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Hopper mascot at Dish Network's CEDIA booth

Hopper mascot at Dish Network’s CEDIA booth

“What nimbleTV is doing, Dish regards as illegal.” That’s what a press relations contact for Dish told me this afternoon immediately after consulting with Dish executives at their booth at CEDIA Expo. I had asked Dave Arland about the nature of Dish’s relationship with nimbleTV, prompting him to withdraw to a lengthy discussion before returning with that short answer.

When I pointed out that Dish had already shut down nimbleTV once and asked why Dish didn’t simply continue cutting off its service, Arland replied, “It’s not that simple.” He said that nimbleTV had “workarounds” and declined to elaborate further.

That description of nimbleTV contradicts its often-stated goal of keeping its programmers fully paid and therefore happy. I’ve reached out to nimbleTV for a reaction to today’s Dish comment, but at the time of this post, I haven’t received a reply.

Clearly something happened in the weeks between Dish cutting off nimbleTV and the resumption of nimbleTV’s Dish-based packages. I had theorized that Dish required certain changes that nimbleTV implemented in the interim – local channels restricted to in-market subscribers, and fewer simultaneous recordings. There was one other change that I hadn’t mentioned, one that Dish would be unlikely to request. In my bottom-tier package, drawing from channels in Dish’s Welcome Pack, my non-local channels such as Comedy Central and TBS are now in HD. Before the service interruption, nimbleTV had delivered those in SD, matching the quality that direct subscribers to the Welcome Pack would see. If Dish mandated those changes, why allow HD upgrades to Welcome Pack subscribers? If Dish didn’t mandate those other changes, why did nimbleTV make them?

If Dish is right, could it have been that nimbleTV’s programmers somehow created some “workarounds” to continue offering service despite Dish’s desire to cut them off? Is nimbleTV account stacking, running too many receivers on each Dish account and letting too many subscribers view the results? I have a hard time believing that nimbleTV’s slow, careful buildup would culminate in aw-heck-with-it illegal access. NimbleTV could clear the air by simply telling the world how it delivers all those Dish-originated channels to all those streaming customers. In the absence of those facts, I’m confused as usual about nimbleTV. And even now, I sure hope it’s legal.

by ·Comments Off on DishWorld streams TV with a difference

ebruscreenAfter I wrote about DishWorld last week, I knew I needed to give it a try so I could let you know what it’s like. It turns out that DishWorld offers some interesting wrinkles on how to stream TV over the internet.

DishWorld offers TV programming packages in 15 non-English languages. All of them include a bonus set of international English channels, and some also include a few English sports channels. I chose the Mandarin package, which includes 22 Chinese channels plus the English and sports sets for $14.99 per month. Other languages are more expensive. For example, Filipino provides just two native channels plus English and sports for $19.99, and Hindi provides almost as many channels as Mandarin but for $44.99. Since I don’t get any special discounts for being a Dish shareholder, and since I can’t speak any of the 15 available languages yet, the cheapest package works best for me.

In addition to all that programming, there are plenty of on-demand movies available on DishWorld. A few dozen Bollywood movies are free on demand, and hundreds of US-made new releases and older films are available to rent, most for $3 or $4.

The English-language bonus pack includes:

  • ND 24×7 – News channel from India.
  • Fashion TV – My old favorite former-FTA channel featuring people who dress skimpy and walk funny.
  • France 24 – News channel from France.
  • Ebru TV – US-based general entertainment channel majority-owned by Samanyolu Broadcasting Company.
  • BabyTV – International channel for babies and toddlers. Not to be confused with Baby First TV.
  • Blue Ocean Network – News channel from China.
  • Eurochannel – European culture and lifestyle movies and shows.
  • Euronews – News channel from Europe, of course.
  • Trace Urban – International urban music channel.
  • Luxe.TV – Luxembourg-based channel “dedicated to the world of luxury and art of living”.
  • RT – Formerly Russia Today, news channel from Russia.
  • Zoom – Bollywood channel from India, of course.
  • Bloomberg – US-based business news channel.

And the four or five sports channels include:

  • One World Sports – International sports offshoot of the America One over-the-air network.
  • Nautical Channel – Covers boating and board sports.
  • Universal Sports – Former over-the-air digital sub-channel concentrating on Olympic sports.
  • BeIN Sport – Qatar-based channel with lots of soccer.
  • BeIN Sport 2 – Bonus soccer that wouldn’t fit on BeIN. Off the air otherwise.

That’s an interesting set of channels for $15/month, not to mention the bewildering (to me) variety of Mandarin channels I can watch. It’s all available to stream on PC and Mac, Android devices, and particularly Roku. DishWorld offers a free Roku LT or half off a Roku 3 for prepaying the first four months of service. (I picked the Roku 3, which is very interesting in its own way. More about that Roku 3 in a future post.)

Unlike nimbleTV, FilmOn, and Aereo, DishWorld doesn’t offer a cloud-based DVR, but it provides an interesting alternative. DishWorld’s guide shows the last eight days of programming on each channel, and every show from that period is available on demand. When I first activated my subscription, I was able to watch an episode of Doctor Who that had aired a week earlier on Ebru. When I change channels in the middle of a program, DishWorld asks whether I want to watch it live or from its beginning. It’s like having the PrimeTime Anytime feature from Dish Network’s Hopper, except all day for all channels, but without automatically skipping commercials. This week-back feature is so cool, I almost don’t miss being able to record. Almost.

For some channels that are hard to find anywhere else, $15/month is okay. For plenty of entertainment in your non-English native language, it’s probably worth whatever your package costs. For a glimpse of how all TV might be delivered 10 years from now, DishWorld is priceless.

by ·Comments Off on 80s video returns with a Pop-Up

Watch live streaming video from spinthebottle at livestream.com

Every now and then, I check the logs to see what search terms drive web surfers to visit FTABlog. My most recent check revealed that months after our last installment, some people still want to see more 80s music videos. Well alrighty then.

Today I present a special treat. Shock the Monkey is the enigmatic hit that helped Peter Gabriel break out in the US, and this is the Pop-Up Video version. For the youngsters out there, Pop-Up Video was a VH1 show in the 1990s. In every episode, PUV provided behind the scenes info and often sophomoric commentary about several music videos. If you want more examples, there are dozens more at producer Spin the Bottle’s Livestream site. Enjoy!

 

by ·Comments Off on Dish Network pioneers streaming TV packages

A world map montage over a blue background.With all the talk about FilmOn and Aereo and nimbleTV, I keep forgetting to mention another really important internet-based TV service. Janko Roettgers of GigaOM reminded us recently that for years, Dish Network has been streaming TV channels from other countries through its DishWorld brand. I remember when Dish started the service and saw it both as a smart way for Dish to shift transponder space to more English-language HD programming and as another sign that internet-delivered content would eventually supplant most satellite TV programming. We’ll see how that goes.

Dish is in a great position to run this international offshoot because of its longstanding relations with foreign programmers. On the other hand, a big part of nimbleTV’s true potential is to provide parallel programming packages by providing virtual cable subscriptions from Bangalore or wherever nimbleTV can work out a good deal. Never mind watching New York channels as you travel; imagine the folks from India and other countries on long-term assignments here with a chance to tap into everything they’d get at home. FilmOn has also been adding a fair number of foreign-language channels, so it’s always possible that it could become a player in this market segment.

True one-to-many broadcasting makes a lot of sense when a lot of people want to watch the same live event at the same time. For programming that only a small fraction of viewers want to see, DishWorld is showing what the TV world is coming to.

by ·Comments Off on FilmOn adds OTA channel lists for DC, NYC, LA

FilmOnMHzI’ve been resisting the urge to write more about FilmOn because I don’t want this to become the What the Heck is Going On with FilmOn Blog. But once again, I’ve just got to ask, What the heck is going on with FilmOn?

On the legal front, it’s a little easier to explain what’s going on. Two days ago, a New York federal judge ordered FilmOn to pay CBS and other plantiffs $1.35 million plus interest and attorneys’ fees for failing to pay the full amount it owed under an October 2012 settlement on the old copyright lawsuit. Then yesterday, FilmOn asked Washington DC U.S. District Court Judge Rosemary Collyer to reconsider her injunction preventing it from streaming over-the-air broadcasters, claiming that the order puts it at a competitive disadvantage compared to Aereo, which keeps avoiding these injunctions. I also keep reading reports that the injunction prevents FilmOn from streaming stations from almost all of the US, but in real life, FilmOn continues to stream Denver, Chicago, and probably other cities I can’t easily check.

If FilmOn is ignoring or bypassing the “nationwide” part of the injunction, that would be just the beginning of the weirdness. Yesterday, its online channel list added New York TV and Los Angeles TV as new categories, populated by the names of every OTA channel and subchannel in those markets. Today, it added Washington DC TV, the one place I’d firmly believe is covered by Judge Collyer’s injunction, with a similar set of every possible OTA offering. Yesterday, my attempts to launch a handful of these channels were uniformly unsuccessful; selecting one kicked in the standard preroll ad, then a Loading graphic and that’s all. Today, I see that at least a few of the Washington DC channels are live, including 30.3, the MHz subchannel carrying CCTV News. The picture stutters and sometimes goes blocky, suggesting a marginal signal, but there it is.

As someone who has been following FilmOn for years, I can tell you that I have no idea what this means. It’s uncharacteristic of FilmOn to offer all available OTA channels for a market; for example, in Denver, it only offers the Big Four networks. Is FilmOn deliberately thumbing its nose at the injunction? Is someone in the control room experimenting with what FilmOn might do after they actually win a lawsuit? Is some prankster playing a trick on FilmOn or the rest of us? I suspect we’ll all find out soon enough.

Update: John Eggerton from Broadcasting & Cable followed up by talking with FilmOn founder Alki David. According to Eggerton, David was waiting for a ruling on FilmOn’s request for the judge to reconsider her decision. This afternoon, she denied that request. “We had a motion to stay. As a result of the stay motion, the order is put on ice. The decision is made so now we comply,” David said. There’s a lot more in Eggerton’s article, so go read it!

Update 2: By the time Eggerton’s article appeared, the local TV categories I mentioned had disappeared from FilmOn. As I type this the next morning, the Big Four networks are gone from Denver and Chicago, although WGN is still there. New York, safely in a pocket of District Court approval, looks the same as it did before all this happened. I still wonder what the plan was for those categories. Maybe David will let me know one of these days.