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Comcast – Now with a Lot More Football

Mari Silbey — August 4, 2009 — 5 Comments

Comcast NFL Network

There we were, happily channel surfing at home last night, and suddenly it appeared out of nowhere: the NFL Network. We have the Comcast digital classic plan and have never, ever had access to the NFL Network before. Surely a mistake, right? Not at all. Somehow back in May I missed the earth-shattering news that Comcast and the NFL Network had finally come to a peaceful resolution in a years-long standoff. After much “friendly” haggling, Comcast finally agreed to carry the network by August 1st with no additional fee required from digital subscribers. As with the dispute over the the Big Ten Network, it was all a matter of finding the right price. In the end, the NFL didn’t have to hand over any channel equity, but it did reduce the cost per subscriber from 70 cents to just over 50 cents on average.

In combination with the NFL Network, I also now get ESPN360 as a Comcast broadband subscriber, and I should be getting ESPNU before the start of college football season. Unlike Dave, I’m not much of a college football fan, but the ESPN360 access will certainly come in handy for those out-of-market Redskins games. Yes, I’m a Redskins fan. And I’m ready for some football!

In Broadband, Home, Industry, TV Shows, Web

Netflix Hits “Start Over” on Popular ABC Series

Mari Silbey — August 3, 2009 — 5 Comments

Netflix Watch Now Abc

Netflix is on a roll. In addition to the fact that the movie rental service may be launching an iPhone/iPod app in the future, Netflix announced a deal with Disney today to add ABC shows to its list of Watch Now content. As NewTeeVee reports, the first five seasons of Lost, seasons four and five of Desperate Housewives, season five of Grey’s Anatomy, and seasons one and two of The Legend of the Seeker will all be available. That’s on top of TV shows from NBC and CBS.

The concept of “Start Over” for a TV series (minus the commercials) is something Netflix virtually pioneered. Instead of going out and buying or renting a season of a television show you want to try out, Netflix has made it easy for years now to let you sample a series with DVDs that arrive in your mailbox. Not only great for consumers and for Netflix, it’s a move that has been good for major content owners as well. Why not convert new viewers by catching them up on an entire series? The Watch Now feature only makes it easier.

It’s interesting to me that cable and telco operators haven’t followed the Netflix trend more closely with their VOD offerings. There have been occasional exceptions, like offering season one of Mad Men before season two began, but for the most part, the VOD libraries consist of recent TV episodes rather than archived content. I believe this is an issue with licensing agreements more than anything else, but it would be nice to see it rectified.

In Industry, Netflix, TV Shows, Web

Digital Media Bytes

Dave Zatz — July 29, 2009 — Leave a comment

A periodic roundup of relevant news… from our other blogs:

dlna-home-networking-with-motorola-dcx-set-top

Your Personal Photos, Music, and Video on TV
Where should the processing occur to encode personal content for TV viewing? In the Verizon set-up, the processing takes place in a PC, and then content is transferred via MoCA. But it’s also possible to have the processing take place in a set-top.

Comcast Mobile App + TV Everywhere
Today you can only access TV listings and program details on the mobile Guide, and movie trailers from the On Demand link. With Comcast’s On Demand Online initiative underway, however, I have to assume the app is built to evolve.

Motorola MPEG-4 Set-Tops in the Wild
An online forum thread on the Broadband Reports site confirms that Motorola DCX set-tops are now officially live in the field. I’ve heard rumblings about deployments since CES in January, but this is the first proof I’ve seen of the MPEG-4 set-tops making their way into consumer homes.

Prevent iTunes from Launching the Picture Sync Wizard
Each time I connect my iPhone to PC, iTunes automatically starts the Windows ‘Import Pictures and Videos’ wizard, regardless of whether or not there were any new pictures on my iPhone to import. This was a daily frustration.

The Green Button Forums Gets a Makeover
The official Windows Media Center forums website, Green Button, received a long overdue makeover. It’s been WMC users go-to place for a long time and was recently purchased by Microsoft.

In HTPC, Industry, Mobile, Video, Web

Has Best Buy’s Twelpforce Already Failed?

Dave Zatz — July 28, 2009 — 10 Comments

Is this who you want representing your brand?

Last week, Best Buy (BBY) launched an audacious online engagement experiment in allowing hundreds of employees to man their Twitter feed. “Twelpforce” aggregates rank and file employee contributions into a single Twitter account. However, unlike say a Sprint (S) or Comcast (CMCSA) who utilize communications and service professionals, the results have been hit or miss for Best Buy.

The primary Twelpforce issue seems to be continuity. Whereas Best Buy sees strength in numbers, I see value in relationships. With so many contributors coming and going under one name, Twelpforce has no individual personality… beyond ‘disjointed conversation’, the second and far greater, continuity issue. Twitter conveniently allows you to follow a thread via “in reply to” links. Which the Twelpforce feed lacks. Meaning, to track down an original question you may end up clicking through to a Best Buy employee’s Twitter account - which is how I stumbled upon that gem above, posted within a few minutes of a #twelpforce comment. And then there’s the matter of pumping leaked products over existing inventory or promoting one brand over another (wonder how Dell fees about this?).

So while corporate Best Buy and the vast majority of participating Blue Shirts are good intentioned with their tweet cloud, I wonder how this is going to play out. Thoughts?

Click to enlarge:

In Industry, Web

Messing Around With Card.ly

Dave Zatz — July 25, 2009 — 2 Comments

For some time, I’ve considered developing the vacant davezatz.com into a simple landing page directing folks to my various online haunts. But I never found the time or motivation. Enter: Card.ly.

This new web service offers pretty much what I was shooting for, currently supporting a few dozen web services and providing a number of visual themes. However, all free profiles are hosted on card.ly. For $3/month or $26/year, premium accounts come with additional perks – including custom domain hosting. Sort of. If you’re network savvy, take a look at the pic below to see card.ly’s forwarding hackery in action. Card.ly’s founder, Daniel Blake, suggests this will be improved/corrected in the future. However, my continued membership is more dependent on the continued flow of attractive themes, additional web service integration, and customization options.

And while we’re on this topic of web identities and outposts, I just registered OvercomingGravity.com as the possible future home of my occasional Posterous personal blog. Until Twitter gives me a way to host my entire history in a usable format.

Click to enlarge:

In Web