Cord Cutters are a growing tribe, according to research from The Convergence Consulting Group. I cut the cord in 2008 and five years later have relied solely on non-linear video for my video fix.

PS:  Here is a link to our coverage of cord cutting trend. We also host a video podcast that focuses on cord-cutting trends, technologies and gizmos.

Featured photo courtesy Shutterstock user Mikhail Melnikov.

“Right away, you’ll notice we’ve added content categories across the top navigation bar to make it easy to for you to jump to your chosen section – whether it is TV, Kids, Latino, Search, or something else. Inside each category, you’ll discover what’s new in our content library so it’s easy to discover new shows and keep up with the shows you already love.”

Hulu rolled out a revamped website last summer, and relaunched its PS3 app soon after. Hulu’s UI for consumer electronics devices has been in need for a refresh for some time, as it is essentially unchanged since its launch in 2010.

A spokesperson told us Tuesday that the company doesn’t have anything to announce at this point, but it’s likely that other devices will get a UI revamp soon as well.

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Using your Apple TV

If your home is fully equipped with Apple products, the easiest way to watch home movies privately is by using an Apple TV.  There are several options to display your home movies on your Apple TV, it just depends on which Apple device you happen to have your movies on.

From your iOS device: With point and shoot cameras dropping in sales by 30 percent in recent months, more people are using their iPhones to capture all of their personal moments on video.  Provided you are running iOS 4.3 or greater, when the video files are still on your iPhone, you can view them directly on the AppleTV using AirPlay. Simply turn on your Apple TV, tap on the AirPlay icon and select which AppleTV you want to view your videos on.

Directly from your Mac: If you do not have an iPhone, and you have been off loading your video files from your digital camera directly to your Mac, you can still use AirPlay from your Mac to watch your videos on your Apple TV.  Macs running OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion can also stream their entire screens directly to an Apple TV using AirPlay Mirroring.

If you do not have a newer generation AirPlay-capable Mac (mid-2011 or newer), you still have two choices.  The first is an app in the Mac App Store called HUDTube ($4.99, Mac).  This is the only video player app in the Mac App Store that supports streaming to an Apple TV using AirPlay.  With HudTube, you simply drag and drop the video file you want to view, and select the Apple TV you wish to stream to.

The second solution for your Mac is to use a product called Air Parrot ($9.99, Mac).  This product brings the same AirPlay streaming capabilities to older Macs.  One nice feature that Air Parrot has that Apple’s own AirPlay Mirroring does not is the ability to select just one app window.  This feature is called “App Mirroring.”  As an example, with App Mirroring you can display just the QuickTime Player rather then your entire desktop.

Home Sharing from iTunes: You can also use iTunes on your Mac to stream your home movies to your Apple TV.  Beginning with version 10.1 of iTunes, you have been able to share your video files alongside your photos with Home Sharing.  Home Sharing is a way to share your entire iTunes Library on your local network to all of your Apple devices.  It is easy to enable, but does require that you have an iTunes account.  Keep in mind that all Home Sharing will be limited to devices that are configured with that account.

Once you have Home Sharing enabled in iTunes, from iTune’s File menu go back to Home Sharing menu item and click on “Choose Photos to Share with AppleTV.”  Here you can select either an iPhoto Library, an Aperture Library, or any other folder on your Mac containing photos and videos you want to share.  Just be sure to check “Include Videos” when you first set this up.

To watch your shared movies, you must also enable Home Sharing on your Apple TV.  Now you will be able to select any one of the movies you shared by accessing them from the “Computer” icon on the home menu of your Apple TV.  Even thought they are videos, they will be listed under “Photos” of your computer’s Home Sharing library.  Keep in mind that this Home Sharing solution is limited to your devices connected to your home network.

Direct connection with cables

If you do not have an Apple TV connected to your HDTV, the next best thing is to use a cable to connect your Apple device directly to your HDTV.  How you connect to the HDTV will depend on which Apple product you have and the type of connectors your television supports.  For the most recent Macs that come equipped with either a mini display port or Thunderbolt, there is the Belkin Mini DisplayPort to HDMI Adapter for $34.95 which will allow you to connect your Mac to an HDTV using an HDMI connection.

For your iPhone, iPod touch and iPad that still has the older 30-pin connector, you can use the Apple Composite AV Cable for $39.  While this is not an HDMI solution, it does connect to a wider variety of home theater equipment.  There are also the Lightning Digital AV Adapter for $49 that works with the iPhone 5 and latest version of the iPad that come with the new Lightning connector.  Each of these solutions will allow you to play back your movies from your Apple device directly to your HDTV.

Copy files to USB thumb drive

If your Mac is not near your home theater equipment, or you just don’t want to mess with cables every time you want to watch a home movie, you may be able to watch your video files from a USB thumb drive.  Many of todays home theater appliances come equipped with a USB port.  The challenge here is getting your home videos into a format that your device can display.  To convert mine, I have always used Handbrake (Free, Mac).  Handbrake is capable of reading in a wide variety of video formats and can export to the industry standard H.264.

If you are looking for a solution that works just as well, but is available through the Mac App Store, then try Smart Converter Pro ($4.99, Mac).  Like Handbrake, Smart Converter Pro can convert all of your home movies in a batch process.  Unlike Handbrake, it can also encode your home movies to DivX, a popular video format that a lot of older home theater equipment still supports.  Once you have your home movies in the format that you need, simply copy them over to your USB thumb drive and plug it into your home theater equipment.

Host your own UPnP/DLNA media server

Another option is to host your own Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) or Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) media server from your Mac.  Most smart HDTVs, Blu-ray Disc players, Roku and popular game consoles like the XBox and Playstation all can play videos served up by a UPnP/DLNA server.  The problem with this solution historically has been finding a media server solution that your home theater appliance works well with.  This sounds complicated but it really is not.  It is basically the same thing that iTunes does via AirPlay to the Apple TV outlined above.  Just think of UPnP/DLNA as AirPlay for the rest of the home theater market.

For the Mac, there are two popular media server solutions that are UPnP/DLNA compliant.  The first is Plex Media Server (Free, Mac).  Plex has been around for a while now and has done a great job of ensuring that its solution works well on a wide variety of devices.  Once installed, there are tutorials and instructions to help publish your local video files over your home network.

The second solution that does not have nearly all of the features the Plex has — but does a great job at serving up a folder full of home movies — is Serviio (Free, Mac).  Both solutions are easy to set up and will provide access to your home movies to almost any UPnP/DLNA compliant device attached to your home network.

There are several options available to you when it comes to watching home movies at home.  Not every solution requires that you use only Apple products to record and watch your home movies.  Each one offers its own benefits, from being able to play back your recently recorded videos directly from your iPhone, to storing years of home movies on your Mac and being able to bring them up any time you want to view them.

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HBO Go, which requires a subscription, is only available to users who get HBO from their cable provider, so it’s not a solution for cord cutters to simply pay for à la carte HBO programming separate from cable or satellite. But it’s a boon for HBO subscribers who want to access the provider’s backlog of content: HBO Go makes every episode of every season of every HBO show available to subscribers.

Apple has been reportedly in discussion with U.S. cable companies, including Time Warner, for many months about ways to bring cable content to its set-top box. The news that HBO Go could arrive by mid-2013 is the most significant sign yet that the two are making headway in the negotiations.

This would not be the first time Time Warner has made HBO Go available on a set-top: it’s already on Roku set-top boxes and on Microsoft’s Xbox 360 console. Neither is it a first for Apple customers. HBO Go has been available as an app on the iOS App Store since 2011.

But it would be a possible selling point for Apple as it continues to figure out its television strategy. Though the company sold two million set-top boxes during the final quarter of 2012, the company’s leadership won’t commit publicly to what the future holds for the device. CEO Tim Cook has moved from calling Apple TV a hobby to “an area of intense interest.”

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We sometimes make component changes which require an updated model number for regulatory approval. The component changes we made don’t affect product features and Apple TV customers will continue to have the same great user experience.

Apple is getting ready to launch the next generation Apple TV — and it’s still just a box. An FCC filing first spotted by Engadget reveals that Apple has been working on an updated Apple TV device with a slightly smaller casing. 5 millimeters smaller (0.2”) on each side, to be precise. The FCC filing is heavily redacted, so we don’t have any actual photos, and don’t know what else is different about the new Apple TV — but it doesn’t look like much will change.

Case in point: The most recent Apple TV update, which rolled out when the company released iOS 6.1 earlier this week, has also been made available for a still-unreleased “Apple TV 3,2” device. Apple calls the current-generation device the Apple TV 3,1, which makes it clear that the coming update is likely just incremental.

That’s a disappointment to anyone who has been hoping for a full-blown Apple TV set, for which we have seen many rumors but little evidence over the last few years. Then again, Apple has no need to rush its TV plans, if it has any: Its current Apple TV actually sells really well, to the tune of 2 million in the last quarter.

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Vivendi just launched (PDF) Watchever on Wednesday. The service offers access to “entire seasons of award-winning U.S. series, blockbusters and international art house films” for €8.99 (USD $11.99) per month. Among the “thousands” of available titles: AMC shows Mad Men and Breaking Bad, early seasons of HBO shows like The Sopranos and Sex and the City and films like Slumdog Millionaire and There Will Be Blood.

The Next Web, which first reported the news, thinks this “could be the start of a trend in which Apple cuts deals for regions where there is a strong localized offering that delivers content appealing to Apple TV owners there.”

Netflix is not available in Germany. The Amazon-owned Lovefilm, which offers both streaming and physical DVDs, is available in Germany but, like Amazon Instant Video in the U.S., it’s not available on Apple TV.

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But before you get out your wallet, remember that these are just prototypes. We’ve heard these rumors before, and we’ll likely continue to hear them as Apple figures out how to move its strategy for the living room beyond a “hobby.” The Journal‘s story is careful to point out just how early these tests are, with a source quoted saying, “It isn’t a formal project yet” and that “Apple could opt not to proceed with the device.” In other words, according to this story Apple doesn’t have a concrete plan just yet, and they are still figuring things out.

It is not exactly breaking news that Apple is exploring what to do in the area of television. In fact, just last week CEO Tim Cook told NBC that television is “an area of intense interest” for Apple. The company has been working on this for years. Steve Jobs famously told his biographer before his death in 2011 that he had “cracked” TV, which led to more rumors that an Apple twist on a television would arrive as early as “late 2012.”

What content would be on this television that would distinguish it from Apple’s currently available $99 set-top box is an arguably bigger and more important question. Apple’s devices are about what content you can get on them. And as recent stories leaked to the press have shown, Apple and the major content providers have yet to reach an agreement.

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What are the chances for such a product, if it might arrive? Different, depending where you are in the world, perhaps. Sanford C. Bernstein senior U.S. media analyst Todd Juenger told an investor briefing (summary):

“I think Apple is largely stymied in the US to do anything truly disruptive in terms of the television ecosystem. All of the content that people care about most is in the hands of the US media companies … None of them has really any discernible upside to gain from entering into any agreement to make that content available to Apple … In fact, they have a lot to lose by doing that … Apple would need to do that to really disrupt things. What Apple has left to do is to build a device.”

Juenger says the absent middle ground in the U.S. TV ecosystem — between the expensive multi-channel pay TV most viewers buy and the five-network free TV a minority take — is not about to be occupied any time soon by a cheaper or alternative service offered by the likes of Apple.

However, in Europe, Bernstein says, the situation may be more promising for Apple. Senior European media analyst Claudio Aspesi told investors (summary):

“Several players (including new entrants and Telcos) are trying to potentially find a niche and a play; if this process were to lead to a sufficiently fragmented market, it would be easier (relative to the US) for technology companies to find a foothold in content. If the market fragments that much, then, it will be all that much easier for Apple (or Google or Amazon), at some point, to come in and consolidate this.”

I agree that each market is different but, in some ways, I have the opposite conclusion. Although Apple, under Steve Jobs, broke ground by licensing rights to sell and rent out movies and TV episodes in its native market, elsewhere around the world it has been relatively lackluster at acquiring content rights in the same way.

On that track record, I would not be confident that Apple can sign to acquire TV content in Europe with the same success rate it could at home, certainly not at the same time as U.S. TV content — not least because the pronounced differences in the two businesses would compel Apple to negotiate using different strategies at the same time.

Regardless, whether Apple really wants to sign content in the way many describe it is far from certain. Most technology companies describe themselves as platforms, not content owners, and the thing they can best bring to bear on content industries is user interface accessibility improvements.

We have recently seen no outcome affirmative conclusion to the slightly far-fetched notion — mooted in some media quarters — that Apple or Google would bid for expensive European soccer rights. Indeed, whilst a growing number of YouTube channels is launching to host some highlights, YouTube is taking pains to distance itself from ownership of those videos.

Apple’s interest, however, remains clear, and may even have graduated beyond the “hobby” status that Jobs once gave the company’s TV interests, judging by CEO Tim Cook’s comments to NBC’s Brian Williams in an interview this weekend:

“When I go into my living room and turn on the TV, I feel like I have gone backwards in time by 20 to 30 years. It’s an area of intense interest. I can’t say more than that.”

Read our recent story on why digital media banker Terence Kawaja thinks tech firms hoping to disrupt the TV business “cabal” are going to be hard-pressed.

Apple has shown that it can disrupt and support one content industry in the past — music. iTunes Store popularized the track download format, restored legal consumption to a business diminishing in Napster’s heyday, and atomized the album.

Much of that was imagined by Jobs. What can Cook bring to TV execs’ tables?

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• How consumer media will change in 2013
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