Today's Top Stories Time Warner Cable (NYSE: TWC) is offering a year of free TV as an incentive for subscribers who jack up their broadband speeds to--believe it or not--improve their Netflix (Nasdaq: NFLX) performance. The offer is included in a mailer being sent to Internet-only customers who, it seems likely, are also Netflix customers, according to a story in GigaOM. TWC has been among the industry's front companies in pushing broadband as a service while simultaneously conceding that not every subscriber wants every TV channel. The MSO has developed limited programming packages--and conversely loaded content packages--to appeal to a wider range of subscribers, so the apparent concession that Netflix can be better accessed at higher broadband speeds is not a total surprise. What is somewhat surprising is the year of free TV, which seems to say that TWC is still in the fight to bring these video subscribers back into their TV fold and also indicates that the MSO hasn't yet given up on what has traditionally been a cable industry cash cow. The GigaOM story gave TWC credit for acknowledging the base of cord cutters among its own subscribers and trying to do something about them. "For these cord cutters, an ad like this may actually be a smart thing: Instead of making them feel like they're subscribing to an expensive TV bundle, Time Warner Cable is putting the emphasis squarely on Netflix, a service Internet-only users likely already enjoy," the article noted. Of course, there is a limit to how far any MSO will go, and Time Warner Cable's limit apparently is reached when it comes to including Netflix in the subscription package. Whether that changes or not--and the chances of that change still seem very remote--depends on whether the two sides can get together and make nice. The GigaOM story cited a Reuters report in March that said Netflix could perhaps become another pay TV service like HBO--and even more importantly, that this service would be welcomed by cable operators. "It's not in the short term, but it's in the natural direction for us in the long term," Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said at the time. "Many (cable service providers) would like to have a competitor to HBO, and they would bid us off of HBO." Since then, of course, HBO and Netflix have ratcheted up their own competition a notch in Europe, where HBO launched an online service ahead of Netflix's market entry. That, though, still appears to be in the long term. Short term, Time Warner Cable is taking its first steps to acknowledge that some subscribers might not want a TV package--then taking a step in the direction of convincing them otherwise. For more:
- GigaOm has this story
- and Reuters reported on this in March Related articles:
Time Warner Cable moving to all-IP 'over some number of years,' CEO Britt says
Time Warner Cable to support HBO on Roku, Xbox and Samsung TVs
HBO pushes into Northern Europe ahead of Netflix; sparks fly Read more about: Netflix
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Hulu Plus has jacked up the Sony (NYSE: SNE) PlayStation 3 (PS3) experience with what a Hulu blogger calls "a new and improved Hulu Plus experience ... designed to help you get to the shows you watch faster than ever before." According to a Hulu blog written by Daniel Bear, principal software development lead, "passionate engineers" within Hulu's Seattle office have been working for the past two years to design a new experience for PS3 users that includes "larger, more vivid artwork" and an "easier to navigate" experience. "PlayStation 3 is the first living room platform we are rolling out the new Hulu Plus experience on," Bear wrote. That new experience includes an updated search, the top 100 clips on Hulu Plus, movie trailers and a "Shows You Watch" feature that not only highlights popular content but also lets the viewer jump straight to the latest episode. "The latest update also features simplified playback, with clean, intuitive controls," Bear wrote. All of which should make it easier for PS3 users to tap into the new Martha Stewart Network shows that began airing on Hulu this week, according to other company news. The three new shows include Martha Stewart's Kitchen, Emeril's Table with Emeril Lagasse and DIY Crafts along with other special events programming from the network. Martha Stewart herself is new to the online space, having moved to Google when the Hallmark Channel red-carded her shows earlier this year. She's expected to beef up her Internet presence to highlight products, content and guest stars such as Iron Chef Mario Batali and Conan O'Brien. For more:
- read this Hulu blog
- and this story in DTVUSA Forum Related articles:
With PlayStation 3 deal Amazon is looking bigger in Netflix's mirror
Online video is "a good thing," so pay for it, says Martha Stewart Read more about: hulu plus
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Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) tomorrow will announce which 180 neighborhoods (out of 202 in the two-state Kansas City region) get to be "fiberhoods," eligible to buy ultra-high-speed broadband and pay TV packages from the search-engine-become-much-more company. What it may not announce, however, is where it will get TV content that wants to make consumers--estimated by some analysts to be as many as 24,000 city residents--in those fiberhoods switch from AT&T (NYSE: T) U-verse or Time Warner Cable (NYSE: TWC). "Google still faces a big challenge acquiring TV content that's competitive with the fare offered by Time Warner Cable and other local pay TV providers, such as AT&T," an Investor's Business Daily story said, quoting ISI Group analyst Vijay Jayant as saying that "Google's programming offerings leave many gaps." Being Google, it's logical to assume some of those gaps will be covered by online video purveyors like Hulu, Netflix (Nasdaq: NFLX) and YouTube, which Google owns. On the other hand, those three don't necessarily make up for a lack of more traditional programming. "It appears Google TV will not include TNT, CNN, ESPN and Fox Sports, to name just a few," Tim Horan, an analyst with Oppenheimer, told the publication. Google's biggest programming coup to this point has been the NFL Network, which is unavailable on Time Warner Cable. It's also managed to cut deals with Viacom (NYSE: VIA), Discovery (Nasdaq: DISCA) and Comcast (Nasdaq: CMCSA) (Starz and NBC Universal). Time Warner (NYSE: TWX), Walt Disney Co. (NYSE: DIS) and News Corp. (Nasdaq: NWSA), though, are still outside the fold. Google also does not have access to the valuable ESPN properties yet. Without that content--and sports is both a big draw and a big expense--Google will have to count on its broadband prowess and perks like a giveaway Google Nexus 7 tablet to be used as a TV remote and online file storage device. There is the possibility that Google could, intentionally or not, be breaking the pay TV mold by forcing its subscribers to find video online. If it is intentional, the company hasn't said so publicly. While cable companies are watching their pay TV subscriber numbers dwindle, those are the cash cows that drive the business, not broadband, so Google may be hard pressed to make money if it's counting on its $120 TV/broadband bundle to carry the load. For more:
- Investor's Business Daily has this story Related articles:
Mixed emotions about Google Fiber
Google set to reveal 'fiberhood' winners
Google Fiber TV agrees to carry NFL Network Read more about: Time Warner Cable
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A company known as the "Hulu of Russia," because of its business model of providing a variety of international and local content, has raised $40 million to make things a little tougher if the original Hulu--or its compatriot Netflix (Nasdaq: NFLX)--come into Russia and try to take over its market. Private equity firm Baring Vostok, along with existing investors ru-Net, Tiger Global, Prof-Media and Frontier Ventures, poured the money into ivi.ru in an attempt to build the company's technology and content catalog in the event of an invasion by the American online players into Russian lands and over Russian wires. ivi.ru founder-CEO Oleg Tumanov told TechCrunch that he's already raised "several dozen millions" of dollars and that this investment will be as much about building up the ivi.ru offering to compete with existing players like YouTube and Rutube as it is about battling any newcomers. Rutube has pushed into the premium content space with a redesign that included a new logo, while YouTube is "currently the country's most popular online video site, with 24.9 million monthly uniques [unique views]," the story said. For its part, ivi.ru has seen its monthly views increase to the point where it says it gets more than 10 million monthly uniques looking at more than 50 million videos. All this is happening in a market that Tumanov says is "in an early stage of development" because broadband infrastructure and subscriber numbers are just starting to grow. While ivi.ru has a hefty product catalog of 65,000 titles, that will be a drop in the bucket if Netflix, Hulu or other payers invade the space, so getting more content and getting that content to subscribers is the top priority for how to spend the new money. "We would like to bring more content to our users, and we would definitely like to develop a better user experience and eventually be on every device," Tumanov said in the TechCrunch story. And, while Tumanov would like to be on every device, he thinks it's still a good idea that those devices be located in his mother country. "Russia is still the primary market for us," he said. "There is still a lot of growth here, and we would like to keep our leading market position in Russia and to engage and bring more users." On the other hand, Tumanov added, he would "not exclude adjacent markets in the former Soviet Union," though there is "[n]othing to announce now." For more:
- read this story in TechCrunch Related articles:
Set-top deals: Russia's MTS boxes with Smartlabs; Rostelecom tabs Infomir
Verimatrix lands deal with Russian IPTV operator Read more about: Russian online video, ivi.ru
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Sorenson Media has filled a gap in its video encoding product line with a new product that occupies the middle space from both a price and performance perspective. Aptly called the Sorenson Squeeze Premium, the product is aimed at small-medium-office customers with multiple video concurrent encoding and editing projects. It builds on the characteristics and features of the Sorenson Squeeze desktop video encoding product (top price of $999) but adds in the capabilities of the high-end, multi-featured server-based system that runs about $9,999. "We really wanted to differentiate Squeeze Premium from Squeeze Desktop, [which is] a workflow tool that fits into anything," said Coby Rich, director of marketing for Sorenson Media, during an interview with FierceOnlineVideo. "Squeeze Premium takes that a step further in providing a centralized encoding station where editors can offload jobs." The unit, which lists for $1,995, is built for an existing customer base that increasingly needs to offload encoding responsibilities, Rich said. "They don't want to tie up their workstations for the tedious process of encoding to multiple formats. They need a centralized hub to offload their video encoding jobs to," he said. "It's the middle piece between our desktop line of products and our server line of products because our users wanted the ability to have a familiar interface they could run on a server without any restrictions." The initial product, which was introduced at IBC 2012 in Amsterdam, will only run on Windows even though the desktop product runs on both Windows and Mac platforms. "This is a server product and the Mac doesn't have a server environment," Rich explained. "Most customers have asked for this and they can still run Squeeze Desktop on a Mac and jobs to a Windows environment, but Squeeze Premium is just built for Windows." It's also built for those who want to get right down to the editing and encoding jobs or, as Rich put it, "someone who doesn't want to fuss with the engineering of setting a really high-end robust server." Squeeze Premium, he emphasized, may not be a high-end robust server, but it is a premium product that goes beyond Squeeze Desktop. As such, it comes with benefits that include presets for all major formats and codecs already supported by Squeeze, including adaptive bitrate standards; priority technical support; a year of free product upgrades; and a free copy of Video Compression for Flash, Apple devices and HTML5 by Jan Ozer, an encoding expert. "One thing we've done with Squeeze Premium that we haven't done with our desktop products in the past is give it a priority service and maintenance plan with a dedicated phone number and priority queue for the first year of the products and any upgrades that happen in the first year," Rich concluded. For more:
- see this news release Related articles:
Sorenson debuts faster, more efficient Squeeze 8.5
With Squeeze 8, Sorenson looks to simplify video encoding Read more about: Sorenson Media, Squeeze Premium
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