by ·Comments Off on Sling complement candidate #1: Tablo
Tablo's projected Roku app interface

Tablo’s projected Roku app interface

As I wrote last time, Sling TV looks like it could be the low-cost streaming solution for some viewers, particularly with the (temporary?) demise of NimbleTV. But Sling only works if the viewer also has a set of local over-the-air broadcast channels to complement it. I saw several candidates for that job at the International CES, and the first was Tablo, an OTA tuner, DVR, and streamer.

Before I start, I should mention Tablo’s main competitor, Simple.TV. It was just last year that Simple.TV used CES to announce the launch of its first two-tuner receiver. This year, Simple.TV had no official presence at CES. When I asked before the show, a rep told me that some Simple.TV folks would attend, but that there wouldn’t be any opportunity for meetings. While I was at the show, I heard rumors from two other companies that Simple.TV is exiting the hardware business to focus on its software. My single-tuner Simple.TV still works solidly, albeit slowly, and the company continues to release maintenance updates. Simple.TV is still around, but it’s not giving me a lot of reasons to recommend it.

At CES, I met with Tablo CEO Grant Hall, and he was excited about the improvements that are in the Tablo pipeline. Hall was showing off the innards of his next receiver version – the Tablo METRO, which includes a couple of OTA antennas built into the box. (You can see a photo at the Tablo blog.) I can’t imagine folks who don’t want a rooftop antenna, just like I can’t imagine folks who don’t think the Three Stooges were funny, but I guess they’re out there, and this receiver could give them everything they need without an external antenna. That’s if it works as advertised; we’ll see when the METRO comes out in a month or two.

The other update on the horizon is to Tablo’s Roku channel. The current version looks like a lot of other Roku channels – manageable but nothing like a modern program listing grid. As you can see in my photo above, the new Roku channel will look exactly like a modern program listing grid. Shoehorning this kind of functionality onto the Roku platform will be quite an achievement if it works. Hall was basically showing a mock up, but he wouldn’t do that if he didn’t think his team could pull it off.

When I reviewed the Tablo, I thought it was already a little better than Simple.TV. If these improvements pan out, I might have to consider buying a Tablo receiver and shelving my Simple.TV. Then again, maybe one of the other two major Sling complement candidates will work better. More about them next time.

 

by ·Comments Off on Sling TV looks like a game-changer

Dish Sling TV booth at the 2015 International CESI’m almost recovered from another year of the International CES, and I have sooo much to tell you about. Sling TV from Dish Network won Engadget’s Best in Show award, so let’s start there. Richard Lawler of Engadget marvels at Sling’s interface, but it’s pretty close to DishWorld, which I’ve been trying out for over a year now.

When Sling launches later this year (it’s in invitation-only beta now), it will include ESPN, ESPN2, TNT, TBS, Food Network, HGTV, Travel Channel, Adult Swim, Cartoon Network, Disney Channel, ABC Family, and CNN, all streaming for $20 per month. Also promised are add-in bundles such as “Kids Extra” (Disney Junior, Disney XD, Boomerang, Baby TV, and Duck TV) and “News & Info Extra” (HLN, Cooking Channel, DIY, and Bloomberg TV) for $5/month each, plus an unspecified “Sports Extra” package.

One huge difference between DishWorld and Sling is the length of its replay feature. In lieu of a DVR, a DishWorld subscriber can watch any show on any channel from the past seven days. On Sling, for most channels, that will be limited to three days. Some channels, such as ESPN, will have no replay feature; it’ll be live only.

In the right combination with local over-the-air TV service, Sling could satisfy what some viewers need at a price that’s a lot less than traditional pay TV. But what OTA receiver would provide the best complement to Sling? Over the next few posts, I’ll talk about a few of the candidates that I saw at CES.

by ·Comments Off on NimbleTV pulling the plug
hand holding electrical plug for TV set

© Depositphotos.com / Naypong

Just got back from the International CES in Las Vegas, where Dish Network unveiled Sling TV, an online-only set of pay-TV channels for $20/month. (I’ll write more about Sling TV later, meanwhile you can read more here.) I just knew something like this was coming, and I wondered what it would mean for my old friend NimbleTV, which sells online-only sets of pay-TV channels that it somehow receives from Dish. Yesterday, the other shoe dropped.

My NimbleTV “concierge” sent me a subscriber-only email announcing that beginning Monday, January 12, I will “not be able to access (my) account or recordings.” The email never mentions Dish or Sling, but claims that “we’ve decided to pause the NimbleTV service as it stands today so we can concentrate on developing something even better and more amazing than before.”

It’s been over a year since Dish blocked NimbleTV’s access for a few weeks before NimbleTV restored its service with new parameters. Since then, a Dish representative once characterized NimbleTV as “illegal,” but it has managed to continue operating without further interruption. Yesterday’s email signals the end of all that, unless and until NimbleTV relaunches its “new and improved service later this year.”

My uninformed guess about their relationship had been that Dish wasn’t excited about NimbleTV’s existence, but was willing to accept full-price monthly fees from its subscribers. (A full-blown fight or any serious complaining would have only led to the Streisand Effect of publicizing such a rogue.) That benign neglect ended the minute that Sling TV began offering a similar service. Sling TV is still in invitation-only beta, so the cutoff doesn’t have to be as abrupt as last time, but that reluctant partnership has to end, at least according to my unsubstantiated theory.

I don’t expect NimbleTV to return as anything like it was unless, as reported, the FCC reclassifies “multichannel video programming distributor” to include internet-only services. Absent that intervention, I don’t think that any streaming service will ever be able to do anything that content creators don’t want it to do, at least not for long. NimbleTV bent over backwards to ensure that creators were paid for what they provided, but it’s still drifting toward the failed experiment graveyard with ivi.tv, Aereo, and FilmOn’s US over-the-air channels. It was great while it lasted, but for now, it’s over.

by ·Comments Off on TVFreedom promotes, undercuts retransmission fees
Antennas Direct's C2-V antenna

Antennas Direct’s ClearStream 2 antenna

You know that I love free TV, so I especially love terrestrial, over-the-air TV broadcasters. As a corollary, I also care about OTA TV antennas much more than the average, non-obsessed TV viewer. This week, the broadcasters and an antenna manufacturer are getting together for a public education and assistance outreach program that I would applaud if I weren’t so confused.

First, a bit of background. TVFreedom is … well, it’s easier to quote from their site. “TVfreedom.org is a coalition of local broadcasters, community advocates, network television affiliate associations, multicast networks, manufacturers and other independent broadcaster-related organizations. We believe that cable and satellite TV providers should be held accountable for stifling innovation and repeatedly using their own customers as bargaining chips while increasing their record profits. In a fair and free market, programming is accessible and valued.” To summarize, it’s a group of mostly broadcasters arguing in favor of higher retransmission consent fees.

So TVFreedom, in collaboration with Antennas Direct and LG Electronics, is promoting the first stop in its Broadcast TV Liberation Tour by giving away 1000 very nice OTA antennas (and one 42-inch TV) this Sunday at a mall in Washington DC. Its flier (PDF) opens with “Hey D.C.! Want Your TV for Free?”

Feeling any cognitive dissonance yet? TVFreedom wants cable and satellite TV companies to pay higher retransmission fees, which get passed (sometimes as a line item) directly to subscribing viewers. But TVFreedom is also promoting the accurate counterpoint that viewers don’t need to pay any retransmission fees if they just use a simple OTA antenna.

Personally, this is more than an abstract question. Way back in 2004 when Dish Network had an impasse with Viacom, I made one of my best investments – a good rooftop antenna. That way, I could still watch CBS (then owned by Viacom) while waiting for Dish to capitulate. Today that cycle has returned, and CBS has threatened to pull its owned and operated stations from Dish. With my rooftop antenna, I’d hardly notice any difference.

The free OTA option should be a drag on retrans fee escalation. As the percentage of cord-cutters grows, broadcasters will receive retrans money from fewer viewers. To maximize total retrans revenue, broadcasters ought to be promoting pay-TV services instead of showing ways to bypass them. Or maybe this all relates back to that public service requirement that comes with the free use of large chunks of our airwaves. But then, why hold your programming hostage for more money? It all just makes my head hurt.

by ·Comments Off on Local Choice debate includes rare confessions
Man scratching the head and choosing remote control

© Depositphotos / Nomadsoul1

For years, a la carte, the notion that pay-TV viewers could subscribe to individual channels instead of big bundles, has been a thought experiment as likely to become real as soup on a stick. Now there’s something similar brewing in the US Senate Commerce Committee, and it has already prompted interesting revelations from broadcasters and pay-TV operators.

Quick Background: To allow Dish Network and DirecTV to retransmit local stations to their markets, Congress had to pass a law; the most recent version of that law is named STELA, for Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act. That law expires every few years, forcing Congress to pass a new version or renew the old one, as it did in 2010. That extension expires on Dec. 31, 2014.

In July, the House Judiciary Committee quietly passed an essentially unchanged version. In August, the chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee and its ranking minority member tacked on “Local Choice,” a bipartisan, cunningly simple plan to overhaul the retransmission consent system. Under this plan, each local station would offer its signal to pay-TV subscribers for a given price. Each subscriber could choose whether to purchase each local channel. This way, stations would get market-based value but viewers would avoid pay-TV blackouts from retransmission contract renewal disputes. The senators also released a dull slideshow explaining this relief from “one of the fastest growing items on cable and satellite bills.”

Local Choice’s status is still uncertain, partly because it’ll be difficult to get such game-changing legislation passed by the end of the year. What I find most interesting are the unusual, revealing comments that it has sparked from both sides.

First off, Local Choice is strongly supported by the pay-TV industry, as you might have guessed. That stance refutes a common pay-TV argument against full a la carte – cable and satellite companies have no problem handling the billing and logistics of individual subscribers choosing individual channels. Keep that in mind when you hear the industry claim that separate charges for MTV and Comedy Central would be too difficult to manage.

On the other side, broadcasters hate Local Choice. Robert C. Kenny, in his blog for TV Freedom, a broadcaster-backed group, wrote that “the Washington pay-TV lobby is manufacturing a crisis regarding broadcast TV blackouts when, in reality, hundreds of deals are quietly reached each year through free-market retransmission consent negotiations.” Broadcasters often claim that their deals with pay-TV companies are “free-market,” but they’ve actually got them over a barrel; how many subscribers will stay with a service that doesn’t include the local CBS channel? Local Choice provides an unusually frictionless example of free market economics, and that scares the heck out of broadcasters.

Just yesterday as I watched football, I switched from my Dish Network feed to the sharper OTA signal sent from my local broadcaster to my rooftop antenna. If I had the option to save a dollar or two, I’d drop some of my satellite-delivered locals and use OTA instead, but that’s because I’m hip to the fun of free TV. In the unlikely event that Local Choice passes, it could launch a renaissance as more people discover the power of the antenna.