22 December, 2009
This week, at iHollywood’s Digital Living Room conference a Sony US marketing manager stated that company plans to build out an area on the PlayStation with it’s own, original TV programming. Meaning that with a connected Playstation 3, you don’t need a TV subscription to see the TV shows.
MTV your PS3
Sony already released the Vidzone Music Video application for PS3 this month, offering “your own personalized version of MTV” on the Playstation 3. This free app offers unlimited access to high quality music video streams, and the ability to build custom music video playlists, turning the PS3 into an MTV type station - but one that actually shows Music Videos ;)
From MTV to HBO
The ultimate goal is to transition from a Read on…
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18 May, 2009
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By many in the industry, Belgium is considered to be the Mecca of iDTV (interactive Digital TV), because of the penetration of digital TV in Belgian households, which is relatively much higher than in surrounding countries.
Many iDTV services like Video On Demand are really taking off in Belgium, and the users are getting used to finding some form of interactivity at the push of the red button on most major channels on their set-top boxes.
Because of this well-developed market characteristic, Microsoft Advertising recently ordered a report on the state of iDTV advertising in Belgium, from which Read on…
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7 February, 2009
Proof for the point that internet video distribution through consoles is growing fast. Netflix, an American video rental service that started out renting out DVD’s through the post, is successfully crossing over into internet distribution by using the Xbox 360 game console to get movies on subscribers’ TV screens.
In the last few months, one million Netflix subscribers have downloaded and activated the Netflix app that enables Microsoft’s Xbox 360 videogame console to play normal and HD movies - streaming. And it’s not just that the application was installed often, it’s actually being Read on…
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1 October, 2008
Forget videotapes. A Digital Video Recorder (DVR), now is found in one out of four American households. These Windows Mediacenters, Tivo’s, Harddisk recorders, etc. are all recording hours on hours of TV shows. The number of US households with DVRs has essentially doubled in the past two years and, with a continued push from cable, satellite, and Telco TV providers, will likely double again over the next four years. Leichtman Research Group reports on the use of Digital Video Recorders.
Happiness is a spinning hard disk.
A whopping 87% of the DVR owners would recommend their DVR service to a friend. 81% rate their DVR 8-10 on a 10 point scale (with 45% rating the service as 10). And thirty percent actually owns more than one DVR. Great numbers, showing these devices to be the center of the viewing experience at home. Everyone is watching time-shifted (recorded) shows, causing serious concern with broadcasters and Read on…
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22 September, 2008
Microsoft has shown a new interactive television application developed in co-operation with the BBC for the Microsoft Mediaroom platform. Building on red button interactive television, the BBC iPlayer and the BBC web site, it offers access to web style material on the TV through an intuitive interface.
The concept demonstration of the BBC service suggests how news, sport and weather information could be presented on the TV set using the Microsoft Mediaroom platform. The result is more like a modern web experience than a traditional interactive television service, using the broadband connection to good effect. Mediaroom is currently being deployed in he United Kingdom by BT Vision, the interactive TV offering from British Telecom.
New generation
“These applications set Read on…
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14 July, 2008
Today movie rental company Netflix and Microsoft announced that Netflix subscribers in the US will be able to watch streamed movies and TV shows on Xbox 360 game consoles. The announcement was made at the E3 Media and Business Summit in Los Angeles. The service will be live late this summer.
The service, a software upgrade for the Xbox 360, will be offered at
Read on…
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16 June, 2008
Microsoft has announced a strategic partnership with Russian company VimpelCom to deliver their Mediaroom interactive television service to the Russian audience. The IPTV service, Corbina TV, will be operated by Corbina Telecom, a Vimpelcom subsidiary. It will be the first Microsoft Mediaroom IPTV service in Russian. VimpleCom has about 50 million subscribers in greater Russia. Corbina Telecom operates in 25 Russian regions, primarily as a DSL/fibre-optic voice and data provider. According to Dmitry Malov of Corbina Telecom “the Corbina Telecom fibre-optic network reaches almost every apartment building in Moscow and many other Russian cities”.
SteveB in the house
Microsoft has been Read on…
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10 January, 2008
British Telecom and Microsoft announced reaching an agreement that will make on demand TV content and services available on the Xbox 360 gaming console. All customers of BTVision, BT’s internet TV platform will have access to the service. Apparently high-definition video content will be part of the available package. BT’s internet TV service is powered by the Microsoft Mediaroom IPTV platform, making this first-of-its-kind device and service offering possible. It will be available to UK customers in the middle of 2008.
So long Bill, and thanks for all the fish
Microsoft invested heavily over the past years to Read on…
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9 October, 2007
BSkyB, the UK-based leading European operator of digital television, will no longer allocate new channel slots on its Sky platform. This will undoubtedly lead to bidding battles between companies wanting to gain access to the electronic programming guide(EPG).
Sky announced that it will “cease to take further applications for places in the EPG launch queue” and reconsiders launching the 100 or so TV and radio channels that are waiting. The company is also allocating EPG slots to a select number of channels in the current waiting list. Only those with an already agreed launch date are guaranteed a space.
“After a very careful consideration we have taken the Read on…
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28 September, 2007
About eighty percent of U.S. consumers who have downloaded a movie recently say they did not like the experience and did not plan to do it again anytime soon, according to market research firm Parks Associates. This sort of puts the recent acquisition of video downloader Movielink by Blockbuster in a wholly new perspective.
John Barrett, director of research at Parks Associates, is happy to elaborate on the findings. “People don’t see a reason to use video downloading services. Sure, it will save them a trip to the video store, but it takes Read on…
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26 September, 2007
KPN, the royal Dutch Telecom operator, has recently had research* done in the Netherlands to find out how many stations the average family actually watches. The Dutch audience is pretty spoiled by an abundance of free stations in the different basic cable TV offerings, a normal subscription package of around 15 euro/month typically contains around 27 TV stations.
Digital cable TV subscription offers double or even triple the amount of offered stations, different operators are engaging in a sort of competition who can offer more channels within the digital packages. And the consumer? He (or she) Read on…
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7 September, 2007
Wow this week is busy - presentations in Madrid, Brussels and Hilversum and I’m struggling just a bit to keep up. So far so good though, I had good fun with the Crossmedia MBA today, we had a special “One day MBA” where people could check out snippets of the MBA content. Some nice people in the audience and some very interesting presentations by others. I can still learn a lot.
I did a 1 hour presentation myself, trying to give a Read on…
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23 August, 2007
At Ogilvy summercamp, a nice and informal event with interesting speakers, we had a great presentation by Jeroen de Backer from Telenet. I have published some details on this earlier, but have decided to pull back this article for now untill such time as where all the facts can be checked. I will re-publish in due time.
Sorry for any inconveniece!
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22 August, 2007
Adobe, the software company behind the Flash video player, has announced that the latest version of Flash will support HD (high-definition) video in the the H.264 video format. This means that Web video will be able to have television quality. Soon everyone will be able to watch high definition video content playing in webpages. Mind you, you will only start to actually see better video quality when video makers start to encode their videos with H.264.
Even if Flash isn’t the first video player to integrate H.264, it’s currently the most important. About 98% of desktop computers contain Flash. Because of this, sites like YouTube currently use Read on…
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6 August, 2007
Sony plans to release a digital TV tuner which will turn the PS3 games console into a digital tuner and video recorder. The news was revealed in a New Zealand newspaper. Next year a free DVB-T digital television service will launch in New Zealand, which would mean that the PS3 could be the only device needed to watch and record digital television, together with a satellite dish or aerial. This could pose a real threat to cable TV. It is unclear if the device will be able to record in HD.
Top spot
In the meanwhile the head of marketing at Sony Computer Entertainment Read on…
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2 August, 2007
OK, back on track after a great holiday. Reading through all the feeds on my return I notice that all of a sudden it has become very mainstream to say that internet is eating up television as we know it. According to 85% of the bloggers in this field television is now officially dead, it just hasn’t toppled over and hit the ground yet. And 30 second spots? They are even more dead.
Broadcasters and the upfront
So I decided to check the horrible impact on the biggest TV advertising market, America. The broadcast upfront, a period where the big media agencies buy tv advertising slots in bulk at the start of a new season, has recently Read on…
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10 July, 2007
Microsoft has announced extension of warranty for the Xbox360 from one-year to three-years. The announcement comes in response to an unusually high number of Xbox 360 failures. This means a massive extra cost being taken by Microsoft of about 1.15 billion dollars, to right the wrongs of the shipped Xboxes. Wow. But OK, Microsoft shows it takes the Xbox360 and its’ customers seriously.
What’s wrong?
The reported problems are usually described as the “red ring of death”, as shown on the image accompanying this article, a red ring on the front of the console around the power button. Once the red ring is there the Xbox stops responding. This problem is caused by overheating of the Xbox360 and is usually permanent, meaning that the unit will have to be sent back to be repaired. According to Xbox hardware fan sites Microsoft is fixing these problems by placing an additional heatsink near system’s GPU. A cooler GPU should help solve these problems, so the bitter pill might just be the cure…
A meaningful number
Robbie Bach, president of Microsoft’s Entertainment and Devices division, said the number of Read on…
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24 June, 2007
Digital tv is not as popular as it may seem to be in Holland. While KPN and UPC are publishing one ecstatic press release after another about the rapid growth of their digital TV user base, over 50% of these Dutch digital viewers still watches the analog cable signal. This is the outcome of research by TNS-Nipo about TV viewer preferences.
Isn’t Digital TV great?
The marketing stories about digital TV should be Read on…
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23 June, 2007
Since a couple of days the YouTube software update for the Apple TV is available. Installing this update is pretty easy, you can do it right from the menu. After accepting the download it installs and reboots automagically. You now have the option to select YouTube, and you’re all set to start playing YouTube clips on your TV.
What does it look like?
I’ll tell you if it’s fun in a bit, but let me set the stage here. You get the option to go to YouTube Read on…
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