Tag Archives: TV

Media nirvana? (updated)

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The new iPad (3rd generation) was launched this week at one of Apple’s always-effective marketing events. The new iPad looks great, has some powerful improvements, and will attract huge sales. But the new iPad hardware and software is only a part of Apple’s plan for 2012.

The last words spoken by Tim Cook at the launch event were as follows:

Only Apple could deliver this kind of innovation, in such a beautiful, integrated, and easy-to-use way. It’s what we love to do. It’s what we stand for. And across the year, you’re going to see a lot more of this kind of innovation. We are just getting started.

I take Tim Cook at his word when he says Apple is just getting started. The rest of the plan will be executed by early fall.  Apple will roll-out iOS 6 (already in field testing) and Mountain Lion (available to developers now).  iCloud will be improved and stabilized by then as well. Read the Tim Cook quotation above once more and you can see that all of these developments clearly are headed in one direction: complete, elegant, and easy to use integration of all Apple hardware devices, including computers, iPad (and iPad’s most important accessory, Apple TV), and iPhone.

Apple is building the integration one piece at a time.  An example of the integration already completed is iPhoto for the iPad. Coupled with the iPad hardware, iPhoto is a sleek touch-based application for creating beautiful photos using powerful effects and easily sharing them via photo presentations (called Photo Journals) that display the photos and related data and which are shared with friends via iCloud with the touch of a button.

Further evidence is the newly added ability to re-download movies previously purchased in the iTunes store that Apple rolled out Wednesday. It is actually not completely rolled out because two movie studios (20th Century Fox and Universal Pictures) are not yet included in this feature. But you can bet they will be soon. And the goal here is to allow customers to purchase movies once and access them anywhere anytime forever without having to manage where the data is stored or how to back up the media. Nice.

But gaps in complete integration remain. An example is today’s absence of AirPlay on Macs. AirPlay (coupled with iCloud) is and will be the core feature that actually provides the integration and it must be on all Apple devices to complete the process. And, sure enough, a key feature of this summer’s Mountain Lion release is that it will add AirPlay to the Mac, eliminating this critical gap in the overall integration plan.

All of this integration and software development is, I think, the foundation for an even bigger breakthrough for Apple. Apple’s goal is to deliver to customers, by the end of this calendar year, an always-available media stream including TV, movies, music, and books.  Customers will be able to purchase media once and access it anywhere anytime on any (Apple) screen they own without having to manage where the data is stored or how to back up the media. Imagine being able to tell Siri to show Hugo on the TV in the den for the kids, and the Red Wings hockey game on the TV in the living room for dad and his friends.  No remote control, no TV channel searching, just speak your wish. And customers will be able to create, edit and publish their own media as well from any device, anywhere.

I believe that this effort will be huge a success for Apple this year, even though it won’t be completed immediately.  Apple’s huge cash hoard will allow it to succeed in getting the media deals it will need, once all the Apple technology is in place and deployed. And Apple is the poster child of disruptive businesses. Finally, I think that only Apple has the financial and technical chops to pull something like this off. Simple, elegant software that “just works” is the key and no company on earth does that as well as Apple.

And that is what Tim Cook was saying at the iPad launch event this week.

2012 might be a bad year on the Mayan calendar. But 2012 will be a huge year for Apple.

Update: According to the Wall Street Journal, Fox and Universal movies will be made available shortly in iCloud due to agreements, in process but likely to occur, with HBO. It seems that things are beginning to fall into place.

Disclosure: I am long AAPL.

Netlfix streaming recommendation: Parenthood

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Parenthood is a TV series that I only discovered last week. One could summarize the show as a multi-generational and sprawling family soap opera. Or a continuing drama. Or comedy. Or something?.  The first two seasons are available now on Netflix streaming.

But what places it beyond the ordinary is the truth of the acting and the non-cynical approach to story-telling. Watch an episode or two, and give it a chance. It is hard to believe that a family-based TV show could be as honestly engaging, given what passes for family drama these days. But this show is true and powerful and well worth a viewing.

I started watching after reading Emily Nussbaum’s recent piece in The New Yorker. After watching a few episodes, I have to agree with her:

Week after week, “Parenthood,” on NBC, risks corniness, tiptoes up to the edge of conventionality, then delivers real emotion. Its strength is arguably as valuable as the ability of other series to agitate their fans: it manages to be warm, even sentimental, without being stupid or stereotypical.  Drama on TV continues to charm if given an honest chance.

In this respect, the show is not alone. There’s a quiet crest of similar sitcoms on network television, the best among them being “Parks and Recreation.” But “Parenthood,” since it’s a one-hour drama, can go deeper with its characters, mixing humor and pathos with a free hand. The series, which is based on the 1989 movie, was created by Jason Katims, whose first TV writing job was on Winnie Holzman’s “My So-Called Life.” That show’s one perfect season was produced by Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick, the creators of “thirtysomething.” And, really, for as long as I have been an adult, someone in the Herskovitz-Zwick orbit seems to have had a show on the air, generally on the verge of cancellation. In 1996, there was the short-lived “Relativity.” It was followed by three seasons of the low-rated “Once and Again”; the promising “Huge,” which was cancelled midseason last year; and, of course, Katims’s gorgeous Texas football-and-family series, “Friday Night Lights,” the one such show to be fully embraced by TV snobs. After getting bumped from NBC, “Friday Night Lights” ended its run, this summer, on DirecTV. “Parenthood” is still hanging in there on the network, but its season order was cut from twenty-two episodes to eighteen.

If it gets cancelled, I may never recover. The show has become stronger with each season, and ever more adroit at handling an ensemble so big and baggy that even the Waltons might have been intimidated.

Give it a viewing and see if you agree.

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New Absoutely Fabulous

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Absolutely Fabulous is one of my favorite BBC comedies. And it is back, at least in the UK. New episodes begin on January 8.

Here is a teaser from the new series:

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Qwikster is dead

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Netflix has backed down on its plan to separate its streaming and DVD business. According to Reed Hastings, there will continue to be one company and one website.

It is clear that for many of our members two websites would make things more difficult, so we are going to keep Netflix as one place to go for streaming and DVDs.

It was a stupid idea from the beginning. NFLX is up nearly 10% in pre-market trading.

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A three screen strategy

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Image representing Robert Scoble as depicted i...

Robert Scoble

Robert Scoble writes that one of the most important parts of Apple’s announcement today will be the unveiling of an advance “three screen strategy,” relying on a convergence of the iPhone, iPad and Apple TV using Apple’s AirPlay technology. You can read his post, which I highly recommend, here, but you will need to scroll down a bit to get to the meat of his description of the “three screen strategy.”

While I doubt that Apple is calling this plan the “three screen strategy,” I do think that Scoble is right on in predicting the criticality to Apple of successfully deploying both its AirPlay technology and licensing deals with content providers.  Apple needs to conquer the living room and the mobile space and iCloud plus AirPlay is the path to victory.

Apple has worked for years on its Apple TV “hobby” and, given the big moves in media distribution over the past few months by Netflix, Google, Amazon, Facebook, Spotify and others, now is the time for Apple to bring the pieces together in a compelling way. They have the talent and the reputation to do it. The only question is whether the media giants will play along or will block it despite their long-term best interests in wider paid distribution.

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Tech quote of the day

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I messed up. I owe everyone an explanation.

– Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, apologizing for the manner of announcing the company’s recent price increases.  The service is splitting into two services and Hastings provides the details here.

But the bottom line is that the two services really will be separate: different websites, different queues, separate entry of credit card info, and you would have to enter ratings of a single film on both sites. Further, it appears that you will not even be able to tell on the DVD site which movies are available for streaming. In other words, you would need to search twice for all movies and, even worse, if a movie not available for streaming when you add it to your Netflix queue, but becomes so later, will not show up on your streaming queue and will not show any indication on the Netflix queue that streaming is available.

This seems like a major loss of customer functionality to me, and one that should be manageable with the right technology design linking the two sites to provide the right information to customers to manage their subscription(s).

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“Journalism” quote of the day

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I do wish however that pundits would quit comparing the Murdoch phone-hacking clusterphuck to “a Shakespearean tragedy.” Despite the wealth, power, and magnitude of his media empire, Murdoch has no Lear depths and mind-tattered poetry; he’s a colorless king, mean and un-self-reflecting, his own chasms hidden from him. The ill he has done on several continents, the death toll from the wars his journalistic outlets have reflexively, ritualistically championed, the degradation of politics into hand-puppet psychodrama (Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, et al), cannot be undone by apologies proffered under duress. Without the exclusive about the phone hacking of Milly Dowler, he and News Corp probably would have gotten away with everything and gone smugly into the night. No, if the fall of the house of Murdoch is a tragedy, it’s the feel-good tragedy of the century. [One of the best tickers for keeping up with breaking developments in the phone-hacking clusterphuck is Eric Boehlert's Twitter feed, where the feuding with Andrew Breitbart is lagniappe.]

– James Wolcott

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FBI opens probe of News Corporation

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More trouble for the Murdochs:

In the U.S., the FBI opened a probe into whether employees of News Corp. might have hacked or attempted to hack into the private calls, voice-mail messages or call records of 9/11 victims or their families, according to people familiar with the investigation. The probe was opened Thursday morning, following a request a day earlier by Rep. Peter King (R., N.Y.), who heads the House Homeland Security Committee and whose Long Island district was home to many victims of the 2001 terrorist attacks.

It will also look into whether any News Corp. employees bribed or sought to bribe police officials to gain access to such records.

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Analyze your Netflix usage

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Should you pay the increased ($16/month) Netflix fee for a combination 1 DVD/unlimited streaming plan? Here is a good way to check out whether it would be worth it for you, based on your historic Netflix usage. Note: When you get to the red-bordered image to approve access to your Netflix account, click the white space to the right of the”submit query” text.