Hollywood studios will soon let viewers rent newish feature films from the comfort of their living rooms for $30 each. While the studios hope the new premium VOD window will stem sharp declines at the box office, there’s no guarantee the plan will work. Read more »
Two announcements on Monday night illustrated the yin and yang of the streaming market. Amazon announced a cloud storage drive and cloud music service, and Netflix said it would have to degrade the quality of video streams in response to bandwidth caps. Read more »
Today on the Net: YouTube founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen are thinking about doing another project together, Amazon is planing to launch a cloud media locker and Piers Morgan has fallen in love with Twitter. Read more »
Google announced its plan to build a superfast, fiber-to-the-home network in a lucky town last February and it would name the town in 2010. But last December it named a new person to lead the effort and said it needed more time. Where is the network? Read more »
ISPs have staked out a singular public rationale: Data caps are necessary to limit the consumption of “bandwidth hogs” in order to protect the network experience for everyone else. But is this really accurate and what can the application providers do to help? Read more »
Broadband caps have become a reality at many large ISPs. Protecting the pay TV business is a rationale for caps, but as connected devices proliferate and bandwidth needs skyrocket, consumers may find those caps harder to live with and operators may find them more profitable. Read more »
Netflix is reportedly going up against the big cable networks for a new show called House of Cards. But what will adding original programming to its video library mean for Netflix, and what does it mean for the future of cable programming? Read more »
Time Warner Cable is the latest pay TV provider to roll out an iPad app — and this one streams live TV. Unfortunately, the channel selection is somewhat limited, and if you’re a subscriber, you’re only allowed to stream live TV from inside your own house. Read more »
AT&T is planning to send out letters next week to notify subscribers about a coming broadband cap of 150 GB per month for DSL subscribers and 250 GB per month for U-Verse subscribers, says company spokesman Seth Bloom in an interview at SXSW. Read more »
Despite having an already robust platform for delivering Internet video, Comcast says it will stay away from offering over-the-top videos to people outside its network. Meanwhile, Dish Network is negotiating content rights that might enable it to offer streaming services to customers online. Read more »
Cord cutters who’ve left cable and satellite behind will be happy to learn that Comcast has agreed to continue licensing NBC content to digital distribution rivals like iTunes in order to convince the government to approve its acquisition of the TV network. Read more »
The FCC is set to reform the Universal Service Fund, which provides subsidized access to voice services to low-income people. As the FCC looks to reform USF to provide broadband as opposed to voice telephone service, it should modernize its Lifeline and Link-up programs. Read more »
The pay TV industry had been hit hard by subscriber losses in the second and third quarters of last year, dropping 330,000 users in that time. But subscriber numbers from major pay TV operators in the fourth quarter suggest the cord cutting trend may be slowing. Read more »
Has Comcast been imposing extra peering fees on Level 3 to hurt Netflix, which is competing with its TV business? That’s what Netflix is alleging in its just-published annual report, without actually stating it that frankly. The warning is carefully worded, but Netflix is clearly concerned. Read more »
Comcast had some good news for investors this morning, with news that the number of subscribers lost to pay TV competitors and online-only services had slowed dramatically in the fourth quarter. But could slower subscriber losses be evidence that TV Everywhere might actually be working? Read more »
Global Crossing has weighed in on the peering debate in a Friday letter to the FCC that argued ISPs were trying to use peering as a smokescreen to charge content delivery networks and web service providers more for access to their subscribers. Read more »
Today on the Internet: Carriage fights cost News Corp $47 million last year, MTV is offering a paid subscription service for original programming in the UK and the Comcast-Time Warner deal could be a great example of how companies can work together in the Netflix age. Read more »
Comcast’s broadband subscribers now consume a median of between 4 and 6 GB of data each month, up from 2-4 GB, thanks to the proliferation of devices using Wi-Fi in the home and streaming video services such as Netflix and Hulu. Read more »
Through a variety of TV apps and widgets, consumer electronics manufacturers will be able to choose what content viewers see when they turn on the TV. This has broad implications cable companies and TV programmers, who could soon lose the ability to control audiences. Read more »
More exciting than examining the previous quarter is looking forward into the next 12 months and using the trends of 2010 to predict the realities that will surface in 2011. Throughout this past December, GigaOM Pro’s curators did just that, making trend predictions, pointing out companies to watch and even telling us what not to expect. Connected Consumer curator Michael Wolf’s thoughts, analyses and predictions are compiled here in a single report. Companies mentioned in this report include Netflix, Hulu, Facebook, Apple and Boxee. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Comcast added on-demand video content to its iPad app today, enabling users to watch shows from HBO and other networks on the tablet device. But while the video quality is good, the content selection is only so-so — meaning it’s not something I’d subscribe to use. Read more »
When Comcast announced its plans to build TV Everywhere services, Time Warner was right there with it. So it comes as little surprise that Time Warner’s Turner Broadcasting has extended availability of its content to be available on authenticated websites and mobile apps, live and on-demand. Read more »
Netflix has been very successful in attracting new subscribers, specifically around its streaming video service. But the video subscription company says its business could be hurt by ISPs moving to tiered data plans, which Netflix claims are incredibly overpriced. Read more »
Apple and Google both made moves at the top, raising questions about the future of both companies. The FCC signed off on Comcast’s bid for NBC. And the daily deals business heated up this week with LivingSocial flexing its muscles while Google launched a Groupon clone. Read more »
The entertainment world just got a little bit more conglomerated: The FCC has settled on the conditions needed for it to approve the long-debated joint venture between NBC Universal and Comcast today. Those conditions signal that the FCC fully recognizes the importance of online video. Read more »
Some might call this past quarter in the infrastructure space transformative. The rise of ARM-based processing suggests the days of x86 dominance might be coming to an end, while the Amazon Web Services-WikiLeaks controversy cast new light on the legal aspects of cloud computing. Big data got bigger, meanwhile, as the Hadoop ecosystem expanded, and amid all these cutting-edge technologies, two archaic topics — Novell and Java — proved they aren’t going anywhere soon. Companies mentioned in this report include Intel, AMD, Amazon Web Services, IBM, Yahoo, Appistry, VMware, Joyent and Microsoft. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Cable companies and TV programmers are faced with a startling new reality: They are no longer the gatekeepers that decide what consumers see on their new Internet-connected TVs. In this new app-based world, their content is increasingly being placed against options from online services like Netflix. Read more »
Comcast will be adding a new feature to its Xfinity iPad app that will allow subscribers to stream live TV to the mobile tablet. The catch is that viewers will only have access to that live programming while they’re at home, connected to their wireless router. Read more »
In working to ensure the FCC agrees to the merger of its cable networks with NBC Universal, Comcast is making a concession to make broadband access available to low-income households for $10 a month. But will the proposal spawn a new group of cord cutters? Read more »
It’s important to dispel potential myths and market misunderstandings when it comes to consumer electronic devices and trends. For 2011, that includes paid video chat, Apple dominating the living room and the misinformed belief that Google will rule the e-book space. ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Today on the Internet: Google and Netlfix may start paying for film distribution rights before the films are completed, Comcast VOD had more than 200 day-and-date releases in 2010 and FilmOn’s founder has some not-so-nice things to say to CBS. Read more »
An FCC filing points to what could be Comcast’s next-generation set-top box, which is in trials with some customers in Augusta, Ga. Details of the home screen and menu detail an improved content discovery mechanism, social features and the possibility of third-party apps. Read more »
In the latest salvo over its interconnection dispute with Comcast, Level 3 is taking aim at the cable provider’s proposed deal to merge with NBC Universal. In a letter to the FCC, Level 3 accuses Comcast as acting as a gatekeeper to competing online video services. Read more »
Blame cord cutting, at least in part, for the drop in cable subscriber numbers in 2010. Looking towards 2011, we expect this trend could gather further steam thanks to bundled subscription offerings from players like Microsoft and Apple. We also expect a new iteration of the ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
We already knew that Netflix streams about 20 percent of peak data traffic. But you might be surprised just how few Netflix subscribers it takes to push that much data: One analyst estimates just 3.5 million users might be responsible for one-fifth of primetime data traffic. Read more »
Not everyone believes that Hulu will file for its much-anticipated IPO next year. As one of his top five predictions for 2011, Metacafe CEO Erick Hachenburg suggests Hulu might not go public after all, but could be acquired by Comcast instead. Read more »
Comcast’s new Xcalibur trial shows that it has the ability to roll out new online video services on its connected set-top boxes. But just because it can, doesn’t mean it will. The company is more focused on refining search and navigation features through the trial. Read more »
Today on the Internet: Senator Bernie Sanders’ eight-hour live-streamed filibuster was a big hit for C-SPAN, Blockbuster is experimenting with pricing and kiosks, and when will Netflix add live TV to its content offerings? Read more »
Today on the Net: Comcast released its Xfinity app for Android mobile phones, Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman said Paramount has no plans to be part of other studios’ premium VOD plans and Netflix CFO Barry McCarthy is resigning from the company. Read more »
A fight between Comcast and Level 3 may be simple commercial disagreement over how much traffic Level 3 will send Comcast now that Level 3 is the content delivery network for Netflix, but many believe the spat has the potential to change how the web works. Read more »
