by mrdrivein·Comments Off on Okay, here's a much nicer 80s Christmas video
Last week, I admitted that in my head, Christmas plus 80s videos equals Christmas At Ground Zero. Here’s a much nicer alternative to celebrate the holiday season 80s-style.
Wham!, the two-man musical group of George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley, released Last Christmas in 1984. Michael wrote and produced the song, and the group donated its royalties to the Ethiopian famine relief effort. The song was a huge international success, hitting #2 in the UK and #3 in Australia, but only reached #40 on the US Billboard chart.
This is a lovely example of the production values typical in mid-80s videos for successful recording artists. According to Wikipedia, it also marks the last time that Michael was filmed without the short beard he soon affected. Merry Christmas, everybody!
by mrdrivein·Comments Off on Roku 3 Review: Simply brilliant
For years, I turned up my nose at the Roku line of devices made to stream internet-based video to TV sets. I never understood the big deal with Roku; my Windows Media Center PC could do anything a Roku could and plenty more besides.
Once again, I was wrong. Not only is the Roku a simple little device for folks who might hesitate to dedicate a computer to their TV sets, its user interface works so much better for watching video. I found this out when I finally bought a Roku 3 as part of DishWorld’s signup promotion.
So in honor of YouTube finally coming to Roku, here’s the Roku 3 review that I promised you back then. It’s so good that my family uses it even though there’s a perfectly good Windows Media Center PC next to it. It’s all about the interface.
Good ideas are cheap and plentiful, but good user interfaces are rare and valuable. From its opening, animated Roku-logo dance at startup to its ultra-simple remote, the Roku 3 interface rocks. It’s the best I’ve experienced since I put away my old TiVo.
When I look at most remote controls (check out this monster), I think of how Bill Cosby once described the console radio of his youth as “about six feet tall, had 287 knobs on it, of which only two worked: Off/On/Volume and the station selector.” The Roku remote has 10 buttons and a four-way direction control. Compare that to any other remote you have, and that other remote will start looking like 287 buttons. Three of the Roku buttons do most of the work: OK, Back, and Home. The direction control navigates on-screen rows and columns of rectangles, left or right, up or down.
What’s extra-cool about the Roku remote is a brilliant idea I’ve never seen anywhere else. The remote includes an audio jack to plug in earbuds, which then automatically mute the signal to the TV. In a noisy or do-not-disturb environment, it’s still easy to listen to TV as you watch.
The Roku remote’s simple design reflects the freedom that comes from throwing out channel numbers. I worry a little that the three-wide on-screen source guide might get too big, but by then, I’d probably remove some sources I never watch any more.
And oh, those sources, called channels in Roku-speak. There are dozens of channels available; most are free, a few require monthly fees, and some (HBO, Epix, etc.) are tied in to pay-TV subscriptions. Most of the live streaming sources I’ve talked about lately are also Roku channels: DishWorld, nimbleTV, simple.TV, and Aereo (but notably not FilmOn).
Here at FTABlog World Headquarters, the wife has put me on notice that over Christmas break this year, she intends to spend several hours a day of quality time with the Roku. Notice that choice. We have an unusual assortment of entertainment choices, including a Dish Network DVR with hundreds of live channels plus on-demand programming, another couple hundred free-to-air satellite TV channels, a fair-sized DVD and BluRay library, and all those streaming services that I keep talking about. To express her desire to binge-view TV the way she wants it, she calls out the Roku. That should tell you something.
In summary, the Roku 3 is really, really good. Right now, I can’t imagine how you could buy a better device for streaming internet content to your TV set.
As a bonus, instead of another receiver graphic, I thought I’d treat you to a video of Roku general manager Steve Shannon at the recent Streaming Media West conference. If you’d really rather see what the Roku 3 unit looks like, it’s easy to find photos of it.
by mrdrivein·Comments Off on Here's my favorite apocalyptic Christmas song
To help you get into the holiday mood, I’ve using my Archive.org cartoon slot on the left side of the page to cycle through a lot of Christmas-related shows. It sure seems weird that, in addition to tons of public domain Christmas video, Archive.org is able to offer material that’s probably still under copyright, such as Ziggy’s Gift, Yogi’s First Christmas, Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol, and plenty more like them. Let’s hope everybody’s okay with that.
Anyway, I noticed that it’s been too long since I shared an 80’s music video, and when I tried to think of one that involved Christmas, my mind returned to Weird Al Yankovic. Sorry about that. “Christmas At Ground Zero” was recorded in 1986, back when “ground zero” referred to an atomic detonation point. Yankovic wrote and performed the song, then directed this video, which stitches together lots of public domain snippets before ending with a live shot from a real, distressed street in the Bronx.
After 9/11, “ground zero” was co-opted to include other attack sites. This unfortunate extension of the phrase has pretty much killed commercial airplay for the song, which had been on its way to becoming a rock music holiday staple. (In 1994, it was included on the Billboard Rock N Roll Christmas CD with Queen’s “Thank God It’s Christmas”, the Beach Boys’ “Little Saint Nick”, and similar songs.) But we know this song isn’t about terrorist attacks, it’s about nuclear war! Much better, right? Enjoy it with a glass of egg nog.
by mrdrivein·Comments Off on NimbleTV streams OTA TV for NYC cable customers
Aha! Remember on Halloween when I noticed nimbleTV experimenting with digital sub-channels from over-the-air TV? At the time, I wondered how it could ever stream those channels while keeping their broadcasters happy. We got the answer yesterday when nimbleTV announced that these channels are available for folks who subscribe to certain New York City-based pay-TV providers. For as little as $3.99/month, these subscribers can also subscribe to nimbleTV’s cloud-based DVR and worldwide delivery system.
I’d never seen such a PR push from nimbleTV. The @nimbleTV Twitter account fired up with its first tweets since July, when its epic takedown by Dish changed how it does business. NimbleTV founder and CEO Anand Subramanian emerged for interviews with selected media outlets. “TV today is everywhere — it’s all over the place, and it’s a mess,” Subramanian told The Hollywood Reporter. “Our goal is to make TV easy again for consumers, while doing it in a way that supports the industry. Our approach simply improves existing pay TV — it does not displace it.”
Most reports of the new service characterized it as providing another way to get “pay-TV” channels. But take a look at exactly which channels nimbleTV will sell. Customers from Time Warner Cable, Cablevision, RCN, and FiOS will get the major broadcast networks plus Cozi TV, Livewell, PBS Kids, Antenna, this, CUNY TV and a few others. What these channels all have in common is that they’re all carried in these systems’ TV packages, and that they’re all broadcast over the air. Instead of getting nimbleTV for a bedroom TV, a lot of New Yorkers could just get an OTA antenna. (Maybe OTA TV is a secret after all.)
NimbleTV says it doesn’t have official deals with anybody, so it logically follows that it has its own OTA antenna and is feeding that signal to those cable subscribers. Since the cable systems have paid any necessary retransmission consent fees, the broadcasters might not object as strenuously as they do to Aereo. Subramanian repeated his mantra during the launch interviews. “No one’s getting harmed here. Everyone’s getting paid.”
None of this affects nimbleTV’s existing Dish Network-based service for folks who aren’t NYC cable customers, or who maybe just want a wider variety of channels. As I wrote a couple of months ago, a Dish PR contact told me that “What nimbleTV is doing, Dish regards as illegal.” Subramanian told the Los Angeles Times yesterday that the issue had been resolved.
After months of silence, it’s good to see nimbleTV’s people communicating again, dropping info-nuggets such as almost 80,000 subscribers in July, which is what Subramanian told Variety. I think nimbleTV is a great service, and I hope to hear more about what’s going on there.
I don’t know why Laura Martin’s report on a la carte bugged me more than other, similar reports that pop up now and then. Maybe it was because it was so widely repeated, usually without skepticism. The Needham & Co. analyst said last week that unbundling TV programming would kill off all 130 channels, leaving 50 survivors in the “best case”. At worst, 173 TV channels would disappear, leaving seven?
It’s a common trick to argue that if consumers were to spend $X less on a particular business, it will mean the loss of Y thousands of jobs. (It happens all the time when pro sports teams want the public to finance a new stadium.) That job-loss figure is accurate only if you take the narrowest view; some workers in that particular business will indeed get laid off. But that $X doesn’t vanish. Consumers will use that money for something else, maybe to go to the movies, maybe to buy a tablet, maybe to visit more restaurants. Those businesses will need to hire more workers to accommodate increased demand, so any net job loss will be greatly reduced in a broader view.
With a la carte, each TV viewer could pick and choose each channel he wants to buy. The worst-case scenario in unbundling is that a viewer who now pays $60 for 180 channels might have to pay $59 for his 10 favorite channels. In that case, consumers don’t save money to spend somewhere else, but 170 channels will lose plenty of income, so many of them will dry up. Everybody loses.
Here’s why I don’t think unbundling would cause that worst-case scenario:
Good businesses set prices rationally. Each channel will estimate demand at different price points, then set their subscription rate to maximize profit or long-term market share.
Fewer than a dozen companies control almost all pay-TV programming. They’re used to playing little games during contract negotiations, such as limiting a popular channel’s price increase if the cable system will add its sibling channel for a few cents more. Those new channels, leveraging existing content and production infrastructure, are often spawned at little incremental cost. With unbundling, that popular channel will stand on its own and get the price that its viewers are willing to pay. And those spinoff channels?
Plenty of channels would be free. If you haven’t noticed, basic cable pay-TV channels are packed with advertising, averaging about 17 minutes per hour. Now imagine if the Esquire Network (for example) were free, but mixed in its ads were promos for the great shows on USA Network, available for $1.99/month. The combination of advertiser income and cross-promotion for more profitable channels would provide some filler to populate viewers’ guide screens.
As an aside, notice that even in the worst-case scenario, the network companies don’t lose too much cable-company cash. Instead of getting $60 fed through 180 slots, they’ll get $59 through 10 slots. If any unwanted networks fold, that will reduce expenses as well. On a la carte channels, advertisers will see fewer viewers, but they’ll know that they are dedicated viewers. I’ll admit that there’s a fair chance that the networks would lose something; that’s why they’re fighting so hard against a la carte.
Then again, I don’t know why so many people spend so much time on this question. It’s all academic. Instead, over the next few years viewers will simply continue cutting back on pay TV. Cord-cutting will continue to grow, and plenty of remaining pay-TV subscribers will drop channels to save money. Still, the cord-cutters and young cord-nevers will remain a small fraction of total households, and cable companies will still make plenty of profit on those that remain, plus high-speed internet service.
Despite occasional bills introduced by rogue representatives, Congress will not force pay TV to unbundle. The only group likely to benefit from unbundling are viewers hoping to save money. These people don’t contribute to re-election campaigns the way that media corporations do. The corporations who pay for Congress want to maintain the status quo. And they have lots of cash to pay for studies that validate their perspective and drown out anyone who would claim otherwise. I don’t know who paid for Laura Martin’s work, but I’m sure it wasn’t Consumers Union.
