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Mark Suster on the Future of TV

Mark Suster is an investor in new net-based TV startups and in this 10 minute talk he breaks down ten reasons why Internet TV is ready to disrupt the industry. His full list of points and explanations is available on his blog, and in a presentation format.

It's a great bunch of ideas that take note of the weird transition period we are currently in. When I was giving away my old TiVo, I had trouble finding any close friends with a HD cable package that could even use the device. Almost everyone I know is either cutting cable completely for internet video, or cutting way back on their cable plans to the absolute bare minimums. My friends tend to be technology canaries in the coal mine, but the writing is on the wall, and in the next few years we'll definitely see a mainstream switch to online video (and cancelations of cable TV plans).

November 17, 2011 in News, Op-Ed | Permalink | Comments (0)

Boxee announces Live TV attachment

Boxee, the creators of the beloved Boxee Box announced an interesting new product: Live TV, a $100 attachment that can connect HD over the air TV antennas and unencrypted cable to your Boxee Box. In their blog post they include a FAQ with all the common questions answered.

This is a fascinating product, clearly aimed at helping people cut the cord on their cable bill, while letting them not miss live TV events that relying on downloaded/streaming content lacks. This is clearly a stopgap measure for the weird time we live in right now where you either have to pay $100+ dollars each month for 500+ channels or you skip it entirely and just download/stream what you like and miss out on major news, sports, and events on the main networks. (via Uncrate)

November 17, 2011 in Products | Permalink | Comments (5)

New release of GoogleTV is out: now with apps

via www.flickr.com

GoogleTV owners (all 6 of you!), the long-awaited update to GoogleTV was finally released this week, and my Sony player picked it up on Thursday.

One of the big features is an app store, though the entire store on day one is only a couple dozen random apps. It's a cart-and-horse problem, but now that it's out there, it will be interesting to see what types of apps are created and released specifically for the GoogleTV in the future.

November 7, 2011 in News | Permalink | Comments (0)

No live TV streams: Here’s why?

Over the years, there have been fierce bat­tle between the con­tent play­ers and con­tent car­ri­ers over such fees, lead­ing, for exam­ple, to TV sta­tions not being avail­able on cer­tain cable chan­nels as pres­sur­ing tac­tics dur­ing nego­ti­a­tions. Part of the rea­son is that some of the con­tent play­ers are now also owned by con­tent car­ri­ers, lead­ing to sit­u­a­tions where large con­glom­er­ates that own both car­ri­ers and cre­ators look to get an advan­tage by forc­ing higher trans­mis­sion fees on their competitors.

via www.tnl.net

A good essay on some reasons why streaming live TV isn't even offered these days, and why it may be a long time coming.

November 7, 2011 in Op-Ed | Permalink | Comments (0)