Following a lengthy review process, the FCC has granted cable operators permission to encrypt basic cable programming.
“That’s a major breakthrough for a cable industry that has notoriously been locked down over the years,” writes The Verge.
In order for companies including Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cox, Verizon, Charter and AT&T to get permission to encrypt, they’ll need to meet one of two requirements.
“The first involves issuing a network-connected converter box to consumers that would allow other devices in the home to receive the encrypted signal,” explains the post. This equipment would be free to users for two years.
Option two “skips extra hardware in favor of software updates. Should operators opt against handing out converters, they’ll need to instead produce software-based solutions for third-party IP components like those from Boxee,” writes The Verge.
“Unfortunately, smaller operators like Cablevision and Bright House are exempt from these restrictions for now,” adds the post. “The FCC believes they’ll eventually follow their larger competitors in embracing IP functionality but warns that it may ‘revisit the issue’ should these providers block compatibility with consumer devices.”
Video startup Tvinci “has built a platform that enables cable and other pay TV operators to quickly deploy over-the-top video services for their subscribers,” writes TechCrunch.
Tvinci raised $4.5 million in funding from investors such as Kaedan Capital and Zohar Gilon, along with new investor Trellas Enterprises.
“With more and more consumption of long-form video happening online and on mobile and other connected devices, it’s become necessary for cable and IPTV companies to build applications for those screens,” explains the post. “But rather than having each build their own DIY backend, Tvinci lets them connect with its system and more quickly roll out new services.”
Tvinci’s OTT 2.0 platform allows for the creation of mobile and connected TV apps as well, which its pay TV operator clients can use to deliver video across multiple screens.
“Tvinci’s revenue has tripled over the past year, and it has doubled headcount to meet demand from clients,” notes TechCrunch. “It’s signed up seven TV operators recently, including Liberty Global and Finnish pay TV company Elisa, to help get their content delivered across more screens.”
Working with top advertisers like Pepsi and Capital One, media mogul Robert F.X. Silverman has launched Viggle, which aims to become the chief loyalty-rewards program of the entertainment industry.
The New York startup looks to connect television executives and advertisers with viewers who are increasingly using mobile devices while watching TV.
“The software ‘listens’ to a broadcast to confirm what’s on the tube,” explains Fortune. “Users can then play games and trivia related to onscreen events or a program’s sponsor. The app also awards points that can be redeemed for movie tickets, gift cards and other prizes.”
Unilever, NBC and DirecTV have all used the app to reach consumers. Viggle is expected to earn an estimated $10 million in revenue this year and make a profit in early 2013.
“Mark Gunheim, CEO of TV-measurement service Trendrr.com, says the concept’s potential is obvious because of the so-called second-screen phenomenon,” notes the article. “Around 86 percent of TV viewers now watch with cellphone or tablet in hand. The trend has touched off a race to find ways to co-opt those additional screens and generate more revenue.”
Despite competition from Yahoo, Microsoft, Zeebox and others, Silverman remains confident in his company. “You’re going to see Viggle everywhere,” he claims.
“The battle for your cord-cutting dollars continues to heat up,” reports Wired. “Hardware for streaming, time-shifting (recording to DVR), or place-shifting (watching your TV content on mobile devices) continues to flood the market, promising to take up all your precious HDMI ports.”
The Simple.TV DVR streamer, which began shipping on Monday, does all those things and keeps ports available for other devices, like game consoles.
The product is a DVR that doesn’t actually connect to the TV, but instead connects to over-the-air HDTV signals or cable TV and then streams content to iOS devices, browsers and Roku boxes.
“With a $50-a-year subscription, users can send streams over the Internet to up to five devices at once,” explains the article. “How might this come in handy? Say the latest episode of ‘The Walking Dead’ is about to come on, and you’re at the airport and days away from being able to watch it on your DVR. With this service, you can open up your iPad and watch whenever and wherever you want.”
“The DVR lacks internal storage and requires an external USB drive to use the DVR capabilities,” notes Wired of the device’s limitations. “The single coaxial input limits the recording feature to one show at a time. And without a subscription, cool features like scheduling an entire series won’t work. Finally, the device doesn’t work with encrypted channels, leaving premium networks like HBO and Showtime out of the streaming fun.”
Boxee has announced its second Boxee TV, a smaller and more traditionally-shaped set-top box that offers unlimited cloud DVR storage for broadcast TV shows and the ability to view recordings across multiple devices.
In addition to the $14.99/month DVR service, the new $99 box offers standard online video services such as Netflix and Vudu.
A simple rectangular design will replace the angular cube of the original $199 Boxee Box, suggesting the company is targeting mainstream consumers with convenience and lower price point.
“Instead of worrying about DVR space, you can record entire TV series and have them accessible at the touch of a button,” notes VentureBeat. “Boxee will be buying up huge swaths of Amazon S3 storage to store the recorded video data, which will retain the same HD resolution and 5.1 surround sound audio from its broadcast.”
“Having a DVR that stores recordings in the cloud feels similar to the move from film to digital cameras,” explained Boxee CEO Avner Ronen in an interview.
“Film cameras limited the number of photos you could capture, which made you think twice before taking a photo,” he said. “It’s the same with existing DVRs. The limited space and knowing that stuff will get deleted impacts your decisions about what to record in the first place.”
Boxee TV will be available next month. The DVR service will launch in the top eight TV markets, including New York and Los Angeles — with plans to expand next year.
Amazon has begun negotiations to acquire the mobile chip arm of Texas Instruments, according to Isreali newspaper Calcalist. Amazon will likely pay billions of dollars in the deal, reports Business Insider.
Purchasing a mobile chip business would allow Amazon to rival Apple and Samsung as manufacturers who design their own chips for electronics. Amazon already competes in the tablet industry, and may break into the smartphone business within the foreseeable future.
Last month, Texas Instruments said it would shift from wireless chip development for consumer products to larger industrial products, such as the development of chips for cars. TI sees the move as a more stable and profitable business plan.
“TI’s chips are used in Amazon.com’s Kindle Fire tablet,” notes the article. “TI told investors it would continue to support its customers but its mobile application chip business, which supports features like video, will not invest in supporting its customers future roadmap for tablets and smartphones to the same degree as before.”
Neither Amazon nor Texas Instruments has commented on the report, but Gartner analyst Carolina Malanesi expressed doubt, telling Reuters that she does not think Amazon would want to “become that intimately involved with hardware.”
Best Buy reportedly plans to release its own Android-powered tablet called the Insignia Flex next month, priced from $239 to $259.
“The Insignia Flex is intended to go toe-to-toe with Amazon’s Kindle Fire HD tablet, Google’s Nexus 7, and a slew of other Android tablets from Google and Samsung,” reports Reuters. “A smaller and less expensive version of Apple’s popular iPad tablet is expected to be unveiled next week.”
Best Buy’s in-house brand Insignia recently shared some info on the tablet via its Facebook page. The brand has been used in the past to offer less expensive options for HDTVs and Blu-ray players.
“The Insignia Flex is based on Google Inc’s Android software, which also powers Samsung’s tablets, and features a dual-core 1GHz processor, 9.7-inch screen and 10-hour battery life,” notes the article. “It will also feature a camera for video conferencing and weigh in at about 1.45 pounds.”
According to a source close to the matter, the Insignia Flex will go on sale on November 11 exclusively through Best Buy.
Smartphone owners used apps to watch an average of 6.9 minutes of video content each day on their phones in August, according to NPD DisplaySearch.
The figure represents an 86 percent jump from the previous year, but still trails other activities such as gaming and social networking.
“We expect usage to increase in step with 4G networks and devices, better form factors (larger screens), and more compelling apps,” NPD’s Linda Barrabee wrote in a blog post.
NPD DisplaySearch also points out that the diagonal size of displays for multiple devices continues to increase, with the exception of mobile PCs. The research firm predicts a 38 percent increase in mobile phone screen size between 2010-2013.
“Average sizes are expected to fall from 13.6-inches to 12.2-inches between 2010 and 2013 in the mobile PC segment, and if Microsoft’s new Windows 8 OS makes the splash in tablets the company seems to be hoping it will with the Surface and third-party offerings, that number could go even lower as 10-inch devices flood the market,” reports TechCrunch.
YouTube was able to provide 8 million simultaneous live streams of Felix Baumgartner’s record-breaking leap from space.
It was record-breaking for YouTube also. “That number blows away YouTube’s previous peak of 500,000 concurrent streams, which it hit this summer during the Olympics, as well as last year during the royal wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton,” reports AllThingsD.
“It doesn’t take much imagination to envision YouTube doing this kind of stuff, at this scale, on a regular basis,” notes the article. “Which would mean the Web finally has a chance to rival TV when it comes to serving up live events with huge audiences — one of TV’s last remaining advantages over the Internet.”
But it’s likely to be a slow shift. First of all, there aren’t many live events, aside from awards shows and significant sporting events, that millions of people want to watch at once. And in regards to those types of events, TV companies have those rights locked up for years to come.
In the meanwhile, YouTube will continue to live stream events small and large, hoping to build upon its recent successes.
Juniper Networks and Forrester Research surveyed 150 senior IT executives to help analyze how trends in cloud computing and big data have affected enterprise networks.
The survey found that 58 percent of respondents had to upgrade their network hardware because of increased demand from cloud services.
Mobile device usage also rose as a result of cloud services, as 47 percent of respondents indicate that more employees have begun bringing devices to work.
“The complications for networks have grown past the point where you can simply add more bandwidth and hope for the best,” writes AllThingsD. Eighty-six percent of those surveyed said they could not start new services or support business demand because of an overmatched network.
The main takeaway from the report is that networks are now often under too much demand.
Networks can no longer just add more bandwidth when they struggle, but rather need to “be built with overarching business objectives in mind, with teams that are usually separate — security, manufacturing, quality control — getting more intimately involved with building the network than they have been before,” explains AllThingsD.
4G LTE is changing the landscape of mobile video, as increased bandwidth allows users to watch videos with greater ease. “Mobile video is quickly becoming a mass consumer phenomenon, much as digital photos were earlier in the smartphone adoption cycle,” suggests Business Insider.
The mobile video audience has grown 77 percent to 36 million over the last two years. While the U.S. smartphone industry is largely established, the global industry is still growing rapidly.
“4G subscribers in the U.S. are 33 percent more likely to watch a video on their smartphones than the average mobile user” according to a new report from BI Intelligence. As 4G LTE expands across the nation, mobile video consumption will continue to grow, suggests the report.
The larger screens on new smartphones are also more conducive for video viewing, and are expected to contribute to the rise of mobile video.
But the BI Intelligence report indicates that as consumers demand more bandwidth for mobile videos, carriers could start limiting data either through tiered plans or high data costs. This could reduce the growth of mobile video.
Since Facebook went public, it has been under significant pressure to accelerate its revenue growth. This led Facebook to launch its own mobile advertising network, which Business Insider says could “dramatically increase the amount of money media and tech companies are able to make in the next decade.”
Many Web publishers can create targeted advertising because they can track cookies on Web browsers. But mobile presents a more difficult challenge, as iPhone browsers do not download cookies.
This leads mobile applications to follow an outdated model. Advertisers do not like to spend money when they do not know specifically who they are targeting, the result of which could impact the mobile advertising business.
But the Facebook advertising system could solve these dilemmas. When Facebook users connect to mobile, Facebook can use the username to cross-reference with the version of the user. This means Facebook can transfer the cookie-data to its mobile entity.
This development could also help users, argues Business Insider, because app developers will have more money, and will be able to create better applications.
It looks like the pricing for Microsoft’s upcoming Windows RT Surface tablet will start at $500 — with a TouchCover keyboard case available for an additional $100.
“The pricing and specifications of the new Surface tablets were briefly revealed at Microsoft’s online store today on a page that was quickly pulled,” reported Digital Trends on Tuesday.
“The 32GB version of the ARM-based Surface tablet running Windows RT (a version of Windows 8) will set you back $500,” notes the post. “The 64GB version with the black TouchCover keyboard case will set you back $700.”
The TypeCover keyboard will reportedly be offered for $130, while the $100 TouchCovers will be available in a range of colors. The new tablets are expected to go on sale immediately following the scheduled Windows 8 event on October 25.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Microsoft has ordered 3-5 million Surface tablets for the fourth quarter. “That’s reportedly on a par with the numbers Amazon and Google ordered of the Kindle Fire and Nexus 7 respectively, but way below the 10 million iPad minis that Apple has supposedly ordered,” notes Digital Trends.
Samsung has unveiled its new lineup of Windows 8-powered desktops, laptops and what is being called “Smart PCs” (essentially laptop-tablet hybrids).
The ATIV Smart PCs run from the 500T model ($650 without the detachable keyboard) to the $1,200 Pro 700T. “Samsung did not reveal any tablets running Windows RT, but we expect that might come later this year and cost less than the ATIV Smart PC 500T,” reports VentureBeat.
“The Smart PC is a new category driven by innovation and UI, with Windows 8 as the linchpin,” explains Tim Baxter, head of Samsung America consumer electronics.
“Tablets and smartphones are ushering in a new era of computing mobility,” he told reporters. “New categories will arise as a result of this.”
Samsung’s new $450-$1,400 laptops include the 13- and 15-inch Series 9 Premium Ultrabook, 15-inch Series 7 Notebook, 13.3-inch Series 5 Ultra Touch (with touch screen) and Series 3 Notebook. The Series 5 and Series 7 all-in-ones range from 21.5- to 27-inches.
The post includes a breakdown of all the announced offerings and an accompanying photo gallery.
Samsung has signed a deal with Spotify that will allow direct music streaming from Samsung TVs for consumers with premium subscription memberships.
“The deal will give Samsung a new way to promote its televisions; Spotify, meanwhile, hopes the arrangement offers a new incentive for consumers to pay for its subscription service rather than use its advertising-backed, free-of-charge offering,” reports the Wall Street Journal.
The partnership comes as numerous tech companies are entering the growing music-streaming market.
“Digital-music sales, including both streaming and downloads, are expected to soon overtake sales of physical CDs as the main source of revenue for music labels and publishers,” explains WSJ.
Transitioning customers to pay for the subscription service may become more important to Spotify since its ad sales growth is reportedly slowing.
Samsung E-series sets will include a software application that enables streaming via Spotify. The application will first be available to owners of Samsung TVs in the UK, France, Germany and Scandinavia. The company plans to expand the service to its Blu-ray players and home theater systems by the end of 2012.
“Last year Samsung launched its own music service, called Samsung Music Hub, but analysts say the deal with Spotify may signal that Samsung may now realizes how hard it is to ink music streaming deals with record labels,” notes the article.
