As summer comes to a close, GigaOm’s Ryan Lawler reflects on the dramatic changes web TV has undergone this season. With Netflix hiking up pricing plans, Fox enforcing a paywall to stream its programs and Hulu going on sale, this summer marked major changes in how we access and pay for video content.
We made news this week with the launch of the DROID BIONIC by Motorola, the Motorola WILDER™ and several other new products at IBC, including the ST-6000, a new flexible multichannel transcoder. What is the best thing you’ve seen at IBC this year? Let us know what you think.
1. The summer of our discontent: How web TV has changed (Sept. 6th) – By Ryan Lawler, GigaOm: This summer has marked a major pullback in the amount of content that is available, as well as a major change in the way it’s licensed, priced, accessed and paid for.
2. Motorola shaves 20% off cable bandwidth (Sept. 8th) – By Julian Clover, Broadband TV News: Bandwidth savings of up to 20% can be achieved through the use of new compression algorithms, Motorola has said.
3. Motorola Droid Bionic review (video) (Sept. 8th) – By Nicole Lee, CNET: What truly impressed us was how smooth and fast the navigation was. Thanks to the Droid Bionic’s 1GHz dual-core processor, screens and pages just flew by as we scrolled and swiped around.
4. Survey: Younger viewers prefer using smartphones as TV remote controls (Sept. 7th) – By Steve Donohue, FierceCable: More than 40 percent of viewers ages 18 to 34 would prefer to use their smartphones as a remote control than traditional TV remote controls, according to a new study.
5. TVGuide.com launches social TV power rankings (Sept. 8th) – By Cory Bergman, Lost Remote: TVGuide.com continues to expand its social TV features with the launch this morning of its Social Power Rankings, a continuously-updated list of the most-talked about shows on TV.
