Tag Archives: TV

Apple helps cutting the cord (updated)

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Cord cutters (consumers looking to drop cable TV and secure their entertainment via the Internet and IPTV) face at least one major challenge. After canceling cable TV it is fairly easy to get access to prime time TV, thousands of movies, and older TV shows. Services like Netflix streaming and Hulu Plus provide a a great deal of programing.

What is harder to replace are live TV broadcast events, especially sporting events.

Today, via a free software update, Apple TV 2 users can now subscribe to both major league baseball and NBA games via their Apple TVs. Bringing these live games into the home over the Internet is a significant attack by Apple on the bread and butter of cable and satellite TV providers. More live program needs to be made available for a robust alternative, but this is a major first step.

The same software update also provided enhanced 5.1 audio for streaming Netflix movies.

Good on Apple.

Update: More from MG Siegler at TechCrunch:

That’s great news for Apple TV owners, but such functionality has actually been available for some time on the rival boxes by Roku. Still, the ramifications of this are potentially huge because the lack of sports content has been the one point used over and over again in arguments against these new wave of Internet-powered set-top boxes killing cable. Between this, Roku, and Xbox Live getting ESPN content, we’re definitely getting closer to a full-on cable revolt.

The one element still missing from these boxes is the crown jewel: NFL content. The moment NFL Sunday Ticket launches on one of these boxes — and eventually, it will — you’ll hear screams of pure terror emanating from the headquarters of each of the cable companies. I can’t wait.

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Forget you

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The cleaned up version of “F_ _ _ You” won a grammy last night. And the performance of the song featured the Muppets and Gwyneth Paltrow. How’s that for a combination?

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3D is doomed

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Roger Ebert has long lobbied against the use of 3D in theatrical movies. Now he posts the comments of Walter Murch on why current methods of 3D do not (and will not) work with our brains.

But the deeper problem is that the audience must focus their eyes at the plane of the screen — say it is 80 feet away. This is constant no matter what.

But their eyes must converge at perhaps 10 feet away, then 60 feet, then 120 feet, and so on, depending on what the illusion is. So 3D films require us to focus at one distance and converge at another. And 600 million years of evolution has never presented this problem before. All living things with eyes have always focussed and converged at the same point.

If we look at the salt shaker on the table, close to us, we focus at six feet and our eyeballs converge (tilt in) at six feet. Imagine the base of a triangle between your eyes and the apex of the triangle resting on the thing you are looking at. But then look out the window and you focus at sixty feet and converge also at sixty feet. That imaginary triangle has now “opened up” so that your lines of sight are almost — almost — parallel to each other.

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Puppet John McCain

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The Daily Show has a new cast member: the puppet John McCain. (starts at about 3:30 into in the clip)

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
Let’s All Stand on John McCain’s Lawn
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog</a> The Daily Show on Facebook
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Steve Gillmor: streamonomics (updated)

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Steve Gillmor is a man to read, if you are interested in the business implications of technology development. He has an essay in TechCrunch outlining his view on the impact of streaming media. Worth a full read.

Speaking of Apple TV, I went out and bought another one to go with the largest Sony screen I could get delivered from Amazon along with a freebie home theater audio add-on. Both kids got iPads from the grandparents, and already they’re lobbying for Apple TVs for their rooms. The good news here is that at a hundred bucks plus an HDMI cable my eldest can handle that from her baby sitting stash. She thinks I’m dreading her coming of age at 18. Thank god she doesn’t read TechCrunch.

What she does do is watch Netflix constantly. Amazingly, for one streaming sub of 8 bucks a month everyone in the house can now watch different Netflix shows simultaneously. Or download a newer show or movie to the iPad and Airplay it to a free screen somewhere in the house. Suddenly weekends are argument free — no more endless Disney channel blaring on the unwatched living room TV. instead I can push Mad Men season 1 to the big screen and 5.1 sound, and if the little one complains too much, push it or her into a bedroom.

You can extrapolate from this streaming culture in several directions. In the home, television and gaming are now virtualized. The content comes in via various services, is attached to the streaming network, and is consumed and metadata-tagged across devices before being pushed back out on the mobile network. As we vote for these services with our clicks and device shuttling, the amount of revenue will grow to a meaningful share of delivery models. That in turn will drive advertisers and companies seeking relationships with audiences toward an equitable business revenue stream on both sides.

Update: You can subscribe to a video version of his podcast on YouTube here.

Stewart v. Beck

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According to a crowd estimate commissioned by CBS News, more that twice as many people attended Jon Stewart’s Rally to Restore Sanity (plus or minus 10%) than attended Glenn Beck’s Restoring Honor rally (87,000 plus or minus 10%) at the same location earlier this year.

I’ll take that as a small bit of good news regarding the general intelligence of the country.

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Cultural quote of the day

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It’s as anachronistically sweet as Bye, Bye Birdie but gayer than Hedwig.

– Alex Pappademas, summarizing Glee’s formula for a successful TV show, in GQ.


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