A periodic roundup of relevant news… from our other blogs.
- Motorola CableCARD Set-Tops Shipping: Connected Home 2 Go
- Along the Road to Convergence: Connected Home 2 Go
- 100 Mbps Without Fiber to the Home: Connected Home 2 Go
Netflix has moved their earnings call from the 23rd to the 18th, and Davis suspects something is up. Given their new director of Internet TV, one possibility is that Netflix will acquire Roku to jumpstart a media extender business. Or perhaps there’s been an offer to buy Netflix. We suppose it’s also possible, though unlikely, that Netflix has some bad news to share. Or maybe there’s nothing significant here at all.
So what’s going on? You’ve got about 8 hours to get your vote in.
Time Warner Cable quietly launched PhotoShowTV in Staten Island last week. I say quietly because it appears there was very little press coverage. Granted the service was already operating in Hawaii, but this is the first time PhotoShowTV has been available on the mainland, so to speak. And it’s a very cool service.
SimpleStar’s PhotoShow has been around for quite a while as a simple tool for creating photo slideshows with music, graphics and even some animations. (Comcast subscribers can download the Deluxe version on Comcast.net) The TV part comes in with the combination of PhotoShow and Time Warner’s VOD service. Staten Island TWC subscribers can now create PhotoShows online and then submit them for public viewing on a local VOD station. In other words, what you create in your living room can be watched on Grandma’s TV screen across town. Continue Reading…
TiVo’s annual 10-k has revealed that Comcast paid $16 million (fiscal year ending 1/31/07) for continued development of the upcoming Motorola TiVo build. TiVo presumably received funding the prior year, and will receive a recurring subscriber bounty once the platform is deployed. I wonder if Cox sent Comcast a thank you card for footing the dev bill of this TiVo Java port.
Cost of technology revenues increased by $16.1 million for the fiscal year ended January 31, 2007, as compared to the prior fiscal year. These increase in costs are related to the Comcast development agreement and are offset by an equal amount of development revenue recognized as technology revenues.
In addition, we agreed to develop an advertising management system for deployment on Comcast platforms to enable the provision of local and national advertising to Comcast subscribers. Comcast will pay a recurring monthly fee per Comcast subscriber who receives the TiVo service through Comcast. Comcast has also paid us fees for licensing the TiVo technology, and will continue to pay us fees for engineering services for the development and integration of the TiVo service software solution (subject to adjustment under certain circumstances) and will also pay us for the advertising management system.
(via MultiChannel News)
I’ve written before about my love for Pandora and about the Copyright Royalty Board’s (CRB) attempt to kill it and other Internet radio services. Now Pandora, as part of a coalition called SaveNetRadio, is fighting back.
The SaveNetRadio group (including listeners, artists, labels and webcasters) started a campaign yesterday with a petition to Congress protesting the CRB’s new licensing rate scheme. The goal is to bring attention to the issue now and then follow up by introducing a bill that would make the CRB’s recent decision to slap unfair royalty fees on Internet radio sites illegal.
With all of the things that have been done wrong in the music industry, Internet radio is one shining example of what’s been (generally) done right. Please help save Pandora! Sign the petition and pass on the URL: http://capwiz.com/saveinternetradio/issues/alert/?alertid=9631541