by ·Comments Off on CES is still relevant, just not as much
At a booth at CES, man with his head on a table

I pity this poor guy. CES fatigue is real, but it normally takes a while to develop, and this was the afternoon of Day One.

The 2014 edition of the International CES is over, and all reports suggest that it was the largest yet. That’s true for automotive fans or health gadget followers, but for us satellite folks, it was a little disappointing.

Once upon a time, I could count on CES to show off the latest in satellite free-to-air equipment, the FTA in this blog’s name. That presence dwindled, and in 2014, there was absolutely zero satellite FTA at the show. Searching for “satellite” in the over 3200 exhibitors’ descriptions turned up only 15 matches, including “satellite offices” and companies that supply to satellite and cable providers. Even Dish Network’s “Be anywhere, watch everything” description didn’t mention that s-word; Dish just happens to deliver most of its content through geosynchronous whatchamacallits.

On the other hand, a few companies showed a renewed interest in over-the-air free TV viewing. I got to hold simple.TV‘s second-generation receiver, fresh off the boat. Tablo exhibited a OTA receiver that’s very, very similar to simple.TV’s but with a tablet-oriented interface. Even venerable antenna manufacturer Channel Master introduced its own OTA receiver, the DVR+, which will launch with no guide subscription fees. The DVR+ also won a CES Innovations 2014 Design and Engineering Award.

And most importantly, CES draws together all sorts of people to meet. I talked with technological innovators, iPhone case demonstrators, and some of the other folks who write about what’s new. I was even present for a friendly meeting of attendees from SatelliteGuys and DBSTalk at the Dish booth. There’s a lot of noise at every CES, but the connections make it worth it every year.

by ·Comments Off on The downside to the "Internet of Things"
iPhone cases, second in a series

iPhone cases, second in a series

One of the hot topic at the International CES this year (along with driverless cars, wearable tech, and iPhone cases) was the “Internet of Things”, sometimes called “Internet everywhere”. Companies pushing the next new thing extolled the virtues of wirelessly connected appliances, so users could turn off a washing machine from the office.

Very few people mentioned anything about the downside of having all these internet-chatting devices around the house. I was starting to put together an article to explain the problems with this setup, then I saw that Peter Bright had already written it for ars technica. You need to go read Disaster Waiting to Happen.

by ·Comments Off on 500 channels – something's on, but what?
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iPhone cases, first in a series

Here at the 2014 International CES, I can see plenty of the usual suspects: iPhone cases, healthy living gadgets, iPhone cases, superb audio speakers, iPhone cases, nifty new electronic toys, and iPhone cases. But by searching carefully, looking in hidden corners, I can still find the kind of TV news that we care about.

One recurring theme is the issue of discovery. If you subscribe to Netflix, or Hulu Plus, or a zillion-channel pay-TV service, you’ve got thousands and thousands of viewing choices available. The trick is to make those choices easy to find when you want them or even when you don’t know what you want. Whoever solves this problem and gets the TV/video industry to line up behind the solution will control the screen.

At its press conference here, Sharp offered its version with a smart TV that can integrate all three of those services and several more besides. Two hours later, Dish showed off its latest Hopper version with a lot of the same features, displayed a bit differently. Those are just two examples; so far the only thing all these providers have in common is that they’re all trying to address the problem.

I wandered the exhibit floors and found more companies taking a stab at discovery. Yahoo’s smart TV was, well, another that looked like what the TV manufacturers were offering. One day, someone’s going to figure out an elegant solution, and until then, I’ll keep looking for it.

by ·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 ·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.