
Shapiro noted that a big initiative for his grou...Read More
YouTube-on-the-boob-tube may not be enough to make someone choose TiVo over the MSO's DVR. But it's a cool feature that could prevent people from ditching their TiVos.
TiVo's announcement made me recall a conversation I had recently with the CTO for a major cable network. He was telling me he owns an Apple TV (which als...Read More
There's a fascinating piece in the June 30 issue of The New Yorker by Atul Gawande, a physician who also happens to be a masterful storyteller.
Mainly, his article, "The Itch," discusses that mysterious sensation and begins with a horrifying account of a woman whose scalp itched so intensely that she scratched through her skull in her sleep -- to her brain.
Yiiiiiiikes.
OK, now connecting the dots back to the multichannel video business (bear with me): Gawande later brings up theories of sensory perception and how they relate to severe itching.
Lots of people enjoy watching, say, thunderstorms -- but there's no direct way to "monetize" that. (Weather Channel HD, to be sure, is trying to get a twister in high-def video, but I digress.)
A page-one update today from the Wall Street Journal on YouTube's unattractive business model details one of the chief problems: The site is reluctant to sell ads against pirated material.
YouTube has "significantly" pulled back on the number of clips it sells adv...Read More
The video-rental chain said Tuesday it would abandon its bid for Circuit City. Blockbuster CEO Jim Keyes cited "market conditions and the completion of our initial due diligence process" in spiking the plans.
Philadelphia—Yesterday, Comcast execs spoke in fairly general terms about their analog-reclamation strategy. Then even more interesting tidbits came in over the transom after the day's sessions had ended.
The MSO has settled on Motorola, Pace and Thomson to supply as many as 6 million digital-to-analog converters in 2008 and 12 million in 2009, according to an industry executive who told me about Comcast's current plan. (However, a Comcaster tells me those numbers appear to be somewhat high.)
At any rate, those "DTAs" are a key element of the operator's aggressive campaign to eliminate dozens of bandwidth-hungry analog TV channels in 20% of its footprint.
Philadelphia—Comcast distinguished engineer Phil Gabler provided some insight into the MSO's technical trials to date with switched digital video.
Statistically, Gabler said, Comcast has found a sweet spot in its four test markets of sending SDV channels to service group sizes of about 800 set-tops. He gave his presentation, "Challenges and Design Considerations for Deploying Switched Digital Video," at a session here at SCTE's Cable-Tec Expo.
Comcast is currently testing Motorola and Cisco switched video platforms, and hopes to start working soon with BigBand Networks. The MSO hasn't said where those trials are happening, but two of them have been reported to be Denver and Cherry Hill, N.J.
In terms of channel selection, Comcast is "focusing on a selection of 80 long-tail channels," which are very r...Read More
Philadelphia -- Put a bunch of cable guys in a boat together, and they're bound to row together in perfectly synchronicity, right?
So says Steve Burke. Here, in the City of Brotherly Love (and, as we were reminded repeatedly this morning, Rocky Balboa), Comcast's COO told the tech crowd that the cable fraternity would find ways of making their two key joint ventures -- the Clearwire/Sprint WiMax and Canoe projects -- succeed.
“If the force pushing everybody together is strong enough, it will overcome individual company differences," Burke said. "My bet is that on these two [joint ventures], the forces pushing us together are so great that we’ll stay together.”
Baseball, apple pie, cable TV: watching video entertainment is a quintessential part of Americana.
And what's more American than wanting more-more-more, to get everything and to get it bigger, better and faster?
News announcements leading up to the SCTE's 25th annual Cable-Tec Expo in Philly -- the original home of the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness -- have been about letting cable deliver more HD, more bandwidth and more reliable services.
Here's a roundup of announcements timed for Cable-Tec Expo:
The most successful technology products are usually the simplest to explain and the easiest to use.
Roku's Internet set-top scores on both counts: It's simple to describe the value (the $99 box lets you instantly watch a subgroup of Netflix movies on your TV) and it's very, very easy to set up and use.
When I found out about the Roku, I had more than a professional interest in trying it out: We're longtime ...Read More
For Motorola, "an unpleasant reality is emerging" about its planned split into two entities, according to the Wall Street Journal's "Heard on the Street" column today.
"The mobile-devices division is losing so much money that breaking in two could put one or other of the newly independent firms in the poorhouse," the Journal wrote.
Moreover, the paper said, Motorola is having a tough time finding anyone who wants to be CEO of the money-hemorrhaging mobile devices unit. An HP executive who was the frontrunner, personal systems group EVP Todd Bradley, has pulled his name out of ...Read More
Shapiro noted that a big initiative for his grou...
When I found out about the