Amazon is a rather unique public company. Rather than redirect its profits (when there are profits) to shareholders, its founder and president Jeff Bezos famously prefers to re-invest its huge cash inflows into furthering the business and taking bets on the future. One of Amazon’s biggest bets is video. This year, the company is likely […]
Archive | Video on demand
Roku Makes Big Advertising Leap
What do you think of when you hear the words, “hit TV series?” When it comes to linear TV, the meaning of that phrase is pretty concretely anchored in actual audience metrics. A “hit” series is one that the networks are reasonably sure many viewers are tuned into. Indeed, networks have a fairly strong handle […]
The One Arena Apple Still Rules
With iPhone sales seemingly hitting a plateau, many pundits have taken to bemoaning the Tim Cook era. But whatever one thinks about the future of Apple under Cook’s leadership, there is one area where Apple continues to hold an unquestionable lead: mobile video consumption. In a recent survey, the Streaming Video Alliance found that 47.42 […]
Streaming Has Yet to Defang Piracy. It May Never.
The conventional wisdom surrounding digital piracy is that the vicious cycle of whack-a-mole, where authorities shut down pirate sites only to find new ones sprouting up instantaneously in their wake, would only be broken by making valuable digital content easier to access legally. While plenty of work remains, the content industry has made significant strides […]
What the Olympics Tells Us About the Future of Broadcast TV
The Rio Olympics have come and gone. Several swimmers aside, the U.S. unquestionably had a stellar Olympic games, capturing the lion’s share of medals. But while athletes and coaches will be picking apart their performances for weeks to come, TV analysts have turned their eye to another post-mortem: How were the ratings? The short answer: […]
UHD Blu-ray: A Nice of a Niche
As a handful of UHD Blu-ray players and pre-recorded titles make their market debuts, consumer electronics companies are devising plans for how to position this product in the face of a dramatically changed consumer video landscape. A dozen years ago when BD was the logical next-generation format to DVD, widespread PVR use wasn’t common, pay […]
The Hybrid TV Vision: Is Common Sense Advancing?
You’ve been invited to a party. The invitation promises a horn of plenty filled with all your favorites (including the premium stuff) and also the individual favorites of your friends, family, neighbors and fellow citizens. In fact, everyone gets anything they want, at any time they want it, from this horn of plenty. Sound too […]
Another HEVC Rival Rears Its Head
If video codecs were presidential nominees, then it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to characterize HEVC as the “establishment” candidate of the codec coterie. The presumptive successor to the hugely successful and widely implemented H.264, HEVC’s position as the next generation codec seemed assured when it was first solidified. But just as establishment […]
The Dumb Pipe Era Advances
Cable and telecommunications multi-system operators (MSOs) have had one overriding objective since the dawn of the digital era: to avoid becoming a “dumb pipe” — i.e. infrastructure, a mere purveyor of another’s bits. Today, that fate appears increasingly inevitable, with a twist. MSOs have fought the dumbing down of their networks largely through the promise […]
Is There A Universal Cable Converter Solution?
If you think the presidential primaries, Cam Newton v. the media, and Superman v. Batman battles are brutal, just wait. Two of the most hated entities in our society—the Federal government and local cable TV providers—are about to butt proverbial heads over one of the most important devices in consumer homes: the cable box. This […]