The New York Post reports that in order to access Hulu’s online content, the streaming service is planning to start requiring proof of a pay TV subscription.
As a part of the industry-wide “TV Everywhere” initiative, consumers will be able to access Pay TV content online, but they must first prove that they are paying subscribers of a cable or satellite TV operator.
“The Post suggested that Hulu’s Web traffic could be dragged down by the move towards authentication. It had 31 million unique users in March,” according to The Hollywood Reporter.
NBCUniversal is one of the Hulu owners. NBC Sports will require pay TV subscriptions in order to watch most of its upcoming online London Olympics coverage. NBC says it will offer 3,500 hours of streaming coverage.
The mobile industry is set to take in more than $1.5 trillion in revenues in 2012, according to research from analyst Chetan Sharma. Of that $1.5 trillion, 28 percent will be attributable to mobile data, the study indicates.
“He notes that within the revenues expected for mobile data, non-messaging revenues led by apps, mobile Web browsing and streaming media have finally overtaken those of traditional messaging like SMS as smartphone usage continues to grow,” according to TechCrunch.
He says that “non-messaging” will account for 53 percent of the total, meaning about $212 billion of that total revenue will come from apps, music and video streaming, games and mobile Web browsing.
The report also details that the U.S. now accounts for 69 percent of all smartphone sales, “the highest rate with the global average at about half that, 32 percent,” details the post.
TechCrunch also notes that “the total worldwide base of mobile subscribers now stands at 6 billion, and while it took 20 years to reach the first billion, the speed at which this has accelerated is pretty remarkable: Sharma notes that it took only 15 months for that number to go from 5 billion to 6 billion.”
Samsung and Cineplex Entertainment have teamed up to create a new app that “folks in Canada using Samsung’s Smart lineup of home theater equipment” can be excited about, reports Engadget.
The two companies have created Cineplex Store, a video-on-demand app that allows owners of “select models of Samsung’s Smart TVs, Blu-ray players and home theater systems” to buy or rent videos with a click from their couches.
Pricing ranges from $3-$5 for 48-hour unlimited play rentals. Buying the movie in full will cost between $10-$20. There is no monthly subscription fee.
Whether renting or purchasing, users will be able to store content in a “digital locker” and earn “Scene” points with Cineplex.
Just as Netflix and others are considering further European expansion, a group of companies in Germany — the largest television market in Europe — is preparing to launch its own video on demand service, called Gold GmbH, “that hopes to become the Hulu for Germany,” according to The Hollywood Reporter.
There are 17 companies that make up Gold, including some commercial operators owned by public broadcasters, independent producers and rights groups.
“The group represents a wide span of the German production landscape, with programming ranging from reality shows such as ‘Undercover Boss’ (MME) to high-end series including Tom Fontana’s ‘Borgia’ (Beta) and Aussie teen show ‘H20 — Just Add Water’ (ZDF) and a large archive of documentaries, children’s programming and German feature films,” notes THR.
Gold is scheduled to launch later this year and will attempt to finance itself through ads, subscriptions and pay-per-view fees.
Sprint Nextel will continue to offer unlimited data plans for those who purchase iPhones through the carrier, even promising the same deal for the next model, whenever that comes out.
According to CNET, even if “the next iteration of the iPhone arrives with LTE, Sprint will continue to offer a no-strings unlimited plan.”
“I’m not anticipating the unlimited plan would change by that point,” said CEO Dan Hesse. “That’s our distinctive differentiator.”
Hesse believes that the unlimited data plan attracts customers who may have otherwise gone with a different carrier. “Frankly, it’s a marriage made in heaven,” he said. “We’re clearly attracting customers from our competitors.”
In its first quarter report, Sprint Nextel announced it had activated 1.5 million iPhones, 44 percent of which came from new customers.
Disney/Pixar’s new film, “Brave,” will be the first to test out Dolby’s new Atmos format, the next generation theatrical sound system designed to make films sound more “natural and lifelike.”
“Dolby aims to have the new sound system, which it debuted this week at CinemaCon, installed in 10-15 theaters worldwide for the test, for which Pixar will prepare a special mix of the film,” indicates The Hollywood Reporter. “Seven-time Oscar winner Gary Rydstrom is serving as sound designer and re-recording mixer on the project.”
Oscar-nominated sound designer and editor Erik Aadahl says the new sound format is “the biggest breakthrough in sound that has happened in my career.”
Dolby details Atmos by noting that it’s “capable of transmitting up to 128 simultaneous and lossless audio channels, and renders from 5.1 up to 64 discrete speaker feeds,” according to THR. In order to create a completely immersive experience, speakers will be positioned around the theater and overhead.
Apple exceeded expectations when it announced its second quarter numbers on Tuesday, nearly doubling profits from one year ago.
Blame it all on the iPad. The company sold 11.8 million of its tablets during the second quarter.
Apple’s chief executive Tim Cook gave the situation this perspective: “Just two years after we shipped the initial iPad, we sold 67 million. It took us 24 years to sell that many Macs, and five years for that many iPods, and over three years for that many iPhones.”
The tablet market is growing fast and Apple faces little serious competition in the area. “It faces competition from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Sony in the subsegment of people who want to use the device primarily to read e-books,” explains The New York Times.
As the theory goes, Internet advertising is more effective than traditional models because advertisers can be sure to get their messages directly to the targeted audience.
But according to Peter Kafka writing for AllThingsD, that theory isn’t proving true. He suggests that these methods only work “for some stuff, some of the time.”
“An ad on the Web may do a better job of reaching its audience than, say, a magazine ad. But that doesn’t mean it does a good job,” writes Kafka.
According to data from Nielsen, which tracked a recent ad campaign aimed at “a manufacturer of women’s personal care products” designed to target women aged 25-54, the most accurate publisher got the ads in front of that targeted group only 40 percent of the time. Nearly half of the time, those ads were served to men.
The Nielsen study suggests that Facebook is a better candidate for targeted advertising than other sites, because of how much information the social network has about its 800 million users.
“The Web’s sorta-close, sorta-not targeting problem hasn’t hampered Google, obviously. But that’s because Google’s search ads respond directly to your input and your intent,” comments Kafka. “Now, Facebook, Google and everyone else are going after the branded ads that dominate TV, where the really big money lives. And if they want to get bigger bites of that, they’re going to have to get more accurate.”
The PlayStation Vita and Skype have teamed up for voice and video chatting on the gaming device, which can even receive calls in the background while games are being played.
It’s been a while since people predicted that the Vita would attempt to become a sort of tablet device for gamers, notes TechCrunch. This brings that prediction one step closer to reality.
“While the addition of the Skype app doesn’t make the Vita a fully-fledged cellphone, the app does support Wi-Fi and 3G WLAN calls and essentially makes the device the N-Gage everyone always wanted,” according to the post.
The free Skype app is available in the Vita app store starting today.
Consumers purchased 56 million tablets in 2011. According to a new report from Forrester Research, that number will significantly increase in the next several years.
Forrester says that there “will be 375 million tablets sold by 2016, representing a compound annual growth rate of 46 percent, and that by 2016 there will be 760 million tablets in use overall.”
While those numbers would still put the tablet behind the projected total numbers for PC’s, Forrester believes that tablets are fast becoming the computing device of choice for consumers, especially within emerging markets.
Because tablets are not as fully functional as an average PC, Forrester predicts that “a new class of consumer electronics” will emerge to “fill that gap,” according to TechCrunch. One such product is the “frame,” a dock which Forrester predicts will “become a common way to give tablets more features, more power and link them up to other devices, like TVs, to use them to consume content.”
Could the growing app Socialcam do for video sharing what Instagram did for photo sharing? According to the app’s founders, it attracted 4 million new users over the last weekend.
Socialcam is available on iOS only and is now in competition with another video-sharing service, Viddy, which saw 5.5 million new users in 11 days and has funding coming in from rapper Jay-Z.
“Its addition of 4 million users in just two days is all the more impressive considering that the team behind the app is just three people strong,” according to The Next Web.
Within the app, users can create videos with custom filters, store them in the cloud and share via Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, email and SMS. It also includes the familiar community elements basic to social networking like browsing, commenting and sharing.
While Netflix CEO Reed Hastings says that his company is in good shape, Wall Street has its doubts. That concern resulted in Netflix shares dropping 16 percent to $85.45 directly after its first quarter numbers were announced.
Netflix added 1.7 million new streaming subscribers in the first quarter — considered only light growth for the second straight quarter.
Growth for Q2 is predicted to be lower. “During the analyst call, Hastings appealed for calm and said the problem was temporary and seasonal. The second quarter is typically tough on Netflix,” reports CNET. “Skeptics, however, worry that the problems could be more lasting and have more to do with the company’s inability to secure film licenses and growing competition in the streaming-video sector.”
In order for Netflix to remain competitive and elite, it has to secure more content to encourage subscriber growth. “But licensing costs have gone through the roof,” CNET notes, and “Netflix failed to renew a licensing agreement with Starz, the pay-TV cable service that supplied Netflix with films from Disney and Sony Pictures.”
In the meantime, the competition is growing stronger as Hulu, Amazon and HBO Go continue to expand, along with Comcast’s new Xfinity Streampix service.
In a deal worth $550 million, Microsoft has agreed to sell 650 patents and patent applications to Facebook.
“The Haüs of Zuckerberg will stump up the cash in exchange for various social networking patents that were registered by AOL and sold to Redmond for $1 billion a fortnight ago,” according to Engadget.
Microsoft will hang on to the remaining 275 patents in its portfolio “and cross-license those that it’s sold on, but not the 300 patents that AOL licensed but kept hold of,” adds the post.
Engadget explains that with this deal, “the social network will likely utilize the portfolio to better defend itself from litigation like the lawsuit brought by Yahoo back in March.”
“Today’s agreement with Microsoft represents an important acquisition for Facebook,” said Ted Ullyot, general counsel, Facebook. “This is another significant step in our ongoing process of building an intellectual property portfolio to protect Facebook’s interests over the long term.”
“The Hollywood Reporter has announced the launch of The Hollywood Reporter Social Reader, a free Facebook app that allows readers to read and share entertainment news, reviews, blog posts and videos from the leading entertainment news outlet,” according to THR.
Users will be able to access “nearly all” of the THR.com content without having to leave Facebook.
Dubbed “the first social reader for entertainment news,” it will provide readers with the ability to comment on posted content, in addition to “like” and share articles, blog posts and videos.
THR, which has already launched iPhone and iPad apps, has experienced an 85 percent increase in traffic to its site in the past year.
“People love to share and talk about anything that has to do with Hollywood and the entertainment industry. The Hollywood Reporter Social Reader offers readers a seamless way to share and discuss the entertainment content they love,” said Janice Min, THR editorial director.
Google announced its new Brand Activate initiative for advertising at the Ad Age Digital Conference on Wednesday.
As part of the initiative, two new services rolled out for advertisers this week: Active View and Active GRP.
Active View will measure how long an ad remains on a user’s screen and how much of it is viewed. “If at least 50 percent of it is viewable for at least one second it’s counted as an viewed impression,” explains Engadget. “Active View is something that Google hopes will become a standard for all online advertising.”
In a related report, Yahoo! News describes Active GRP as “the online equivalent of the Gross Rating Point, a metric used by the television industry to estimate how many people saw a given ad. Active GRP is a digital version that will calculate the reach and frequency of a campaign, but — unlike standard GRPs — lets advertisers react in real time. (Hence the ‘active.’)”
The post includes a 2-minute video from Google outlining the initiative.