David Carr of The New York Times observes how his own family uses TV, noting a dramatic downturn in the amount of time spent with live broadcasting.
He cites TV-related apps (especially for sports), Netflix, Hulu Plus and Apple TV as resources his family uses regularly.
“My 15-year-old has a television in her room, but it’s not even on the cable-broadcast grid; it is wired instead to a Web-enabled Wii,” explains Carr. “Like the laptop and smartphone that she never seems to be without, the television is just one more Web-enabled portal for content she controls.”
Live TV “seems very last century,” he writes. In fact, live ratings for network programs have declined for 14 consecutive quarters. In contrast, DVRs and video on demand each exist in nearly half of American homes. And online viewing with Netflix, Hulu and others has increased more than 46 percent over the last year.
“Outside of the professional football season or some breaking national news event, the television at our house has become uncoupled from the commercial-driven environment that drives the broadcast and cable business,” writes Carr. “We haven’t cut the cord so much as kinked it in a way that commercials rarely sneak through.”
Still, the big four broadcast networks and the CW will book some $9 billion in advertising revenue while the cable networks take in more than $9.6 billion during the upfronts. In spite of losing viewers, TV remains the mass medium of choice for advertisers.
Social video network Twitvid has acquired Cull TV, a music video sharing site that includes a selection of about 2 to 3 million videos.
Customization and Facebook integration allow Cull TV users a personalized experience. Cull TV uses Facebook likes and posts “to determine what bands you like and turn those into continuous video playlists,” explains John Hurliman, CTO of Cull TV.
“We’re going to use a lot of the know-how and knowledge the [Cull TV] team has acquired to integrate those learnings into Twitvid,” added Twitvid CEO Mo Al Adham.
“According to Al Adham, Twitvid has more than doubled the number of video views it serves over the past five to six months, now in the range of 70 million+ views,” reports TechCrunch. “The last time they talked to press, the Twitvid network was seeing 10 million unique visitors. Today, that’s over 15 million.”
Twitvid plans to make a new product announcement in June, and then will begin working on their Cull TV integration.
Microsoft has launched “Sidebar,” a social network search update to Bing. The feature searches your Facebook, Twitter and Google+ networks to find people who fit your search criteria.
Google added a similar feature early this year called “Search Plus Your World,” but it only works with Google+.
Microsoft has also launched “Snapshot,” a feature that provides answers on topics such as restaurant reservations, hotel reviews, maps and movie trailers.
“Bing’s strategy is pointedly different than that of Google, which is laser-focused on building its own social network,” reports CNN. “Though Google+ has grown to nearly 100 million users, analysts are still trying to determine how active and engaged they actually are.”
If successful, the new features may help increase Bing’s 15.3 percent share of the search market. Google still retains a commanding 66.4 percent lead.
With company shares and contacts on their side, some of Facebook’s first employees have left the social networking giant to create start-ups or to “bankroll their friends,” reports The New York Times.
The article suggests that this could be one of Facebook’s long lasting legacies — “a new generation of tech tycoons looking to create or invest in, well, the next Facebook.”
As has happened with previous breakout successes from Silicon Valley, like Apple and Netscape and PayPal, each “public offering creates a new circle of tech magnates with money to invest,” points out NYT. “This one, though, with a jaw-dropping $100 billion valuation, will create a far richer fraternity.”
Some early executives from Facebook have already sold their shares and are now living with (and potentially investing with) millions of dollars.
“The history of Silicon Valley has always been one generation of companies gives birth to great companies that follow,” said 35-year-old Matt Cohler, employee No. 7 at Facebook and now a partner at Benchmark Capital. “People who learned at one set of companies often go on to start new companies on their own.”
“The very best companies, like Facebook,” he added, “end up being places where people who come there really learn to build things.” It’s worth noting that Cohler has invested in start-ups created by his earlier Facebook colleagues.
The International Telecommunication Union reports that social media use has reached a global audience of one billion. With a reported 901 million monthly active users, Facebook leads the social media world, capturing about 90 percent of global social media users.
Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn capture upwards of 900, 200, and 120 million users respectively, but most other social media sites have failed to globalize and instead remain localized within only a few nations.
The ITU confirms Facebook’s reports that most use now comes from mobile platforms rather than from fixed broadband networks. Analysts partially attribute this to broadband penetration as low as 4.8 percent in developing countries. Industrial countries average about 26 percent penetration.
Low broadband availability suggests Facebook and other social media providers may shift towards low-end feature phone versions aimed to provide less sophisticated usage, possibly using the USSD technology available on nearly all phones.
HP is targeting mainstream consumers with its new Envy ultrabooks that feature larger screens and lower price tags.
“The new 14- and 15.6-inch Envy ultrabooks retail at $800 and $750, respectively, which puts them squarely below even the cheapest first-gen ultrabooks,” reports Digital Trends.
“HP’s research shows that 15.6-inch notebooks are the most popular size in the U.S. and Europe, and 14-inch notebooks are the most popular in China, one of HP’s growing markets,” adds the post.
The Envy ultrabooks use Intel Core series processors, but are built on Sandy Bridge hardware, not Ivy Bridge — “one of a few possible concessions to reach these prices.”
Measuring 19.8mm thin and just under 4 pounds, they are not the thinnest or lightest of the ultrabook offerings, which could also have to do with their affordability.
New data from online video advertising firm Freewheel indicates that Microsoft’s Xbox is now the most popular non-PC device on which to watch online video.
That means that more consumers are watching online video content on the Xbox than on the iPad, iPhone and Android devices. “And when it comes to home viewing, competitors like Apple TV, Google TV and Roku are so far behind they’re not even competitors,” according to AllThingsD.
Worth noting: “Freewheel is only measuring ‘professional content’ that runs with ads, because that’s how it makes its living. So that means it’s counting stuff from companies like NBC, CBS, ESPN and Vevo, but not YouTube cat videos. It’s also not measuring Netflix usage,” points out AllThingsD. “On the other hand, this isn’t a poll or sample, but data compiled by the company’s own ad servers.”
The article suggests that this data “gives credence to Microsoft’s claim that Xbox users are spending more time watching videos on the machines than playing games, and that its deals with conventional TV programmers may be bearing fruit.”
TiVo has released its Spring update, with the promised and much anticipated Netflix and YouTube apps in tow, but Engadget isn’t very impressed.
“Netflix is the most intriguing of the additions, but while TiVo Premiere owners can now watch Netflix 1080p programming with Dolby Digital Plus discrete surround sound, like Hulu Plus, it isn’t a TiVo experience,” suggests Engadget.
It also notes that the Google-built YouTube app is “like any other streamer” and with the exception of the search capability, “there isn’t much integration at all.”
While parental control features are now included, they aren’t “as full featured as it was with the old UI and is a far cry from KidZone,” notes the post.
“What the update doesn’t do yet however, is complete the HD interface transformation that some Premiere owners have been waiting two years for,” concludes Engadget. “Still, we suspect that caveat won’t stop owners from rolling the dice on an update check for their TiVo every day over the next few weeks.”
A Russian start-up, Pirate Pay, which is backed by an investment from Microsoft, has developed a technology to stop BitTorrent downloads.
The idea was conceived three years ago when developers realized their traffic management solution could stop BitTorrent traffic if necessary.
“After creating the prototype, we realized we could more generally prevent files from being downloaded, which meant that the program had great promise in combating the spread of pirated content,” says Pirate Pay CEO Andrei Klimenko.
The company was hired by Walt Disney Studios and Sony Pictures to protect the film, “Vysotsky. Thanks to God, I’m alive.” Reportedly, 44,845 transfers of the film were stopped.
“We used a number of servers to make a connection to each and every P2P client that distributed this film. Then Pirate Pay sent specific traffic to confuse these clients about the real IP addresses of other clients and to make them disconnect from each other,” explains Klimenko.
“Whether Pirate Pay is truly different and more effective than any of the other solutions remains to be seen,” reports TorrentFreak. “Even if it’s hugely effective, the scattered nature of BitTorrent makes it practically impossible to stop all infringing downloads of a movie, while the costs may outweigh the ‘losses’ that are prevented.”
A Kickstarter project called Lib-Ray is seeking to create an open source format for HD video on SDHC cards.
The project was created by Terry Hancock, a contributor to Free Software Magazine and research assistant who worked on the McDonald Observatory Planet Search program.
Lib-Ray will include a wizard for authoring high-definition videos, a player for the Flash media, and authoring documentation that would allow others to make improvements. It will use the common MKV video container format with VP8 video at 30 frames per second in 1080p and later add extensions for 60fps, 3D and 4K video.
The project is intended for a business model where donors share the costs of the production and the movie is given in return in an open-source format.
“It seems like it ought to be really hard, because Blu-ray was expensive to develop,” Hancock told Ars Technica. “But when you look closely, you realize that all of the money went to pay for the DRM. The actual task of making a video standard that supports high-definition playback and a menu system is just not that complicated. There are open standards, so it’s just a matter of picking the ones you want to use and making sure you have a player that can handle those choices.”
Samsung has revealed the production-ready version of its 55-inch OLED television, the prototype for which initially debuted at CES in January.
At the World’s Fair in Korea, the company demonstrated the ES9500, expected to ship in Korea later this year for more than $9,000.
“Samsung has gone crazy with features that start with the word Smart,” reports Digital Trends. “We’ve got Smart Interaction, Smart Evolution and Smart Content, all of which can be found on other high-end Samsung TVs, and respectively refer to voice and gesture controls, an upgradeable dual-core processor and Samsung’s extensive range of online content and apps.”
“Now we’ve got Smart DualView, which allows two people to watch two different programs on the same screen at the same time, in full high definition too, by using special 3D glasses with wireless headphones attached,” adds the post.
LG also debuted a 55-inch OLED model at CES. Rumors suggest it could be introduced this month in the $8,000 range.
Dish Network’s new Hopper DVR includes a feature known as “Auto Hop,” which can automatically skip past commercials.
“The Hopper DVR costs Dish subscribers $10 a month in addition to a $99 upfront fee,” reports the Wall Street Journal. “Dish also offers a less-expensive traditional DVR with no upfront charge and a $6 monthly fee. The Hopper is made by Echostar Corp., which like Dish is controlled by satellite-TV pioneer Charlie Ergen.”
Auto Hop may alarm broadcasters by threatening network advertising revenues. Already nearly a quarter of U.S. households use DVRs and regularly fast-forward through commercials.
Dish is clearly sensitive to this and has limited Auto Hop’s use for nationally broadcast prime-time programs aired on ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC to after 1:00 a.m. the day after they air.
The new feature may become a factor in broadcasters’ attempts to seek higher retransmission fees from pay TV companies.
Cult of Mac claims to have a source that has seen the long-rumored Apple high-definition television.
“According to our source, who has asked to remain strictly anonymous, the Apple HDTV looks like Apple’s current lineup of LED-backlit Cinema Displays but is ‘much bigger,'” explains the post. “It has a built-in iSight camera for making free FaceTime video conference calls. And it has Siri, the iPhone 4S’s voice-activated virtual assistant.”
Cult of Mac claims the “well-placed” source has provided strong tips in the past, although not all of them have involved concepts that have gone beyond the prototype stage.
In an update to the post, Paul Gagnon of NPD DisplaySearch guesses that an Apple TV product will ship in 2013.
“He noted that Apple’s Chinese supplier, Foxconn, has invested $1.6 billion in Sharp’s TV unit, which can efficiently make large size panels up to 60-inches,” explains the post, adding that Gagnon expects a conventional introduction. “They will not be anything exotic like OLED or 4K resolution. There will likely be two to four models ranging from 40-inches to 60-inches. They will be standard 1920 x 1080p resolution and cost between $1,000 to $2,000 or slightly higher.”
Kentucky-based Gyroskope has developed a platform for musicians to upload video content including live concerts, recording sessions and behind-the-scenes footage.
“Videos are uploaded to a social platform, and the artists set their own prices for how much they want to charge,” reports Fortune. “The videos, which are streamed from the cloud, can be viewed in a Web browser as well as on iPhones, iPads and Android phones.”
Musicians collect all of the revenue, but pay Gyroskope a monthly fee, “ranging from as low as $19 a month for the ‘indie’ plan to $499 a month for the ‘platinum plan,'” explains the article.
Pricing is determined based on the number of videos and required bandwidth.
The service currently has 24 customers including musicians, festival organizers and comedians, but Gyroskope expects to increase this base when it plugs into Facebook and Twitter this month. It also plans to start streaming live events in real-time later this year.
Lenovo broke ground this week on a new facility in China that will focus on smartphone and tablet PC research and development. The company plans to spend $800 million on the effort.
The company also introduced an Internet-enabled television to the China market. “The TV is the first to run Google’s Android 4.0 and is powered by a dual-core 1.5GHz Qualcomm CPU,” reports eWeek.
Independent software developers have already produced more than 1,000 apps for the smart TV, now available in Lenovo’s Le Store online storefront.
“Lenovo has also teamed with SMG’s BesTV to a create an ISmartv joint venture that already provides viewers with more than 300,000 hours of high-definition video resources, and the Smart TV will come with a ‘Sandwich’ user interface said to integrate ‘touch, voice, air mouse, gravity sensor, smart keyboard and [a] traditional television remote control in a ‘Six in One’ Smart Remote Controller,'” explains the article.