Cord Cutter's Diary

Aereo Says New Content Deals Coming for Web TV

Fri, 21 Sep 2012 15:14:28 -0400

Aereo Says New Content Deals Coming for Web TV

Roku mobile app updated with Play on Roku, international support

Thu, 20 Sep 2012 09:27:29 -0400

Roku mobile app updated with Play on Roku, international support:

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.

For a Fee, Streaming Local TV

Mon, 17 Sep 2012 16:01:49 -0400

For a Fee, Streaming Local TV:

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.

The First Apple Channel

Thu, 06 Sep 2012 10:56:11 -0400

The First Apple Channel

Deciding on my network TV solution

Fri, 31 Aug 2012 12:52:56 -0400

Aereo, the service I use for free network TV over the Web, just sent me an email with good and bad news:

“In the next several weeks, we’ll be rolling out support for PC’s.”
“Remember, your free trial ends in one week.”

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

HBO cuts the cord for international launch

Thu, 30 Aug 2012 16:24:00 -0400

HBO cuts the cord for international launch:

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 Announces Expanded Prime Instant Video Agreement with NBCUniversal Cable & New Media Distribution

Fri, 24 Aug 2012 10:18:00 -0400

Amazon Announces Expanded Prime Instant Video Agreement with NBCUniversal Cable & New Media Distribution:

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.

Dear TV Obsessives, TV Guide’s New App Is Actually Pretty Great

Thu, 23 Aug 2012 09:39:26 -0400

Dear TV Obsessives, TV Guide’s New App Is Actually Pretty Great:

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.

New "Post-play" Experience Makes It Easy To Continue Watching

Wed, 15 Aug 2012 20:22:20 -0400

New "Post-play" Experience Makes It Easy To Continue Watching:

For binge-viewing TV shows

Apple's New Front in Battle for TV

Wed, 15 Aug 2012 20:15:40 -0400

Apple's New Front in Battle for TV:

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.

Peter Kafka reports that Aereo, the service I use for network TV...

Thu, 02 Aug 2012 20:00:30 -0400

Peter Kafka reports that Aereo, the service I use for network TV over the internet, has changed its pricing structure. Huh!

I signed up for Aereo in May but have yet to be charged for it. Still, the company has always maintained that, when they did get around to ending my free trial, Aereo would cost $12 a month, which has seemed steep to me. Now, I have a few more options.

I can still pay $12 a month for unlimited use and 40 hours of DVR space, but I could also pay just $8 a month, if I thought I only needed 20 hours of storage. From experience, that is more than enough; in fact, I’ve barely used the recording function on Aereo at all. Or if I were willing to pay $80 upfront for a year of service, I could reduce my equivalent monthly bill to $6.66 (and keep the larger DVR option). Not bad.

But the really interesting new options are the day passes and free trials. I can watch an hour of live network TV per day without paying a dime and/or pay $1 every time I want 24 hours of continuous access (plus a modicum of DVR storage). That last option, the day pass, sounds ideal to me, based on how I’ve been using Aereo so far. When I want to watch a baseball playoff game on Fox or the Oscars on ABC, I pay $1. And on most days, when I don’t have a need for network TV, I pay nothing.

"But the whole idea that there’s a lot of people out there that want to drop multichannel TV, and..."

Wed, 01 Aug 2012 18:33:50 -0400

“But the whole idea that there’s a lot of people out there that want to drop multichannel TV, and just have a Netflix or an HBO — that’s not right. Look for the data, you won’t find them.”

- Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes on a conference call today

Roku’s Streaming Stick Hooks Up With Hitachi, Mitsubishi, And Others To Make Dumb TVs Smart

Wed, 01 Aug 2012 09:59:00 -0400

Roku’s Streaming Stick Hooks Up With Hitachi, Mitsubishi, And Others To Make Dumb TVs Smart:

Roku’s as-yet-unreleased Streaming Stick, which is essentially a smaller version of the Roku XD that I own, will help second-tier television manufacturers compete in the “smart TV” market. Essentially, why do a lot of work turning the TV into a pseudo-computer when a peripheral device can do the work for you? And as Roku puts it, “In a few years, you can replace that Streaming Stick instead of the entire TV.” You could even replace it with a non-Roku device — like, say, the Pocket TV I bought on Kickstarter. That upholds what, to me, is a first principle of cord cutting: modularity.

The Streaming Stick plugs into a mobile high-definition link (MHL) port, which is more common on phones and tablets than TVs right now. So that’s the upshot of today’s announcement: a bunch of TV manufacturers will be making their devices “Roku ready” by supporting MHL.

What I’d really like to see: combine the slimmed-down form factor of the Roku Streaming Stick with the similarly diminutive Boxee Live TV stick, which would add free network television to the mix.

Amazon Brings Its Videos to the iPad

Wed, 01 Aug 2012 09:28:00 -0400

Amazon Brings Its Videos to the iPad:

Finally. It’s here in the App Store. I’ve been using Amazon Instant Video more and more and recently added Amazon Prime. (I paid the $79 for Prime mostly for the free shipping, but it didn’t hurt that I also get a limited library of free media to stream.) I view all of this stuff on my TV through a Roku box, but it will be nice to also have the option of watching on my iPad.

The best feature of the new app is offline viewing, something I wish had for the flights I recently took across the country. (That would be an amazing feature for Netflix to offer, though I assume their content licenses prohibit it.) The app even syncs your viewing across devices like Kindle: start a movie on your big screen and pick it up where you left off on your iPad.

The biggest drawback to Amazon Instant Video for iPad, Peter Kafka notes, is that you can’t purchase new content, just view stuff you’ve already purchased or rented. Blame Apple for that.

Hulu Plus Now Available on Apple TV

Tue, 31 Jul 2012 10:00:15 -0400

Hulu Plus Now Available on Apple TV:

Not a big deal for me, since I don’t use Hulu Plus and can already get it through Roku, but this could start to address a weakness of Apple TV: its paucity of apps compared to other set-top boxes.

Monday night

Mon, 30 Jul 2012 23:04:21 -0400

I caught up on the new episode of Breaking Bad by purchasing it for $2.99 from Amazon and watching it on my television through my Roku box. On my iPad, I kept an eye on the Olympics by streaming NBC live with Aereo, which is still in a free trial but will eventually cost $12 a month. When the swimming was on, I switched it over to my big screen. I followed Twitter on my iPhone, and when someone mentioned that the Yankee game was close in the bottom of the ninth, I flipped on the local radio broadcast on MLB.tv, which cost me $14.99 for the season. The Yankees lost, but it was good night — better than usual, I’ll admit — for getting by without cable.

When I signed up for TV and internet service from Time Warner...

Fri, 27 Jul 2012 09:02:21 -0400

When I signed up for TV and internet service from Time Warner Cable, back in the day, I paid, like everyone else, a deeply discounted rate for the first 12 months. But after my introductory period expired, the standard rates kicked in, and that’s how I came to pay an intolerable $156 a month before dropping TV. Existing customers can sometimes negotiate discounts, especially by threatening to cancel altogether, but nothing like the offers extended to new customers.

Which is why it was surprising to receive this mailing from TWC, offering me the same internet service I currently receive plus “digital TV” for $85 a month. (I pay $52 now.) Call it the cord cutter’s discount: I can add back cable TV for $33 a month, or about a third of what I was paying for it before I dropped the service. The mailing doesn’t specify what level of TV service I would get and I’m hardly interested, anyway, but it’s interesting to see how TWC adjusts its marketing for people like me.

Conquered cord cutting? Try cell cutting and card cutting.

Thu, 26 Jul 2012 16:45:36 -0400

Google Fiber: Plans & Pricing

Thu, 26 Jul 2012 14:23:06 -0400

Google Fiber: Plans & Pricing:

Google just released some details about its experimental, ultra-fast internet service in Kansas City: $70 a month for one gigabit per second in both directions. That’s 100 times faster than the service I currently get from Time Warner Cable, which is the dominant (and nervous) provider in Kansas City, for $50 a month. To drive home the difference, Google is offering free service “at today’s average speeds” to anyone in who wants it, essentially arguing that what Time Warner Cable can provide is worthless.

For $120 a month, customers of Google Fiber can get gigabit internet and cable TV service, but it looks like the latter is missing channels from Disney and Time Warner. I’m sure there will be plenty of hand-wringing to come over those distribution deals, but it seems beside the point. The real story here is super-fast internet and all the opportunities that follow from there. (See my previous post on this.) Google Fiber is a long way from coming to New York, but it will be fun to follow developments in the Midwest.

With Apple’s new operating system released yesterday, OS X...

Thu, 26 Jul 2012 11:33:00 -0400

With Apple’s new operating system released yesterday, OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion), AirPlay has finally come to the Mac. That’s a killer feature for cord cutters. Now, any media you can pull up on your MacBook or iMac — and there’s plenty of live and on-demand video most easily accessed that way — can be sent over to your big screen with a click. This was already the case for your iPod Touch, iPhone, or iPad, but nothing beats the flexibility of a personal computer with a Web browser.

Now, yes, it has always been possible to plug your Mac or any other computer into the side of your television. That’s how I and a lot of people I know do it. But it’s ironic and more than a little cumbersome that cutting the cord actually tends to involve, well, a lot of cords. Apple TV and AirPlay let you skip the hassle of plugging and unplugging your various devices, and the more Apple devices you own, the more convenient this seems. (Yes, of course, that’s the strategy. I am increasingly trapped in Apple’s ecosystem.)

When I was first considering which set-top box to buy, I chose Roku because it’s much more flexible and has many more apps. Apple TV is in the same price range but more limited: it has Netflix and MLB.tv but no Amazon and lots of other apps I find valuable. At the time, I saw the core strength of Apple TV as iTunes, which others may value but I don’t use much. But now it’s abundantly clear that Apple TV’s greatest asset is actually AirPlay, and that’s why I’m finally going to buy one. A friend and fellow cord cutter emailed me last night to say she’s also taking the plunge for the same reasons.

Apple has sold 4 million Apple TVs this year, but the company still calls the device a “hobby.” For that and other reasons, a lot of people speculate about Apple releasing an actual television that will enter the market with the same kind of splash that the iPad did. That may still happen — who knows — but as Peter Kafka wrote last month, “Look a little closer, and you might see the outlines of Apple’s TV plans staring you right in the face.”