U.S. broadband connection speeds now average better than 7.4 Mbps, Akamai today said in its Q4 State of the Internet Report, that’s more than 25 percent faster than average connection speeds nationwide were a year ago, but still leaves the United States eighth in the global rankings behind South Korea (14 Mbps), Japan (10.8 Mbps), […]
The key part of the upLynk solution is that is cost-effective for anybody of any size. When you have a customer like Disney that has a massive operation that you’re trying to work with, keeping costs low is incredibly important for them.
Latin America is poised to add 19 million new satellite-TV households by 2018, outpacing cable, which is expected to add about 14 million new digital household over the same period. That’s according to a new report from Digital TV Research, which goes on to say that much of the growth is coming from lower-cost and […]
Some of you may be bleary-eyed this morning after a weekend of intense Netflix viewing. The company rolled out its latest batch of original content, the supernatural thriller “Hemlock Grove.†All 13 episodes of the show were made available at once on Saturday, a la “Lilyhammer†and “House of Cards,†guaranteeing at least some Netflix […]
Social TV will bring content providers, TV networks, multichannel operators, and advertisers opportunity and challenges, according to new research. The impact of social TV already is changing the way users view TV, moving it from “a passive consumption medium to a new kind of community experience, in which millions of Americans gather around the digital […]
Hulu’s original content play has become more animated, as it announced a new, 13-week series starring Eva Longora—she of “Desperate Housewives†fame—as a record exec who moves to suburbia to give motherhood a try. The flip? It’s a cartoon, and Longora will provide the voice for Rudi Wilson in “Mother Up!†The show debuts this […]
It seemed as if only months ago Google Fiber was being classed as “an experiment†by many of the folks who supposedly know about this space. The rollout in Kansas City was labeled as everything from a ploy by Google to put pressure on other broadband providers to pony up and improve their speed and […]
They’re b-a-a-a-c-k. In case you were worried that broadcasters were planning to fold up their tents and let Aereo walk away with a clean court win… fear not. Claiming that an appeals court decision not to shut down the start up that uses tiny antennas to stream over-the-air content to consumers in New York City […]
UltraViolet, which struggled to get off the ground with consumers in the United States who said it was confusing to register with and use, is getting a similar reaction in Great Britain, where satellite operator BSkyB is calling for it to be simpler and more customer focused. Ian Lewis, director of Sky Movies and Sky […]
With pay-TV providers continuing to lose subscribers to over-the-top offerings like Netflix and Hulu, the question in the C-suite has to be “How do we keep/get back those former subscribers †Turns out, that’s a pretty simple proposition: Bribe them. New research posits that 44 percent of customers who re-subscribed to pay-TV services in the […]
Conviva recently signed one of the longest deals in streaming media; a 6 year agreement with HBO to provide video optimization support for the Go product.
Until recently, TV Everywhere has been one of those oxymorons that also tended more toward flash than substance. An AT&T exec once told me “TV Everywhere is nowhere until it’s anywhere,†pointing out that the “anywhere†at the time meant “in your home.†But providers have been pushing that ring of availability out a bit, […]
Netflix has gotten a big boost from Richard Greenfield, an analyst at BTIG Research, who has stamped a BUY rating on the content aggregator and reset its price target to $250… a big journey from its current range, but still shy of the $300 heights it hit before its bubble burst. Why now? Greenfield says […]
You gotta love Liberty Media chief John Malone, one of the original cable cowboys who took the then-fledgling technology to the masses in the U.S. and around the world. Malone has a bee in his bonnet (well, several, actually, but more on that later): The rising costs of sports programming, which, he told CNBC, has […]
Uplynk is the company that’s responsible for the WatchDisney apps and their live streaming. Here’s a great example of a company that’s really optimized their technical solution to deliver live, in real time, with very little latency.
So, today’s BIg Rumor is that CBS is threatening to take its ball and go home, pull the plug on its over the air signal and go the cable route, a la Fox. Well, there are a lot of words that could describe how likely either of those two companies are to put themselves behind […]
That thump you just heard was the other shoe dropping: Ericsson today announced it had acquired Microsoft’s MediaRoom and, in the process, become a more significant player in the ecosystem. For Microsoft, meanwhile, it means they can turn their full attention toward making the Xbox the center of their TV and IPTV strategy without any […]
Birds do it, bees do it… wait, wait, wait, wrong song. Intel wants to do it, Microsoft and Google could do it, Verizon is kinda doing it, and now, AT&T? No, not falling in love, but launching a streaming video service. Could it be the mythical Virtual MSO? AT&T, according to Variety, last month sent […]
