Weekly

Cable and telecom experts spent three days discussing industry issues at the 10^th Annual TelcoTV Conference that took place inNew Orleans this week. Eric Bruno, VP of Product Management at Verizon Communications, was the keynote speaker and emphasized the relevance of over-the-top video and the increasing consumer demand for home automation. In fact, Verizon Communications took home one of the 2011 Vision Awards for its FiOS Home Monitoring and Control system powered by Motorola 4Home. In his speech, Bruno also points out the growing number of IP-connected devices that fragments the traditional linear TV viewing experience. For instance, his family of 5 has access to 21 different IP-connected devices! This emergence of tablets also necessitates an increase in bandwidth. A study by Bytemobile shows that users are spending more time watching mobile video at higher resolutions and operators are diligently working to accommodate this surge in demand.

In other news, Kristin Frank, general manager of VH1 and MTV Digital, shares the enormous opportunities social media provide advertisers and programmers, comparing the real-time social media buzz to a global “watercooler” conversation. She adds that the linkage between TV and social media is the only way to keep your audience engaged, interested and entertained.

1. TelcoTV Announces 2011 Vision Award Winners(Oct. 27) – Light Reading: TelcoTV, the largest video conference and expo focused on the U.S. service provider market, today announced the winners of the fourth annual TelcoTV Vision Awards.

2. Verizon’s Over-the-Top Home Control (Oct. 26) – Light Reading: Verizon Communications Inc. intends to start selling its new home control and security product nationwide sometime next year, company VP of Product Management Eric Bruno.

3. More tablets means video hogs even more bandwidth (Oct. 24) – By Stacey Higginbotham, GigaOM: Time for mobile operators to hit the panic button — mobile video use is increasing across their networks and users are choosing to watch higher resolution clips when they sit down for a video-watching session.

4. Social media’s power to amplify TV programming (Oct. 24) – By Kristin Frank, MTV and VH1 Digital: Social media platforms are providing TV networks with new screens to program to drive even greater engagement and advertiser benefit.

5. Twitter and TV Get Close to Help Each Other Grow (Oct. 25) – By Brian Stelter, The New York Times: Type the term “X Factor” into Twitter’s search engine on a Thursday night and within moments, hundreds of viewer compliments and complaints about show will appear.

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This week, Motorola 4Home and Verizon teamed up and announced their new home automation system, bringing us one step closer to connected, energy efficient, “smart homes.” Imagine the convenience of locking your doors or turning off your lights remotely with your smartphone!

Upon facing backlash from numerous customers and investors, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings decided to kill Qwikster three weeks after he initially announced the new business. For now, Netflix will remain one entity that provides streaming video and mail-in DVD rental services for subscribers. Additionally, movie studios will soon revolutionize video content by using a cloud-based storage space called UltraViolet. Viewers will soon be able to purchase once and watch anywhere. Comcast is trying out its new MyTV Choice cable package, an alternative to bundled pay TV offerings. My TV Choice will allow users to choose from tiered packages and opt out of costlier channels such as ESPN and BBC America. Lastly, be sure to check out the Nielsen statistics detailing who’s talking about TV on social media. You might be surprised by the results!

1.  Motorola and Verizon team up; let you control your home as you roam (Oct. 12) – By Zach Honig, Engadget: Do you have Verizon broadband and an overwhelming desire to dim your lights remotely and spy on the kids while you’re out on a date?

2. Qwikster Is Gonester: Netflix Kills Its DVD-Only Business Before Launch (Oct. 10) – By Peter Kafka, All Things D: Qwikster, we never knew ya: Netflix has killed its plans to turn its DVD service into a separate business.

3. Ready for movies in the cloud? Studios bet you are (Oct. 11) – By Lisa Richwine, Reuters: Hollywood is making a major bet this coming holiday season that consumers will buy movies, instead of renting, and view them on the go.

4. Comcast’s MyTV Choice: Is this the future of pay TV bundling? (Oct. 7) – By Ryan Lawler, NewTeeVee: Comcast is testing out a new type of pay TV bundling that gives users the ability to pick and choose which types of content they want to pay for month after month.

5. Who’s Talking About TV Online? [STATS] (Oct. 13) – By Zachary Sniderman, Mashable:  More women use social media to talk about their television-watching habits, making up 53% of the total online population and 55% of the social media population discussing television.

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Media coverage this week continues to focus on executive changes in the tech industry; at Motorola, we announced that Christy Wyatt, one of the Most Influential Women in Wireless, will shift away from software and focus more on enterprise. In other news, on Wednesday Amazon introduced the highly anticipated Kindle Fire. This new device shook up the tablet world, but what does it mean for pay TV? Cable MSOs and distributors have yet to partner with Amazon, but will they look to deliver multiplatform content on the Kindle Fire?  Let us know what you think.

The GigaOM Mobilize 2011 Conference also took place this week with some of the industry’s top execs sharing their insights on cable and the home; Qualcomm President Craig Barratt anticipates that the connected home is closer than ever. GigaOM’s Ryan Lawler also hints at potential unbundled TV programming packages on the horizon. This “a la carte” system would allow people to individually pick and pay for specific channels. What channels would you subscribe to and which channels would you ditch?

1. Motorola moves software exec Christy Wyatt to enterprise role (Sept. 26) – By Phil Goldstein, FierceWireless

2. Amazon shakes up pay TV business with $199 Kindle Fire tablet (Sept. 28) – By Steve Donohue, FierceCable

3. Get ready for the great cable unbundling (Sept. 27) – By Ryan Lawler, NewTeeVee  

4. The connected home is closer than ever (Sept. 27) – By Colleen Taylor, GigaOM

5. TV Industry Ups Ante to Lure Jaded TV Viewers (Sept. 26) – By Brian Stetler, The New York Times

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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.

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Change is happening whether you like it or not. The TV industry has begun following in the footsteps of newspapers and magazines, establishing internet paywalls and signifying the end of free online content. FierceIPTV reports that TV Everywhere is readying us for the “evolution” of the way we consume content and predicts that devices will become faster, TVs will become smarter and networks will become stronger to sustain these inevitable changes. Our homes are changing too; Fox News anticipates motion-sensing technologies and aggregated control panels in the future smart house. What do you foresee in the “Home of the Future?”

1. The end of free looms for Internet TV (Aug. 1, 2011) – By Dan O’Shea, FierceCable: Content paywalls work if your content is interesting enough. Fox has the right idea in creating a paywall for TV content that it previously had made available for free online.

2. Sustaining TVE and the evolution of video (Aug. 2, 2011) – By Andy Beach, FierceIPTV: TV Throughout the industry, companies are rushing to provide TV Everywhere (TVE) capabilities for consumers.

3. TV Everywhere is the new DRM (Aug. 3, 2011) – By Janko Roettgers, GigaOm: Missed yesterday’s Welcome to the new world of TV Everywhere, where TV watching is as complicated as online banking.

4. Mobile video viewers stay close to home, study finds (Aug. 2, 2011) – By Dan O’Shea, FierceCable: Nielsen reports that most usage of video apps on mobile devices actually is occurring in the home, rather than when users are on the go.

5. The Home of the Future Is Almost Here (Aug. 3, 2011) – By Adam Verwymeren, Fox News: The future was supposed to be here by now. So why has it taken so long for the home to be truly transformed by tech?

Image courtesy of Fox News

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