WTF? Comcast scores MORE sales from fewer vid customers
Analysis Plus it keeps hiking prices - how will it hang onto these big spenders?
Comcast numbers were largely deemed good by its management team on their results call, with a few noticeable holes. Firstly, despite an increase in video revenues, Comcast in fact lost 60,000 video customers in the quarter, a number which appears to be rising. Secondly, there was a major revenue fall in NBC broadcasting.
Another …
AT LEAST two-thirds mobile traffic will be video by 2017 - Cisco report
Total mobe data shifted doubled during 2012
Global cellular networks are reeling under remarkable growth rates that look like they will be sustained over the next five years, and this will be driven by video, says a recent report.
According to the Cisco Visual Networking Index (VNI) report, with its quarterly update out this week, video accounted for over 50 per cent of …
OpenTV slaps Netflix with patent lawsuit
Analysis Blockbuster: Awesome, I don't need to lift a finger...
Netflix has been hit by a patent infringement lawsuit by Open TV, now a subsidiary of Nagra, the Switzerland-based conditional access company, part of the Kudelski Group. It has not said what the patents are, but the filings at the US District Court for the District of Delaware show that they are all software patents.
There are …
Microsoft-Netflix bid rumours feast on froth – and logic
Perfect fit?
Some of the big takeovers in the pay TV arena have taken analysts by surprise, but that will not be the case if, as looks increasingly likely, Microsoft tables a bid for Netflix.
We all know where the rumour began, with the announcement early in October that Netflix CEO Reed Hastings was standing down from his other big role as …
TiVo: Cisco and pals could owe us BILLIONS over DVR patents
Check this, Apple - A patent battle over actual technology
Since 2004, Faultline has been championing the idea that someone must have invented the DVR, and that it is a genuine invention, not a set of software patents like the flimsy patents filed by Apple, which we do not believe will ever stand up to scrutiny.
And if TiVo genuinely does own those patents, which the last three court …
TalkTalk's YouView: Why no Wi-Fi?
That's no way to penetrate Virgin Media, Sky punters
Better late than never has been a popular analyst response to the UK’s YouView hybrid connected TV platform, and it could equally well apply to the TalkTalk TV service re-launched on the back of that, just as BT Vision has been. It has got some things right, such as bundling the service free with broadband, and allowing …
Nook pulls on backpack, heads for Europe and flings with foreigners
Barnes & Noble deals with Dixons, Sainsburys and even Waitrose
There are a lot of Nooks in the US, maybe 10 million, maybe more, no one is quite certain as the company only releases revenues, which are up at around $192m a quarter for the Nook, not unit numbers. But at an average purchase price of $200 including media, that‘s about 4 million devices a year, since in first launched. But all …
French firm snatches Italian set-top contract from Blighty's Amino
Merde
French digital video specialist Technicolor has snatched away a central set top contract from UK's Amino, the set top company that has so far blazed a trail in the hybrid Intel-based set top market. Technicolor has announced that it will supply the next generation set top for Telecom Italia‘s Cubovision.
The MediaPlay range of …
Thomson joins vid-streamers' rush for MPEG-DASH
Web vid spec has Microsoft on board, but Apple's still hanging back
Now that the web vid spec MPEG DASH has been published and interoperability testing is well underway, vendors are starting to put their cards on the table with serious deployments. One of the first to build DASH into products is Thomson Video Networks, which is now supporting it in its ViBE VS7000 multi-screen video platform, …
France U-turns on public TV advertising
May be forced to abandon the telco tax
It might seem a no-brainer for the French government to revive prime time TV advertising on the France Television public channels, after all public finances are under relentless pressure, and the advertising ban was the controversial policy of the last government, brought in by Nicholas Sarkozy in January 2009. But the problem …
Pay TV giant Hulu becomes victim of its own success
Latest rumour of CEO's departure heralds end of stormy honeymoon
The latest rumour of Hulu CEO Jason Kilar’s imminent departure sounds like a good old silly season story designed to fill the void of empty news pages while people are on vacation. But the fact Hulu has been attracting such rumours while other big hitters in pay TV never seem to get them, itself provides a clue to a story of …
Netflix puts end to fumbling, penetrates Scandinavia
Actually working in its own interest for a change
For the first time in a while Netflix has said something that has not crashed its share price, and has lifted it instead: it plans to launch its online movie service in the fourth quarter in the four countries of Scandinavia – Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland. It confirmed that the cost of doing so will mean that it makes a …
AuthenTec sells out to Apple to the sound of 1,000 lawsuits
Directors hounded for not hawking the business to Samsung
The $356m purchase of AuthenTec by Apple has not been universally welcomed. Not only are analysts and potential rivals trying to piece together the logic of the deal, but investors and, more importantly, class actions lawyers, are trying to work out if the 60 per cent trading premium that the deal is set at, was sufficiently …
Netflix scores $1bn own goal after company shoots off mouth
Throwaway comment ruins investor confidence despite solid results
A throwaway comment in the Netflix results (PDF) – suggesting that the Olympics will impact everyone's TV watching, including Netflix customers – has the company in PR trouble once again, with deeply suspicious investors, ready to jump at anything. After an innocuous set of results which looked like it had almost done enough to …
Eurozone crisis hits pay TV: Punters pick broadband over telly
Norway's GET cable firm learns hard lesson as it tries to flog TV assets
As Norway's GET cable company puts up a "for sale" sign, it demonstrates that the pay TV scene in Europe is starting to realise a home truth – and it may take something as big as the Eurozone crisis to prove it – that pay TV is NOT as resilient as broadband, which continues to grow in the Eurozone. You cannot apply for a job …
Comcast makes up with Boxee after cable encryption spat
Cable TV + internet boxes sector keeps swelling
The proliferation of third-party aggregation devices to combine cable TV with internet content in the home is set to continue in the US following a landmark deal between Comcast and Boxee.
This is significant because Comcast is the largest US multi-system operator – with 22.5 million pay TV customers – while Boxee is the most …
TiVo plunges into Swedes after penetrating Virgin Media
Gets another pipe into the box
The announcement that Com Hem of Sweden has cut a deal with TiVo this week shows how the TiVo strategy is rolling out in Europe and points to more and more deals being likely in the future. Expect it to drift outside of Europe soon, as well.
Com Hem gives another 643,000 cable customers in Europe a chance to buy TiVo service. In …
No one watches TV, Nielsen, and you know it
Scraping social media doesn't work either
Even in the modern world where there is more pay TV, there are few, if any, sources of professional video where consumers can know that they will encounter little or no advertising.
Pay TV networks such as Comcast, DirecTV and Time Warner Cable in the US – and Sky and Liberty Global in Europe – all carry the advertising which is …
FCC: Let's kill analogue early, fob diehards off with converter boxes
Opinion Only thing left on the channels is fat ladies singing
Every pay TV market has its idiosyncrasies, particularly for Multi System Operators (MSOs) such as Time Warner or Comcast in the US and Virgin Media in the UK. And in the US, one of these idiosyncrasies is the requirement that cable operators retransmit so called "must-carry" signals in both analogue and digital formats.
This …
Cisco vs TiVo DVR smackdown: Whose patent is it anyway?
Analysis Time for a slow-motion replay of telly tech battle
It‘s hard to read a "TiVo is sued by someone" headline these days and get excited about it. Multiple courts, going up to the highest in the US, have backed TiVo‘s claims to its Time Warp and other patents, dating back to 2001, so how can it get its patents re-examined once again?
But the US press got all excited this week about …
TiVo spits out monster 6-way Pace box for US eyes only
Probably commissioned by mega US cable corp
The fact that the very first product out of the relationship between TiVo and Pace is a six-tuner device means automatically that it‘s for use in the US – nowhere else has that kind of requirement yet.
But in the US six tuners is becoming a requirement, and the TiVo Premiere being delivered at cable TV giant RCN already has four …
Dish Networks locks horns with broadcasters over ad skipping
Auto Hop has content industry hopping mad
In the latest episode of the US ad-skipping saga, Dish Networks is facing the wrath of broadcasters such as NBC and Fox, but winning praise from customers and no doubt causing a little churn among competitors. That at least is the intention of the Dish PVR ad skipping feature called Auto Hop, with the company gambling that the …
Samsung buys US Spotify clone, hopes to bruise Apple's eco-system
All it needs is international music rights
You don‘t have to be a genius to know that mSpot, which has just been bought by Samsung Electronics in the US, is going to go through both a transformation and a huge international upsurge in usage, if it has, or can get, international music rights.
Samsung has been talking about a rival to iTunes for some years, ever since …
Web super-TV turns EXTREME sports fans into sofa-dwellers
Epic telly hopes for market in Europe for its OTT service
Over-the-top content (OTT) – the online delivery of video and audio content that cuts out the ISP – has always seemed perfectly made for a global age where communities are widely distributed, and now we have the first pan European service for extreme or adventure sports enthusiasts.
Branded Epic TV and funded by Finnish telecoms …
Investors circle Barnes & Noble as it plans Nook spin-off
Could compete with the iPad...
Barnes & Noble has had a troubled few years. Part of the problem is that it continues to be a tablet business with a chain of bookshops connected to it rather than the other way around – with the tablet and ebook reader business growing at a savage pace, while the bookshop dawdles. But it clearly needs a new owner, and to that …
AOL slaps on 'online Nielsen ratings' to lure advertising fat cats
Wants to prove it attracts the 'right sort' of people
AOL hopes to steal a march on its online competitors in the US over the next few weeks, when it shows off its use of metrics – which are the closest Nielsen can get to comparing the results of online video based ad campaigns with TV campaigns.
AOL has announced the use of this new model, which uses the Nielsen gross rating point …
Nordic region, Ireland adopt new 'connected telly' standard
Follow in Europe's footsteps - leaving Blighty's YouViewers behind
Nordig, the parent broadcasting organisation for the Nordic countries, plus Ireland, has issued a new specification for broadcasting. It has dropped MHP as its interactive primary broadcasting protocol and adopting Hybrid Broadcast Broadband TV (HbbTV). The standard is already taking off in Germany, France, the Netherlands and …
Yahoo! enters! last! chance! saloon!
... through the revolving door
The lazy reaction to Yahoo!‘s latest attempt at revival is cynicism, but a closer examination suggests it is playing a mixed hand of cards as well as it can. As we all know Yahoo! lost the search wars to Google, as did a bunch of other vendors that appeared well placed at the time. One of them, Alta Vista, ended up being …
US telly big boys open fire on 'cloud streaming' biz Aereo
Ban sought on video service
The US "free to stream" service Aereo has, as expected, run into a hail of legal fire within one week of its unveiling, as major networks NBC, ABC, CBS and Fox waste no time responding to what they consider a threat to revenues.
The broadcasters have requested a court injunction blocking Aereo’s service even before its first …
Europe is a happy hunting ground for TiVo
Customer decline screeches to a halt ...
After pioneering the DVR and trick-play functions over a decade ago, TiVo eventually ran out of steam, until reinventing itself as a vendor of hybrid software for integrating broadband and broadcast services from 2008. This meant it was no longer confined to its own boxes but could enter partnerships with set-top box vendors as …
How Google and Apple exposed their Achilles heels this week
Analysis Mobile payments and advertising are rocky ground for the big boys
In the massive tussle between Apple and Google, it is easy to forget that neither giant (for all their successes) is infallible. They are almost unbeatable in their core markets – Apple in device design and user experience, Google in search, advertising and online software.
But once they venture out of their comfort zones, …
PlayStation Vita OS in your phone and telly - Sony's saviour?
Analysis Now it's finally shot of Ericsson
Incoming Sony CEO Kazuo Hirai doesn't have too long to prove himself before shareholders get restive again. Of course, his big challenge is in the TV business*, but he has also spotted the chance to do, belatedly, what rival Samsung has been putting together for years – creating a true multiscreen apps and content platform by …
Can Sony's new supremo make the sacrifices to save his biz?
Comment We drill into the uphill battle ex-Playstation boss Hirai faces
When Faultline first began following Sony in 2003, it was worth $36 billion on the stock market. At the time Apple was worth $9.8 billion and it was about to launch the iTunes Music Store. We said that Sony should buy Apple and put Steve Jobs in charge.
Of course it was whimsical, Apple and Jobs in particular would never have …
BT Vision throws Microsoft Mediaroom under a bus for Linux
Set-top box software to be torn out and replaced over the net
UK hybrid TV service BT Vision plans to be the first customer to discard Microsoft's Mediaroom software, almost imminently, after at least a year-long effort to put in completely new software building blocks to rejuvenate the service.
BT controversially refused to launch a fully-fledged IPTV service when it finally got Vision …
Undervalued TiVo wins yet another legal battle
Analysis Braces self for flood of investor cash
There is likely to (eventually) be a flurry of investment activity in TiVo over the coming weeks, as investors shake the tinsel and party poppers from their eyes and the depression on the markets that 2011 brought, and realize what an undervalued stock it has become. The shares spiked on January 3 as it announced that it had …
Apple to conquer connected TVs? Steady on, lad
Analysis Report of telly kit success misses the mark
A very inward-looking report by Strategy Analytics, published last month, seems to ignore the entire Over the Top video market - and makes Apple an out-and-out winner with its $99 Apple TV device by taking 32 per cent of the Connected Home Device market in 2011.
Let's just look at that. So Apple will win 32 per cent of the …
Yahoo! and! Sony! tuck! into! interactive! multimedia! ads!
Interactive advert irritation coming to a tablet near you...
This week could go down as the dawn of the interactive multimedia advert era, as both Yahoo and Sony make very different plays in the field. Yahoo launched an advertising platform called "Living Ads" aimed at tablets, which combines print, online and TV type advertising on a single page, kicking off with a campaign for launch …
TiVo subscriptions go up – for the first time in 4 years
Turns the corner as Virgin and RCN deals cut in
TiVo in the US has definitively turned the corner, increasing the number of Tivo subscribers in the quarter for the first time in four years, turning a 33,000 deficit last quarter into a 117,000 gain this quarter. This long awaited milestone was greeted in the current US investment market with a yawn, and no significant rise in …
Hey everybody! Microsoft's discovered social networking
Analysis Fashionably late? Orange and Facebook are already loved up
Warren Buffett, the world's most famous investor, may have diluted his usual hostility to hi-tech stocks by betting more than $10 billion in IBM, but he remains averse to social networking companies (as well as to Apple) because he thinks it is "extremely difficult" to determine their value and understand their future plan.
Few …
Massive Chinese set-top box orders favour locals
But Cisco and Ericsson get a taste
The magnitude of China Telecom‘s set top plans – with 3.6 million set tops being ordered in a variety of programs – shows how Chinese companies are likely to dominate the set top industry in the coming years and months.
The tender for this round of 2012 devices is just complete and will only take the giant operator through to …
Google TV 2.0 is all bling and no kerching
Sill picking up pieces from hype bubble burst
It is easy to be rude about Google TV, but at the back of the mind is the feeling that one day, after successful tinkering, Google may get it right. Yet after initial hype and excitement around the launch, Google has struggled to recover from the dead weight of unfulfilled expectations that followed, and it will take something …
Cheaper competition? Right, we're outta here
Broadcom, Intel squeezed out of smart telly biz
Last month chip maker Broadcom, with hardly a whimper, began disengaging from the smart TV and Blu-Ray player markets, despite having some high profile CE customers such as LG in this sector.
Then around three weeks later in mid-October, Intel, with tail between its legs, also announced its withdrawal from the smart TV market …
How to pipe live telly into your pocket with 4G
For when you just can't get a WiFi signal
Mobile TV has had as many false starts as an Olympic 100m sprint final, but Long Term Evolution (LTE) technology could change all that. LTE is one of two contenders for 4G mobile networks, the other being Wimax, although some wags call WiFi a third.
It is true though that the proliferation of hot spots both public and private …
RIM's BBX has all the logic PlayBook should have had
BBX converges BlackBerry and QNX, and beefs up enterprise features
RIM is a frustrating company right now. The massive outages that affected BlackBerry email users on three continents last week may have been a miracle of bad timing, just after the iPhone launch, but they were only the most publicised of a string of more avoidable mistakes which are leaving users and developers at the end of …
Microsoft whips Apple with global Xbox TV deals
Gaming network taps up broadcasters
If the Xbox Live network was a cable operator it would be the largest such operator in the world, with 35 million customers, which is why Microsoft is turning the Xbox into an over-the-top TV delivery device – something it has dreamed of ever since it first made the Xbox one of its IPTV Mediaroom set-tops.
Redmond announced the …
Steelie Neelie stares down telcos over fibre sharing
Opinion Euro digital queen will make them ditch copper
Telco operators have a wonderful habit of neither listening nor being rational when local loop unbundling is ever mentioned. The reactions, spread across the European press, to the two consultations announced by Neelie Kroes, European Commission Vice President for the Digital Agenda, mostly accuse her of being mad and her ideas …
Fibre up, broadband up, IPTV up in Europe
Broadband World Forum Fibre-to-home numbers up 43 per cent
Numbers announced at the Broadband World Forum point to a continued rise in fibre deployments, with the dual conclusions that Lithuania and Norway are the most fibred up countries and that both Hungary and the Ukraine are joining the world's leading 'fibre to the home' (FTTH) economies, with a sudden burst of pace.
The report …
Google Wallet and PayPal in electro-purse war
Handbags at dawn...
Google went live with its hotly anticipated Wallet application on Tuesday, though it will hardly hit the mass market yet – it runs only in the US, on the Sprint network, and on its own handset, the Nexus S. And eBay‘s PayPal – the firm which sued Google when it first unveiled Wallet in June – may be the more important player to …
Samsung-Apple patent lawsuit tally hits 21, and counting
Analysis WHOLE WORLD to end up locked in the walled orchard?
The legal activity around Android continues to mount, with the chief antagonists - Samsung and Apple - increasing their lawsuit tally to 21. And another may follow soon, as Samsung threatens to sue to block sales of the iPhone 5 as soon as it launches, at least in its home country of Korea.
Let's face it, this is relevant to all …
Intel gets into Comcast product catalog
At Broadcom's expense?
While Motorola’s announcements at the Cable Show in Chicago last week shows that it has come alive and is hellbent on keeping its major cable customers, in Comcast and Time Warner Cable, the emergence of an Intel chip in an announced set top box at Comcast must set Broadcom firmly back on its heels and send the shivers up …
