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Roku unveils its first answer to Apple’s AirPlay:
Now you can stream your carefully curated music playlists and flattering family photos straight from your iPhone or Android device to your living room big screen with our brand new Play on Roku feature. Yes, it’s true. You can even set your photos to music.
Since it only works with audio — not video — it can’t yet be considered a viable competitor to AirPlay. But you have to imagine that Roku, which recently accepted a round of venture capital from large media companies, is heading in that direction.
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The New York Times profiles Aereo and notes its expansion plans:
In addition, the company’s lofty expansion plans — 10 to 15 cities by next year — will be an expensive endeavor. It is likely to require more than the $20.5 million that Aereo has raised from a roster of impressive investors, including Barry Diller, who created Fox and is now the chief executive of IAC/InterActiveCorp. The company designs and manufactures its own equipment, and it will need to build antenna farms in each metropolitan area it hopes to enter. Then there is the staffing for those cities and marketing campaigns to warm consumers to the idea.
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Aereo, the service I use for free network TV over the Web, just sent me an email with good and bad news:
Aereo has been deliberately vague about the length of my free trial, so the word “remember” is, well, bullshit, but I guess it’s about time that I paid for it. But the company recently changed its pricing structure, so I have a choice.
I was signed up for the $12/month plan but definitely don’t need 40 hours of DVR space. (When I use Aereo, it’s almost always to watch live programming.) And the other options — $8/month or $80/year — are similar in assuming that I use Aereo regularly.
The reality is that I only use it when I really need access to something that’s airing live on network TV like the Olympics or the conventions. When Ann Curry gave her tearful goodbye on Today, it was great to be able to flip on my TV and watch, but I don’t need to watch that show every morning. Which is why I’m choosing Aereo’s most interesting pricing option: pay $1/day only on days when you want to watch. I think that will come to about three or four days a month, but if it’s more frequent, I should consider the other plans.
So after a long trial period and considering some other options, that’s how I’m solving my need for network TV. Not bad.
On another note, Aereo could really use some help in the marketing department. All of their communication, from customer emails to tweets, is so restrained and devoid of personality. For instance, here’s a very typical tweet they sent after the Olympics ended:
The big games are over. What are you most excited to watch now?
— Aereo (@AereoTV) August 14, 2012
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Fascinating: HBO Nordic, the network’s version of HBO Go for Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Denmark, will be available to anyone willing to pay, regardless of whether they also have a cable TV subscription. TechCrunch calls it a Netflix competitor, which is true enough, but Variety cuts to chase:
What’s different this time around is that Scandinavia is a market where HBO doesn’t have to protect an entrenched business model as lucrative as the one in the U.S., where a standalone product would jeopardize its deals with distributors from Comcast to DirecTV.
I’ve written previously about the conditions that keep this from happening in the U.S. — for now. In the meantime, keep an eye on HBO Nordic.
Amazon.com, Inc. today announced an expanded content licensing agreement with NBCUniversal Cable & New Media Distribution, adding hundreds of popular and award-winning TV episodes to Prime Instant Video, including prior seasons of Parks and Recreation, Parenthood, Friday Night Lights, Heroes, Battlestar Galactica and more.
FNL on Amazon Prime! It will be interesting to see if Amazon continues to beef up its Prime Instant Video offerings to compete with Netflix. Prime costs $79 a year, and most people who pay that, including me, do so for the free shipping, but the catalog of free media that comes with it certainly doesn’t hurt. Netflix costs $96 a year but has a much larger catalog — for now — and most of Amazon’s truly appealing content is sold a la carte. But if Amazon were to continue adding FNL-caliber content to Prime, it could become the first provider with attractive subscription and a la carte offerings.
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The new app makes it incredibly easy to personalize results using a platform they call “Watchlist.” Users can input their interests in terms of actors, shows, movies, sports teams, etc. and Watchlist will display where you can find free and pay episodes on TV, on demand (they were the first to index Xfinity results obscured by Comcast’s unintuitive cable system), or even streaming. Better yet, the results, which are sortable by what’s on right now, or what’s new to stream, sends you directly to that episode on Hulu Plus, iTunes, Crackle, HBO Go, MAX Go, and more, with plans to add more sources in the coming months.
It’s here in the App Store.
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Apple Inc. is in talks with some of the biggest U.S. cable operators about letting consumers use an Apple device as a set-top box for live television and other content, according to people familiar with the matter.
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