News and Rumors:
(08/12/2008) Morgan Freeman's ClickStar and Vongo movie download sites going out of business.
It comes as no surprise, two pioneering Internet movie download sites have silently switched off their servers. Vongo, launched in 2006 by Starz Entertainment, posted a notice Friday it was no longer welcoming new subscribers, and that existing subscribers would be able to download movies only through the end of September. Vongo, which replaced an earlier Starz Internet service called Starz Ticket, was one of the few sites offering consumers unlimited downloading of recent movie releases.

Morgan Freeman's much-hyped ClickStar service ( a joint venture between his production company Revelations Entertainment and chip-maker Intel Corp.) open for business in December 2006, went dark (RIP) earlier this year.

News and Rumors:
(08/08/2008) Broadband usage caps is here.
Comcast was caught slowing down BitTorrent traffic last year by the Associated Press. It sparked cries for government-mandated net neutrality—treating all internet traffic equally, whether it's email, watching porn or a bootleg of The Dark Knight over torrent. While that didn't happen, a complaint against Comcast went through the FCC, which ruled against it last week, saying that slowing down BitTorrent was a naughty thing to do, and that they must disclose all management practices to subscribers. The end result though, and what we're already seeing, is that ISPs will move away from network filters and get into data caps—which are FCC approved. Or at least, not disapproved.

In the meantime, a different network management trend started to emerge among the major ISPs: metered broadband, aka data caps. It's like dial-up service or wireless data: After reaching your alotted amount of data for the month, you pay extra, maybe through the nose, as our northern neighbors in Canada are familiar with. Conveniently, it's "net neutral," since it doesn't discriminate against particular kinds of traffic, and it's fully disclosed to subscribers so it satisfies guidelines discussed by FCC Chairman Kevin Martin. In case you're looking to file a complaint, Electronic Frontier Foundation Senior Staff Attorney Fred Von Lohmann stated, "There's certainly nothing to stop them from pricing that way if they want to."

Time Warner was the first major to float the plan, which is currently in testing, with a 40GB cap at the high-end. Comcast is considering a metered approach as well, its spokesman has confirmed. AT&T is the most recent major ISP to jump onboard, and it'll be testing caps in the fall. Not to mention Cox Cable and a whole mess of regional ISPs already implement them.

Here's the rub: The P2P apps ISPs point to as pillaging their networks are increasingly a nonexistant bogeyman. Video is now the actual bandwidth monster, and it's only getting hungrier and hungrier. The thing about all that video is that it competes with what your ISP is probably delivering to your other screen in the living room. Why watch Howard Stern on your couch at specific time when you can grab it on demand on your laptop with Hulu, or on a Netflix Roku box? That awesome Vudu box you bought? Pulling in Transformers in HD uses your cable provider's pipes, but your cable provider doesn't see a dime from the transaction.

Suppose you decide to opt for an all-digital approach from Vudu or Apple TV, and you have a moderate habit of two movies a week. A 90-minute HD movie running at a constant bitrate of 2.5 megabits per second will swallow 1.69 GB. If you've got a 40GB cap, eight movies will eat over a quarter of it. And that's just your rental habit, with today's specs. The 1080p flicks they'll be streaming tomorrow will be even more bandwidth intensive.

Data caps will not destroy the internet, but internet VOD or "internet movie streaming" is what's actually facing the greatest threat. Time Warner has openly said content providers can't have it both ways. It would effectively have us paying twice for video delivered over the internet. Most people can barely stand paying for it once.

News and Rumors:
(08/01/2008) FCC to Rule Against Comcast on P2P Blockage.
It comes as no surprise, but the FCC has officially ruled on the issue of Comcast P2P blocking and determined in a 3-2 vote that the company must stop blocking web access and fully disclose its traffic management practices to subscribers—but it will not be fined for its actions. It is only a small victory though—as we have already stated, this ruling does not prevent data caps from being implemented by ISPs and there is no guarantee that the ruling will hold up in court. Chances are the FCC does not legally have the authority to regulate ISPs in the first place.

Technology:
(07/25/08) Is physical media is at risk?
I think it's funny how so many people seem to assume that internet VOD or "internet movie streaming" is going to replace physical media. There are so many barriers against it, that I honestly can't see it growing much beyond maybe 10% of the home video market, at least in the next ten years. We're not talking 3 MB song downloads, here, but multi-gigabyte movie downloads for good quality HD. Certainly it will have its place, but replacing physical media? No way. No one is going to come wave a magic wand and give every household in the world unlimited bandwidth and unlimited data transfer, but any household in the world can go out and buy a DVD or Blu-ray player right now and get as much of whatever content they want.

This reminds me of the dot com days in 1999, when everyone thought that a viable business model was irrelevant. I suppose they think Grandma and Grandpa are going to wire their home theater for Ethernet, run out and buy a proprietary video streaming solution, and cash is just going to rain from the sky for these providers, right?

Technology:
(06/20/2008) Is the Internet meter running? Maybe
The days of "all you can eat" Internet access may be numbered.

Time Warner Cable Inc. acknowledged earlier this week that it's testing a plan to charge its heaviest Internet users extra monthly fees if they break a so-called bandwidth cap. Other cable operators also are looking at such an approach, and even their rivals in the phone industry seem open to the idea.

That's bad news for a fraction of customers who frequently download or upload large files, such as movies or music collections. The good news? Most consumers won't notice any difference in their bills once the era of unlimited flat-rate Internet access is over.

"It would not affect 95% of the people," said Bruce Leichtman, who runs Leichtman Research Group, focusing on broadband service.Consider the sort of approach Time Warner is testing in Texas. The company would offer a basic $30 a month plan with a 5-gigabyte cap and a faster $55 a month service with a 40-gigabyte limit. Customers would pay a dollar for every extra gigabyte they use.

Sounds scary, all right. No one wants to get socked with suddenly high access bills. Yet very few consumers come close to Time Warner's proposed caps, or have any idea how much bandwidth they use. One gigabyte, for example, is the equivalent of 1,000 novels, 3,000 Web page views or 17 hours of MP3 music, to cite some examples. Most activities on the Web, in fact, take up surprisingly little bandwidth. Even online gaming (hard-core players, listen up) is a modest devourer of network resources. The biggest culprit by far is video, and to a lesser extent, audio files. Unless customers frequently download movies, they would probably never exceed such caps. Given the increasing availability of video-on-demand services, TiVo-like devices and old-fashioned movie channels such as HBO, there's little reason for most people to use the Internet as their chief video-delivery option. So why tinker at all with current flat-rate plans at the risk of confusing consumers and potentially causing some to cancel service or tie up costly help lines? In the case of cable companies, it's not about squeezing more money from subscribers. Cable operators are trying to manage the precious and dwindling capacity on their networks to maintain a high quality of service.

For most cable operators, about 5% of all their customers account for half of total bandwidth usage. If left unchecked, the situation could reach a point where slowdowns or disruptions affect every cable-modem customer. It's only fair, executives say, that heavy users bear the costs of bandwidth-hogging. There's also the delicate question of what those heavy users are doing. Industry executives won't say it, but Leichtman suspects most heavy users engage in illegal or questionable behavior, trafficking in copyrighted music or videos.

See Reoprt on BusinessWeek June 4, 2008

News and Rumors:
(06/10/2008) Netflix to hike Blu-ray rental price
Get ready to pay a "modest monthly premium" if you want to rent Blu-ray movies from the by-mail DVD giant. Netflix will begin charging a premium to subscribers who rent Blu-ray Discs sometime this year, CEO Reed Hastings said during the company’s first-quarter earnings conference call today. Hastings said the increase would be modest and blamed it on the higher wholesale prices on Blu-ray compared to DVD. The company expects the percentage of subscribers who rent Blu-ray to stay in the single digits this year, he said. The talk of raising prices came as Netflix reported record first-quarter subscriber growth due to competitor Blockbuster’s price hike late last year.

My 2 cents: This is a step on the wrong direction for the blu-ray technology. This is the time that companies should maintain blu-ray prices as an incentive to the new technology.

News and Rumors:
(05/25/2008) Flexplay disposable DVD are making a comeback.
Staples will begin selling disposable discs from Atlanta-based Flexplay Technologies in its 2,000 stores across the country beginning in mid-June. Flexplay has deals with Warner Home Video, New Line Home Entertainment, Paramount Home Entertainment and DreamWorks to sell new release movies on its disposable discs, according to its Web site. Flexplay time-limited discs play for 48 hours after they’ve been removed from their sealed packages, essentially making them disposable rental discs. Discs will be priced between $4 to $6.

Disney sold movies on the disposable discs, dubbed EZ-D, in 7-Eleven stores and through pizza chain Papa John’s in select cities for a year before giving up on the concept. This time, Flexplay has lowered the price of the discs so that they are more in line with rentals. Flexplay also is promoting recycling of the discs on its Web site and will allow buyers to print out a prepaid mailer to return the discs to Flexplay for recycling.

By Video Business Online 2008

My 2 cents: It won''t last 6 months. Another chance for Paramount and Dreamworks to pick-up free money from a foolish manufacturer like they did with HD-DVD.

Technology:
(03/26/2008) $100 HDMI Cables? Don't Be Fooled
If you've ever been shopping for an HDTV at a big electronics retail store, you'll know the drill-basically, once the pushy salespeople hit you up for the $500 extended warranty, they steer you toward the $100 (or more) HDMI, digital audio and coaxial cables. Usually, these cables come in fancy packaging, the connectors are dipped in gold (literally), and you're told that if you're buying a $3,000 TV, you might as well throw down a couple hundred more for the very best cables. Don't fall for it.

While the top-dollar cables at the electronics store sure looks amazing, you really, honestly don't need them. Bargain HDMI, optical and coaxial cables will deliver excellent images and sound without the solid-gold connectors or snazzy plastic casings. I've been using a $20 HDMI cable, $5 coaxial cables and $10 optical cables for a few years now, and no one's complained yet.

Don't take my word for it, though. The experts at Ars Technica would be the first ones to tell you that a $100 Monster-brand HDMI cable delivers a better picture than, say, a $15 off-brand version. Their verdict? "Cabling is something of a racket, and while there probably is a difference between the medium-quality cables and the Monster Cables that cost $100+, I'm guessing none of us have systems that will let us tell enough of a difference to make the price worth it."

I couldn't agree more. I recommend you pay no more than about $20 for an HDMI cable, $10-15 for an optical (or Toslink) digital audio cable, $10 for a component-video cable, and $10 or less for regular RCA-type cables. The sales dude may look appalled, but do yourself a favor and save your money.

News and Rumors:
(11/02/2007) Just How Many Subscribers Are Leaving Netflix?
Bloomberg's Jonathan Weil digs deeper into Netflix's churn numbers and finds that the company is losing more than half of its subscribers each year. Though, with the exception of the latest quarter, the retailer has generally added more new subscribers than it loses, allowing it to grow its subscriber base each quarter.

Weil notes that Netflix defines churn differently than most other companies including TiVo. That lowers the churn rate the online DVD retailer reports. By Netflix's estimation, churn in the latest quarter was 4.6%. By Weil's estimate, using the definition TiVo and others use, the retailer's churn was 16%. More surprising/disturbing was that Weil found that for the full year ending June 30, churn was 63%, meaning that the retailer lost two-thirds of its customers during the year.

Bloomberg sees the churn as a possible sign of trouble to come for the retailer: If it got to 6.8 million subscribers, assuming the 63 percent annual churn holds steady, Netflix would have about 4.16 million cancellations this year. That means it will need to have added 4.64 million new subscribers on a gross basis come Dec. 31. That's a whopping 73 percent as many subscribers as Netflix had at the start of 2007.

by Jennifer Netherby on November 2, 2007 - Video Business Online

Technology:
(10/28/2007) Required Cables and Connectors for Your HDTV
Some cable/connection types are (almost always) simply better than others - they give you a better picture or clearer audio. So how do you know which cable you want for what connection?

HDMI: Short for "High-Definition Multimedia Interface," HDMI is the latest thing in home-theater interfaces. You'll recognize HDMI inputs by their thin, flat shape, and most HDTV sets sold today have at least one HDMI input (if not two or more). One of the advantages of HDMI is that it allows for an all-digital connection, meaning that the digital signals from your DVD, Blu-ray or HD DVD player don't need to be converted to analog (a process that will degrade the resulting picture, if ever so slightly). HDMI connections will also deliver both audio and digital signals, and the latest version of HDMI (1.3) supports Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio, a pair of "lossless" audio formats that you'll find on Blu-ray and HD DVD discs. Oh, and one more thing: HDMI also supports DRM, a little feature that's much loved by the movie industry and despised by home-theater advocates, who note that once HDMI-based copy-protection schemes are fully implemented (which won't happen for a few years, at least), they may lead to nightmarish compatibility problems.

DVI: The Digital Visual Interface, or DVI, is primarily used for computer displays and digital projectors, although you'll find DVI-D (the extra D stands for "digital") inputs on some older HDTVs. Unlike HDMI connections, DVI only delivers video. If you happen to have an older HD set with a DVI input, you can still try connecting it to an HDMI device using a DVI-to-HDMI cable.

Component video: An analog connection as opposed to the digital HDMI and DVI interfaces, component video is perfectly capable of delivering high-def signals to your HDTV—my Xbox 360, for example, sends gorgeous 1080p video to my TV over component video. However, many manufacturers don't let their DVD, Blu-ray and HD DVD players send 1080p images over component, probably because component video doesn't support DRM copy protection. And while robotic TV salesmen will repeat endlessly that HDMI connections are the best, I urge you to take the Pepsi challenge with HDMI versus component—you may be able to tell the difference on a massive 70-inch display, but otherwise, good luck. Anyway, a component video cable is actually a bundle of three cables that separates the video signal into three distinct components: the "Y" cable handles luminescence (or brightness), while the "Pb" and "Pr" cables divide up the color signals. If your HDTV has a component-video input (and I can virtually guarantee you that it does), you'll find a trio of RCA-type plugs marked "Y", "Pb" and "Pr"; when you connect the component-video cable, make sure you match those three plugs correctly, or else you'll get a black-and-white picture or no image at all.

S-Video: A step down from component video, S-Video (or "separate video") carries video signals (but no audio) to TVs using two distinct signals, compared to three for component video. S-Video connections came into vogue with the development of high-end VHS players, and while they do a decent job with standard-definition images, they're incompatible with HD. If you're connecting a DVD player to a 19- or 24-inch CRT TV, S-Video will probably do the trick, but if you're watching on a screen that's 32 inches or bigger, you should use the component-video inputs if you can. S-Video cables have little round plugs at the end with thin, oh-so-delicate pins inside; be careful when plugging the cable (it can be maddeningly difficult to do), lest you damage the pins and render the cable unusable.

Composite video: Even lower quality than S-Video, composite video cables send images to your TV using just one signal, so the picture will be less than pristine, although the single RCA-type plug couldn’t be easier to attach. While most big-screen HDTVs have composite video inputs, you better not let me catch you using it (unless you're just plugging in your vintage GameCube or something).

Coaxial RF: These round, threaded inputs aren't straight-ahead video connectors per se; rather, they let you plug over-the-air antennas and cables to your TV, and coupled with an analog or digital tuner, they deliver anything from old-style VHF and UHF broadcast TV channels to full-on HDTV signals.

News and Rumors:
(10/22/2007) SONY - The next Evil Empire ?
What's up with Sony? (Betamax, MiniDisc, SACD and now…)
In July 2000, a marketing executive working for Sony Corporation created a fictitious film critic, David Manning, who gave consistently good reviews for releases from Sony subsidiary Columbia Pictures, which generally received poor reviews amongst real critics.

In Nov, 2005 Sony BMG installed Trojan horse software on users' computers, then claimed it wasn't a problem, then released a "removal" tool that was actually spy ware… Sony, like most music companies, wants complete control over how you use the music and movie you buy. They want to prevent you from copying it, even to an iPod or a mix you take in your car. So this time Sony took it to the max. It hired a company called First4Internet to design a copy-protection system called XCP. If you tried to play a protected disk in your computer, you first had to agree to install a Sony music player to listen to it. But what Sony didn't say out loud was that the software also included a rootkit. Both Sony and First4Internet did such a lousy job that the hidden space created by the rootkit could be used by anyone who knew about it. In other words, it created a huge security hole - a space on every user's computer that a virus writer could hide some nasty code. Sony's excuse? In an NPR interview, Thomas Hesse, president of Sony BMG's global digital business said, "Most people I think don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"

In April, 2007 Sony says it has discovered a glitch on recent DVD releases including Casino Royale, The Pursuit of Happiness and Stranger Than Fiction that prevented the movies from playing on some DVD players. Sony said the problem was due to an update of its ARccOS copy-protection system, an additional layer of protection meant to prevent ripping. The studio has included ARccOS on its DVDs for the past two years. The copy-protection is continually updated to keep ahead of hackers. Several thousand users complained directly to Sony and on discussion boards at Amazon.com and other blogs, saying their players were freezing or shutting off in the menu section of recent releases from the studio. ARccOS is known to have compatibility problems with some models of Sony, PS2, Toshiba and Harman Kardon DVD players.

News and Rumors:
(10/01/2007)'Bandwidth hogs' finding the Internet has its limits
Comcast advertises unlimited service, yet kicks people off if they "use too much". Once again, Comcast seems to be starting to cut off internet service to "customers with excessive Internet use and movies download." This is an old story that receded from public view a couple of years ago after Comcast previously received much negative PR over the issue. The company has been heavily criticized for misleading advertising of "unlimited" Internet service, while issuing vague charges of excessive bandwidth use when some customers are sent disconnection notices by the Comcast Abuse Department. Comcast has never accurately defined "unlimited" or "excessive" in terms of service agreements, although the term "unlimited" seems self-evident to most average citizens.

Several other media outlets have picked up this story and one former Comcast customer has started a blog on the issue. I believe that this is just the first step in Cable TV's scheme to invalidate net neutrality and head off competing IPTV movie and HDTV download services that soon will be offered by Apple Computer (and already offered by other, lesser known startups companies).