by ·Comments Off on I can't believe this is an 80s music video

The Doobie Brothers were one of the most famous rock bands of the 20th century, but almost all of their hits were in the 1970s. Yet here is one of their music videos, so that requires some explanation.

Tom Johnston formed the Doobies with Patrick Simmons and others in 1970. A year later, they added a second drummer and hit the charts with “Listen to the Music”. After a few years of broad success, Johnston developed health problems that led to emergency hospitalization for a bleeding ulcer in early 1975. Michael McDonald stepped in to complete a tour, then finish the next album, and then influence the direction of the band.

Under McDonald’s leadership, the Doobies produced the Grammy-winning, number one album Minute by Minute in 1978. But McDonald’s more soulful influence left other members complaining that they were just just his backup band, and by the end of 1981, there were no original Doobies left. The group disbanded.

In 1987, a benefit concert brought together many of the early-70s members of the band, including Johnston and Simmons. Demand for tickets was so strong that they turned the concert into a 12-city tour and turned the band into a new, permanent version that returned to that early-70s sound.

From the 1989 album Cycles, here is the Doobies’ last song to hit the Billboard Hot 100, and it only reached 45. But the video’s whip-around, fast-cutting clips of multiple concerts give us a great time capsule of a bunch of guys who once had it all and were happy getting it back together again.

by ·Comments Off on Read a great biography of FilmOn's Alki David
Alki David's Twitter photo

@alkidavid‘s Twitter profile photo

Eriq Gardner at The Hollywood Reporter just published an amazing, solid biography of Alki David, the self-described eccentric behind FilmOn. It provides such an entertaining look into the background of David, the fun guy, and FilmOn, the company that is bucking a huge, entrenched industry.

Who knew, before this article, that Charlie Sheen, Ice-T, and Andy Dick are board members of FilmOn? Who knew about the reason David fired a supermodel from his new over-the-air station? There is such a wealth of interesting information here that you just have to read the article.

The part that leaves me wanting more is David’s quote that “We have deployed over 2.5 million (tiny OTA) antennas in major cities all around the country.” Wouldn’t it be great to get Aereo-style OTA channels available through FilmOn? I’m looking forward to it.

 

by ·Comments Off on Voom vs. Dish should be fun to watch

Voom logoIn a modern-day clash of titans, the 4-year-old lawsuit between Voom HD and Dish Network has reached a trial, which started today. Billionaire cable pioneer Charles Dolan will face off against billionaire satellite pioneer Charles Ergen in a case to be decided by a jury of their peers.

Dish abruptly dumped the Voom channels in May 2008, claiming that Voom hadn’t spent enough on its programming, as its contract with Dish had required. (As a Voom viewer, I can say that during its last year, Voom’s shows seemed to be about 90% repeats.) In today’s trial, “Cablevision attorney Orin Snyder said Dish was ‘hell-bent’ on getting out of a contract covering a high definition channel package offered by Voom HD,” according to a Reuters article.

The trial is expected to last for several weeks. You might want to check Google News to find some sources who will be covering this. Sounds like it’ll be fun, and it might even be enlightening.

Update: After a train wreck of a trial, with Ergen apparently next up on the witness list, Dish settled by giving Cablevision $700 million and agreeing to carry the AMC channels.

by ·Comments Off on How will Congress regulate internet TV?

US Capitol BuildingThe Advisory Committee to the Congressional Internet Caucus held an educational briefing Friday titled, “Internet TV: What Must Congress Do About It?” Phil Kurz of Broadcast Engineering has a nice summary of the issues and discussion flying around. You really should go read it!

My favorite quotes are from Andrew Jay Schwartzman, who used to run the Media Access Project. “TV Everywhere says, ‘Fine, get a video subscription, and you can get video online.’ And through various contractual arrangements they are trying to tie in some of these cable channels so they can’t really offer their services al a carte online so you can just get the channels you want….”

Best of all, you can download the whole thing as an MP3 podcast here. Enjoy!

by ·Comments Off on Watching OTA over the internet could be Simple

Simple.TV deviceYet another service that offers over-the-air channels streamed to internet devices is about to hit the market. This one looks legal, because it uses your home antenna.

Simple.TV is a great story. It showed off a prototype at the International CES in January, won a Best of CES award from CNET, then rode a successful Kickstarter project to create a finished product for consumers. You plug in your home OTA antenna and an ethernet connection, then it streams the shows to you wherever you are. Add a USB hard drive and it’ll even act as a DVR for you. All for the cost of the $150 device, although you might want to spring for the $4.99/month enhanced TV listing subscription.

Streaming this way isn’t completely new. You can hook up a Slingbox or a TiVo and get the same results with the right equipment. What’s new is that Simple.TV has brought that functionality down to a lower price point with a, dare I type this, simpler interface.

What fascinates me is that programmers don’t seem to care much about this kind of streaming, but they’re still battling hard against Aereo, which is only different in that it maintains the OTA antenna for you. Cablevision was the most recent company to dogpile on Aereo, submitting a brief that says Cablevision’s cloud-based DVR is nothing like Aereo’s because Cablevision paid retransmission fees. Yes, this is the same Cablevision that publicly suggested less than two years ago that any non-profit could freely retransmit any OTA channel. So you might want to take all that with a grain of salt.

Anyway, Simple.TV is supposed to begin shipping units this week. I hope it encourages more people to explore the wealth of programming they’re already getting for free.